On My Work as a Painter

Abstract

I left Japan for San Francisco at the age of 37, drawn by the Beatnik movement of Ginsberg, Schneider and others. In California I encountered the 'supermarket' of new religions, religions that were neither Occidental nor Oriental in conception. There I organized a group of painters interested in Buddhism to study the practice of Za Zen and to adopt the regimen of vegetarianism. We found a house for our group and converted one of the rooms into a gallery for our paintings. Our days began at 5 a.m. with a 40-minute Za Zen session. In 1973, I left the group to live in -France. I retain the attitudes to life I was taught in Japan as a child. I am aware of the coexistence of opposites in everyday life. Thus, sadness is present in joy and joy in sadness. Death, taken as joining the universe of which one is a part, can be regarded with joy. In Buddhist terms it means to enter Nirvana. When one tries to imagine the state of Nirvana, one becomes weary, because one is outside it. That is the moment one accepts the idea of hell and arrives at an understanding of Nirvana. Egoistically, I have imagined Nirvana, which I do not wish to explain to anyone. It leads me to find miracles in everyday life. One of these miracles is a marriage between a man and a woman who met by chance only to develop bonds much stronger than those existing between parents and children. In this world where people kill each other, I consider it to be incredible that two strangers should trust each other to the point of marrying. Then a child may be born to them, a child who did not decide if he wanted to be born. Even in banalities of everyday life one can find little miracles. Since leaving my native province of Kyushu in Japan, I have, by chance, met eight of my former friends-two in New York City, three in San Francisco, one in Delhi and two in Paris. To meet them thus in cosmopolitan cities swarming with people seems an extraordinary occurrence to me. In Japan, if someone from far away visits you, you are expected to prepare a feast that will be so ample it will torture your guest's stomach. I find it easier to fast for a week, which I do two or three times a year. The simple act of drinking tea has become a 'tea ceremony'. Many thousands of people in Japan make their living out of it! I find it strange that anyone could live without any other work than serving tea. Now I rise each morning at 7 a.m. and practice, in an informal manner, 40 minutes of Za Zen. One should free