We had a peaceful shodo calligraphy session together meditatively brushing. The theme we brushed was Zazen zen sitting meditation, and we preceded this with enso 円相 brushing, which is a great practice in itself and helps you express and feel interconnection with all things and your own body-mind in a single stroke.
Blair has some experience learning directly from zen monks in Japanese temples so gave some pointers for the enso practice to bring spaciousness and relaxed focus to it.
He also explained the meanings of the za and zen in Zazen 坐禅 (Chinese: Zuochan, usually translated as sitting meditation) helping us discover the visual breadth of meanings in the two characters, and connection to Dhyana.
After working on enso Blair gave demos so we could brush zazen in the kaisho style (comparing styles by two teachers) and then the quirky older tensho style. It was interesting how much everyone connected with the characters, the meditation aspects and enso.
Thanks to participants for sending your images, lovely work, and Ken we like your digitised ‘Zen Kawaii’ cute zen, very funky.
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