At the last Zen Heart Brush we explored the Kaisho and Sosho styles of shodo calligraphy, working with tenchi 天地. We were inspired by the examples of calligrapher Chiei 智永 from his version of the fascinating Thousand Character Classic 千字文 – Senjimon. His name means… Read More »Inspired by the examples of calligrapher Chiei
At the Zen Heart Brush in November, we practiced ‘生命 seimei – life’ in the cosy Kagyu Samye Dzong, Tibetan Buddhist centre. Winter has arrived and energy is waning in Glasgow just now but we vigorously enjoyed writing ‘life’! We talked about life, the elements,… Read More »生命 – life springing up with shodo calligraphy
In October at our Zen Heart Brush group, we hamonized with the season and decided to write ‘koyo, 紅葉’ autumn colours. To help us get in the mood and connect with the natural feeling, there were some red and golden leaves on the table to… Read More »Feeling the autumn colours in our shodo calligraphy group…
We had a lovely day at the Cowden Japanese Garden with enthusiastic people taking part, it was a colourful autumn day and tranquil atmosphere, a perfect setting to enjoy a workshop of Japanese shodo calligraphy. After a short talk about shodo we slowly strolled outside,… Read More »Japanese shodo calligraphy at the beautiful autumnal Cowden Japanese Garden
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… Read More »Summer months of shodo calligraphy at Zen Heart Brush
We are having some Japanese themed groups this October.One is “Cloudbrush, Treebrush” with Margaret Kerr, on Sunday 20th October from 10.30am – 4.30pm in the open countryside of Lenzie. Combining Japanese calligraphy and meditation, we will explore the relationship between clouds, water and the character… Read More »October Japanese themed groups ?
In May’s Zen Heart Brush, our Japanese calligraphy group, we wrote “世界” – sekai – world in Japanese. The character se “世” – world/ generation/ society – has nice horizontal and vertical line combinations while kai “界” – world/ boundary/ limits – has an expansive… Read More »世界 – Sekai world of Shodo Japanese calligraphy
The last of our series of free events related to Japanese calligraphy and meditative practice was Shakyo copying – tracing a sutra.We started with a talk where Blair discussed the history of Shakyo (and of course including the famous story of Genjo / Xuanzang c… Read More »Deeply, slowly and softly – Shakyo tracing at KSD
At Kagyu Samye Dzong Tibetan building we had a large turnout for this free Shodo calligraphy group (apologies to those we couldn’t accommodate) and enjoyed a gentle introduction to the way of Sho. Before working on the kanji characters, we talked about the history of… Read More »Meditative calm and connecting to spaciousness and light
In this session generously supported by the GB Sasakawa Foundation, our group of adults with children were able to try out Japanese calligraphy for the first time and find out about some of the history and culture behind the beautiful characters. The participants enjoyed the… Read More »Enso zen circles and old bone language at Maryhill Art Group