tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84167689537694833222024-03-13T01:05:53.319-07:00The Heart Of Clay"We can make our minds so like
still water that beings gather
about us that they may see, it may
be, their own images, and so live
for a moment with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life
because of our quiet."
-- W.B. Yeats ***************************** *********************************
I make functional pottery in an effort to preserve local culture in our modern throw-away society. My main goal is to inspire other people to make their own creative work.Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-34267719126205809982012-07-18T07:10:00.001-07:002012-07-18T07:10:03.826-07:00On the Future of Art and Art Criticism, Keith Martin-Smith<a href="http://www.integralworld.net/martin-smith2.html">On the Future of Art and Art Criticism, Keith Martin-Smith</a><br />
<img src="http://www.integralworld.net/images/fountain-duchamp.jpg" /><img src="http://www.integralworld.net/images/Piss_Christ_Serrano.jpg" /> <br />
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"So too with art: it does not follow that judgments, standards, or ranking artwork are impossible, as Huston Smith so grandly points out. As Shakespeare said, therein lies the rub: postmodern critics fail to see that just being ironic and having impact isn't enough to make something art. To use only the postmodern criteria for art creates a flatland, where there is no way to deem anything “better than” anything else — everything is left in an egalitarian swamp where everyone gets a gold star for trying to be an artist, and everyone can be an artist if they want. Using irony just means you're on the “in” — you “get it”, which does, in fact, make your work a little better than grandma's painting of ducks in winter."Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-89426648654810585162012-02-27T12:59:00.000-08:002012-02-27T12:59:25.243-08:00Jean's Monotypes<div style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWeL9Hb8EqMGpDg1N0c7UH3gbGTYxBp8BFMx44UAai2PN-UgLi0DDX1C7-kGxbseOXIXd1jkCa_yW0a_IxYHM3Yxic-Mbz4rrhEQVjEsgrBWCZ75GIlnf_pCr3At55c8wwyFYHHQzR3VyH/s1600/Scan10007.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="423" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWeL9Hb8EqMGpDg1N0c7UH3gbGTYxBp8BFMx44UAai2PN-UgLi0DDX1C7-kGxbseOXIXd1jkCa_yW0a_IxYHM3Yxic-Mbz4rrhEQVjEsgrBWCZ75GIlnf_pCr3At55c8wwyFYHHQzR3VyH/s640/Scan10007.JPG" width="640" /></a> </div><br />
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</div>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-64135671255703771702012-01-22T05:31:00.000-08:002012-01-22T21:37:27.064-08:00The Mingei Spirit by Warren MacKenzie From "The Beauty Of Use"<div class="itemshadow">
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What Yanagi really recognized was the relationship between the crafts and the society that nurtured them as a necessary part of the culture, and the fact that this interaction was rapidly dying out. Although mingei started in Japan, parallel situations existed in Europe, Africa and North and South America. In the U.S. the folk potters of the Appalachian Highlands were closing down unless represented by mass marketers in a metropolitan area. In England the traditional redware potteries were closing or making knickknacks, and the wonderful tweeds of Scotland and Ireland were more likely to be found in swank tailor shops of London and New York than in the country stores of their origin.<br />
In the course of establishing the Mingei Movement in Japan, Yanagi dwelt on even more subtle thoughts. He wrote and talked about the Buddhist idea that there were two ways of becoming a Buddha (achieving a state of perfect illumination). "One is called jinki-do or the way of self-reliance, and the other tariki-do or the way of reliance on others: the one is the way of reaching the destination by one's own power; the other that by relying on an external power ...The way of self-reliance is for men of capacity to follow. :rat of reliance on others is for men without the power, or one may even explain the former as the way for geniuses and individualistic artists, and the latter as the way for ordinary people and craftsmen."' Embracing this second way was to become the essence of the Mingei Movement. Yanagi recognized and honored the strength of craft works that were produced by relying on the power of others who had gone before. This was MINGEI!<br />
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When Gerry Williams asked me to write about "where we are now in relation to the Mingei Movement," I wasn't sure whether he meant to focus on the world situation (I know nothing about that). the American situation (I have opinions but know little about that either), or the attitude that Soetsu Yanagi talked about when he organized the original Mingei Movement. When I read about mingei and heard Yanagi talk about the original conception, it was to be a recognition of the values of the anonymous craftsperson who sold articles of dailyuse for modest prices. Yanagi wrote about the first showing of mingei articles in the Ginza, Tokyo, June 22, 1927. "In many ways it was an unprecedented sort of exhibition. Not an article was signed. All of the work was created by nameless artisans. None of the articles had value attached to them, yet they spoke eloquently of beauty."'<br />
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Yanagi even went so far as to delineate the criteria for mingei articles: it must be made by an anonymous craftsman or woman and therefore unsigned; it must be functional, simple, and have no excess ornamentation; it must be one of many similar pieces and must be inexpensive; it must be unsophisticated; it must reflect the region it was made in; and it must be made by hand.(2)<br />
While this may have been the beginning of the Mingei Movement in Japan, it was not to be the complete story. Yanagi in his original conception had sought the advice and help of friends who were involved in the crafts and who agreed with his original premises. Among these people were Shoji Hamada, Bernard Leach, Kenkichi Tomimoto and Kanjiro Kawai, potters; Keisuke Serizawa, stencil dyer; and Shiko Munakata, printmaker. These people were not anonymous craftsmen. They were artists who were influenced by the mingei type of work, but they were also trained artists from art schools or colleges. They admired and sought to emulate the mingei attitude, but they could never be anonymous. All of these people fell into the category of jiriki-do cited above. They were the "men of capacity" and not anonymous craftspeople. Because of his intense feelings, Tomimoto eventually dropped out of the group, saying in effect it is wrong to try to preserve these folk traditions. If they will die, let them die and new found traditions will rise in their place.<br />
<br />
The situation related above represents the case for America today. The only mingei craftspeople that I can think of are probably situated in the remote areas of the Southern Highlands. I have met potters, quilters, basket makers and furniture makers in that area who are working in the way their ancestors did, without desire for personal recognition but with pride in the quality of their work and a strong sense of preserving the best of what went before. The Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild was originally formed for and by these people, and it was at their fairs that this anonymous work was shown.<br />
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In much of the world today, folk crafts have been bastardized to conform to what will' sell or what the makers mistakenly believe is a better form of expression. This "better" form often reflects the tastes of people with whom the craftspeople have come in contact, whose opinion they accept because they are wealthy or come from urban areas. As remote people become aware of what is being done in urban centers, it takes a lot of strength and conviction to resist being influenced by such commercial considerations. Yanagi, with his desire to honor and preserve the folk traditions that he loved, inadvertently sowed the seeds for their demise. There is an old song sung by the Mills Brothers which reflects this situation well: "YOU ALWAYS HURT THE ONE YOU LOVE, THE ONE YOU WOULDN'T HURT AT ALL." Once work was shown and talked about, the shops and dealers entered the scene, buying cheap, selling dear and then subtly pressuring the craftspeople to change their work to conform to the tastes of their urban customers. One of the best descriptions of this process is in the book Lost Innocence by Brian Moeran.' He points out the difficulty of maintaining an integrity of product and attitude once the publicity of recognition has hit.<br />
<br />
My feeling is that we of the 1990's cannot even approach the sense of anonymous creation that tome is the essence of mingei. Even those artists of Japan who were influenced by mingei and who wanted to embrace the sense of mingei in their work would never become the unsophisticated craftspeople that they admired. Personally I love the jugs and bread pans of the Appalachian potters. I admire the early German salt ware such as whiskey jugs, baking dishes and kitchen storage jars. The work of French potters who made milk jugs, eating bowls, wine jugs and even rabbit feeding bowls was of the mingei tradition; it all fulfilled a need in the community and became a part of the life of the people.<br />
There is no easy way that contemporary craftspeople can approach that special sense of fulfilling a need in the life of our communities. We sell, for the most part, to an elite patronage that is willing to pay for the pleasure of owning a handcrafted object (which they may or may not use), or to those (usually young) people who are willing to sacrifice a great deal in their attempt to surround themselves with objects that they feel reflect their values and the maker's personality. In my own experience I have found that customers are either students who have been imbued with a love for personal expression in artifacts, or older and presumably wealthier people who have been educated to the values of the arts and hand crafts. I hate to say it but, in my experience in America, the great majority of people would rather go to a movie or ball game than to spend a comparable amount of money on a craft work. We live now in a society where people think little of spending thousands of dollars for a car which will rapidly depreciate and deteriorate, while they would seldom spend $100-$500 for a craft object which they could use in their daily lives and which would eventually pass to their descendants as an heirloom of our times.<br />
<br />
If all of this seems to dwell too much on monetary value, I have to apologize, but it seems that the attempt to look at the aesthetic and cultural value of objects (which was, in fact, the basis for Yanagi's first forays into collecting) is honored more in the breach than in the practice. Yanagi demanded that the people of his time and countryappreciate what was around them, work that was all too often being taken for granted ' or ignored completely. There were people in other countries who also did that. Muriel Rose of the British Crafts Council, the Swiss Hiemetwerk and the Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild, mentioned above, all attempted to make people aware of the qualities of objects used in their everyday lives. I am sure that there were others as well, but today while there may be an appreciation of that traditional work, the usual maker in the developed world is working as an "artist craftsperson," producing individual works that are expected to be looked upon as ART. They are signed, exhibited and written about so that people may understand that these are "important works." While we may pursue our crafts in this manner, we still look for and collect the works from other cultures, not knowing who made them and probably not being interested. In purchasing work from other cultures, we are much more likely to trust our gut reactions about the sense of the piece. If it speaks to us then we will buy it to use and enjoy in our homes.<br />
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In Stillwater at our showroom, we show the work of several other craftspeople. It is disappointing to see people select a piece because they like it, but then put it back if they find it is not by someone they consider important. I feel they are considering their purchases as investments rather than responding to the object. This is true in other countries also. In Japan the craftspeople have been divided into artisans and artists and even further, "holders of Intangible Cultural Properties" or, as they have become known, "Living National Treasures." Prices vary according to the status of the maker and under these circumstance it is very hard for the "elevated" artist to remain "mingei."<br />
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Should we despair? I don't think so. Our artists work in a manner that reflects our times and their own personal attitudes. To do otherwise would be false and the work would lack integrity. Many people miss the fact that Yanagi, in his writings, accepted that craftspeople can rise to the highest achievement in two ways, as stated above. The first is the anonymous mingei craftsperson who builds upon and strengthens that which has gone before. The other is the route of the individual artist who strikes out in unknown directions, driven by her or his inner search for a personal expression that hopefully will speak to the times and find a broad response from an educated public. Hamada, Kawai, Leach and Tomimoto were of this sort, and most of the potters working in America are attempting this route. Even these artists, however, are building on what has preceded them. No artist works in a vacuum or starts from nothing. We all build and alter based upon what we have seen or experienced. The difference is that some alter and develop radically while others work much more closely with tradition.</div>
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Shiko Munakata Working.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #78f4ff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">Beyond the social criteria for a mingei object, I believe there were aesthetic judgments that Yanagi and his friends used. The mingei objects were usually simple, unpretentious and restrained, reflecting their creation as an object for everyday use these were. For the most part, these were rural crafts, and decoration, if it existed at all, was drawn from the countryside. Colors and techniques were very basic. Articles that had been used and sometimes damaged and repaired were likely to be valued over new production. The terms associated with the tea ceremony, such as sabi and wabi which describe reserve, detachment and frugality were adopted by Yanagi. Much of this aesthetic is available and used today by our American craftspeople. If our customers see the beauty that exists in everyday objects (if made with care and love), then they too will enjoy the essence of mingei. But it will not be mingei. It will be art that derives from the mingei spirit.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #78f4ff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">'Transcript of Yanagi's talk at the First International Conference of Potters and Weavers, Dartington Hall, Devon, England, 1952.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #78f4ff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">' Mingei: Masterpieces of Japanese Folkcraft. Published by Kodansha, 1991, p. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #78f4ff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">6.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #78f4ff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">2 [bid., p. 15.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #78f4ff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">Moeran, Brian. Lost lnnocence. University of California Press, 1984</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #78f4ff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">This article originally appeared in the December, 1996 edition of The Studio Potter, Volume 25,</span></span>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-43062417642155418472011-10-26T06:37:00.000-07:002011-10-26T06:37:31.392-07:00A Revaluation of William Morris's Influence in Japan.<br />
By Chiaki Ajioka<br />
<br />
The Mingci movement, which began in Japan in the "I 920s and continues today, has<br />
almost always been discllssed as onc which revolved entirely around Yanagi Soctsu<br />
(1889-1961), a religious philosopher and the apparent founder of the movement.:!<br />
The movement. and Yanagi's theory on the beauty of folk crafts, have been known<br />
to the West particularly after World \'(far 11 through a number of publications in<br />
English, the most famous being The Unknown Craftsman, adapted by Bcrnard Leach<br />
