Description
ZEN CREATIVITY: THE ART OF LIFE AND DEATH
a new three-day workshop with Alok Hsu Kwang-hanOctober 6 – 8, 2023 | Friday – Sunday | 9 am – 5 pm
- Medium: Ink, Paper
- Experience Level: All Levels of experience are welcome in this workshop!
- Registration: Click the “Cancellation Policy” tab above for more information
- Materials: All materials are included. Click the “Materials List” Tab above for more information.
- Location: Sedona Arts Center, Theatre Studio
In this workshop we engage in Zen creativity to explore the art of life and death. Using specially made Chinese brushes, ink, and paper – all provided for you to use and keep after the workshop – Alok will ask you to paint things that are impossible to paint so that you can be comfortable with not-knowing and be available to the intelligence and creativity prior to thought. In that deep intimacy, you-as-the-brush can move forth with freedom and wonder. We let go of our customary identification with who we are and who we are supposed to be and our need to know how to do it, so that we can show up for the gift of healing into death and into life which may not be so different from showing up for the creativity prior to knowing who we are and what to do.
Alok might ask you to paint the story of Zhou Zhou who was asked, “When great calamities arrive, how shall we respond?” he replied,”‘Welcome!”…or you might paint Rumi’s saying, “God has only 4 words, ‘Come Dance With Me!’”…or Alok might ask you to paint Ryokan’s haiku, “The thief left it behind/ the moon at my window.” Or we all might paint some grief suggested by you that has dredged you deeply or some surprise awakening that might bring us all home.
At age 84, Alok has added one extra day to his usual weekend workshop and limited attendance to 10 participants so that we have more opportunities to explore “resting in presence and moving from emptiness”, to create strange and wonderful paintings, to show and tell our paintings, and to be so blessed as to heal into life and death!
The day begins at 9 am sharp with active-combined-with-stillness meditation, we have tea, we remember to breath into and from our being, we paint and share our paintings with each other, we each bring a lunch and eat together. We finish at 5 pm holding hands in a circle.
- “Healing into Life and Death” is a most apt phrase from Stephen Levine’s book with the same title. Though Alok’s way is different, he acknowledges Stephen and Ondrea’s great contribution in the “therapeutic” dimensions of this healing and is grateful for the resonance.
Prerequisite:
1. Jot down sayings or topics you might want to explore or would like to paint. Please give Alok a copy.
2. To have viewed the trailer and the 69-minute documentary: Moving from Emptiness: the Life and Art of a Zen Dude
Alok’s website: www.zencalligraphy.com
23 1006 AH