Brushwork and Creation
In his book Zen Brushwork – Focussing the mind through calligraphy and painting — Terayama Tanchu talks about zen brushwork in terms of an act of creation. The white paper, prior to drawing, is complete, empty/full. As soon as the brush touches the surface of the paper, this wholeness is split into two polarities, black and white. He expresses this in the traditional Chinese way – prior to the manifestation/creation of heaven and earth is the state of “konton kaiki” (Japanese term) a state of chaos.
In The Watercourse Way Alan Watts says that Lao Tzu uses the Chinese term “hun” 混 (kon in Japanese) meaning obscure, chaotic, turgid…..“but I do not think that this can mean chaos in the sense of mess and disorder such as we see when things formerly organized are broken up. It has rather the sense of hsiian 玄 (gen in Japanese), of that which is deep, dark, and mysterious prior to any distinction between order and disorder—that is, before any classification and naming of the features of the world.”