If working samadhi is present in your life, in your being, then it will be present in your art. Art always reflects the artist. If you’re agitated, your art will be agitated. If your art is grounded in the still point, the self will be out of the way and your art will reflect its subject directly.

Koans are designed to short-circuit the intellectual process and to open up the intuitive aspects of our consciousness. To understand the vitality of koan study, one must understand that the question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” for example, is not a riddle or a paradox. It’s a question that has to do with the most basic truth. It’s

The art of the inner work, which unlike the outer does not forsake the artist, which he does not “do” and can only“be,” springs from the depths of which the day knows nothing. EUGEN HERRIGEL, ZEN IN THE ART OF ARCHERY

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things. EIHEI DOGEN

In terms of spiritual practice, seeing with the whole body and mind is to “reach the summit of the mystic peak.” This may seem like a profound achievement, but in Zen, this is not the endpoint.

Its only purpose was to point to the nature of reality. It suggested a new way of seeing, and a new way of being that cut to the core of what it meant to be human and fully alive. Zen art, as sacred art, touched artists and audiences deeply, expressed the ineffable, and helped to transform the way we see ourselves in the world.

In the sixth century C.E., Bodhidharma, considered to be the first ancestor of the Zen lineage, put forth the four points that define Zen: Zen is a special transmission outside the scriptures, With no reliance on words and letters. A direct pointing to the human mind, And the realization of enlightenment.

Minor was guiding us to go beyond simply seeing images. He was inviting us to feel, smell, and taste them. He was teaching us how to be photography.

In chado, the way of tea; shodo, the way of the brush; kado, the way of the flower, and kyudo, the way of the bow, the suffix “do” means “way.” These arts were called ways because they were disciplines or paths of polishing the artist’s understanding of him or herself and the nature of reality.