Tanchu, Zen Brushwork - Mu-shin > Klee, âForm-givingâ as action and movement
âAccording to the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kataro (1870-1945) true creativity is not the product of conscious effort but rather the âphenomenon of life itself.â True creation must arise from mu-shin, or the state of âno mind,â a state beyond thought, emotions, and expectations. Work that is produced through conscious effort is ultimately devoid of life.â (Tanshu, Zen Brushwork. p. 10)
âIn his notebooks the painter Paul Klee repeatedly insisted, and demonstrated by example, that the processes of genesis and growth that give rise to forms in the world we inhabit are more important than the forms themselves. âForm is the end, deathâ, he wrote. âForm-giving is movement, action. Form-giving is lifeâ (Klee 1973: 269 In Ingold 2010: 2)
The danger of the term âgivingâ is the conscious effort of how that may manifest. While I find Ingoldâs use of Kleeâs acknowledgment of artistic production as a mode of being in the âfluxes and flowsâ of materiality useful, it is also from Tanchuâs assertion, and from my own experience through meditation and energetic movement work, that life must be flowing through one unblocked by the division of thought.