Frederick Franck
I have often been challenged: "Are you justified in claiming seeing/drawing to be meditation?"
I do not doubt that I am justified, for the essence of any authentic form of meditation - whether it is the objectless sitting meditation, the zazen of Zen, the repetition of Jesus prayer, or mantra, the concentration on scriptural texts - is to stop the mind's confused obsession with little Me.
In seeing/drawing the entire concentration -- for a change -- happens to be on what is not-me, on that rose, that face, that ruin, that fills the entire field of consciousness.
It is not only meditation, it is meditation-in-action, by eye and hand in unison. The ninth century Zen master Daie declared: "Meditation in a state of activity is a thousand times more profound than that in a state of quietude".
Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing
I find my morning practice, which is listening from the heart, to be meditation. The quotation helps me understand this.
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