In this last session of the year, we talked about the meanings of Daichi 大地, great earth or vast earth, and the various styles that could be used for both these characters. We especially looked at the possible styles for Dai – 大, a kanji… Read More »Exploring the calligraphy of the great earth at Heart Brush
The old tensho character for mu – nothing – is actually a pictogram, either of a person dancing, or holding ceremonial pieces of wood, so it is really interesting to work on. The more complicated tensho has a strong balance and the kaisho style of… Read More »Mushin and Unsui calligraphy at Heart Brush
On a hot Monday evening we enjoyed some Shodo calligraphy in the refreshingly cool Kagyu Samye Dzong building. We wrote or painted (in Japanese the verb kaku means both to write, draw, paint) the word Kongo 金剛 which means literally metal/ gold and brave/ sturdy.… Read More »Painting brave diamonds at Zen Heart Brush
Having fun with the shodo calligraphy characters we will work with on Monday! Kin metal, gold, one of the Chinese 5 elements, kongo diamond, as well as tamashii, spirit. The meanings and variety of visuals in each of these is fascinating ?
We had fun with trying out both the curved older Tensho style as well as the more stylized Kaisho style at the last session. First we worked with with Ki 木 – tree, experimenting with the branch like strokes, and then Yume – dream/ illusion,… Read More »Shodo calligraphy – in the middle of a dream
At Zen Brush Heart we worked from some inspiring characters related to life and the elements, such as tsuchi 土 – earth /soil, mei 命 – core, destiny, life, and jinzu 神通 – spiritual/ soul power. To get a fuller understanding and feel about these… Read More »Life force and lightning Shodo calligraphy
In the Garden room at KSD a small group of us began Shakyo – copying sutras – by chatting about the history and styles and looking at some examples of the characters such as mu – dream and ku – space. Then we slowly and… Read More »Relaxing and meditative tracing of the Heart Sutra
We will try working from the old visual pictgrams, first curved into shell and bone, for kou (光) and myou (明). Koumyou means radiant light, which combines well with our other character Spring (春)! We will look at the tensho as well as kaisho styles… Read More »Preparation for Zen Heart Brush
We worked on some kanji characters including nichi/hi (日) and nenbustsu (念仏) as well as ei (永) – eternal which is always a helpful character for practicing the eight strokes (永字八法) of shodo calligraphy used in China and Japan. Some flowing markmaking helped us to loosen… Read More »Nichi and nenbutsu at Zen Heart Brush
On February 17th we led a calligraphy and mindfulness day at Wiston Lodge with the friendly and enthusiastic members of the Border Collie Sangha. The setting and light was beautiful with lodge sitting next to Tinto hill south of Lanark, with ice and snow melt… Read More »Sansui – Mountains and Water calligraphy at Wiston Lodge
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