zen arts – the awakened eye

wherever the eye falls is the face of creation

Posted on March 29, 2013May 22, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

New at the artisans’ gallery – photographer Mitchell Doshin Cantor

Mitchell, who is also a Zen teacher and member of the White Plum Asanga, currently leads the Southern Palm Zen Group in Boca Raton, Florida. He is also a long time student of Peter Matthiessen.

Wherever the eye falls
is the face of creation.
– Sufi saying

The study, practice, and teaching of Zen have contributed as much to my photography as has any practical instruction. Fortunately, photographers who were technically rich as well as spiritual masters have guided me. I have received great benefit from their teachings. I now wish to share my photographs so that others can be enthused to trust life and its voices, audible and inaudible, in ways that these teachers have helped open for me.

Mitchell Doshin Cantor: Bridgewood Buds

Bridgewood Buds

There is … no need to ask what the image means nor why or how it was taken. For me it is enough to relax into the power of the moment the shutter is pressed or the printer is activated; to have no fear of trusting the truth of that moment.

– Mitchell Doshin Cantor

listeningwiththeeye.com

Mitchell Doshin Cantor at the artisans’ gallery

everything is this Knowing

the radiance of things as they are

water seeing water

submit to nature, return to nature

Posted on February 14, 2013May 22, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

New at the artisans’ gallery – artist and poet Ron C Moss

Ron C Moss is a visual artist and poet living in Tasmania, an island of rugged wilderness and solitary beaches. Tasmania’s natural wonders inspire his art, poetry and his continuing journey into the haiku arts.

“Submit to nature, return to nature,” wrote the seventeenth-century Japanese haiku-master Matsuo Bashō, thus capturing the beauty and simplicity of the haiku—a seventeen-syllable poem traditionally depicting a fleeting moment of a given season. The same can be said of the haiku’s more visual cousin, the haiga, which unites a haiku poem, written in calligraphy, with a simple painting.

In Bashō’s time, ‘haiga’ meant a brushed ink drawing combined with one of his single poems handwritten as part of the picture. In our day and age, haiga can be watercolor paintings, photographs or collages with a poem of any genre that is integrated into the composition. Sometimes the poem is handwritten or it can be computer generated, depending on the artist’s taste.

Source – www.poets.org

Ron C Moss: Starry Night

Starry night
what’s left of my life
is enough

I consider myself a student of the Zen arts, which have fascinated me from an early age. I enjoy the distilled conciseness of haiku, the exploration of art and mixed media, and sometimes I like to combine the two, as in the ancient tradition of haiga.

I try to bring a sense of contemplation into my work. Moments of stillness are important in our very busy lives and my path is to practice the way of art and haiku poetry.

– Ron C Moss

website

Also see Ron’s pages at the haiku foundation

Find more info about haiga at www.poets.org

Ron C Moss at the artisans’ gallery

the subject is the echo of its creator

Posted on February 26, 2011May 23, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

New at the artisans’ gallery – Dennis Cordell

Photograph by Dennis Cordell

Photography is the crown jewel of austere poverty. It is what the Japanese poet Hakuin Ekaku has called “the sound of snow.” A photograph can be the answer to a koan that is not information but consciousness.

There is an energy that flows between the photographer and the subject. This energy is the source of inspiration and has a classical association to the muse. This muse, or exuberance is known as prana or “life force” in Sanskrit, rlung in Tibetan, ch’I or qi in Chinese, pneuma in Greek, spiritus in Latin, ruwach in Hebrew, and, perhaps the word “soul” in English.

Sometimes it is necessary to be very patient for this vitality to arise. Often an external element such as the light and shadow on the subject is an inappropriate ebullience for the “breath” of the muse to arise, but when the “breath” proceeds, the camera photographs and the photographer and subject fuse to create an amalgamation of beauty.

– Dennis Cordell

denniscordell.zenfolio.com

dennis cordell at the artisans’ gallery

hearing with the eye

Posted on August 13, 2009December 5, 2018 by miriam louisa simons

How can we hear with the eye and see with the ear? We must first set down ‘the pack’ – the ideas, notions and positions that separate us from reality. We must take off the blinkers that limit our vision, and see for ourselves that originally there are no seams, flaws or gaps between us and the whole phenomenal universe. The 10,000 things are in reality neither sentient nor insentient; the selfish neither sentient nor insentient. Because of this, the teachings of the insentient cannot be perceived by the senses.

John Daido Loori, Wave Echo

John Daido Loori, Wave Echo

Many people think the teachings of the insentient are similar if not equivalent to the teachings we receive from sentient beings. But hearing the teachings of the insentient is not a matter of ordinary consciousness. How then can they be heard? When body and mind have fallen away, in the stillness that follows, the teachings are intimately manifested in great profusion. Whether we are aware of it or not, they are always taking place. The teachings of the insentient are about intimacy, not words.

– John Daido Loori

Hearing with the Eye
John Daido Loori

john daido loori at the artisans’ gallery

let your subject find you

“I” is just a swinging door

Posted on June 16, 2009May 24, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

Breathscribe: Prayer for Miriam

When we practice zazen our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say “inner world” or “outer world,” but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, “I breathe,” the “I” is extra. There is no you to say “I.” What we call “I” is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no “I,” no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.

– Shunryu Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

breathscribe painting – a prayer for my mother, who died recently.

meditation – the inner strip-show

artisans gallery