Zen & the Making of Art

Last month I read Stephen Batchelor’s Confession of a Buddhist Atheist. Somewhere in there (he’s a writer and photographer, his wife is a photographer) he makes the statement that Zen is the only religion (he doesn’t like that word, I don’t like that word, but we use what we got) that emphasizes art as a means of practice. It was such a simple statement, I was startled. He was correct (see postscript), but I was surprised that I hadn’t made such a statement, it’s so obvious. In fact, as I thought about it, it was art that brought me to Zen—in particular the peculiar little poems that go deeper and deeper the more you know them, and also the wonderful ink drawings and calligraphy pieces where negative space is such a constant.

If you hang out around me, you’ll hear me say that Zen is the only spiritual practice that teaches that those tiny moments of understanding—looking at a flower, a person, the ocean, when the self seems to drop away—is understood as a spiritual experience. The experience of oneness. Many of us first see this connection between our experience and a spiritual experience in haiku or other poems from Zen.  Take for instance, Basho’s famous haiku:

The old pond.
Frog jump in.
Plop!

Back when I was growing up (teens, 20s, etc) I read a lot of poems by those American “Dharma Bums” Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. They were both serious students of Zen. Gary studied in Japan at a monastery; Philip was a longtime student at the San Francisco Zen Center with Shunryu Suzuki and later Richard Baker. Here’s one of my favorites of Whalen’s poems, which I’m always finding a reason to quote. I was sitting on the floor of the University of Arizona library when I first read it, oh, something like 44 years ago:

Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis

I praise those ancient Chinamen
Who left me a few words,
Usually a pointless joke or a silly question
A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin of a quick
                         splashed picture—bug, leaf,
                         caricature of Teacher
    on paper held together now by little more than ink
    & their own strength brushed momentarily over it
Their world & several others since
Gone to hell in a handbasket, they knew it—
Cheered as it whizzed by—
& conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars
Happy to have saved us all.

▲

But I don’t want to talk about being a witness to art. I want to talk about making art as a way to practice Zen.

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe.

This is what Dogen said, and this is what we do when we sit zazen. And this is what the Zen practice of art is all about.

One of my favorite all-time books is Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It’s a remarkable book. I used it a long time ago. I was interested in trying to figure out if the experience of being a visual artist is like the experience of being a poet. Besides, I was envious of visual artists. I wanted to be one too. Edwards uses all sorts of exercises to teach hoof-handed folks like me how to draw. The two exercises I remember the most are drawing upside down and drawing a portrait.

Edwards said that forgers always turn a signature upside down to copy it. Why? Because they don’t want to be confused by what a letter “means,” they want to see its shape. They want to see the letters as they really are, not what the “think” they are. I did upside down signatures and I did a couple of upside down drawings. I was amazed at the results. Her point was that the rational mind (“the left side of the brain” in her terminology) got in the way of seeing. We have to figure out ways to let that go.

The same thing holds true for portraits. Most people (non-artists) when they try to draw somebody’s portrait it comes out totally out of proportion and warped. The face is usually magnified and takes up the whole head. The eyes are near the top of the head and the forehead is shriveled down. But really, she says, if you look at a head rightly, you’ll see that the eyes are in the middle of the skull so what we think of as the face is a much smaller element of the whole skull.

I was so happy. Especially when she described the experience of doing art as a place where time and place get lost. Minutes and even hours can go by and we’re not sure of what’s happened during that time except we were drawing. Also our sense of everything around us is dropped away. What’s essential is the act of drawing.

This is what happens when I write poems. Or “play with them,” editing them down to this and that. People ask me what some poem means or why did I choose that word, but really, I’m not making decisions like that. I’m listening to the poem, playing with it until “I feel it’s right.”

I think everybody has this experience in one way or another if they do something with conscious intention. What we could call love. Maybe they are doing martial arts or gardening or cooking or making love or other forms of creative activity. It’s our job, as Zen practitioners, to bring this experience to all parts of our lives—washing the dishes, resolving a conflict with a friend or spouse, engaging in our community or walking in the desert. By concentrating, by paying attention to what we are doing, by studying the self. Again, to repeat Dogen:

To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe.

