Part 2 (1/2)

The writing materials used by Heian courtiers and the calligraphy they set down became important tools for the Zen arts. Writers made use of what the Chinese called the ”Four Treasures”: a brush of animal hair or bristle, a block of solid ink made of lampblack and glue, a concave inkstone for grinding and wetting the dried ink, and a paper or silk writing surface. These materials are all thought to have been introduced into j.a.pan by a Korean Buddhist priest sometime near the beginning of the seventh century, but they already had a long history in China--possibly as much as a thousand years.

With these materials the Heian calligrapher--and later the Zen monochrome artist--created a subtle world of light and shade. The preparation for writing (and later, painting) is itself a ritual of almost religious significance. The ink, called sumi, must be prepared fresh each time it is used: a small amount of water is introduced into the concave portion of the inkstone, and the slightly moistened ink block is slowly rubbed against the stone until the proper shade is realized. The brush is soaked thoroughly in water, dried by stroking it on a sc.r.a.p of paper, dipped into the new ink, and applied directly to the writing surface. The writer or artist holds the brush perpendicular to the paper and spreads the ink in quick strokes, which allow for no mistakes or retouching.

Where the male scholars of the Heian period labored with complex Chinese ideograms, the female artists and calligraphers were able to work in a new, simplified syllabary of approximately fifty symbols, which had been invented by a Buddhist priest in the early Heian era.

Since this new script was less angular and geometrically formal than Chinese writing, it lent itself to a sensuous, free style of calligraphy whose rules later spilled over into Zen aesthetics. The new ”women's script” called for brushstrokes that were a pirouette of movement and dynamic grace, requiring the disciplined spontaneity that would become the essence of Zen painting. Indeed, all the important technical aspects of later Zen monochrome art were present in early Heian calligraphy: the use of varying shades of ink, the concentration on precise yet spontaneous brushwork, the use of lines flexible in width and coordinated with the overall composition, and the sense of the work as an individual aesthetic vision. The lines record the impulse of the brush as it works an invisible sculpture above the page; the trail of the brush--now dry, now flushed with ink--is a linear record of nuances in black across the white s.p.a.ce beneath. The total mastery of brushwork and the ink line gave the monochrome artists a foundation of absolute technical achievement, and the Zen calligrapher-poets a tradition of spontaneity in keeping with Zen ideals.

Another legacy to Zen artists was the creation of spontaneous verse, which also sharpened the faculties and required a sure mastery of technique. Since virtually all communication was in the form of poems, to move in polite circles a man or woman had to be able to compose a verse on any subject at a moment's notice. A famous female novelist and diarist recalled a typical episode:

_The Lord Prime Minister . . . breaks off a stalk of a flower-maiden which is in full bloom by the south end of the bridge. He peeps over my screen [and] says, ”Your poem on this! If you delay so much the fun is gone” and I seized the chance to run away to the writing box, hiding my face--

Flower-maiden in bloom--

Even more beautiful for the bright dew,

Which is partial, and never favors me.

”So prompt!” said he, smiling, and ordered a writing box to be brought [for himself]. His answer-

The silver dew is never partial.

From her heart

The flower-maiden's beauty.4

_

The quality of such impromptu verse is necessarily strained, but the spirit of impulsive art revealed in this episode survived to become an important quality of Zen creations.

The Heian era bequeathed many artistic forms and techniques to later Zen artists, but even more important was the att.i.tude toward beauty developed by the Heian courtiers. Their explicit contributions were a sense of the value of beauty in life and a language of aesthetics by which this value could be transmitted. One of the more lasting att.i.tudes developed was the belief that transience enhanced loveliness.

(The idea of transience seems to be one of the few Buddhist concepts that entered Heian aesthetics.) Beauty was all the more arresting for the certainty that it must perish. The perfect symbol for this, naturally enough, was the blossom of the cherry tree, as may be seen from a poem taken at random from a Heian-period compilation.

_O cherry tree, how you resemble

this transitory world of ours,

for yesterday you were abloom

and gone today your flowers.5

_Many of the later verities of Zen art can be traced to this first philosophical melancholy over life's transience which developed in the Heian era. The vehicle for this heritage was a special vocabulary of aesthetic terms (providing distinctions few Westerners can fully perceive) which could describe subtle outer qualities of things--and the corresponding inner response by a cultivated observer--by the use of fine-grained aesthetic distinctions.6 The word that described the delicate discernment of the Heian courtiers was _miyabi_, which was used to indicate aspects of beauty that only a highly refined taste could appreciate: the pale shades of dye in a garment, the fragile geometry of a dew-laden spider web, the delicate petal of a purple lotus, the texture of the paper of a lover's letter, pale yellow clouds trailing over a crimson sunset. If the beauty were more direct and less muted, it was described as _en_, or charming, a term marking the type of beauty as sprightly or more obvious. The most popular aesthetic term was _aware_, which refers to a pleasant emotion evoked unexpectedly.

_Aware _is what one _feels _when one sees a cherry blossom or an autumn maple. (This internalization of aesthetic qualities was later to have great import for the Zen arts, whose reliance on suggestiveness s.h.i.+fted a heavy responsibility to the perceiver.) As the notion of beauty's transience became stronger, the term also came to include the feeling of poignancy as well as pleasure and the awareness that delight must perish.