Hsin

hsin

Hsin means "sincere," "sincerity."  This Chinese character has two sides.  The left side is "person," and it looks somewhat like a torso with two legs.  The right side is "words," "language," and it looks somewhat like a hand blowing words from the mouth (at bottom).

Hsin is the title of the first chapter in Hunger Mountain, a lovely little book by the longtime translator of Chinese works, David Hinton.  The book is about Chinese words (and language and culture) and Nature and about  David Hinton's philosophical walks in the mountain near his home, Hunger Mountain.  Etienne showed me the book in Boston when we saw him there in May.

Hsin is a notable word in the last chapter of Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching ("The Way of Things").

Hsin yen pu mei

Mei yen pu hsin

Sincere words are not pretty

Pretty words are not sincere

-translation by Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo

This is how Chapter 81 begins.  We have brushed this 8-character verse in calligraphy class, and so I was interested that David Hinton had chosen hsin for a title.  And I will always remember that Etienne held the Hinton book and showed it to me.

We got to meet Etienne and, for the first time, Etienne's wife Christien.  They are luminescent together.  How I wish South Africa were closer, so we could see them more often.

shou and kotobuki

shou

Shou is Chinese for "long life."  In Japanese, "long life" is kotobuki.  The same written character is used for shou  and for kotobuki.  My calligraphy, above, shows the character for "long life" with bamboo-like strokes and a bit of a lilt at the bottom.  The dot at the bottom is almost double-lobed.  It is OK calligraphy, and so I have added two red seals.  When I did "long life," some family and friends were having health trouble.  I see shou now and I think of them.

Kotobuki, below, is a work of calligraphy done late in his life by Hakuin, one of the most notable Zen Masters of all times.  You may know of him because of the wonderful koan that he came up with:  "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"  You can tell--yes?-- that I looked at Hakuin's kotobuki, that I have, in my simple calligraphy, paid homage to his great calligraphy.  His strokes are both bonelike/strong and round/alive.  He shows much force in this one character.

kotobuki

scroll, practice

qing                             yong

The scroll on the right shows the Chinese character yong, which means "forever," "eternity."  The Japanese use the same character, though they pronounce it ei.  Yong (ei) contains the pictogram of water; maybe you can see the brushstrokes here as rivulets, as flow. The character is made of hand-ground ink on paper, mounted on the scroll, and I have added my vermilion red seal.

The five characters on the left, qing, are ink on practice paper.  The paper is thin, tough, and highly absorbent, carefully torn from a roll.  Here you can see that the brushstrokes vary according to relative wetness and pressure of the brush (in the first (top-right) character, qing, and the fourth character, kuai, you can see grey ink).  If you "scroll" down to my next blog entry, qing is explained a little more.

Calligraphy I practice almost every week alongside some students.  We become still--centered--and moving with the brush when we practice, and sometimes the calligraphy is good.

plum

qing

This is a calligraphy practice from Tuesday night's class. Reading top to bottom, right to left:

qing     lao     i  kuai  r 

green   old      together    =    Young and Old Together

Sandi and I also practiced some plum blossom painting.  The plum is a symbol of hope and endurance, blooming as it does so early--even in the snow--and blooming often on branches that are very old.

Sandi's granddaughter Alexis practiced with us.  Such a young, talented calligrapher in our midst.

plum practice

returning geese

si bi luo yan

Four leaves of bamboo painted in such a way that they are said to be luo  yan, "like a wild goose alighting."  This is an instruction to painting students, on a page in The Mustard Seed Manual of Painting, in the chapter on Bamboo.  Each time I practice this arrangement, the wild goose/bamboo leaves look different:  sometimes pensive, sometimes free, sometimes a bit gangly!  We have returning geese in our skies every day now, and we can hear their honking above us often before we even see them.  Oh wonderful reunions.

Emerging from

the regions of the moon--

the first wild geese

(Hatsukari ya

tsuki no soba yori

arawaruru)

I came across this haiku, by Miura Chora (1729 - 1780), in a 1995 exhibition book entitled HAIGA by Stephen Addiss.  A haiga, a haiku-painting, by Chora was on the same page with the haiku.  It is lovely, three black geese.  I hope that you and I see this haiga (again) and more of Chora's work someday.