A Deep Paradox

KYOTO, Japan —  Tofukuji temple is tucked into the gentle slope of a mountain here, and a ravine runs through it. A holy life would seem possible in these centuries-old wooden halls surrounded by elegantly austere gardens.

Crossing a small covered bridge, you reach the main building, where Abbot Keido Fukushima and his handful of monks reside. You pass through a gate and enter the courtyard--combed gray gravel and manicured trees are to the right, a low L-shaped building in traditional Japanese style stands to the left and in front of you. Before stepping up to the porch rimming the building, you must stop. A bit of Kabuki drama unfolds as the Zen Buddhist acolyte who has guided you here loudly announces your arrival. Behind the half-closed sliding door comes an equally loud, guttural response in formal Japanese, “So then, enter. . . .”

Leave your shoes on the ground and climb up.

In a moment, Abbot Fukushima, a roly-poly man in a beautiful orange robe, enters the small parlor off the main meditation room. The visitor sits on a sofa, before a long coffee table, while the abbot, or kancho, sits with some dignity in the armchair opposite. Short and stout, he is a plain-speaking fellow with an easy smile. His translator, Alex Vesey, an American who is a sometime student here, sits to the side. A few samples of calligraphy--Fukushima’s as well as that of his own master--decorate the room.

Fukushima is the only living artist among the 14 whose works are featured in the exhibition “The Art of Twentieth-Century Zen: Paintings and Calligraphy by Japanese Masters,” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through Jan. 2. And while this is a show of art and calligraphy, Fukushima makes clear that the aim is edification, not entertainment.

In fact, he spends the first hour or so of a visit giving a discourse on Zen--or, rather, a condensed version of it--before talking about art. That is because, as he emphasizes again and again, he is a Zen monk and teacher first, and an artist only secondarily.

Zen, a meditative school of Buddhism, came to Japan from China in the 12th century. And then, like so many other imports to this unique island nation, it became tweaked and refined in such a way as to render it distinctly Japanese.

In America today, “Zen” is a common term--so common as to suggest we know what it means. The Zen of fashion, the Zen of sports, the Zen of motorcycle maintenance. An article last March in Vogue, for example, headlined “Zen on a Hanger,” asked the thought-provoking question, ‘Does Zen style equal a Zen mind?” But what the word implies in popular parlance--Minimalism, mystery, mind-over-matter, and perhaps even perfection--tends to obfuscate what Zen really is.

That Zen would have anything to do with trendiness or fashion is mere conceit. In Japan, the land of Zen, the word is much more likely to conjure images of discipline, austerity and rather grueling and completely unglamorous physical hardship. Which is not what the harassed modern Japanese person longs for, and which is why there are only 15 monks studying at Tofukuji temple right now--a number considered high, since most teaching temples can barely keep 10 monks in training.

In fact, a holy life is a tough life. Fukushima describes a typical day in the life of Zen. The monks rise at 3 a.m. and chant in the main hall until 4:15. There are 15 minutes for a simple breakfast, generally rice porridge and a pickled plum. Then morning sittings and koan questions and answers till 5. Afterward there are various duties around the temple complex, including cleaning and maintenance, lunch sandwiched in, and the afternoon sitting just before sunset. During the day, by privilege of his position, Abbot Fukushima reads, writes articles, gives lectures and sometimes even works on his calligraphy. Everyone is in bed by 11 p.m., only to start again four hours later.

These are the easy weeks.

On special training weeks they undergo koan study half a dozen times a day, and on the special week that falls at the first of December, the monks are required to sit or stand the entire time--no lying down. Seven days of sleep deprivation. Seven days of intensive koan training, in which acolytes must ponder the unanswerable, some 3,000 questions like “What is mu [nothing]?” Indeed, that is what those sticks displayed in the LACMA exhibition are for--they are nicely inscribed, but they are used to give monks a whack for nodding off or giving a stupid answer during koan training. As Zen master Kutsu Deiryu (1895-1954) wrote on one such stick, or keisaku, “When you train hard, your satori will be much greater.”

All this is meant to steer one toward the Zen goal of mushin (pronounced moo-shin), which literally means empty or “no-mind,” but Abbot Fukushima points out that no-mind might imply no thinking, which is certainly not what Zen is striving for. He suggests two alternative translations: “free thinking” or “free mind.”

“When there are no attachments,” he explains, “one can take in everything, therefore it’s a free mind. It’s a creative and fresh mind.”

It is with this mind that Fukushima--and other Zen masters--are to create their art, art that for them serves a tangible function. “We never do art for art’s sake,” the abbot insists.

