This ancient Zen text expresses a core aim of Zen practice.
It is traditionally attributed to Bodhidharma (菩提達磨 / Daruma), the Indian monk regarded in Zen tradition as the First Patriarch of Chan Buddhism in China, from where the tradition later spread throughout East Asia and took root as Zen Buddhism in Japan.
A literal translation is:
Point directly at the human heart.
See your true nature. Attain Buddhahood.
For this exhibition, we have taken some poetic license in translating it more intuitively:
Gaze directly into the heart.
See true nature.
Awaken.
Zen practice is often described as an ongoing enquiry. It asks, as we do here: What is my true nature? And, beneath that question: What is the true nature of things?
When we begin to see, to apprehend, answers to these questions, Zen tells us that we are moving toward awakening.
In the language of this text, this awakening is the realization that our true nature is Buddhahood. What that actually means for each of us, in the lived reality of our daily lives, is the question this exhibition asks:
What does it mean to truly see?
In Zen training, our teachers exhort us to empty our minds.
As we sit, we aim to still the torrent of thoughts raging through us, until our heart, our kokoro, becomes clear and empty as a cloudless sky.
This is said to be the path to returning to our original heart.
In Book I, Chapter IV of the Tao Te Ching, the Daoist text traditionally attributed to Lao Tzu, it is written:
“The way is empty, yet use will not drain it.
Deep, it is like the ancestor of the myriad creatures.
Blunt the sharpness;
Untangle the knots;
Soften the glare;
…
Darkly visible, it only seems as if it were there.
I know not whose son it is.
It images the forefather of God.”(1)
This idea of being “empty yet full” is a key element in our exploration.
What happens when you stop enrobing your experience of reality in the harsh, cutting glare of rational thought, and instead approach each moment with a naked heart, empty and ready to be filled with the fullness of the moment?
What happens when you see with your kokoro, not just your eyes?
Kenshō
Chapter 1: What does it mean to truly see?
Gaze directly into the heart.
See true nature.
Awaken.
| About
Exhibition continues below…
In teaching zazen meditation practice, Zen masters often compare the kokoro to a mirror.
In its original, innocent, untouched state, this “mirror” is said to be perfectly clear and reflective, simply showing things as they actually are.
Our thoughts, desires, concerns, and all the myriad ruminations that run through our minds distort this kokoro-mirror. Instead of apprehending things as they are, we see them as we think them to be.
Zazen meditation, mindfulness, and other practices are described in this context as helping to clean the mirror.
The critical implication of this metaphor is also an extraordinary realization: the awakening to “truth” sought by Zen is not about gaining something new. It is, in fact, the opposite: rediscovering the limpid kokoro that has been within us all along.
In traditional Japanese symbolism, climbing and trailing plants such as vines, squashes, and ivy represent vitality, prosperity, and an unbroken continuity of connection.
They put out tendrils, intertwining as they vigorously grow outwards in all directions: an embodiment of the unending, ever-expanding, ever-connecting life-force underlying all things.
They describe the cycles of life and the connections through which one thing leads to another in an unbroken chain of events leading up to this moment: where we are, who we are, when we are, here and now.
The moment you are reading this exists within an unbroken chain of events stretching backwards all the way to the Big Bang. And it is the stepping-stone from which every moment from now will be generated, through to the end of time.
The vastness of this limitless, ever-expanding connectedness defies the boundaries of rational thought.
I suspect it can only begin to be apprehended by liberating ourselves from the confines of our thinking minds, and approaching it with the empty-yet-full kokoro alluded to by Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching.
To use what has a boundary to pursue what is limitless is dangerous.
— The Book of Chuang Tzu, Chapter 3 “The Nurturing of Life” (2)
Chinese and Japanese art has a long tradition of bird-and-flower painting. Traditionally associated with the seasons, symbolism, and human virtues, I think of it more broadly as a celebration of the living spirit expressed through the physical world.
This work is my own interpretation of that tradition, expressing the forces of life reaching outward to realize their potential.
As I photographed the image, I was thinking about how strong and alive this little weed is, using the resources at his disposal to thrive in his own way, on his own terms. In my mind, he expresses what we might discover when we see beyond our habitual perceptions to apprehend what we really are.
Empty your mind and return to your original heart….
This is what I call abiding in the Garden of the True Home.
— Kojunki
The heart of childlike wonder dances on the energy currents of the universe...
Every living thing is inherently radiant and beautiful in each moment of its existence.
Plant life makes the most of the resources available to it, bursting forth as best it can. It realizes the potential inherent in each moment, bringing forth the beauty uniquely possible right there, then.
In every moment of life, consider: what is the unique resource available here and now?
What can I do where I am, when I am, here, now, to realize the greatest luminosity of my being in this moment?
… free from bondage, simply dancing.
A little glistening figure dances alone on the beach in the warm glow of the sun, silhouetted against the ceaseless shimmer of scintillating waves.
Dancing the dance of the little dancer.
— Kojunki
Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt that I was a butterfly, flitting around and enjoying myself.
The shadows of leaves dancing against a plaster wall spattered with mud bring to mind this poetic parable from the ancient Daoist thinker Chuang Tzu, known for his freewheeling embrace of the potential of the human heart.
I had no idea I was Chuang Tzu.
Then suddenly I woke up and was Chuang Tzu again.
But I could not tell, had I been Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly,
or a butterfly dreaming I was now Chuang Tzu?
— The Book of Chuang Tzu, Chapter 2 “Working Everything Out Evenly” (3)
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
A bamboo branch in dialogue with its shadow.
Which is more “real”?
The bamboo or its shadow?
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.
— Simple Gifts, Elder Joseph Brackett, 1848
The thoughts in my mind are overlays dancing over an underlying fundamental truth…
What happens when we close our eyes and apprehend the world through the eye of our kokoro?
… clouds shifting ceaselessly, constantly changing, against a clear blue sky spreading infinitely behind and beyond.
— Kojunki
Untitled, Polychromed terracotta, Isaku Goto, 2010 |
1HVKM02020, Gilded handheld stereoscopic viewer, 2020 | About
What lies in the stillness behind the restless dance of leaves and nervous shadows thrown about in the narrow confines of our thinking minds?
And here we are…
Originally two separate works, brought together as a single statement by SHIKŌ project member Kanji Hasegawa, a monk-artist who trained at Eiheiji, one of the principal temples of Sōtō Zen.