The Zen rebels: obscure hermits and existential reformers (part 15). Sengai Gibon

“I came alone I will die alone 
In between I remain alone night and day. 
The I who came thus 
The I who will pass away thus 
Is the same I living In this small hut all alone.”

And in Sengai Gibon's hermitage this is where he begins to paint, in the traditional simple brush strokes of the Sumi style, but, despite its simplicity in expression. Sengai's art, as you would expect from Zen stylizations, also holds a intricacy.  The quick yet disciplined brush strokes and the texturing, even though he wasn't a trained artist. Sengai has a natural ability to develop an original and distinct artistic style and prose. And even with the hermit lifestyle after his retirement, he painted life, trees, birds, people working in the fields – everyday activities of the villages.  Sengai reflected the Zen Buddhists philosophical aspects of attachment and detachment, humor, paradoxical questioning. The ensō circle, which is so important as a way of the Zen practitioner to view and clear the mind of what is known as the void. Nothingness.  But, in his later named The Universe which draws the most attention, as it was the famed Zen scholar Daisetsu Suzuki (d1966), who was able to communicate Japanese Zen to the West – describe Sengai's most recognizable work the three geometrical shapes, drawn in in Sengai's style: Circle, Triangle and Square as the embodiment of "The Universe", the formlessness and infinity of a Universal structure. For many years after, artists from the West, more so in the 1960s, notably Walter De Maria (d2013) attempted a minimalistic take on the Zen Master's original concept of The Universe.  Except, I feel, Sengai's “The Universe” with its three geometric shapes, a perspective done without a title, only with Sengai's Gibon signature, seems vastly more complex than any minimalist style.  The three shapes combining into each other, as they over lap, the brush strokes seem organic, real as the flow through each of the forms.  It is not a static print, it moves within time.  More importantly it transcends time.  The infinite, the void, nothingness and everything combined. 

"He who comes knows only his coming, 

He who goes knows only his end. 

To be saved from the chasm, Why cling to the cliff? 

Clouds floating low Never know where the breezes will blow them."

(Sengai Gibon d1837)