and first published in 1972.3 Nlore recendy, two rouringexhibitions based on Yanagi's<br />
collection at the Japan Folkcrafr Museum (Mingeikan), have been organised in the<br />
West: Mingei: The Living Tradition in Japanese Arts (Glasgow, Sunderland and<br />
London, 1991-92) and Two Centuries of Japanese Folk Art (Massachusetts,<br />
Nebraska, Cal;fornia and Texas, 1995-97).<br />
Yanagi presented his craft aesthetic in a series of articles published in 1927. It<br />
consisted of a number of principles: first, that the purest beauty of craft is found<br />
among ordinary objects; second, that the essence of the beauty of ordinary crafts is<br />
their simplicity of shape, warmth of character and spirit of service (i.e. case of use);<br />
third, that their beauty springs nor from the creativity of the individual producers<br />
hut from the concerted efforts of the multitudes over generations; fourth, that their<br />
beauty is thus free from the individualism which has caused the degradation of art<br />
and crah, and is therefore superior to works of art bearing individual names; fifth,<br />
that the characteristics of their beauty come from the fact that they are made in large<br />
quantities so the economy of the production process drives individual fancy out of<br />
the objects· the producers, therefore, were not conscious of the beauty they create;<br />
and sixth, that because it is impossible to return to the unconscious past in this age<br />
of consciousness, the future of the crafts can only rest on individual producers. To<br />
achieve the purest beauty of craft, however, the individual craft artist muSt strive to<br />
erase his or her individuality and surrender to the power from without.<br />
Curiously, until recently there had been few critical studiesofYanagi and the Mingei<br />
movement in either Japan or the \Vest. For most people, Japanese or non-japanese,<br />
Yanagi's vast knowledge of \'V'estern philosophy and religion, and of numerous<br />
difficult Buddhist texts, perhaps seemed too daunting to allow them to criticise him.<br />
In addition, rhe body of his writings includes his answers to, and counter attacks<br />
against, criticisms made during his lifetime. There are questions, however, which have<br />
been repeatedly asked but remain unans\\'cred - such as rhe vexing problem of the<br />
position of individual craft artists (such as Hamada Sh6ji, Kawai Kanjiro, Serizawa<br />
Keisuke and Munakata Shiko) wirhin a movement which considered the beauty of<br />
folk crafts superior to works by individual craft arrists.4<br />
However, when one steps back from Yanagi's actions and writings, and places the<br />
Mingei movement in rhe contexr of the wider contemporary development of the crafts<br />
in japan, one begins to sce a different picture in which most of these important<br />
quesrions are answered. In most publications on the Mingei movement, its hisrory is<br />
21<br />
described as commencing with Yanagi when he, together with Hamada Sh6ji and<br />
Kawai Kanjir6, coined the word mingei (craft with the characteristics of common<br />
people). However, this narrative ignores the significance of the earlier development<br />
from which the notion of mingei sprang. Why this is so will become clearer later in<br />
my article.<br />
The origin of what we caB the Mingei movement can be traced back to the time<br />
when Bernard Leach took up pottery, which was early in the 19105.5 Around this<br />
time Tomimoto Kenkichi, a progressive student of architecture and design, acted as<br />
an interpreter for Leach and his teacher Kcnzan, and then began making pottery<br />
himself.6 The style of this pottery was derived from old English folk art and other<br />
Western and Middle-Eastern traditions. Tomimoto became acquainted with these<br />
traditions at the Sourh Kensington Museum (now the V & A), and while travelling<br />
;n the M;ddle East between 1908 and 1910.<br />
Leach and Tomimoto not only experimented in pottery but in prints and other<br />
crafts, and designed exhibitions in an unconventional manner. Their works and<br />
activities were innovatory, and as such had an extremely strong and lasting impact<br />
on many youngJapanese artists and craftsmen. For some time, this younger generation<br />
of artists had been seeking new kinds of expression that would reflect their recently<br />
established, largely \Vesternised, urban life. Their works struck a sympathetic chord<br />
in a new consciousness among the artistic community. This new consciousness, which<br />
one may call a modern culture, emerged among the urban intellectuals from the<br />
beginning of the century. One important clement of this new culture may be seen as<br />
exoticism. Living in a now fully developed urban society in which information about<br />
Western cultures and art movements was readily available, these intellectuals began<br />
to see not only foreign cultures bur also their own past, their rural culture, as exotic.<br />
In this context, one must poinr out the effect of Japan's colonisation of Taiwan in<br />
1905 and annexation of Korea in 1910. A strong sense of cultural superiority often<br />
accompanied this taste for exoticism; for example, Masaki Naohiko, the president<br />
of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, spoke thus of 'native crafts' in 1913:<br />
Recently, natives' art has become fashionable. As our culture becomes more<br />
advanced, people begin to prefer objects which represent the opposite. As<br />
everythlllg from the social structure to our everyday life is becoming more and<br />
more complicated and sophisticated, and so is our work, it is natural that we seek<br />
our repose in simpler objects.?<br />
Masaki illustrated this with pictures from his collection - mostly from the South<br />
Pacific, North America and the Middle East.<br />
One of the artists on whom Leach and Tomimoto had a strong impact was Hamada<br />
Sh6ji (1894-1978). Hamada went to a technical school to study ceramics, but was<br />
determined to make pottery in the style developed by Leach and Tomimoto rather<br />
than in the highly tefined and skill-oriented styles of traditional Japanese cetamics.<br />
Hamada visited Leach and offered help in setting up a kiln at St Ives in Cornwall.<br />
Here Hamada - who grew up in Tokyo and worked in Kyoto - met British artists and<br />
intellectuals, such as Eric Gill, who chose to live the simple life in the country.s They<br />
served their guests not with Doulton or Wedgwood ware but with locally produced<br />
slipware plates and bowls which were in perfect harmony with their surroundings.<br />
22<br />
This was the direction in which Hamada was determined to proceed. On his return<br />
to Japan in 1924, Hamada began foraging in antique shops and markets in Kyoto<br />
for pieces to his taste and for his creative use.9 In other ~words, his experience in the<br />
West opened his eyes to objects which were otherwise taken for granted in Japan.<br />
Hamada's behaviour at first puzzled his friend Kawai Kanjiro, who had e::stablished<br />
himself as an extremely skilled cera mist yet was not satisfied with his work and was<br />
searching for a new direction. Yanagi Soetsu was also living in Kyoro at the time.<br />
The three men quickly discovered their shared interest in simple folk crafts, and a<br />
strong friendship was formed. It was during this period that Yanagi developed his<br />
Mingei theory.<br />
It is important to note, however, that Hamada Shoji had doubts about Yanagi's<br />
Mingei theory being used as a formula for appreciating all art and craft. lo Yanagi's<br />
theory was a synthesis of his previous spiritual journey in search of truth through<br />
religion, science and psychology. When he 'discovered' the beauty of folk crahs, he<br />
identified his aesthetic with spiritual truth. The notion that ordinary crafts made by<br />
ordinary artisans for use in everyday life could have a supreme beauty was a kind of<br />
enlightenment for those who read Yanagi's passionate writings. The lack of logic in<br />
some of his arguments was overlooked. His was a revolutionary theory which<br />
completely overturned the conventional artistic hierarchy.<br />
The similarities bctween Morris's writings and Yanagi's Mingei theory are<br />
unmistakable. Yanagi, however, insisted on the originality of his ideas, declaring that<br />
he had not known of Morris's or Ruskin's ideas before he formulated his own theory.<br />
Most of Yanagi's followers do not question the validity of this daim. l1 Western<br />
scholars, on the other hand, have tended rosee a strong influence of Morris on Yanagi.<br />
Brian l\1oeran has been the most persistent advocate of this view. 12 Elizabeth Frolet,<br />
a French artist and scholar, is another who considers that Yanagi's inspiration came<br />
largely from Morris.1.l<br />
My view is that the circumstances in which Yanagi's theory was formed suggest<br />
that he could not have been unaware of Morris and his ideas. However, I also believe<br />
that there are too many other Eastern and Western ideas which certainly influenced<br />
Yanagi to say that Morris's was the main influence on him. For example, thete is a<br />
striking resemblance between Emile M5.le's representation of the Gothic craftsmen<br />
faithfully following the rules of image production· in his book The Gothic Image:<br />
Religious Art ju France in the Thirteenth Cel1tury (1902) - and Yanagi's description<br />
of the selfless artisan who unconsciously created beauty. This has somehow escaped<br />
the notice ofMingei hisrorians. although they know that Yanagi read and wrote about<br />
Male's book some years before forming his Mingei theory.<br />
Some people, including Bernard Leach, but particularly Japanese scholars such as<br />
Mizuo Hiroshi and Jugaku Bunsho. hold that Yanagi actually surpassed Morris in<br />
that Yanagi 'raised' the aesthetic appreciation of folk crafts to a spirituallevel. 14 For<br />
those who believe that spiritual discourse has a higher value than artistic discourse,<br />
it may be so. One may argue, however, that by presenting a personal aesthetic as<br />
universal truth, Yanagi created confusion. Firstly. he completely cur off his aesthetic<br />
frolll history and made it a kind of gospel which claimed that once your eyes were<br />
opened to this truth. you were ablc to understand beauty. This was precisely what<br />
Hamada feared and warned against. To the extent that Yanagi's writings opened up<br />
new possibilities of seeing beauty in objects that had never been considered beautiful.<br />
23<br />
this provided the freedom of a modern sensibility. Yer, at the same time as Yanagi<br />
did so, he shackled his readers to his formula - a pre-set value which determined what<br />
was beautiful and what was not.<br />
Another serious problem with Yanagi's theory, which Hamada pointed out, was<br />
that when Yanagi illustrared his argument with examples of folk craftworks, he did<br />
nor fully explain why he selected them our of rhe rens of thousands of other objects<br />
of similar kinds which would also apparently satisfy his criteria for beautiful objects.<br />
The fact that they were selected by Yanagi with his celebrated connoisseurship was<br />
not mentioned, as Yanagi wanted to generalise from the objects' beauty rather than<br />
to draw attention to his own good taste.<br />
Hamada's criticisms were very important as they anticipated the direction in which<br />
Mingei theory would develop. By the time he voiced his concern in 1931, a new<br />
movemenr was emerging, in Tottori, a coastal ciry on the Sea of Japan, led by Yoshida<br />
Sh6ya, an ear, nose and throat doctor and ardent admirer of Yanagi. Yoshida<br />
interpreted Yanagi's theory as a practical manual for appreciating and creating beauty;<br />
he and others like him believing that if the older artisans produced beautiful objects<br />
through repetition of the same shapes and patterns, properly guided artisans would<br />
also be able to produce beautiful objects even in the modern age. These were the<br />
people who eventually overwhelmed the more cautious readers of Yanagi's writings<br />
and became the mainstream Mingei movement, particularly after the war. For them,<br />
the movement started when Yanagi first perceived the beauty of folk crafts.<br />
The earlier group, Leach, TomimotO, Hamada, Kawai and Yanagi, shared their<br />
love and admiration of folk crafts. The individualistic pursuits of craft artisans (as<br />
most of them were) happily coexisted with their admiration for extraordinary pieces<br />
of old folk ware. Yoshida Sh6ya and others who became the mainstream Mingei<br />
movement, however, held that one should despise individualistic crafts, because<br />
Yanagi despised them. Ironically, it was the high profile of the artists under its wing,<br />
like Hamada and others, and later, Munakata Shik6 or Serizawa Keisuke, that<br />
promoted the Mingei movement as a whole. How, then, did these artists and craft<br />
artists reconcile their position in a movement which, as a principle, condemned<br />
individualism? The answer was that they did not take Yanagi's theory at its face value<br />
and, contrary to popular belief, did not let his theory guide their work. As to Hamada<br />
and Kawai, for example, they simply shared Yanagi's taste for 'extraordinary mingei'.<br />
The younger craft artists of the movement, on the other hand, were fostered by<br />
Yanagi's discernment and encouragement, as well as the brotherhood-like support<br />
within rhe group. In this light, it is significant that Kuro da Tatsuaki, a woodwork<br />
artist who set up a cooperative (under Yanagi's suggestion) in 1927, claimed that it<br />
was Shoya, rather than Yanagi, who popularised the word mingei. 15<br />
To conclude the first point: once the self-contradictory nature of Yanagi's Mingei<br />
theory and the different degrees of his influence (or non-influence) on the members<br />
of the movement are acknowledged, it follows that a discussion of Morris's influence<br />
on Yanagi and the Mingei movement now needs to be more specific as to how the<br />
influence was effected and to what degree.<br />
Yanagi and his Mingei theory were not the major recipient of Morris's influence<br />
in terms of the development of modern Japanese crafts. A more significant and farreaching<br />
influence of Morris's ideas and practice can be observed in Tomimoto<br />
24<br />
Kenkichi, a student of architecture and design who became a potter. Inui Yoshiaki<br />
wrote of Tomimoro in 1986:<br />
The core task in modernising ceramics, that is, to break through rhe practice of<br />
copying traditional styles, and to establish the concept of originality, was first<br />
achieved by Tomimoro, and he did it in a most spectacular manner. 16<br />
Tomimoto is usually considered to be the one who bridged the gap between Morris<br />
and Yanagi by introducing Morris's ideas to him. Tomimoto wrote a two-part article<br />
on .Morris which was publjshed in 1912 in a very influential an magazine called<br />
Bijutsu Shi"po. There is a general unwillingness to acknowledge Morris's influence<br />
on Tomimoto himself, however. The single ground for this unwillingness, it seems,<br />
is the fact that Tomimoro once wrote that he had been disappointed to find no<br />
originality in Morris's workY<br />
Tomimoto was the champion of originality in craft design. He is famous for<br />
his aphorism 'never make patterns from patterns', and. faithful to this motto, he<br />
took pride in drawing from nature to create all the patterns for his craft. Because<br />
of his commitment to originality, his above comment on Morris has been taken<br />
out of conrext, and as a consequence his repeated praise of Morris and<br />
acknowledgment of his debt to Morris have been all but ignored. One can fairly<br />
argue that Tornimoto was an independent craft artist, and his debt to Morris in<br />
his practice as 3 craft artist lay deeper than his introduction in print of Nlorris's<br />
ideas to the Japanese public. My intention here is to highlight Morris's influence<br />
on Tomimoto as he interpreted Morris, rather than to examine whether his<br />
interpretation was valid. Tomirnoto was by no means a scholar of Morris, and<br />
one must nO[ overestimate his competence in the English language as well as the<br />
research opportunities during his limited sojourn in Britain (twelve months from<br />
December 1908 and less than a month in April 1910 before returned to Japan).<br />
Let us look at twO aspects of Morris's influence on Tomimoto here. The first is<br />
Morris's approach to crafrmaking in which he mastered various skills while<br />
always keeping them under the control of his aesthetic. In the 19105, craft<br />
production in Japan was strongly dominated by the convenrional idea that skill<br />
was the most essential value in crafrwork. When Tomimoto adopted Morris's<br />
