With its bold strokes and mystic aura, Zen calligraphy has intrigued many Westerners, but has remained a little-understood art form. Master calligrapher and swordmaster Tanchu Terayama offers detailed lessons in Japanese brush techniques, as well as an appreciation of calligraphy's subtle elements. With its bold strokes and mystic aura, Zen calligraphy has intrigued many Westerners since the 19060s, but has remained a little-understood art form. Here, master calligrapher and swordmaster Tanchu Terayama offers detailed lessons in Japanese

Long Strange Journey presents the first critical analysis of visual objects and discourses that animate Zen art modernism and its legacies, with particular emphasis on the postwar “Zen boom.” Since the late nineteenth century, Zen and Zen art have emerged as globally familiar terms associated with a spectrum of practices, beliefs, works of visual art, aesthetic concepts, commercial products, and modes of self-fashioning. They have also been at the center of fiery public disputes that have erupted along national, denominational, racial-ethnic, class, and intellectual lines. Neither stable nor strictly a matter of euphoric religious or intercultural exchange, Zen and Zen art are best approached as productive predicaments in the study of religion, spirituality, art, and consumer culture, especially within the frame of Buddhist modernism. Long Strange Journey’s modern-contemporary emphasis sets it off from most writing on Zen art, which focuses on masterworks by premodern Chinese and Japanese artists, gushes over “timeless” visual qualities as indicative of metaphysical states, or promotes with ahistorical, trend-spotting flair Zen art’s design appeal and therapeutic values. In contrast, the present work plots a methodological through line distinguished by “discourse analysis,” moving from the first contacts between Europe and Japanese Zen in the sixteenth century to late nineteenth–early twentieth-century transnational exchanges driven by Japanese Buddhists and intellectuals and the formation of a Zen art canon; to postwar Zen transformations of practice and avant-garde expressions; to popular embodiments of our “Zenny zeitgeist,” such as Zen cartoons. The book presents an alternative history of modern-contemporary Zen and Zen art that emphasizes their unruly and polythetic-prototypical natures, taking into consideration serious religious practice and spiritual and creative discovery as well as conflicts over Zen’s value amid the convolutions of global modernity, squabbles over authenticity, resistance against the notion of “Zen influence,” and competing claims to speak for Zen art made by monastics, lay advocates, artists, and others.

"A humorous book on Zen brushwork and calligraphy. Brush Mind provides insights into the philosophy of art with a collection of writings with only a few simple words. Every other page in the main section of this book shows an imaginative one-stroke painting created in monochrome."--Amazon.com

"When a Zen master puts brush to paper, the resulting image is an expression of the quality of his or her mind. It is thus a teaching, intended to compassionately stop us in our tracks and to compel us to consider ultimate truth. Here, forty masterpieces of painting and calligraphy by renowned masters such as Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768) and Gibon Sengai (1750–1837) are reproduced along with commentary that illuminates both the art and its teaching. The authors’ essays provide an excellent introduction to both the aesthetic and didactic aspects of this art that can be profound, perplexing, serious, humorous, and breathtakingly beautiful—often all within the same simple piece."--Publisher description.

The enso, or "Zen circle", is one of the most prevalent images of Zen art, and has become a symbol of the clean and strong Zen aesthetic. This books containts examples of traditional enso art from the seventeenth century to the present.

Examines the complexity of language in Zen Buddhism and explains how to understand meaning of words in the way the original Zen writers intended.

Its history, techniques, aesthetics, and philosophy—with an in-depth practical guide to understanding and drawing 150 characters A guide to the history and enjoyment of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy that offers the possibility of appreciating it in a hands-on way—with step-by-step instructions for brushing 150 classic characters. This book is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the history and art of calligraphy as it's been practiced for centuries in China, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia. It works as a guide for the beginner hoping to develop an appreciation for Asian calligraphy, for the person who wants to give calligraphy-creation a try, as well as for the expert or afficionado who just wants to browse through and exult in lovely examples. It covers the history and development of the art, then the author invites the reader to give it a try. The heart of the book, called "Master Samples and Study," presents 150 characters--from "action" to "zen"--each in a two-page spread. On each verso page the character is presented in three different styles, each one chosen for its beauty and identified by artist when possible. The character's meaning, pronunciation (in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese), etymology, the pictograph from which it evolved, and other notes of interest are included. At the bottom of the page the stroke order is shown: the sequence of brush movements, numbered in their traditional order. On each facing recto page is Kaz's own interpretation of the character, full page.