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Summer months of shodo calligraphy at Zen Heart Brush

In June at our Zen Heart Brush Japanese calligraphy group, we practised the chapter title from poet and zen mater Dogen’s Shobogenzo “有時” uji – being time, and talked about the meanings of this, and the meanings of the individual characters themselves, which was surprising and mysterious!

Summer months of shodo calligraphy at Zen Heart Brush
Summer months of shodo calligraphy at Zen Heart Brush

In August we practiced ningen “人間” which means human beings in Japanese, but curiously in China it means society or human world. It was fascinating to explore how the kanji changed over time from the earlier shell and bone examples which are very visually communicative and lifelike.

Summer months of shodo calligraphy at Zen Heart Brush
Summer months of shodo calligraphy at Zen Heart Brush
Summer months of shodo calligraphy at Zen Heart Brush
Summer months of shodo calligraphy at Zen Heart Brush

In our September session, we had a full group (sorry didn’t manage photos until afterwards) and after working on enso zen circles we practiced the key eight strokes of a Chinese character. The Chinese character “永” ei contains all of these strokes – known as eiji happou, there are various versions of ei which vary in balance and dynamic, we had fun trying these out. We also looked at the fluid rivery meaning and visual in the kanji character. The faster more fluid styles were popular tonight 🙂

Summer months of shodo calligraphy at Zen Heart Brush
Summer months of shodo calligraphy at Zen Heart Brush
Summer months of shodo calligraphy at Zen Heart Brush