attitude, it became the fundamental power in breaking through this concept of<br />
craft production in Japan.<br />
Tomimoto wrote:<br />
I found [Morris's wallpaper designsj very interesting when I first saw them. As I<br />
became familiar with them, I came to be fascinated with them. The noble taste of<br />
the serious and gentlemanly artist deeply impressed me. 1S<br />
And,<br />
When I think of the time and effort Morris had taken, without help or teaching<br />
from others, in dissecting the details [of old carpets} and in carrying out many trials<br />
until he could weave them on his own, my respect for this man seems to acquire<br />
even more lustre. 19<br />
25<br />
In faCI, on returning to Japan, Tomimoto took out his great-grandmother's old loom<br />
from storage and himself began weaving.<br />
IMorrisl overcame great difficulties in having various products made in the way<br />
he wanted them. The works which he himself patterned - in various materials such<br />
as silk, carron, linen or wool - show me, apart from their noble artistic value, that<br />
Morris trusted himself and was faithful to himself.l°<br />
A revelation came to Tomimoto when he saw chintz and paintings hung side by side<br />
at the South Kensington Museum. The display struck home the idea that art and craft<br />
have the same value. Tomimoto concluded:<br />
'The appeal of the individualiry of the artist' or 'things that are infinitely<br />
beautiful' must be recognised not only in paintings and sculpture bur also in<br />
weaving, metalwork and all other craftwork. Morris was a forerunner like no<br />
other in perceiving this, and J feel that he showed us the way through his own<br />
practice.21<br />
Tomimoto thus learned from Morris his 'let's see what can be done' attitude, that<br />
is, to believe only in one's own taste when creating objects and follow it through. In<br />
Japan, this was a radical departure from the long-established craft-making practice,<br />
and Tomimoto immediately met strong resistance from the craft community. In fact,<br />
when Tomimoto devised a vase without a neck, other potters sneered at him, saying<br />
that he had only done so because he was not skilled enough to make the neck. On<br />
the other hand, his unconventional experiments and his numerous thought-provoking<br />
essays liberated many young craft artists from conventional ideas and practices. He<br />
was not alone in claiming that artists should follow their own taste and not any<br />
prescribed rules. But he was the first and certainly the most influential one in the field<br />
of the crafts. There were a number of craft movementS developing during the 19105<br />
and 1920s, and those who initiated these movements were often influenced by<br />
Tomimow's progressive ideas and sensitivity.<br />
As well as his commitment to the originality and integrity of the artist, social<br />
conscience was also fundamental to Tomimoto's life and work. He was deeply<br />
interested in Morris's socialist activities and conducted research into this aspect of<br />
his work while in London. Until after the war, however, he was not prepared to<br />
publicly admit this, nor publish his research, as this would certainly have meant<br />
imprisonment.22 One suspects that Tomimoro read Morris's lectures on art and<br />
society, and wished to contribute to Morris's cause in his individual capacity. This<br />
led him to turn to the possibility of mass-producing his designs so that people who<br />
could not afford his expensive pots could still enjoy his work. As early as 1917 he<br />
wrOte:<br />
This year, I began to desire to make craft which can be used by anyone for everyday<br />
life, at the lowest price possible. This is a very important matter for me, and I think<br />
it will have an important role in the direction I will proceed in. 2J<br />
He also wrote to Leach in ] 918:<br />
26<br />
Since last year, I have been thinking about this: decorative arts must not be separate<br />
from everyday life. If people create decorative arts without thinking about everyday<br />
life, the work will be mere toys for grown-ups... I want to make cheap objects particularly<br />
tableware. And I want to provide people'\vith as much of it as I can.<br />
The quality of my vessels will certainly suffer, but to combat ordinary wares,l must<br />
have low prices as the weapon.H<br />
Tomirnoto attempted mass production in different ways - from drawing designs<br />
himself 011 large quantities of bases made by others, to providing originals to have<br />
them reproduced. His efforts during the greater parr of the 1920s were focused on<br />
devising patterns which were easy ro copy. In 1929, as his first large-scale experiment,<br />
he went to Shigaraki, one of the old pottery regions, and drew iron-glaze patterns on<br />
thrown plates. Tomimoto was living in Tokyo around this time. and it became an<br />
annual event for him to leave Tokyo's cold winter for warmer pottery-producing<br />
regions and draw designs on a large number of bases made by skilled artisans.<br />
Tomimoto encountered many difficulties, however, and envied Morris for what he<br />
thought was lacking in himself: 'What 1 admire most about William Morris is his<br />
power to unite and ability to lead'.H Bur the real cause of his frustration was the fact<br />
that he was ahead of his time. After the war, in 1947. he recalled:<br />
Abour thirty years ago I made medium-size plates for use in the kitchen in ceramicproducing<br />
areas like Seto and sold them at around fifty sen each. The next year,<br />
however, those plates were sold as a kind of antique ware, at forty or fifty yen each<br />
"approximately 100 times the valueJ. I was saddened that things had gone in a<br />
completely different direction.26<br />
Yet he continued to persist with his experiments with mass production. In 1957, he<br />
created a brand called Tomisen under which his original works were mass-produced<br />
and distributed through a large craft company. Unfortunately, production ceased in<br />
the mid 1960s, soon after Tomimoto's death. Today, a brand called Tomihana,<br />
ceramics with copies of Tomimoto's patterns, is sold by the same company (Japan<br />
Craft).<br />
Tomimoto was not the only artist who learned from Morris. But it was through<br />
this remarkable individual that Morris's ideas were made relevant for Japan, at a time<br />
when the modern Japanese spirit was ready to absorb them.<br />
NOTES<br />
I This article is an edited version of the paper of the same title presented atthe Morris<br />
Centenary Conference at Oxford in June 1996. All Japanese names in the main<br />
text appear surname followed by given name.<br />
2 This is true in both Japanese and Western literature.<br />
J Published by Kodansha International, Tokyo.<br />
4 This problem caused the split in the movement in 1953 when Miyakc Tadaichi, a<br />
dedicated Mingei activist. left Yanagi'sJapan Folk Craft Association and established<br />
a museum in which he displayed only folk crafts made by anonymous artisans.<br />
27<br />
, Bernard Leach (1887-1979) arrived in Japan in 1909 after his encounter wirh<br />
Takamura Koraro, arguably the most significant artist in modern Japanese art<br />
movements.<br />
6 For a brief introduction of Tomimoto and his ideas, see Yuko Kikuchi, 'Tomimmo<br />
Kenkichi', Crafts, no.148, 1997, pp. 22-23.<br />
7 Bijutsu Shimpo, vo!. 12,00.6, p. 7.<br />
8 Bernard Leach, Hamada: Pofter, (TokyolNew York: Kodansha Inrcrnarional1990<br />
[firsr edition 1975]), pp. 131-32.<br />
9 Ibid., p. 149.<br />
10 Ibid., p. 168. Also see K6gei, no. 1 (Tokyo: Rakuy6d61931), p. 29.<br />
11 I am aware that Yuko Kikuchi has challenged this common Japanese view in her<br />
recent publications: see for example, 'A Japanese William l\1orris: Yanagi S6etsu<br />
and Mingei Theory' in The journal of the \,(!illiam Morris Society, XII, 2 (Spring<br />
1997), pp. 39-45.<br />
Il For example, see 'Yanagi, Morris and Popular Art', Ceramic Review, no. 66, 1980,<br />
pp. 25-26; 'Bernard Leach and the Japanese Folk Craft Movement: the Formative<br />
Years' ,journal ofDesign History, vcl. 2, nos. 2&3, '1989, pp. 141-42; 'Oriemalism<br />
and the Debris of Western Civilisation: Popular Art Movements in Britain and<br />
Japan', Europe & the Orient, D. Gerstle and A. Miller (eds.), (Canberra: The<br />
Humanities Research Centre (994), pp. 36-37.<br />
13 'Mingei: The Word and the Movement', Mingei; The Living Traditiol1 ifJjapanese<br />
Arts [exhibirion caralogue], (Tokyo! New York: Kodansha Inrernational 1991), p.<br />
13.<br />
14 The comment by Leach was made during an interview with Professor Masaaki<br />
Maeda, on the latter's visit to St Ives in 1973. I discussed this point with Professor<br />
Maeda twice in 1992; Jugaku Bunsho, 'Uiriamu Morisu to Yanagi Saersu', Kogei,<br />
no. 100,1939, pp. 27-30.<br />
15 Kuroda Tarsuaki interview, recorded at Asahi Hall, Kyoto, 1976. A copy of this<br />
tape was kindly provided by Kuroda's son Kenkichi.<br />
16 Inui Yoshiaki, Tomimoto Kenkichi, [exhibition catalogue], (Asahi Shinbunsha<br />
1986), p. 17l.<br />
17 •Autobiography' in Jroe-jiki; Tomomoto Kenkichi, (Tokyo: Japan Agency for<br />
Culrural Affairs 1969), p. 72.<br />
Ig Tsujimoro Isamu (cd.), Tomil1loto Kenkichi Chosakusha, (Kyoto: Satsuki Shoho<br />
1981), p. 423.<br />
19 Ibid., p. 439.<br />
'0 Ibid., p. 436.<br />
'1 Ibid., pp. 445-6.<br />
Z1'Autob'lography', op. C.lr., p. 72.<br />
Z3 Ibid., p. 515.<br />
24 From an unpublished Ietrer, courresy of Tomimow Kenkichi Memorial Museum,<br />
Nara.<br />
2S Tomimoto Kenkichi Chosakushu, op. cic., p. 526.<br />
" Ibid., p. 614..<br />
28Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-6744096473863833722011-09-03T07:15:00.000-07:002011-09-03T07:26:27.245-07:00Warren MacKenzie, In His Own Words by Mason Riddle<a href="http://www.mnartists.org/article.do?rid=151997">mnartists.org | Warren MacKenzie, In His Own Words</a>:
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<img src="http://www.mnartists.org/uploads/news/b265951e81027ab437089c84ebcdef31/b265951e81027ab437089c84ebcdef31.jpg" /><br />
How would you describe the current climate of ceramic arts in the Twin Cities and in Minnesota?<br />
<div>
It is very strong with all sorts of clay expressions. Personally, I think, outside of the Midwest, it is not so well known. In part this is because we do not have many people who are doing something – something more groundbreaking or breaking down barriers. However, we do have all forms of ceramics – simple pots, sculpture and more experimental work. But, few are gathering national attention as I see it. We do have extremely good artists, who are able to make a living and that is something. This lack of recognition [for pottery] is due, in part, to the fact that major museums have paid little attention to the so-called craft arts, until recently. When Alix and I first moved to Minnesota, Walker Art Center was interested in the fine arts, design, architecture and the craft arts. This has changed. [Walker showed MacKenzie in 1948, 1954, and 1961]. These activities, the craft arts, still, have the image of being a minor art with many museums. </div>
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<div>
Are there other communities or centers of ceramics or pottery that you see as influential, or important, like the Archie Bray Foundation?</div>
<div>
For me, it is as important to talk about and understand the way something is made as what is actually being made. Historic centers of pottery-making such as Appalachia are stronger, in many ways, than those in New York City, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. Some very strong statements have been made over the decades by Appalachian craftsmen. The Northern Clay Center is a strong center but doesn’t always generate the same kind of interest as Archie Bray once did with the likes of Peter Voulkos and Rudy Autio. Archie Bray ran a brickyard and turned it into this center for ceramics. And Voulkos changed forever the way people looked at ceramics. There is not much like that now. We don’t have that here. It doesn’t really happen at Penland or Haystack. I was not an innovative potter; I was a traditional potter.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What is the best way to learn about ceramics, about pots?</div>
<div>
It is important to go to a strong school that promotes and develops the ceramic arts. What strikes me is that in many areas of the country strong craft activity often centers on a strong program at a university. That happened here in Minnesota and many of the students stayed and have continued their work, and are making a living by it. Clay is really the only one of the craft arts (taught at the university) that has caught on as a localized activity. In the late 1940s – 1950s there was a wonderful jeweler who taught at the University, Phillip Morton. He had a lot to say with his jewelry. But that has all faded. Once there was a weaving program in the art department that had great excitement for a while but that too is gone. And glass faded in the late 1980s. My approach to teaching ceramics was not the most popular, or strongest in the development of the ceramics at that time. My approach was conservative.</div>
<div>
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<div>
How do you see the state of ceramic arts growing today?</div>
<div>
Craft involvement has almost always centered around an individual. Peter Voulkos and Rudy Autio developed a great following at Archie Bray. Like the fine arts, it is just as easy to produce crap as it is good work in the craft arts. Many, many students studied with me, maybe too many. There are those who have broken away, like Mark Pharis, and those who remain close to the type of work I make, like Randy Johnston. Wayne Branum has become a very good architect, but still makes wonderful pots. Maren Kloppman was never my student, but she has established quite a following for her work. So has Bob Briscoe, who never studied with me either.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What museum collections of pots should one see?</div>
<div>
There is not a better place to see pots, really, than in anthropological museums around the country. They don’t have a strict idea about what is and is not art, like some art museums. They are not so oriented to fashion. There is the Field Museum in Chicago, the Natural History Museum in New York City, and the Smithsonian in D.C. These places look at the history of clay. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has a tremendous variety of clay expressions, but they are found in specific collections of Asian, African, or South American art. Not a collection of ceramic art. Too often our museums show the clay of other countries, but not very much of our own. It is just wonderful to stumble upon collections of clay in museums when traveling in other countries.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Could you speak to the influences on your work?</div>
<div>
The first influence was when Alix and I apprenticed at Bernard Leach’s pottery in St. Ives, England. Because we stayed in his house, we were around his collection of pots. We saw pots from China and Japan. It is also where we met Shoji Hamada, the master Japanese potter who worked in the mingei tradition. Through Leach and his book, The Potter’s Book, pottery became more available. Hamada, who was influenced by Korean folk pottery, took a tradition and gave it new life. I gravitated to his philosophy and how he threw pots. It was a philosophy of “don’t look at my work, but look at the influences of my work. These influences are stronger [than my pots] as they represent a culture.” Koreans didn’t have a word for “good or bad”, just mu, “it is.” Hamada’s work had tremendous breadth – it was an attitude – carried out as well as possible.</div>
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<div>
What do you like about Asian pots?</div>
<div>
I like the historic pots of China and Japan and Korea, where the culture was more elemental, when these pots were beginning to be made. Much of contemporary Japanese pottery has become all too clever but fantastic in terms of technical skill. The potters have gained incredible skills, but they have lost an emotional reason to express. But, this is only my personal opinion.</div>
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<div>
Are there any other influences you would like to mention?</div>
<div>
You can’t change your life and your aesthetic because of everyone and everything you come in contact with, even though you may admire it. Some things affect you more strongly than others. I love American Indian pottery, but it hasn’t really influenced my work. All my work has been done on a kick-wheel. As Tim Crane [a ceramic artist and early student of MacKenzie’s] said, “You chose to be a potter with a wheel.” Of course, Tim is fascinated by slabs of clay; nothing else will do. Mason Riddle
Mason Riddle is an independent writer and curator, and an arts administration consultant.