 So, when people not used to drawing or writing poems, try to do so, they let their “self” get in the way. When I teach poetry writing, I’m always inventing exercises to try to get people to get out of the way of their self. And I tell them, by the way, not to worry. No matter what you do, your real self will be there. Your own unique experience and your perceptions will not be lost. To this end I want to remind you of Joko Beck’s adaptation of the Four Noble Truths, what she calls the Four Principles of Practice:

Caught in the self-centered dream, only dukkha (suffering).
Holding to self-centered thoughts, exactly the dream.
Life as it is, the only teacher.
Being just this moment, compassion’s way.

Now think of these not so much as principles for deeper spiritual understanding, but think of them as a way to make art. And enjoy your practice.

Thank you.
Bobby Kankin Byrd
POSTSCRIPT: This was originally a dharma talk that I wrote up in July. I read a part of it on a Tuesday night, but went riffing off somewhere else. Also, I don't like to get into the never-ending discussion about Zen as a "religion." At least not here. I should say that I believe that some people would argue "that Zen is the only religion that emphasizes art as a means of practice." He's speaking of recognized world religions like Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism and Muslim. He's not speaking, for instance, of all sorts of indigenous religions or practices that include the making of art as central to their spiritual practice. Although they wouldn't make these categories. I think too that every religion has a sect in some nook and cranny where art-making is at the core of what's happening. The mystic Sufi poet Rumi and his Dervish brethren come immediately to mind. But generally I think Batchelor's statement is true. The making of art is a vital facet of Zen practice, although all practitioners of Zen are not necessarily artists in the narrow sense.

Thanks, Mr. Wang Wei

When I was in college, I studied Japanese and Chinese Literature. My favorite for a year or so was Wang Wei, Chinese poet and painter in the 8th Century (Tang Dynasty). I often credit him and his cohorts--Li Po, Tu Fu, Cold Mountain, all the rest of those crazy Chinese poets and their Japanese brethren (Basho, Issa and that ilk) that came along later--with saving my life. They understood quite clearly that nothing is permanent, that everything was changing one moment to the next, including themselves. Here's a painting and two poems by Wang Wei.

--Bobby Kankin Byrd

A portrait of Fu Sheng by Wang Wei

Passing Hsiang-chi Temple

Oblivious, I pass Hsiang-chi Temple
walking on through mountain cloud,
an empty trail through ancient trees.
Deep in the mountains, a bell resounds.

The susurrus rivr flows among stones.
Sunlight streams through frozen pines.
In this still pool, in falling light
Zen overcomes the serpents of delusion.

One-Hearted

When those red beans come in springtime,
Flushing on your southland branches,
Take home an armful, for my sake,
As a symbol of our love.

NOTE: "Passing Hsiang-chi Temple" from The Poetry of Zen translated by Sam Hamill and J.P. Seaton. "One-Hearted" copied and pasted from the Wikipedia page linked to above. 

New Time New Place

We've switched our services to my home--2709 Louisville.

We're between Piedras and Alabama. 

Our new times are as follows:

Sunday, 10am.

Tuesday, still 7pm.

Sundays @ 10am, which I assume will be our most attended services, will be in the living room of my house. Go through the gate on the side and then enter my house at the side door.

I am keeping our Tuesday night services @ 7pm because several of our regular Zentistas can only come then. For Tuesday night services, we will sit in my office. Again, go through the gate, but continue ahead to my office. The lights will be on, the tea will be hot. Lee, by the way, will be hosting neighborhood children in the house.

Remember: my cell number is 915-241-3140 if you have questions. If you want special instruction about zazen and Zen practice, please come early or call to see me.  

The Byrd House @ 2709 Louisville

The Side Gate: Come on in. 

Sundays, enter the house through the side door.

Tuesdays, come on back to the office.

Back Office. Come on in.

I'll keep the light on for you.

Last night the zafus were all in place

...but nobody came.

That happens of course. I’ve always promised myself that I would continue as usual. The zabutons and zafus were all arranged anyway, although I didn’t move the altar. It’s a two-person operation. So I sat for two long periods with a nice longish kinhin, doing the rinzai boogie to see how the faster pace felt on my old legs. The sitting was fine. I chanted the Maka Hanya Haramita. My voice loud in the big room. The bell. A lost grackle outside the door gave the dharma talk. I don’t speak grackle but I enjoyed the rhythms of what she had to say. The tea was delicious. I got to go home a little early. The moon rising from the east through those strings of clouds.

