Zen Culture

"Highly recommended" - The Center for Asian Studies


Anyone who examines the Zen arts is immediately struck by how modern they seem.

The ceramics of 16th-century Zen artists could be interchanged with the rugged pots of our own contemporary crafts movement.

Ancient calligraphies suggest the monochromes of Franz Kline or Willem de Kooning.

The apparent nonsense and illogic of Zen parables (and No theater and Haiku poetry) established the limitations of language long before the theater of the absurd.

400-year-old Zen architecture seems to be a copy of modern design ideas such as modular space and a California marriage of house and garden.

Zen values experiencing things over analyzing them. Perhaps if we can take the power of direct perception, sharpened by the devices of Zen art, back to everyday activities, we will find a beauty in common objects that we previously ignored.