Tolerating My Own Heart

11 X 17 Inches
3-color Screen Print
Signed
Created in 2020

$30

This series is inspired by a book that I recently bought on very old Japanese woodblock prints carved by Buddhist monks. I’ve paired the different Bodhisattva characters with passages from some of my favorite writers. The passages that read like koans, which are Zen paradoxes that encourage enlightenment. 

These words are from Virginia Woolf. Every person who has ever lived has had the odd experience she describes.

A koan is a sort of zen thought experiment. One that acts as a vehicle to pass the limitations of thought. They are small objects of language that trip up our logic and offer a momentary transcendence. The one that most Americans are familiar with is, “What is the sound of one hand [clapping]?” Many Koans were created by specific zen masters and recorded by their schools and there is a sort of academia around them but the nature of the koan can be found in languages and cultures throughout time and geography, often in the form of poetry or enigmatic idioms or jokes. 

These “Bodhisttva” prints pair buddhist imagery with bits of language, penned by writers that I love, that offer this kind of koan magic.