Orthodox Zen dictates that proper training can only be conveyed through a bona fide Zen master--in this self-perpetuating system, only one Zen master can anoint another. However, it is also generally accepted that looking upon a work of Zen art can convey some instruction. That comes via the appropriate text or symbolism, as well as through the spirit of the Zen master left behind through ink on paper. “When you’re a student and want a trace of your master, there’s no better symbol or sign of him than his calligraphy,” says Robert Singer, LACMA’s curator of Japanese art, who has also undergone some Zen training.

The exhibition at LACMA marks the first time a collection of such works has been shown in the United States. “The public seems endlessly fascinated with Zen,” Singer says. “There’s also an increasing acceptance of calligraphy, even if it’s not readable.”

Organized by Audrey Yoshiko Seo of the College of William & Mary and Stephen Addiss of the University of Richmond, the works are culled from various private and public collections. In the serene, spiral staircase gallery of the Pavilion for Japanese Art, there’s ample physical and mental room to contemplate them.

A number of themes recur. First, of course, certain words or sayings are repeated, such as the character mu, which looks something like two hatch marks stuck together. It is the one-syllable embodiment of nothing--and everything--at the same time. The perfect circle, or enso, is another frequent sign. It is the symbol of spiritual enlightenment, of awakening.

Just looking at the several ensos in this show is intriguing, for even such a simple loop of the brush can be beautifully rendered, as in the Fukushima sample on display, or completely pedestrian, as in the Kojima Kendo (1898-1985) version.

There is the usual fondness for birds and flowers, plus an added favorite--monks, especially Daruma, the monk said to have brought Zen Buddhism from India to China around the 6th century. A touch of humor appears in portraits of Daruma by such artists as Deiryu, Gentatsu Yuzen (1842-1918), Mokurai Takeda (1854-1930), what with Daruma’s bushy brow, bulging eyes and rather hangdog demeanor.

Humor, in fact, is not lost in Zen. In a calligraphy demonstration Fukushima recently gave at the museum, he first painted an enso at the top of a long sheet of paper. So far so good. Then underneath he wrote, in English, “Please bite this!” Later, he explained, “I did it as a joke. Instead of thinking of it as an enso, think of it as a cookie!”

And finally, this being Japanese art, how an image is mounted is very much part of the beauty of the object. A pair of folding screens by Nantenbo Nakahara (1839-1954) display a powerful series of hiragana, the Japanese phonetic alphabet. But equally impressive are the rows of black ink on sepia paper being bordered by silver leaf on each vertical panel, the quintessence of elegant Japanese aesthetics.

Not every Zen master is a great artist. “They’re basically untrained artists, so in fact they’re amateurs,” Singer says. Fukushima is among those who are considered skillful at wielding the brush. At 14 he entered Hofukuji Temple in Okayama, where he assisted his first master, Kido Okada, when Okada painted.

“By graduate school I could reproduce a style similar to that of my master in the kaisho style, where the characters are more rigid, if you will, closer to printed characters,” he recalls. “When I entered the monastery under my second master, Master Shibayama, he preferred gyosho, a very fluid style which has a softer feeling to it--a style which I prefer too.”

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Over time Fukushima has found his own touch. Today his calligraphy is much in demand by various followers and admirers who may wish to hang them in a tokonoma, the special niche in a traditional Japanese room. They are so much in demand he can barely keep up, though on a good day he can knock off several dozen at a time. And while it would not be appropriate to charge money for the work, many recipients are expected to--and do--give donations to the temple.

On days when he decides to do calligraphy, Fukushima prepares his inks and lays out the seals that he wants to use--he has about 100--some with his name and variations of his names, some with short, appropriate phrases on them. When asked about his tools, he disappears with an assistant and brings some out, showing them off like a kid with a Hot Wheels collection. In different sizes and shapes, in different colors and stones, they are burnished with obvious use.

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Before applying ink to paper, the abbot sits in meditation for an hour or so. Then he may write the same phrase over and over again, or execute several different symbols or phrases. “At that moment I’m not aware of the state of mushin,” he says with a grin. “I’m just enjoying myself.”

Is there a certain contradiction that something so universal is being taught through something so personal, the idiosyncrasies of an individual’s hand? The flourish of an artist’s brush stroke?

At LACMA, Fukushima readily acknowledges the quirky variations proliferating in the art in the exhibition. “Each one of them is different; all represent aspects of the same mushin,” he explains. “The art part comes from their being different. If they ended up all the same, it would just be boring!”

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“The Art of Twentieth-Century Zen: Paintings and Calligraphy by Japanese Masters,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., (323) 857-6000. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, noon-8 p.m.; Friday, noon-9 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Ends Jan. 2.