--By </div>
Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-70957306100612183412011-08-22T15:11:00.000-07:002011-08-22T15:11:09.502-07:00The Burden of the Gospels<div>Wendell speaks about how real understanding of the Sacred Texts inspires humility. They also inspire Stewardship, and cause us to think about the best way to interact with creation.</div><div>
<br /></div><div><a href="http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3248">The Burden of the Gospels</a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 223); font-size: medium; "><b><span ><p>The Burden of the Gospels</p></span></b><span ><p>by Wendell Berry</p></span><span ></span><p><span >Wendell Berry is the author of more than 40 books of fiction, poetry and essays. This essay is excerpted from the <u>The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays</u>, by Wendell Berry, to be published in November by Shoemaker & Hoard. © Wendell Berry, 2005. Reprinted by permission of Shoemaker & Hoard Publishers (an Avalon Publishing Group imprint). This article appeared in <i>The Christian Century</i>, September 20, 2005, pp.22-27. Copyright by the Christian Century Foundation; used by permission. Current articles and subscriptions information can be found at </span><a href="http://www.christiancentury.org/"><span >www.christiancentury.org.</span></a><span > This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.</span></p><hr /><span ><p></p><p>Anybody half awake these days will be aware that there are many Christians who are exceedingly confident in their understanding of the Gospels, and who are exceedingly self-confident in their understanding of themselves in their faith. They appear to know precisely the purposes of God, and they appear to be perfectly assured that they are now doing, and in every circumstance will continue to do, precisely God’s will as it applies specifically to themselves. They are confident, moreover, that God hates people whose faith differs from their own, and they are happy to concur in that hatred.</p><p>Having been invited to speak to a convocation of Christian seminarians, I at first felt that I should say nothing until I confessed that I do not have any such confidence. And then I understood that this would have to be my subject. I would have to speak of the meaning, as I understand it, of my lack of confidence, which I think is not at all the same as a lack of faith.</p><p>It is a fact that I have spent my life, for the most part willingly, under the influence of the Bible, particularly the Gospels, and of the Christian tradition in literature and the other arts. As a child, sometimes unwillingly, I learned many of the Bible’s stories and teachings, and was affected more than I knew by the language of the King James Version, which is the translation I still prefer. For most of my adult life I have been an urgently interested and frequently uneasy reader of the Bible, particularly of the Gospels. At the same time I have tried to be a worthy reader of Dante, Milton, Herbert, Blake, Eliot and other poets of the Christian tradition. As a result of this reading and of my experience, I am by principle and often spontaneously, as if by nature, a man of faith. But my reading of the Gospels, comforting and clarifying and instructive as they frequently are, deeply moving or exhilarating as they frequently are, has caused me to understand them also as a burden, sometimes raising the hardest of personal questions, sometimes bewildering, sometimes contradictory, sometimes apparently outrageous in their demands. This is the confession of an unconfident reader.</p><p>I will begin by dealing with the embarrassing questions that the Gospels impose, I imagine, upon any serious reader. There are two of these, and the first is this: If you bad been living in Jesus’ time and had heard him teaching, would you have been one of his followers?</p><p>To be an honest taker of this test, I think you have to try to forget that you have read the Gospels and that Jesus has been a "big name" for 2,000 years. You have to imagine instead that you are walking past the local courthouse and you come upon a crowd listening to a man named Joe Green or Green Joe, depending on judgments whispered among the listeners on the fringe. You too stop to listen, and you soon realize that Joe Green is saying something utterly scandalous, utterly unexpectable from the premises of modern society. He is saying:</p><p>"Don’t resist evil. If somebody slaps your right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too. Love your enemies. When people curse you, you must bless them. When people hate you, you must treat them kindly. When people mistrust you, you must pray for them. This is the way you must act if you want to be children of God." Well, you know how happily <i>that </i>would be received, not only in the White House and the Capitol, but among most of your neighbors. And then suppose this Joe Green looks at you over the heads of the crowd, calls you by name and says, I want to come to dinner at your house.</p><p>I suppose that you, like me, hope very much that you would say, "Come ahead." But I suppose also that you, like me, had better not be too sure. You will remember that in Jesus’ lifetime even his most intimate friends could hardly be described as overconfident.</p><p>The second question is this -- it comes right after the verse in which Jesus says, "If you love me, keep my commandments." Can you be sure that you would keep his commandments if it became excruciatingly painful to do so? And here I need to tell another story, this time one that actually happened.</p><p>In 1569 in Holland, a Mennonite named Dirk Willems, under capital sentence as a heretic, was fleeing from arrest, pursued by a "thief-catcher." As they ran across a frozen body of water, the thief-catcher broke through the ice. Without help, he would have drowned. What did Dirk Willems do then?</p><p>Was the thief-catcher an enemy merely to be hated, or was he a neighbor to be loved as one loves oneself? Was he an enemy whom one must love in order to be a child of God? Was he "one of the least of these my brethren"?</p><p>What Dirk Willems did was turn back, put out his hands to his pursuer and save his life. The thief-catcher, who then of course wanted to let his rescuer go, was forced to arrest him. Dirk Willems was brought to trial, sentenced and burned to death by a "lingering fire."</p><p>I, and I suppose you, would like to be a child of God even at the cost of so much pain. But would we, in similar circumstances, turn back to offer the charity of Christ to an enemy? Again, I don’t think we ought to be too sure. We should remember that "Christian" generals and heads of state have routinely thanked God for the deaths of their enemies, and that the persecutors of 1569 undoubtedly thanked God for the capture and death of the "heretic" Dirk Willems.</p><p>Those are peculiar questions. I don’t think we can escape them, if we are honest. And if we are honest, I don’t think we can answer them. We humans, as we well know, have repeatedly been surprised by what we will or won’t do under pressure. A person may come to be, as many have been, heroically faithful in great adversity, but as long as that person is alive we can only say that he or she did well but remains under the requirement to <i>do </i>well. As long as we are alive, there is always a next time, and so the questions remain. These are questions we must live with, regarding them as unanswerable and yet profoundly influential.</p><p>The other burdening problems of the Gospels that I want to talk about are like those questions in that they are not solvable but can only be lived with as a sort of continuing education. These problems, however, are not so personal or dramatic but are merely issues of reading and making sense.</p><p>As a reader, I am unavoidably a writer. Many years of trying to write what I have perceived to be true have taught me that there are limits to what a human mind can know, and limits to what a human language can say. One may believe, as I do, in inspiration, but one must believe knowing that even the most inspired are limited in what they can tell of what they know. We humans write and read, teach and learn, at the inevitable cost of falling short. The language that reveals also obscures. And these qualifications that bear on any writing must bear of course on the Gospels.</p><p>I need to say also that, as a reader, I am first of all a literalist, as I think every reader should be. This does not mean that I don’t appreciate Jesus’ occasional irony or sarcasm ("They have their reward"), or that I am against interpretation, or that I don’t believe in "higher levels of meaning." It certainly does not mean that I think every word of the Bible is equally true, or that <i>literalist </i>is a synonym for <i>fundamentalist. </i>I mean simply that I expect any writing to make literal sense before making sense of any other kind. Interpretation should not contradict or otherwise violate the literal meaning. To read the Gospels as a literalist is, to me, the way to take them as seriously as possible.</p><p>But to take the Gospels seriously, to assume that they say what they mean and mean what they say, is the beginning of troubles. Those would-be literalists who yet argue that the Bible is unerring and unquestionable have not dealt with its contradictions, which of course it does contain, and the Gospels are not exempt. Some of Jesus’ instructions are burdensome not because they involve contradiction, but merely because they are so demanding. The proposition that love, forgiveness and peaceableness are the only neighborly relationships that are acceptable to God is difficult for us weak and violent humans, but it is plain enough for any literalist. We must either accept it as an absolute or absolutely reject it. The same for the proposition that we are not permitted to choose our neighbors ahead of time or to limit neighborhood, as is plain from the parable of the Samaritan. The same for the requirement that we must be perfect, like God, which seems as outrageous as the Buddhist vow to "save all sentient beings," and perhaps is meant to measure and instruct us in the same way. It is, to say the least, unambiguous.</p><p>But what, for example, are we to make of Luke 14:26: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own also, he cannot be my disciple." This contradicts not only the fifth commandment but Jesus’ own instruction to "Love thy neighbor as thyself." It contradicts his obedience to his mother at the marriage in Cana of Galilee. It contradicts the concern he shows for the relatives of his friends and followers. But the word in the King James Version is "hate." If you go to the New English Bible or the New Revised Standard Version, looking for relief, the word still is "hate." This clearly is the sort of thing that leads to "biblical exegesis."</p><p>My own temptation is to become a literary critic, wag my head learnedly and say, "Well, this obviously is a bit of hyperbole -- the sort of exaggeration a teacher would use to shock his students awake." Maybe so, but it is not obviously so, and it comes perilously close to "He didn’t really mean it" -- always a risky assumption when reading, and especially dangerous when reading the Gospels. Another possibility, and I think a better one, is to accept our failure to understand, not as a misstatement or a textual flaw or as a problem to be solved, but as a question to live with and a burden to be borne.</p><p>We may say with some reason that such apparent difficulties might be resolved if we knew more, a further difficulty being that we <i>don’t </i>know more. The Gospels, like all other written works, impose on their readers the burden of their incompleteness. However partial we may be to the doctrine of the true account or "realism," we must concede at last that reality is inconceivably great and any representation of it necessarily incomplete.</p><p>St. John at the end of his Gospel, remembering perhaps the third verse of his first chapter, makes a charming acknowledgment of this necessary incompleteness: "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written everyone, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." Our darkness, then, is not going to be completely lighted. Our ignorance finally is irremediable. We humans are never going to know everything, even assuming we have the capacity, because for reasons of the most insistent practicality we can’t be told everything. We need to remember here Jesus’ repeated admonitions to his disciples: You don’t know; you don’t understand; you’ve got it wrong.</p><p>The Gospels, then, stand at the opening of a mystery in which our lives are deeply, dangerously and inescapably involved. This is a mystery that the Gospels can only partially reveal, for it could be fully revealed only by more books than the world could contain. It is a mystery that we are condemned but also are highly privileged to live our way into, trusting properly that to our little knowledge greater knowledge may be revealed. It is this privilege that should make us wary of any attempt to reduce faith to a rigmarole of judgments and explanations, or to any sort of familiar talk about God. Reductive religion is just as objectionable as reductive science, and for the same reason: Reality is large, and our minds are small.</p><p>And so the issue of reality -- What is the <i>scope </i>of reality? What is real? -- emerges as the crisis of this discussion. Bight. at the heart of the religious impulse there seems to be a certain solicitude for reality: the fear of foreclosing it or of reducing it to some merely human estimate. Many of us are still refusing to trust Caesar, in any of his modern incarnations, with the power to define reality. Many of us are still refusing to entrust that power to science. As inhabitants of the modern world, we are religious now perhaps to the extent of our desire to crack open the coffin of materialism, and to give to reality a larger, freer definition than is allowed by the militant materialists of the corporate economy and their political servants, or by the mechanical paradigm of reductive science. Or perhaps I can make most plain what I’m trying to get at if I say that many of us are still withholding credence, just as properly and for the same reasons, from any person or institution claiming to have the definitive word on the purposes and the mind of God.</p><p>It seems to me that all the religions I know anything about emerge from an instinct to push against any merely human constraints on reality. In the Bible such constraints are conventionally attributed to "the world" in the pejorative sense of that term, which we may define as the world of the creation <i>reduced </i>by the purposes of any of the forms of selfishness. The contrary purpose, the purpose of freedom, is stated by Jesus in the fourth Gospel: "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."</p><p>This astonishing statement can be thought about and understood endlessly, for it is endlessly meaningful, but I don’t think it calls for much in the way of interpretation. It does call for a very strict and careful reading of the word <i>life.</i></p><i></i><p>To talk about or to desire more abundance of anything has probably always been dangerous, but it seems particularly dangerous now. In an age of materialist science, economics, art and politics, we ought not to be much shocked by the appearance of materialist religion. We know we don’t have to look far to find people who equate more abundant life with a bigger car, a bigger house, a bigger bank account and a bigger church. They are wrong, of course. If Jesus meant only that we should have more possessions or even more "life expectancy," then John 10:10 is no more remarkable than an advertisement for any commodity whatever. Abundance, in this verse, cannot refer to an abundance of material possessions, for life does not require a material abundance; it requires only a material sufficiency. That sufficiency granted, life itself, which is a membership in the living world, is already an abundance.</p><p>But even life in this generous sense of membership in creation does not protect us, as we know, from the dangers of avarice, of selfishness, of the wrong kind of abundance. Those dangers can be overcome only by the realization that in speaking of more abundant life, Jesus is not proposing to free <i>us </i>by making us richer; he is proposing to set life free from precisely that sort of error. He is talking about life, which is only incidentally our life, as a limitless reality.</p><p>Now that I have come out against materialism, I fear that I will be expected to say something in favor of spirituality. But if I am going to go on in the direction of what Jesus meant by "life" and "more abundantly," then I have to avoid that duality of matter and spirit at all costs.