Kazuaki Tanahashi: "Calligraphy as an Expression of Buddhism"

Date
Saturday January 8th 2011, 1:00PM
Event Sponsor
Continuing Studies, Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford
Location
Annenberg Auditorium, Cummings Art Building
Kazuaki Tanahashi: "Calligraphy as an Expression of Buddhism"

Abstract:

Prominent Japanese calligrapher Kazuaki Tanahashi discusses the history, aesthetics, techniques, and practices of East Asian calligraphy through the exploration of a single ideograph in a variety of forms.

The character 無 (read wu in Chinese, mu in Japanese), meaning "no," "not," "beyond," frequently appears in the Heart Sutra, the most widely recited text in Mahayana Buddhism. Using the new Tanahashi-Halifax translation of the sutra, Mr. Tanahashi will explain the meanings of this word in different contexts and then discuss how this character came to represent a central teaching in Zen and how it has been rendered in brushwork.

Agenda:

Lecture with calligraphy demonstration

Bio:

Kazuaki Tanahashi, born and trained in Japan, has been active in the United States since 1977. A painter and calligrapher, he has had solo exhibitions of his brushwork and has taught calligraphy worldwide. He is the author of Brush Mind (1990) and other works on calligraphy, as well as Moon in a Dewdrop (1985) and other translations of the writings of the Japanese Zen masters Dogen and Hakuin.

For more on his work, visit his website www.brushmind.net