The first stop

I have had such an interesting day that I feel like making notes of some of it's curious contents. It all started with an invite to a Zen calligraphy workshop given by Sarah Moate Sensei in Exeter.


I had forgotten that there are many schools of Zen, this particular one was Rinzai Zen. Starting with chanting the Heart Sutra in Japanese was a great beginning but I was not expecting the subtle changes in intonation and the sheer VOLUME of it. A zazen period followed.


In the room there were two original Hakuin calligraphies. Being a dedicated Hakuin fan, I couldn't believe my eyes. They were not behind glass as in a museum but right here with the group as if the man himself were watching us. They seemed to be emanate qi.

Next was the calligraphy preceded by a short but powerful qigong set. Every thing about this calligraphy was different from the Chinese style that I had previously tinkered with. The brushes were much bigger and the horsehair bristles were stiffer, as one friend put it - it is like painting with a bog brush! Then there were formalities to be observed with great care taken over the handling and loading of the brush, correct posture and even breathing. This was calligraphy done with extreme focus and mindfulness. I felt quite scared at the prospect of making some awful faux-pas and felt clumsy in my movements.


Our first attempt was on newspaper but even so, the list of possibilities of making mistakes grew longer by the minute, remembering the effortless ease of my teacher's demonstration and making unfavourable comparisons with my clumsy attempts. Whoosh! The first one was done and was whisked away and disposed of before I had time to think. There were no recriminations, no awful post mortems on my messy lines. The idea then struck home - how silly, it is about the doing of it and not he finished product. Very sensible, very Zen. I could hear Hakuin laughing. I laughed with him.


After lunch an opportunity to try something on calligraphy paper. More qigong, demonstrations and directions about the ritual of performing the art. Working on a long piece of paper I was a little more confident now but this soon evaporated when my brush seemed to stick to the paper and provided some interesting angles in what should have been flowing lines! Somehow it didn't matter any more as, again, it was the doing of it that mattered and not the end result.


During the break I really had to go through some taiji and grabbed a friend to join me in a quiet spot for some practice. It felt so good.


The group was treated to an amazing demonstration of something that was completely new to me called a Hojo Kata. Apparently an ancient forerunner of kendo with similarites to aikido bokken forms, it was very slow, stylised and performed with great focus. The energy emitted at the ki-ais was powerful and somehow it was like looking at one of those old samurai wood block prints coming to life with the two performers faces looking like Japanese theatre masks.

Japanese arts seem to be very much about mindfulness and attention to detail which seems to form a strong framework and yet somehow this extreme focus provides a way of letting go which is very freeing and unrestrained. I am fascinated by this concept.

In response to things,

be like the moon in water.

Hakuin Ekaku