</p><p>As every reader knows, the Gospels are overwhelmingly concerned with the conduct of human life, of life in the human commonwealth. In the Sermon on the Mount and in other places Jesus is asking his followers to see that the way to more abundant life is the way of love. We are to love one another, and this love is to be more comprehensive than our love for family and friends and tribe and nation. We are to love our neighbors though they may be strangers to us. We are to love our enemies. And this is to be a practical love; it is to be practiced, here and now. Love evidently is not just a feeling but is indistinguishable from the willingness to help, to be useful to one another. The way of love is indistinguishable, moreover, from the way of freedom. We don’t need much imagination to imagine that to be free of hatred, of enmity, of the endless and hopeless effort to oppose violence with violence, would be to have life more abundantly. To be free of indifference would be to have life more abundantly. To be free of the insane rationalizations for our urge to kill one another -- that surely would be to have life more abundantly.</p><p>And where more than in the Gospels’ teaching about love do we see that famously estranged pair, matter and spirit, melt and flow together? There was a Samaritan who came upon one of his enemies, a Jew, lying wounded beside the road. And the Samaritan had compassion on the Jew and bound up his wounds and took care of him. Was this help spiritual or material? Was the Samaritan’s compassion earthly or heavenly? If those questions confuse us, that is only because we have for so long allowed ourselves to believe, as if to divide reality impartially between science and religion, that material life and spiritual life, earthly life and heavenly life, are two different things.</p><p>To get unconfused, let us go to a further and even more interesting question about the parable of the Samaritan: Why? Why did the Samaritan reach out in love to his enemy, a Jew, who happened also to be his neighbor? Why was the unbounding of this love so important to Jesus?</p><p>We might reasonably answer, remembering Genesis 1:27, that all humans, friends and enemies alike, have the same dignity, deserve the same respect, and are worthy of the same compassion because they are, all alike, made in God’s image. That is enough of a mystery, and it implies enough obligation, to waylay us awhile. It is certainly something we need to bear amdously in mind. But it is also too human-centered, too potentially egotistical, to leave alone.</p><p>I think Jesus recommended the Samaritan’s loving-kindness, what certain older writers called "holy living," simply as a matter of propriety, for the Samaritan was living in what Jesus understood to be a holy world. The foreground of the Gospels is occupied by human beings and the issues of their connection to one another and to God. But there is a background, and the background more often than not is the world in the best sense of the word, the world as made, approved, loved, sustained and finally redeemable by God. Much of the action and the talk of the Gospels takes place outdoors: on mountainsides, lakeshores, riverbanks, in fields and pastures, places populated not only by humans but by animals and plants, both domestic and wild. And these nonhuman creatures, sheep and lilies and birds, are always represented as worthy of, or as flourishing within, the love and the care of God.</p><p>To know what to make of this, we need to look back to the Old Testament, to Genesis, to the Psalms, to the preoccupation with the relation of the Israelites to their land that runs through the whole lineage of the prophets. Through all this, much is implied or taken for granted. In only two places that I remember is the always implicit relation -- the practical or working relation -- of God to the creation plainly stated. Psalm 104:30, addressing God and speaking of the creatures, says, "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created And, as if in response, Elihu says to Job (34:14-15) that if God "gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; All flesh shall perish together . . ." I have cut Elihu’s sentence a little short so as to leave the emphasis on the phrase "all flesh."</p><p>Those also are verses that don’t require interpretation, but I want to stretch them out in paraphrase just to make as plain as possible my reason for quoting them. They are saying that not just humans but <i>all </i>creatures live by participating in the life of God, by partaking of his Spirit and breathing his breath. And so the Samaritan reaches out in love to help his enemy, breaking all the customary boundaries, because he has clearly seen in his enemy not only a neighbor, not only a fellow human or a fellow creature, but a fellow sharer in the life of God.</p><p>When Jesus speaks of having life more abundantly, this, I think, is the life he means: a life that is not reducible by division, category or degree, but is one thing, heavenly and earthly, spiritual and material, divided only insofar as it is embodied in distinct creatures. He is talking about a finite world that is infinitely holy, a world of time that is filled with life that is eternal. His offer of more abundant life, then, is not an invitation to declare ourselves as certified "Christians," but rather to become conscious, consenting and responsible participants in the one great life, a fulfillment hardly institutional at all.</p><p>To be convinced of the sanctity of the world, .and to be mindful of a human vocation to responsible membership in such a world, must always have been a burden. But it is a burden that falls with greatest weight on us humans of the industrial age who have been and are, by any measure, the humans most guilty of desecrating the world and of destroying creation. And we ought to be a little terrified to realize that, for the most part and at least for the time being, we are helplessly guilty. It seems as though industrial humanity has brought about phase two of original sin. We all are now complicit in the murder of creation. We certainly do know how to apply better measures to our conduct and our work. We know how to do far better than we are doing. But we don’t know how to extricate ourselves from our complicity very surely or very soon. How could we live without degrading our soils, slaughtering our forests, polluting our streams, poisoning the air and the rain? How could we live without the ozone hole and the hypoxic zones? How could we live without endangering species, including our own? How could we live without the war economy and the holocaust of the fossil fuels? To the offer of more abundant life, we have responded with choosing the economics of extinction.</p><p>If we take the Gospels seriously, we are left, in our dire predicament, facing an utterly humbling question: How must we live and work so as not to be estranged from God’s presence in his work and in all his creatures? The answer, we may say, is given in Jesus’ teaching about love. But that answer raises another question that plunges us into the abyss of our ignorance, which is both human and peculiarly modern: How are we to make of that love an economic practice?</p><p>That question calls for many answers, and we don’t know most of them. It is a question that those humans who want to answer it will be living and working with for a long time -- if they are allowed a longtime. Meanwhile, may heaven guard us from those who think they already have the answers.</p></span></span></div>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-17302732578633763722011-06-20T07:41:00.000-07:002011-06-20T07:41:52.856-07:00BZC: FUKANZAZENGI<a href="http://www.berkeleyzencenter.org/Texts/fukanzazengi.shtml">BZC: FUKANZAZENGI</a><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; "><h1 style="font-size: 20pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; ">FUKANZAZENGI</h1><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">by Eihei Dogen</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">The Way is basically perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent upon practice and realization? The Dharma-vehicle is free and untrammelled. What need is there for concentrated effort? Indeed, the whole body is far beyond the world's dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from one, right where one is. What is the use of going off here and there to practice?</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">And yet, if there is the slightest discrepancy, the Way is as distant as heaven from earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the Mind is lost in confusion. Suppose one gains pride of understanding and inflates one's own enlightenment, glimpsing the wisdom that runs through all things, attaining the Way and clarifying the Mind, raising an aspiration to escalade the very sky. One is making the initial, partial excursions about the frontiers but is still somewhat deficient in the vital Way of total emancipation.</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">Need I mention the Buddha, who was possessed of inborn knowledge? The influence of his six years of upright sitting is noticeable still. Or Bodhidharma's transmission of the mind-seal?--the fame of his nine years of wall-sitting is celebrated to this day. Since this was the case with the saints of old, how can we today dispense with negotiation of the Way?</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">You should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest. If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay.</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">For sanzen (zazen), a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately. Cast aside all involvements and cease all affairs. Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and cons. Cease all the movements of the conscious mind, the gauging of all thoughts and views. Have no designs on becoming a Buddha. Sanzen has nothing whatever to do with sitting or lying down.</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">At the site of your regular sitting, spread out thick matting and place a cushion above it. Sit either in the full-lotus or half-lotus position. In the full-lotus position, you first place your right foot on your left thigh and your left foot on your right thigh. In the half-lotus, you simply press your left foot against your right thigh. You should have your robes and belt loosely bound and arranged in order. Then place your right hand on your left leg and your left palm (facing upwards) on your right palm, thumb-tips touching. Thus sit upright in correct bodily posture, neither inclining to the left nor to the right, neither leaning forward nor backward. Be sure your ears are on a plane with your shoulders and your nose in line with your navel. Place your tongue against the front roof of your mouth, with teeth and lips both shut. Your eyes should always remain open, and you should breathe gently through your nose.</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">Once you have adjusted your posture, take a deep breath, inhale and exhale, rock your body right and left and settle into a steady, immobile sitting position. Think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen.</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, like the tiger when she enters the mountain. For you must know that just there (in zazen) the right Dharma is manifesting itself and that, from the first, dullness and distraction are struck aside.</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">When you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. Do not rise suddenly or abruptly. In surveying the past, we find that transcendence of both unenlightenment and enlightenment, and dying while either sitting or standing, have all depended entirely on the strength (of zazen).</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">In addition, the bringing about of enlightenment by the opportunity provided by a finger, a banner, a needle, or a mallet, and the effecting of realization with the aid of a hossu, a fist, a staff, or a shout, cannot be fully understood by discriminative thinking. Indeed, it cannot be fully known by the practicing or realizing of supernatural powers, either. It must be deportment beyond hearing and seeing--is it not a principle that is prior to knowledge and perceptions?</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">This being the case, intelligence or lack of it does not matter: between the dull and the sharp-witted there is no distinction. If you concentrate your effort single-mindedly, that in itself is negotiating the Way. Practice-realization is naturally undefiled. Going forward (in practice) is a matter of everydayness.</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">In general, this world, and other worlds as well, both in India and China, equally hold the Buddha-seal, and over all prevails the character of this school, which is simply devotion to sitting, total engagement in immobile sitting. Although it is said that there are as many minds as there are persons, still they all negotiate the way solely in zazen. Why leave behind the seat that exists in your home and go aimlessly off to the dusty realms of other lands? If you make one misstep, you go astray from the Way directly before you.</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">You have gained the pivotal opportunity of human form. Do not use your time in vain. You are maintaining the essential working of the Buddha-Way. Who would take wasteful delight in the spark from the flintstone? Besides, form and substance are like the dew on the grass, destiny like the dart of lightning--emptied in an instant, vanished in a flash.</p><p class="OPEN" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; ">Please, honored followers of Zen, long accustomed to groping for the elephant, do not be suspicious of the true dragon. Devote your energies to a way that directly indicates the absolute. Revere the person of complete attainment who is beyond all human agency. Gain accord with the enlightenment of the buddhas; succeed to the legitimate lineage of the ancestors' samadhi. Constantly perform in such a manner and you are assured of being a person such as they. Your treasure-store will open of itself, and you will use it at will.<br /><br /></p><p class="SM" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif; ">Last revised September 7, 2000. Copyright 2000 Berkeley Zen Center</p></span></div>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-59627661944810592252011-03-14T12:37:00.000-07:002011-03-14T12:43:28.552-07:00The Leach Pottery launches earthquake appeal for Mashiko Village<div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="http://www.leachpottery.com/What-s-On/News-Feed.aspx">Leach Pottery - News Feed</a><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/73/215722042_89dde62161.jpg" /></div><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"></span><br />
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><b>The Leach Pottery launches earthquake appeal for Mashiko Village</b></span></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">The trustees and staff of the Leach Pottery would like to express our great sadness at the recent catastrophe that has beset Japan. The Leach Pottery’s historic and current links to Japan, dating back over a century, are of great importance to us and the friendship we have received from the Japanese people over the years has been unwavering. We have not forgotten the support we received from the people of Mashiko pottery village and members of the Mingei Association in 2008 when individuals collectively donated over £40,000 towards rebuilding our pottery in St Ives and we would like to offer them back the hand of friendship now. </span></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">We are launching an appeal to raise funds for Mashiko which has been badly hit by the earthquake. Mashiko has over 400 studios and kilns, providing the main livelihood of the village, and the recent quake has caused considerable damage to both kilns and buildings. Mashiko’s two main museums, the Mashiko Ceramics Museum and the Hamada Reference Museum have also been badly hit.</span></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">Mashiko Town in Tochigi prefecture is located about 60 miles north of Tokyo. In 1923 Shoji Hamada, co-founder of the Leach Pottery in St Ives with Bernard Leach, returned to Japan following the Tokyo earthquake of 1923. He settled in Mashiko with his family where he set up his own pottery, now owned and run by his potter grandson Tomoo Hamada, who attended the reopening of the Leach Pottery following its restoration in March 2008. Shoji Hamada also established the Hamada Reference Museum in Mashiko to display his stunning and internationally acclaimed collection of crafts and ceramics. </span></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">MASHIKO EARTHQUAKE APPEAL</span></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">You can donate to the Leach Pottery’s Mashiko Earthquake Appeal in any of the following ways:<br />