Still, I’m thinking that Tuesday nights are not the best time for folks who like to sit on zafus and do nothing. Attendance has been low since July. Three or four usually. Besides, there’s the $100 a month to the UUCEP. I’m thinking of moving our makings to my home. I have a nice but small office outback which we would have to share with my desk. Our sitting space would be organized among the helter-skelter, but I think we could manage five or six sitters pretty comfortable. We’d kinhin outside. Or we could move downtown to the Cinco Puntos office. Plenty of space at CPP.

My question to all: What would be a good time for you? I’m thinking Sunday 9am or 10am and also a morning sit on Wednesdays, 630am. Mondays don’t work for me for family reasons, and Tuesdays don’t seem to be working. Wednesday and Thursday nights are also possibilities. Likewise our old time of Saturday afternoons.

Finally, if you don’t want to receive these emails, that’s cool. Just tell me.

I hope you’re all well.

Bobby Kankin

915-241-3140 Cell

915-838-1625 Office

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Batchelor

Broken Buddha torso in ancient Buddha caves in northern Laos

At the end of his book Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, Stephen Batchelor speaks about a secular religion, a beliefless practice, although he understands the contradictory nature of the terms. For me it's a concept that rattles around in my head and heart in the mornings as I prepare to sit and stare at the wall. Settles there while I become quiet sitting on my zafu. I don't need to think about it then. I just need to breathe. It's afterward, that I can take up these questions. This morning, for instance, reading Dogen's Genjo-koan. The light of the moon reflected fully on a tiny drop of morning dew hanging from a blade of grass.  

●

Below are quotes from page 237 of Confession:

"The point is not to abandon all institutions and dogmas but to find a way to live with them more ironically, to appreciate them for what they are—the play of the human mind in its endless quest for connection and meaning—rather than timeless entities ruthlessly defended or forcibly imposed.
...
What is it in Gotama’s teaching that is distinctively his own? There are four elements of the Dharma that cannot be derived from the Indian culture of his time. These are

1. The principle of “this conditionality, conditioned arising.”
2. The process of the Four Noble Truths.
3. The practice of mindful awareness.
4. The power of self-reliance.

●

Sit well. Hold the sky up with the tip of your head.
Bobby Kankin

Of Gods and Men

For years now I remember and think about the koan where the monk climbs to the top of the flagpole and he's asked, Well, what do you do now? Daiho Hilbert in his dharma talks always came back to that koan. And that same koan is told in a number of different ways throughout Buddhist and Zen literature. Sometimes, for instance, the monk is hanging on a branch of a flimsy bush at the edge of a cliff. He's holding onto to the branch for dear life. If he climbs back up to the top, a hungry lion is waiting for him. If he lets go, he dies. So what does he do? I recommend watching this French movie Of Gods and Men for a way to consider this koan. It's the best movie about the life of the spiritual practice I have ever watched. A community of Christian monks in contemporary Algeria are confronted with the Mujaheddin on one side, the corrupt government on the other.Their practice has carried them to the very top of the flagpole, to the edge of the precipice. What do they do?

The Practice of the Eightfold Path is a creative act.

Below, like the title of this blogpost, are quotations from Stephen Batchelor's memoir The Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist. I highly recommend the book. Batchelor is also a photographer. I found this one from his collection "Sospel's Shadows"-- Bobby Kankin

"Buddhism has become for me a philosophy of action and responsibility. It provides a framework of values, ideas, and practices that nurture my ability to create a path in life, to define myself as a person, to act, to take risks, to imagine things differently, to make art. The more I prize Gotama’s teachings free from the matrix of Indian religious thought in which they are entrenched and the more I come to understand how his own life unfolded in the context of his times, the more I discern a template for living that I can apply at this time in this increasingly secular and globalized world." —page 181, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, Stephen Batchelor

"Nonetheless, old habits die hard. In my quest for the historic Buddha, I still keep catching myself in search of a perfect person: one how can do no wrong, whose every thought, word, and deed springs from infallible understanding. But Gotama cannot be perfect because he is not God. He did not exempt himself when he said that all hings are impermanent, suffering, unreliable, and contingent. He tried to respond as best he could to the situation at hand. When I try to imagine myself in his present moment, I hae to cancel everything I know abobut what happened to the centures that separate his time from my mine. He had no inkling of the worldwide spread of Buddhism that would occur after his death. In the fractious environment of his time, he did not know whether he, his community, or his teaching would survive even for another day." —page 186, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, Stephen Batchelor