We started the day at Lenzie with a chat about the shared cultural connections around the five elements, particularly through the Himalayan area, from India, Tibet to China and Japan. We looked at the variety of meanings as well as the different approaches of the… Read More »Meditation and calm at Brushing Fire
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
Some fluid markmaking with the Japanese fude brushes and sumi ink was a nice relaxed way to start the group, before working with the characters 春 Haru – Spring – and 光明 Koumyou – Brightness. We had fun trying out the expressive shapes of the… Read More »Exploring the characters for Brightness – Koumyou – at Zen Brush Heart
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
Laying out various materials for the Shodo Japanese calligraphy class on Saturday, such as shitajiki (felt mats), bunchin (paper weights), fude brushes, suzuri (ink wells), fudeoki (brush rests) and washi paper. The pavements are still snowy in Glasgow, so we recommend wearing boots and warm… Read More »Preparation for Zen Heart Brush calligraphy group
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