By phone – call with you credit or debit card details on 01736 799703</span></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">B</span></span></span>y post – send a cheque to the Bernard Leach (St Ives) Trust Ltd. (marking the back of the cheque ‘Mashiko Appeal’. Send to Mashiko Earthquake Appeal, The Leach Pottery, Higher Stennack, St Ives, Cornwall TR26 2HE</span></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">By internet – donate through your Paypal account <a href="mailto:julia@leachpottery.com" style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">julia@leachpottery.com</span></a> – please add a note clearly stating ‘Mashiko Earthquake Appeal’</span></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">If you are a UK taxpayer you can Gift Aid your donation by including the following information: Your name, address and postcode and confirmation that you wish the Leach Pottery to treat your donation as a Gift Aid donation. This simple act will allow us to claim a further 25p for each £1 donated towards the appeal.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><br />
</span></div></div>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-42249971906161015452011-03-14T06:23:00.000-07:002011-03-14T12:34:10.032-07:00Fund Raising For Japan Disaster: Handmade For Japan<div id="pagelet_profile_picture" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"><div id="c4d7e15ab374f18a94518091"><div class="profile-picture" style="display: block; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; position: relative; text-decoration: none; width: 180px;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/handmadeforjapanauction" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3b5998;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial; cursor: pointer; margin-bottom: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: auto;"><u><img alt="Handmade For Japan" class="img" id="profile_pic" src="http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/188101_177880872258683_3711589_n.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; display: block; margin-bottom: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: auto; max-width: 180px;" /></u></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 13px;">http://www.facebook.com/handmadeforjapanauction</span></span></a></div></div></div><br />
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<table class="uiInfoTable profileInfoTable noBorder" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; width: 483px;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="data" style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"><div class="data_field" style="width: 350px;"><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; line-height: normal;"></span><br />
<table class="uiInfoTable profileInfoTable noBorder" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; width: 483px;"><tbody>
<tr><th class="label" style="font-weight: bold; line-height: 15px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 125px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">About</span></th><td class="data" style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"><div class="data_field" style="width: 350px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">eBay auction March 18-20 to help the victims of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami</span></div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><table class="uiInfoTable profileInfoTable noBorder" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; width: 483px;"><tbody>
<tr><th class="label" style="font-weight: bold; line-height: 15px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 125px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">Description</span></th><td class="data" style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"><div class="data_field" style="width: 350px;"><div id="description3-essay-full"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">Mission:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">Handmade For Japan's mission is to raise money through an online auction on March 18-20 for relief efforts to assist the victims of Japan's catastrophic earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear emissions.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">Handmade for Japan is an online auction of unique, handmade art donated by concerned, invited artists. One hundred percent of all net proceeds collected via the auction will be donated to the relief efforts in Japan.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">Because of the urgency of the situation, the auction will begin on eBay on Friday, March 18th and end on Sunday, March 20th. The auction items will be listed under the "Handmade for Japan" seller ID.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">Previews of the auction items will be available in English and Japanese through Facebook pages and Twitter updates. All inquiries in either language should be sent to handmadeforjapan@gmail.com.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">Who We Are:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">Handmade For Japan was borne out of concern for Japan's residents by Japanese-American ceramic artist Ayumi Horie. She, Ai Kanazawa Cheung, and Kathryn Pombriant Manzella have mobilized to solicit, promote, and auction handmade pieces of art generously donated by talented artists throughout North America and Japan.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">ハンドメイド・フォー・ジャパンってなに?</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">ハンドメイド・フォー・ジャパンは3月11日の東日本大震災で被災した方々の支援金を募るオークションを主催するために誕生しました。</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">手作りでユニークなアートを手がけている著名なアーティストのご協力により提供された作品をオークションにかけ、収益を100%支援団体に寄付します。</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">日本の被災状況が急を要するのため、オークションはeBayにてアメリカ東海岸時間・3月18日に開始し、3月20日に終了いたします。</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">オークションにかけられる作品はフェイスブックページとツイッターにより事前に順次公開されます。</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">お問い合わせはhandmadeforjapan@gmail.comまで。</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">だれがやっているの?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">ハンドメイド・フォー・ジャパンは日系アメリカ人で陶芸作家のアユミ・ホリエが東日本大震災の被災者支援のために立ち上げました。</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;">主に北アメリカや日本で活動している協力アーティストの多大なる支援により実現し、アユミ・ホリエと、仲間のキャスリン・ポンブリアンーマンゼラ及び金澤愛によって運営されています。</span></div></div></td></tr>
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<tr><th class="label" style="font-weight: bold; line-height: 15px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 125px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
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</tbody></table>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-38974136004820888502011-03-12T16:05:00.000-08:002011-03-12T16:06:01.512-08:00Michael Simon Opening<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWa2r46tnru5nc2mQznVKNznfGwIjqQAenhz4HuXr61ZJSekiJOTzxaCJUfSfbCOeZOBxfooMW2MVL9ZbjwrAOowOJRb4HdNhPVquIKWu2tE1V4yz21mmGi5nKPGlue0HwzT9IH5gbWIp/s1600/IMG_0015.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; FLOAT: left; CLEAR: both" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWa2r46tnru5nc2mQznVKNznfGwIjqQAenhz4HuXr61ZJSekiJOTzxaCJUfSfbCOeZOBxfooMW2MVL9ZbjwrAOowOJRb4HdNhPVquIKWu2tE1V4yz21mmGi5nKPGlue0HwzT9IH5gbWIp/s400/IMG_0015.JPG" /></a> <br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgajg1u1JcB7Iboh-sWmLQ5WoF1xqZ8lguIDqHiWj8l9OmeiDwerdDXHEqG4sTcsgRTJDGX3wWiVrVIcoBhqhokqdrP_IzFi0YQjMRmOBEzO5TQWzS37JtTkqo7Ml8TKaPDahKDKaECCMhT/s1600/IMG_0018.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; FLOAT: left; CLEAR: both" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgajg1u1JcB7Iboh-sWmLQ5WoF1xqZ8lguIDqHiWj8l9OmeiDwerdDXHEqG4sTcsgRTJDGX3wWiVrVIcoBhqhokqdrP_IzFi0YQjMRmOBEzO5TQWzS37JtTkqo7Ml8TKaPDahKDKaECCMhT/s400/IMG_0018.JPG" /></a> <br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJhL2WAOboxIZhbAedPD2hyphenhyphen_OtVrdDeoQDKMtlhZq5CxLQ2_-8Ahp5O3wQR4YxJFg6kZrEefCsS2A6xxbGMgbTWUbbv8zCCrTJUSyI7zZs3ER96zKj-TFl6WlSZKQDhwIbnF1IqgxSsa3O/s1600/IMG_0007.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; FLOAT: left; CLEAR: both" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJhL2WAOboxIZhbAedPD2hyphenhyphen_OtVrdDeoQDKMtlhZq5CxLQ2_-8Ahp5O3wQR4YxJFg6kZrEefCsS2A6xxbGMgbTWUbbv8zCCrTJUSyI7zZs3ER96zKj-TFl6WlSZKQDhwIbnF1IqgxSsa3O/s400/IMG_0007.JPG" /></a> <br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQGCX5FTRYEkOZBgpngJ6KmhyNLBrqK0PCxZUAnrXavRN2EnAzjI2qr_6_weI6fXpBtOmSCALWDE4WA3V9Qy3ORXedHlek6h8wHOAgL24sse94U0mi13L_xyYSOWCfBbYceMR6Lr-4P1II/s1600/IMG_0013.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; FLOAT: left; CLEAR: both" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQGCX5FTRYEkOZBgpngJ6KmhyNLBrqK0PCxZUAnrXavRN2EnAzjI2qr_6_weI6fXpBtOmSCALWDE4WA3V9Qy3ORXedHlek6h8wHOAgL24sse94U0mi13L_xyYSOWCfBbYceMR6Lr-4P1II/s400/IMG_0013.JPG" /></a><div style='clear:both; text-align:LEFT'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-16404513146320353592011-03-12T16:04:00.000-08:002011-03-12T16:04:58.597-08:00Michael Simon Opening<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjac94evkHz1B5zj_x9uLiIT3n7tWp74G924TkdO9nkdkqM39fGfpRBEIe6Wd0DiThYdzv0rQMsgCcz-EzNOqdejXPSCXMch8h4VLawQo_069Z8w-PestNYVoR7RhecZwCzU4nm2PHr4kjG/s1600/IMG_0008.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; 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padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-79411697296820271352011-02-28T05:51:00.000-08:002014-08-28T11:13:36.803-07:00The Dharma Gate Of Beauty, Soetsu Yanagi, trans. Bernard Leach<div id="content" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; width: 660px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The Dharma Gate of Beauty, by Soetsu Yanagi, trans. Bernard Leach</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">As a student of Soto Zen Buddhism,I don't completely agree </b><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;"> with Yanagi's parallel between Pure Land Buddhism and </b><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">"The Unknown Craftsman."I believe he ignores the importance </b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;"><b>of the Connoisseurin recognizing the "Unknown's" work.</b></span></span><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.6em;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I will write more about my ideas</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">soon. --Lee</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">YANAGI SOETSU THE DHARMA GATE OF BEAUT Y</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">Following are excerpts from an essay by Yanagi Soetsu, translated by Bernard Leach, which was </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">published in "The Eastern Buddhist" Vol. XII No. 2 (October 1979). The excerpts are reprinted </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">with the kind permission of Mrs. Janet Leach and the Folkcraft Museum, Tokyo.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">When I come to attain Buddhahood, unless all the beings throughout my land are of one form and </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">color, unless there is no beauty and ugliness among them, I will not attain highest enlightenment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">The Larger Sutra of Eternal Life</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">Human beings brim with falsity to the end of their days. They cannot remain without imperfection </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">nor avoid contradiction. But this is not something original in them. Originally they have no </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">faults. This means not that they are perfect, simply that they are embraced in their imperfectness </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">into a faultless world. Their faults are then, just as they are, no faults. On his own, man cannot </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">rid himself from fault and become faultless, but all is originally so constituted that however a </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">thing is made, whatever and by whomever it may be, it can be embraced in beauty. The superior make </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">things in superior ways, the inferior in inferior ways, and whatever they may draw, however they </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">may carve, all is disposed so that they are included in true non-dual beauty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">This is confirmed in the Buddha's attainment of highest enlightenment. The Sutra of Eternal Life </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">was written to relate the astounding influence his enlightenment worked. So, whether they are good </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">or bad, believers or unbelievers, all of the works of all men are in receipt of his mercy. Illusion </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">is left in only because this implicit promise of his does not get through to them, or else because </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">they struggle against it. Ugliness, then, is an appearance which has been separated from its </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">original and native state. In religion, this is called sin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">So it is up to us to get beyond the discrimination that sets beauty and ugliness apart. Let us </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">return prior to that, to our original self, the original state of suchness, leave behind the </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">artificial constructs of beauty and ugliness, and dwell in "everydayness." Making distinctions of </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">beauty and ugliness is a mental disease. What we must do is regain the original well-being of </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">"buji," where nothing "happens" to us even when we are at our busiest. To do this we must first </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">discard our small ego-self, for if the slightest flicker of attachment lingers illusion will not </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">leave. Then, we must not allow ourselves to be hindered by discrimination, for as long as we lean </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">on our own judgments we shall never find our way free of the world of duality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">That is where purity and innocence come in. There is a more than small measure of truth in the fact </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">that so many saints have extolled the quality of childlikeness. The Japanese priest Myozen is said </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">to have always taught that an infant's Nembutsu is best. Such statements endeavor to expose to us</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">the shortcomings of discriminatory thinking. They do not mean that it is totally valueless, but </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">unless it is broken through we can never go beyond duality. Hence the deep suggestiveness of the </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">infant's innocent mindlessness. It is not a return to the cradle being recommended, rather an </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">attainment of the realm of selfless and unimpeded freedom. Once there, nothing can go wrong; even </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">though we err, the error remains just as it is, and is no longer error. We may say this is the </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">virtue inherent in no-mindedness. Once detached from its realm, however, even those things which </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">are not wrong fall into error. The very fact that they assert they are not wrong is the proof that </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">they are. How often it is that things which the world boasts of as beautiful prove to be ugly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">The problem, then, must not be allowed to turn upon beauty and ugliness. How effective could any </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">standard for measuring beauty and ugliness be? Anything which could be so measured should never be </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">spoken of as beautiful. True beauty is native to a realm which Buddhism calls "Mu" (nothingness). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">Nothing should be praised as beauty which has not reached the profundity of this realm of </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">nothingness. (Beauty and ugliness are mere forms of beingness.) Fortunately, the essence of man </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">does not reside in forms of being, and that is why his original estate is said to be innocent and </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">pure. Impurity is the vestiges of the sins he has produced.