Zen and Art

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Zen and Art

Introduction to Zen as life tips & miscellaneous information. As I mentioned on Rinzai Zen and the Five Temples of Kamakura, the purpose of Zen Buddhism is to attain enlightenment, and it emphasizes enlightenment, not knowledge. In Zen Buddhism, enlightenment means “realizing the Buddha nature, which is the original nature of all living things. It is said that Buddha nature is “the ability to perceive things beyond the scope of verbal understanding. Enlightenment is passed on from master to disciple, not through words (logos), but through sensory and physical experiences such as zazen and koans. It is said that the state of enlightenment can be expressed in various ways, and in Japan in particular, enlightenment is expressed in poetry, painting, architecture, and other fields.

In 2016, the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno held a special exhibition entitled “Zen: Heart to Form” to commemorate the 1,150th anniversary of Rinzai Zenji and the 250th anniversary of Hakuin Zenji. The exhibition included portraits of Zen monks, Buddhist statues, calligraphy and paintings, and handicrafts, with the aim of touching the essence of Zen.

Rinzai Zenji is the founder of the Rinzai sect, as mentioned in Rinzai and the Five Temples of Kamakura. Many portraits of Zen monks are painted with the same frowning face, and Rinzai’s portrait is similarly painted with an expression as if he is angry about something. It is said that Rinzai’s Zen style was so severe that he often used “blackmail” (shouting), and was called “Rinzai’s blackmail” along with “Dezan’s stick” by Dezan Xuanquan, a Zen monk of the Tang Dynasty, and was also called “Rinzai Shogun” because of his fierceness. His fierceness is said to have earned him the nickname “Rinzai Shogun,” which may be reflected in his paintings.

The “Rinzai Roku” is a collection of Rinzai’s writings. It contains, for example

• Do you want to meet the Ancestor Buddha? You are the ones who are listening to my sermons in front of me. However, because practitioners cannot fully believe it, they seek it outwardly. Even if you can obtain it, it is only in writing, never in the meaning of a living Dharma master.
• When you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. When you meet an ancestor, kill the ancestor. When you meet an arhat, kill the arhat. When you meet your parents, kill them. When you meet your relatives, kill your relatives. Then you will be liberated.

This is a very fierce expression.

The other Zen master, Hakuin, was a Zen priest of the Edo period who spread Zen from the upper class to the general public, and is called the founder of the Rinzai sect. His self-portrait is as follows, and unlike Rinzai Zenji, it gives an impression of aloofness.

In addition, the beautiful powder blue celadon porcelain produced in the Southern Song Dynasty, where Rongxi traveled, and the

Similarly, the exhibition included ink painting, a black-and-white world that flourished during the Southern Song Dynasty.

I believe that painting is a medium that is suitable for conveying information that cannot be put into words. If we simply consider the feature of information in terms of Shannon’s information theory, a single black-and-white painting will contain at most several hundred megabytes of information, but if we expand the interpretation to the world of abstract meanings, the amount of information will be infinite.

The amount of information that can be conveyed increases when the painting becomes a moving image. The following link is to a collaborative video of the exhibition by TeamLab, a renowned projection mapping company.

Together, simple paintings can imagine a limitless world beyond the ink brush strokes. Art is also connected to the digital world, as described in “The Common Beauty of Art and Programming” and “Generative Art, Programs, and Algorithms. Perhaps there is a mechanical god beyond the world where Zen, art, and the digital are connected.