Welcome to the second in a series of interviews on Buddhist practice and creativity. I am talking to some long time practitioners and Buddhist teachers about the relationships between creativity and Buddhist practice in their lives. This month, I am delighted to present an interview with Kyoun Sokuzan, the head teacher and abbot of Sokukoji Buddhist Temple Monastery, in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Lianghua Su Jill Eggers: I have known you for about four years since you began to come to the Dharma Studio to give monthly dharma talks. I have also visited you at the monastery and have seen your art work there and on the temple website. But I do not know too much about your art practice and art background, so I have a lot of questions for you about that. Can you describe the role of art in your life—whether you studied it in college, how you came to your art practice.
Sokuzan: When I was very, very young, I found that one of the things I could do better than my school mates was draw. I tended to focus on that instead of numbers, math, or arithmetic. Drawing carried through my youth first by being a keyline artist for Wolverine Insurance in Battle Creek, Michigan, where I grew up, and from there to being an illustrator for four years in the United States Marine Corps. I then went to art school at the Corcoran School of Arts and Design in Washington, D.C., where I studied drawing under Alexander Russo at the school in 1962-63.
I’ve seen some of your watercolor paintings. There’s a very beautiful one on your website that I have seen in the monastery. Can you tell us a little about that painting?
Sokuzan: “The Paradise of Maitreya” was inspired by a mural that was painted by Zhu Haogu on the wall of a 13thcentury Chinese Buddhist monastery, which no longer exists. Today, this wall painting is housed in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. My watercolor is an interpretation of a small part of that mural showing a monk receiving vows by having his hair trimmed, a ceremonial practice called “tonsure,” for becoming a monk, bodhisattva, or Buddhist saint.
You teach a practice called, Opening the Eye Mind©—A Dharmic Approach to Art. You teach this somewhat regularly at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as well as other places. You were going to teach a session in this at the Dharma Studio, and then the pandemic hit. Can you talk about this practice and how you came to develop it?
Sokuzan: This practice developed out of frustration at my understanding of art when I was attending the School of the Art Institute in Chicago in the early 60’s. I basically developed this approach by sitting for many, many hours in front of a painting of “Sylvette David” by Picasso. I developed a way to move the awareness to the peripheral vision of form that allowed the thinking process to detach from visual awareness so that one can see with the mind’s eye. We can experience something as it actually is visually rather than how we think it is without interpretation, intercession, an interlocutor, or stupidity.
Once when you were giving a talk at the dharma studio, you referred to painting as, “dancing with the phenomenological world.” That struck me as a beautiful way to describe the creative process. Can you say something more about that?
Sokuzan: Whatever the medium—whether it is paint, sound, words—we always need to relate to that partner in a respectful way. We want to appreciate the shape of words, colors, contrasts in the painting, and so on. If there is true appreciation—which means being completely on receive—when viewing what is in front of you with the eye mind, then any movement of color or texture is like a dance with the partner, with the phenomenal world instead of being blinded by the fear of failure in one’s own eyes or others.
You have the unique spiritual heritage of having significant teachers from two very different lineage backgrounds—your root teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, was Tibetan, and your other primary teachers were from a Soto Zen lineage. I notice that much of the liturgy and formal structure of the SokukoJi Buddhist Temple Monastery derives from Japanese Zen traditions, but your teaching style is also very much informed by Tibetan Buddhist traditions, specifically the influences of Trungpa Rinpoche. Zen and Tibetan traditions have very different ways of relating with the visual experience and creativity. American Zen teacher, John Daido Loori, and Chogyam Trungpa both were active as artists and wrote extensively about creative practice. Can you talk about how you relate with Zen and Tibetan aesthetic traditions?
Sokuzan: First of all, I don’t differentiate between the two. They are just forms that are held up and pointed at. Fundamentally, it is still just working with the elements of the physical world whether it is sound or music. Sound or sight or movement.
A particular form that Trungpa Rinpoche used was three-fold logic, which also shows up in the Japanese art of flower arranging called ikebana, or Sogetsu, of heaven, earth, and man. Using these elements, one can use them in such a way that it evokes a feeling of perfection or completion.
The two cultural differences are not particularly different at all to one who practices them. They are just forms. Some very simple, some very elaborate. Zen is very simple. Tibetan forms are very elaborate.
Chogyam Trungpa was very engaged in art making in various forms. Did he ever talk with you about this or did you ever work with him on any creative projects?
Sokuzan: I never worked with him directly. He had thousands of students, but I worked with many of his senior students not only in dharma art but also various kinds of movement practices and on awareness practices that are more culturally extant rather than tied into specifically Buddhist awareness practices.
I’m thinking of one I took, which was a movement or dance course with Archarya Arawana Hayashi, that takes words and puts them into movement. I’ve been trained in it but I have not taught it. I know what it is about.
Do you have a current art practice? If so, can you describe it. What kind of space do you work in, what kinds of materials do you use, whether you set time aside to paint, or just do it on occasion, etc.
Sokuzan: I do birthday cards. I like to do things with people and for people. There is a watercolor in the hallway of the monastery whose inspiration came from a good friend of mine, Rob Fisher, a sculptor in New York. Rob actually gave me the paper. It was 24-30 inches long and six inches wide. That’s how those things develop. He gave me the paper, and I just started making things. I did it with him in the sense he gave me the paper. There are probably fifty of them. Some of them have been brought together in that particular arrangement in that framed piece.
I have worked with lots of people in the Shambhala and Vajradhatu organization for forty years doing artwork. I did artwork for fundraisers for Shambhala in Minneapolis where I would do large paintings and watercolors of dragons and so on. Then they would be auctioned off. I am always doing things with people or for them rather than seeing myself as some kind of a painter or artist who is trying to develop a style or reputation as a painter. I am not particularly collectible in that sense—unless you want to collect all the birthday cards I’ve ever made.
Or if you look in all my sketch books, I’m constantly doing a practice I call “content repetition.” I’ve been doing it for many, many years. I teach it to my meditation students occasionally. It is a personal practice. You draw a thousand images of the same content. I have gone way over a thousand, and the content I draw is cowboys. I have an abstract kind of form that kind of looks like a mushroom or ghost or something. I do that over and over and over. I have been doing it for decades. Content repetition helps one to break through the fixation on content. You have done the content so many times you eventually see what you are actually doing instead of thinking about what you are doing. You actually begin to enjoy yourself.
As a longtime teacher, you have seen and led many students through years of their practice. Do you have any observations about the development of creativity through Buddhist practice?
Sokuzan: Anyone who is already creative is probably going to extend their creativity in different directions sometimes even slowing down on the awareness practices altogether and heightening the practice of music, art, or whatever. I think that is totally appropriate. Sometimes people who are artists slow down in that area and begin to develop more intense awareness practices—sometimes up to, and even including, becoming fully ordained as monks.
Do you have anything else you would like to say?
Sokuzan: I really like you Lianghua Su, and I love your paintings.
Thank you, Sokuzan.