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">The Zen master Rinzai says, "Just don't strive!" For as long as the slightest ambition to make or </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">to do remains, everything, both the beautiful and ugly, will be tainted by the ugliness of </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">artificiality. Yet if "non-striving" or "artlessness" is then attached to, that will be just </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">another form of striving. We find good substantiation of this in raku ware bowls, in which the </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">effort to make beauty inevitably results in ugliness. As long as any such conscious effort or </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">intention remains, the result cannot help being ugly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">Were men all in their native purity where distinctions of beauty and ugliness have yet to appear, </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">they could never fall into error, the error, for example, of creating differences between men. The </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">commonsense view would say that the world of beauty is one which requires genius. The notion that </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">genius alone can produce great art strikes most people as reasonable. But it is only a partial </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">truth. The amount of talent people have, the distinctions of intelligence between them, are </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">trifling and foundationless considerations fathered by a relative world. They only arise because </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">everything which forms a part of that world works to breed distinctions between the superior and </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">the inferior.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">Prizing the good and loathing the bad being the norm of that world, while we remain within its </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">confines we have to comply with its laws. Respect for genius and reverence for sanctity would </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">seem to be most commendable. But we must not overlook that they</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">belong to the world of dualism. Once in the different dimension of the non-dualistic world, d</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">ifferences such as intelligence and stupidity, goodness and badness, hold very little meaning. Zen </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">teaches the profundity of "not thinking good and not thinking bad." It tells us we should "Be </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">careful not to do good"—for then there can be no rationale for doing evil. These voices come from a </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">realm beyond duality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">So even with the differences between good and evil, a world exists in which those differences as </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">such disappear, where contradictions as mere contradictions melt away. Nembutsu followers call this </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">the Pure Land, but it might also be called God's Heaven. It is the land of equality, of freedom, of </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">peace of mind, and harmony. There, where opposing principles do not exist, the contention of </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">opposites never materializes and one could not separate beauty and ugliness even if one wanted to. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">All things and all people are in a state of salvation. Whatever anyone might make, it cannot </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">disturb the working of the Buddha's all-embracing compassion. The genius is taken in and so is the </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">ordinary man. There are no ranks or distinctions at Heaven's round table. Those are the product </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">of our discrimination. The Buddha's eye and our eye are not the same.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">The belief that the artistic genius is the only one who can accomplish work of outstanding merit </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">betrays an extremely narrow way of thinking. The ordinary man should be able to produce splendid </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">work as an ordinary man. Did not the Pure Land teacher Honen (1133-1212) say: "If you cannot recite </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">the Nembutsu as a priest, then recite it as a layman.. .The bad man should recite it just as he </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">is"? The Pure Land is not a place ever to be attained through one's own power, a power in any case </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">ordinary men could never boast of. But Self-power is not the only gate to salvation. Another, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">belonging to the Other-power, has been erected for him. Through it, everyone, however dull-witted, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">can make their way to safe haven on the "Other shore." Not by working the oars, but by letting the </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">wind swell the sails. Honen's brief "One-Sheet Document," which tells ordinary men in unmistakable </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">terms how to attain the Pure Land, has in this sense an indeed wonderful message.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">Those who enter by the Gate of Self-power may gain experience in the path of absolute </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">self-dependence, though through it few are able to actually make their way to full attainment. The </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">road is a steep one fraught with great difficulty. In contrast, those who travel the path of </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">Other-power, placing all their trust in Amida and the promise of his Vow, reside in a realm of </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">absolute dependence. A Way of salvation is given them despite their inferiorness. The reference to </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">the Other-power teaching as the "Easy Way" (Ig yo- do) comes from this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">Some people may still demur, and say that while universal salvation may indeed have been promised, </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">what about all those mediocre people going around making this world progressively uglier. Why are </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">they left unsaved like that? Was not the Buddha's Vow a glorious pipedream after all? How long must </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">we be plagued by such people? And how long will we have to go on deploring this state of affairs?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">The answer is simple and clear. It is because the minds of those mediocre people persist in </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">asserting their own insignificant egos. Because, in imagining they can achieve something through </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">their own power (a fundamental illusion), they becloud their originally pure nature. Ugliness is </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">the color produced by this defilement. But the Buddha's Vow to save all beings never weakens </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">because of this; in fact, it becomes all the more available to them. It is for them, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">the sinful and the mediocre, that the </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">compassionate Vow continually rains down its benefits. It is one thing to be aware of one's sins, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">but one should not for a moment doubt that they are redeemed by the Buddha's great compassion. In </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">the Yuishinsho ("On Faith Alone"), it is said: "You think it is impossible for you to be saved </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">because of your guilt and sin, but do you realize how great the Buddha's power is?" Buddha's Vow is </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">not swayed by the number of our sins. Despite the blessing such a favorable wind can provide, man </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">foolishly insists on lowering his sail and rowing forward on his own—only to tire out in </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">mid-journey. Ugliness comes into being when we place reliance on our own meagre self. So the Buddha </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">tells us to abandon it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">In past ages of deep faith, people were more innocent and humble and closer to the truth. They </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">could forget their self without much trouble. That was an advantage it would be difficult to </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">overestimate. We in an age of deep scepticism see talented and untalented alike striving to </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">understand things by themselves. That explains the separation of beauty and ugliness. It is not </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">surprising those with little talent soon find themselves overwhelmed. Ugliness is a sign of their </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">self-power's insufficiency. Why is it they do not realize and realize keenly their ignorance? Or is </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">it their ignorance is so deep they cannot realize it? If they throw themselves into the contest </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">between beauty and ugliness their work is cut out for them. They are digging holes and burying </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">themselves in the process.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">From here on, countless numbers of ugly objects will no doubt continue to be produced— just so long </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">as the small self, greed, and discrimination prevail. But we may still cherish some hope. We may </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">believe in the Buddha's attainment of highest enlightenment. We may place full faith in his </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">all-encompassing Vow of salvation, which is a guarantee that everyone and everything is taken into </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">a land originally prior to the beauty-ugliness duality. What hope would there be without this Vow? </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">Salvation is not a mere possibility. Possibility assumes impossibility, and those are words in </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">man's vocabulary, not the Buddha's. His compassion, to borrow Ippen's words, is "neither too little </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">nor too much." It is only due to our own ignorance that we do not realize its wonderful meaning and </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">thus lose out on its blessings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">Therefore, it falls upon those who have reached true faith to guide those who have not to the path </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">to Buddhahood, even if that has to happen while they are still in the state of unbelief. They are </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">to be guided so that even while they themselves are unaware of it, they dwell in the Buddha's Land </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">naturally. They would be incapable of returning there even were they told to do so, yet they are </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">guided back, their inability unchanged, in an environment in which they will at some time find for </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">themselves that they have been dwelling in their native land all along. This makes us realize what </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">an extremely welcome thing tradition is for people of lesser abilities. It comes to the aid of </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">those who cannot stand on their own, like a great safe ship that enables a small and insignificant </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">being to make his way across vast ocean expanses. Tradition provides support for him in his frail </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">individual existence. Indeed we should remember that many beautiful things in the world did not in </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">themselves possess the strength to become that way. Their salvation is not owing to any specific </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">qualifications on the part of the individuals who made them. Something greater than them is doing </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">the work. Herein is hidden the disposition of the Buddha.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">So although people say man creates beauty, that is not so. Buddha himself does the work. No, to </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">make things beautiful is the Buddha's nature. Beauty means a Buddha becoming a Buddha. Creating </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">beauty is an act performed by a Buddha toward a Buddha. Beauty is the product of Buddhas working </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">together.</span></div>
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Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-52268557357182719082011-02-28T05:37:00.000-08:002011-02-28T06:03:59.990-08:00The "Unknown Craftsman."<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8fiuTsLt3eQCC7SQLEG8xZnAknqLoZU5xUo6AqV3drEaBvsqJwx3uVynKCSV8FKuTXPb_V6itRbmh_JysbVq1zeAktBT84FJrOx4QUy7Vv1ly7B4OIQuThNrSkrS51fVgxtVNIvknwzw0/s1600/meso1a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8fiuTsLt3eQCC7SQLEG8xZnAknqLoZU5xUo6AqV3drEaBvsqJwx3uVynKCSV8FKuTXPb_V6itRbmh_JysbVq1zeAktBT84FJrOx4QUy7Vv1ly7B4OIQuThNrSkrS51fVgxtVNIvknwzw0/s200/meso1a.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Mesopotamian Potter's Wheel</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>I think the central problem with Yanagi's approach to Mingei begins with the artificial construct that he created: "The Unknown Craftsman." While I disagree with Kikuchi's labeling Mingei as "Ultra-nationalist", I do believe the Unknown Cr<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">aftsman perspective is related to Yanagi and Leach's membership in colonial/imperial societies, and the artificial notion of looking at the peasant potters from the perspective of<i> bon sauvage</i> or noble savage. I really don't believe that the personhood of a peasant potter is different in kind, but only degree. I've always thought, if you want to know who the Unknown Craftman is, just talk to one of my relatives who is a farmer or an uncle who worked on the assembly line at Ford Motor Company. They are people like you and me. When Yanagi came up with the idea from Buddhism of <i>tariki</i>, or "other power" as found in Pureland Buddhism, he was looking for the counterpart (that already existed for over 800 years) of the Zen Buddhist influences upon the educated practicing the fine arts via Tea Ceremony. Yanagi was compensating for the uneducated craftman, but somehow, the "other power" of the uneducated craftsman was put on a pedestal above the educated person's "self power", ignoring the importance of the connoisseur to the<i> tariki</i> craftsman. As a Tibetan teacher once told me, these different kinds of Buddhist teaching are "expedient means" and are giving to people according to their eduction, intelligence and abilities. Each way has elements of the other in it. And jiriki ways are more effective, but devotional ways are accessible to more people. This has not been adequately explained to people, especially in the West.</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"> I realized this about jiriki/tariki in reference to craft immediately, the first time I read about it because of my over thirty years as a practicing Soto Zen Buddhist. </span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">Making beautiful craft is not something more difficult from the perspective of Jiriki. Actually, where Tariki is concerned, the maker is dependent upon someone else, a connoisseur, to help them in the evaluative process. That is why Yanagi's eye is so important to the collection at the Mingeikan. He picked the best out of tens of thousands of craft objects, that would otherwise meet the criteria that others have shared the link to at the Mingeikan's posting of Yanagi's criteria. In the modern individual studio craftman, because of the benefits of wealth and education brought to us by the modern middle class, both the maker and the connoisseur can exist in one person.</span>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-45663437531725539742011-02-27T17:45:00.000-08:002011-02-27T18:23:23.909-08:00Serizawa, Mingei and Studio The Artists' Dilemma.<div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUBxZCXc-kR_mT_BLL5NcPPHM5B_V5lEVfTkbdBjRGLNuM0YQsliFJcIYWGy3iveyJMbkLsBGf043uNHl3f8p1HWkGaLmmyDPoVpCto0Az_fUm6WyrYFJtCqCUrrJ7hllHjWM-Dy4lZ4JH/s1600/Serizawa_20_450.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUBxZCXc-kR_mT_BLL5NcPPHM5B_V5lEVfTkbdBjRGLNuM0YQsliFJcIYWGy3iveyJMbkLsBGf043uNHl3f8p1HWkGaLmmyDPoVpCto0Az_fUm6WyrYFJtCqCUrrJ7hllHjWM-Dy4lZ4JH/s320/Serizawa_20_450.jpg" width="172" /></a><br />
