The space around the flower spoke as trenchantly as the form itself. I remembered suddenly, Zen began with a flower held up and a smile. After a while, my teacher appeared at my elbow. He was silent a moment. Ah, he replied, you must learn to see the poem in the brushstroke.
Many works are of the first two types.
But the chrysanthemum painting was zen in the third sense. It was a painting that manifested this direct seeing, the essence of the poem in the brushstroke, regardless of the artist s religious or philosophical outlook. Such immediate perception of the nature of reality begets both fear and courage. Individual strokes of a soft brush surrounded by space may look a bit unfinished, with no elaboration of background or suggestion of a setting, just some simple marks on blank paper. In Western art we have a horror of empty space that reflects our inability to tolerate any form of solitude, of undefined spaciousness in our lives.