Word: zen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Zen Buddhism is growing more chic by the minute. Latest evidence: the summer issue of Chicago Review, which contains nine articles on the subject, a poem, and an excerpt from Zen-loving, "beat" Novelist Jack (On the Road) Kerouac's forthcoming The Dharma Bums. Begins Kerouac: "LET THERE BE BLOWING-OUT AND BLISS FOREVERMORE...
Long rooted in Japan, Zen is an ancient Chinese technique of mind-breaking discipline aimed at freeing the will. All things bubble along in one interrelated continuum, says Zen. Why try to "grasp" or "stop" them? The real problem is spontaneity: how to "let go" and "go with" the permanent impermanence. The Zen disciple must destroy his ego-consciousness, until his real self calmly floats on the world's confusion like a pingpong ball skimming down a mountain stream...
...Anglo-Saxons, says Author Alan W. Watts, former Anglican priest and a leading U.S. exponent of Zen, the main obstacle to the achievement of Zen's peace is an inability to purge themselves of the need for self-justification. This urge to prove oneself right "has always jiggled the Chinese sense of the ludicrous." The Chinese rated human-heartedness ahead of righteousness, felt that one could not be right without also being wrong. "At the roots of Chinese life there is a trust in the good-and-evil of one's own nature which is peculiarly foreign...
After World War II, Horiuchi made his way to Spokane and Zen Master Takizaki, who had greatly influenced Mark Tobey. His work became an exciting blend of abstraction and traditional Japanese painting. At his best, Horiuchi manages to combine a sense of the mysterious depths of an ancient heritage (often suggested by weathered scraps decorated with archaic Japanese calligraphy) with moody, grey and color-flecked images of Pacific landscape, mists and rain. Having attained a point of equipoise between East and West, Horiuchi's goal is "to impart something of the peace and serenity of an Eastern memory into...
...distinguishing mark of such leading Pacific Northwest painters as Mark Tobey, Morris Graves and Kenneth Callahan is their ability to mix Zen with zest, give an Oriental slant to their Western vision. Now a major new artistic talent, who arrived at the East-West meeting point by a different route, has appeared among them. The newcomer: patient and painfully modest Paul Horiuchi, 52, a Japanese-born American who for years made his living as a railroad foreman...