notes from the drifting spaces
Blair’s art notes…
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Shakyo – bringing the Sutra to life with each brush stroke and pen mark
Our first online Shakyo 写経 practice event saw us come together from Scotland, and elsewhere such as the rest of the UK and Canada, forming a lovely group of sutra tracing and copying practitioners. This was a joint event I led for the D+P Studio and Glasgow Zen Group. Beginning with an introduction about the
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Walking and chanting the Lotus Sutra Odaimoku
The Odaimoku お題目 chant – repeating the title of the Lotus Sutra Namumyohourengekyou 南無妙法蓮華経 – is principally associated with the Nichiren-shu school but was originally part of a Tendai chant, the school in which Dogen Zenji grew up with. Here I am walking in a quiet Glasgow park whilst chanting, at a fairly slow pace
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Walking chanting the Boundless Life Ten Line Kannon Sutra
The Boundless Life Ten Line Kannon Sutra is chanted at various times such as by monks at Takuhatsu ritual begging while they walk in all weathers. It has a lot of energy and you can try it walking, or even running slowly! Visit the Zen Group Chanting Group page – Blair co-runs this group.
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Tracing the heart of the Heart Sutra – Tokyo 2019
Towards the end of the year as the dry leaves rustled across the pavements, Blair practiced Shakyo Sutra tracing at temples in Tokyo, working mainly from Genjo’s version of the Hannya Shingyo – Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra. You can see the hanging scroll of Genjo / Xuanzang in the Soto Zen shakyo
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Poetry and visual experiments
Zazen practice: at peacewithin the heartthe clear mooneven the smashing wavesreflecting light (Waka by Master Dogen, trans. Shogen) temporal voidsof cerulean blue –ice holes, pulsating –falling apart rapidlyplummeting
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Kusen
After zazen when we chant the Heart Sutra we are chanting the short condensed version – heart/essence – of the massively longer Great Real Wisdom Perfection Sutras (an early Mahayana work begun around the 1st Century). The Japanese title is Maka hannya haramita shin gyo. What we chant is the most common version chanted in
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Limitless – Kusen collaboration
John Fraser’s Kusen No. 197 “A teacher and his student were standing by the shore. In the distance was a boat. The teacher said to the student ‘forgetting about your mind for the moment, point to the boat’. The student pointed to the boat. The teacher then said ‘forgetting about the boat for the moment,
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Portrait of Tokyo Ren Master
Many visitors to the friendly Ren Bar in east Tokyo made calligraphy and artworks to express their wishes for the new year… here is my fast ink portrait of the famous master!