<div style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Functional yet exceptional in design and more than ordinary: herein lies the tension epitomized by Serizwaw’s productions, which were promoted and marketed through department store exhibitions starting in the 1930s. In keeping with Mingei disavowed signatures and ciphers, Serizawa's works bore no emblazoned brand name. His distinctive designs, however, became a signature of their own.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Serizawa's subsequent acceptance of the Living National Treasure designation reinforced the elevated status of his works, Ultimately, he became a commercially successful artist producing recognizable and eminently marketable products, but they were not ordinary, nor were they ''made by the many for the many.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">How then did Serizawa -whose later works were anything but anonymous, inexpensive, and collectively produced - navigate the ideological terrain that separates mingei objects from recognizable works produced by artists who attain government recognition and sponsorship? The debate regarding the role of the anonymous artisan versus the individual artist began in the 1930s and went increasingly public when the government instituted a system for designating Living National Treasures. The 1950 Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties was enacted in part to prevent the disappearance of skills in arts deemed to have historical or artistic value. It was later revised to include all arts bearing significant historical or artistic value, endangered or not. While the selection criteria remained opaque, the laws were amended in 1955 to emphasize three basic tenets: ''artistic value, importance in craft history, and local tradition" Serizawa's was an exceptional designation. Beyond celebrating his works because they produced a painterly composition that ''cannot be found in designs painted by hand," government authorities coined a new term, kataezome (stencil-picture dyeing), for his technique.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">This neologism effectively acknowledges Serizawa's innovative, even transcendent, dyeing practices.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">As a founding member of the Nihon Kogei Kai, Serizawa presumably was cognizant of shifting attitudes toward ''tradition.'' In 1955 the first board director, Nishikawa Tekiho, expressed his hopes for the organization as follows: ''This association is not about being hidebound by the word 'tradition' nor simply worshipping the culture of the past. Our foremost goal is to promote works that make the best of both Japanese traditions and elements learned from foreign countries," It would be naive to assume that the term traditional can be equated with qualifiers such as unchanging or bound by national borders. In either of these cases, materials, techniques, motifs, and formats would ossify and quickly lose their freshness and appeal. The paradox of mingei is that it promotes the suppression of the artist's individuality for the sake of preserving time-honored techniques and collective practices.. yet some of its major proponents, like Serizawa, nevertheless produced highly individualistic, nontraditional works. Similarly, the Living National Treasure system promotes and preserves the traditional arts of Japan, yet even as the system acknowledges how artists bow to Japanese precedents, rarely does it recognize the myriad cultural borrowings and adaptations - Korean, Okinawan, European, and American - that reflect the wider world in which the artists conceive, produce, and sell their works.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">One might ask: How many generations must pass before a foreign novelty becomes part of a nation's ''tradition''? Serizawa as remembered in the cultural imagination represents an important transitional figure moving from the anonymity of the mingei artisan to the celebrated position of Living National Treasure as embodied in an individual craftsperson. While his works reveal polarities between tradition and innovation, everyday and extraordinary, inexpensive and costly, regional and international, anonymity and identity, their attraction may lie in their ability to extract essential elements from the visual arts and technical processes of various cultural practices and transform them, appearing fresh yet steeped in time-honored conventions. His commercial success made it impossible for him to remain an ''unknown craftsman'' and thereby adhere to the strict mingei ideal, yet he ensured the longevity of certain motifs, techniques, and formats by cultivating a demand for his deliberate selections of eclectic motifs and tech- niques. Later in life, he established a research institute to train apprentices in his paper-dyeing technique.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">His works link one generation of Japanese artisans to the next at the same time that they bridge cultural borders. Serizawa navigated the turbulent wafers between tradition and innovation, steering a new course for successive generations of Japan's artist-designers.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;" /></span></div><div style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">From Cataog: Serizawa, Master Of Japanese Textile Design.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">Photo above SERIZAWA KEISUKE (1895-1984) Japanese Syllables, 1960s. Framed, stencil-dyed raw silk, 25 3/4 x 13 3/4 in. John C. Weber Collection.</span></span></div><div><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"></span>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-55894738905930474522011-02-09T07:10:00.000-08:002011-02-09T07:34:04.355-08:00Making Chawan In The 21st Century<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><i>Jean asked me to save this note I wrote to a facebook friend. They asked about the rationale of making tea bowls in modern times. </i></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1n43NThHWc0WPSuBwP3BESpH91ejDlQvkX6vafEiuE1EmVGjqBGLOG6k4CYelRKC2cdz-pxupgqz6W2qBh1j9FEzoRRX6OOwuD1IHOb_dDgmUBYSRVj2_sNG_oLYYLYXErp69TOHH_62Q/s400/kizaemon.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Korean Ido Tea Bowl Name Kizaemon.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">I see no reason to disregard superior techniques or methods simply because they come from another place, culture or time. </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
Or, if it is a more general discussion about our post-modern preoccupation with the present, I believe that we are fortunate with Clay. Unlike painting, which is circumscribe within the arena of studio arts, there are many entries into our medium. I come to clay from three general areas that do not have the "studio arts" baggage or need to measure itself against the atelier: anthropology, Zen Buddhism and ecology (informed by author/poets like Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry, and also Henry David Thoreau.) From the anthropological perspective, whether a work is done in th 15th century or the 21st really has no meaning. You judge the quality of the work and its merits solely by the work itself.<br />
Green tea is a part of my culture. We do leaf tea all day (I start the day with a bowl of coffee. My current coffee bowl is a very 21st century MacKenzie shino bowl.) In the afternoon, around 3:00pm, we have powdered whisked tea. </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: black; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
One of the big advantages ceramics has in Japan is the tea culture which informs not only art, but crafts, dance, theater and also, the martial arts. It is the single thing that makes ceramic culture there light years ahead of ours. (I say ceramic culture specifically, not ceramics.) In Japan, ceramicist do not have to think of themselves as the poor stepchild of the studio arts. With all the health benefits of green tea being discovered, there is no reason why tea culture cannot help ceramics here. But certainly, not everybody, not even the majority, of pottery makers have to be concerned with tea aesthetics. But IF you make tea bowls, it helps you make things that are not a "facade". Most American tea bowls (unlike Rob's that are made with tea in mind) have nothing to do with tea. They are just small bowls. That is where the "facade" dwells.</span></div>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-19107972590974640482010-11-24T06:30:00.000-08:002011-01-07T15:08:20.685-08:00Artist’s Statement<img style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; display: inline; float: left" align="left" src="http://photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2753/220/40/550727056/a550727056_2196670_7070802.jpg" width="200" height="131" /> <br /> <div align="left">“"We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.” --W.B. Yeats</div> <div align="left"> <br />I came to pottery from my studies in Zen and a life long interest in ecology. I make functional pottery in an effort to preserve local culture in our modern hyper-active, information intense society. If we take a stand where we live, and attempt to understand that place, we can create something that preserves and maintains the nature of that place. My main goal is to inspire other people to make their own creative work.</div> <div align="left">Human beings have always worked with their hands. We are creators. We cannot survive by consuming only. We need both creativity and Nature to be healthy and whole human beings. Making and using handmade pottery is one way to bring Nature and culture together in our lives. <br />I intend my work to affect people who use it the way the green countryside affects someone who normally lives in the city: The fresh air & the green of the trees and grasses restores the soul & refreshes the spirit. If my work can do this, in a small way, it is successful. <br />I came to my personal understanding of Mingei and The Arts and Crafts Movement from working with my late teacher Tatsuzo Shimaoka and from observing the family farmers who were my neighbors in Mashiko, who lived according to the natural seasonal cycles. Distilled, it comes down to four basic principles: <br />1.Humans are naturally creative. We are informed by Nature about creativity and beauty. <br />2.Objects should be judged by how they fulfill the human need for creativity. Our tools are enablers. <br />3.We best function when we know the people whose products we depend upon and the people who likewise depend upon us. <br />4.When human creative needs are met, it is also beneficial to the ecology of the environment.                   </div> <div align="right">Kiln Prayer: Clay, Water, Fire</div> <img style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; display: inline; float: right" align="right" src="http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2753/220/40/550727056/a550727056_2197597_5507411.jpg" width="206" height="433" />As we become a post-industrial society, people who work with their hands are finding themselves being displaced by automation. In all advanced civilizations, artists and artisans and their work has been supported by society. If our culture chooses to do so, displaced farmers, autoworkers, and other factory workers can become artisans and artists. This was a realization of William Morris and Soetsu Yanagi and influenced their humanistic approach to making things. Philosophers Hannah Arendt and Max Scheler called man Homo Faber, “Man the Maker.” It is all about switching our mindset from one of being “consumers” to one of being Makers. We are all makers at heart. Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-37099223124778136102010-07-16T13:47:00.000-07:002010-07-16T13:47:06.998-07:00Mike Norman Work<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJT6N8JxCokEsWqz7RyoclBoWIpitmSonKrQz6bxYAsCZ-DWu2sSUvlhhAWWbVSawhX0ri3sfWIRnCPRgzSB0HVIFyMaonmgWC-3urIBJ0PjWEevFLmCxStppglhDy3wc2fweJxzWk6xDR/s1600/IMG_0672.JPG"><img border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJT6N8JxCokEsWqz7RyoclBoWIpitmSonKrQz6bxYAsCZ-DWu2sSUvlhhAWWbVSawhX0ri3sfWIRnCPRgzSB0HVIFyMaonmgWC-3urIBJ0PjWEevFLmCxStppglhDy3wc2fweJxzWk6xDR/s400/IMG_0672.JPG" /></a><br />The vase was a swap at St. Kate's<br />Jean found the piggy bank at a neighborhood garage sale<br />A tech at the UofMn had it.<br /><br /></div><div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-57789333352660693982010-06-11T21:11:00.000-07:002010-09-21T06:57:53.631-07:00Taking away the flag of ego.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi08ahp-bsbutB8P2VxxwKcKTHjSEnN37FpggIvQ51vABPlXhFQ2cvuMTaH7OcuqDi-E4J00POTPMtjOXhdYk8UqXXwYVRdOhuu8ohtGxXdKYGcjocUcQHJ0hLwc3h86keLQEFHX4XkSwXJ/s1600/Dainin_Katagiri.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5481737844415961138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi08ahp-bsbutB8P2VxxwKcKTHjSEnN37FpggIvQ51vABPlXhFQ2cvuMTaH7OcuqDi-E4J00POTPMtjOXhdYk8UqXXwYVRdOhuu8ohtGxXdKYGcjocUcQHJ0hLwc3h86keLQEFHX4XkSwXJ/s400/Dainin_Katagiri.jpg" style="float: left; height: 400px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 271px;" /></a><br />
<div>"'We can say that Buddhist practice has two aspects: to constantly seek Truth and to go into the human world.<br />
<br />
'If you want to be a pianist, devote yourself to studying and practicing the piano. This is the mind that seeks Truth. But though you may eventually reach a lofty stage as a musician, it is not good enough. You have to descend into the human world as well. Your life, your presence, your personality must touch people's hearts directly. This means you have to go beyond being a pianist.<br />
<br />
'It is relatively easy to teach people to be musicians, but it is not so easy to teach them how to go beyond being a musician. If you would teach this to others, your mind must be based on compassion. When you teach, you have to pierce the human heart and take away the flag of ego. So your compassion must extend beyond the words you use. Then your penetrating words will teach, and not injure.'"</div>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-1244602120781214722010-05-09T06:07:00.000-07:002010-05-09T06:23:39.585-07:00Paul Woodruff - Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue<div>This is a book I just picked up at my library. Barry Lopez recommended it when he was on Bill Moyer's last show of his Journal. </div><div><br /></div><div> Durning my apprenticeship, though the old craftsmen that taught me were not reverential in their lives as a whole, they always treated their craft, their tools and the craft process with reverence. Some examples:</div><div><br /></div><div> When my first pair of work gloves wore out, I put them in a trash can. The 75 year old Shokunin/master craftsman, Fukuyan, who started with Shoji Hamada when he was 14, told me to get the gloves out of the trash can. Save them and put them in the fire the next time we make one. We offered up the gloves to fire, out of reverence for their service and work life.</div><div><br /></div><div> Another time, I left my Korean Kick wheel spinning, to go do something else. Fukuyan, walking by, stopped the wheel. I didn't think much about it, until it happened again and Fukuyan said it wasn't good to leave the wheel spinning by itself. I didn't have the language to ask why, but I assumed it was out of respect for an important tool. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> See Paul Woodruff - Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue at Google Books:</div><div><br /></div>http://books.google.com/books?id=wjA5RH0jK8wC&lpg=PP1&dq=reverence%20Paul%20Woodruff&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false<div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-315128287401440922009-12-26T07:00:00.000-08:002009-12-26T07:07:30.528-08:00Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work<span style="font-style: italic;">A must read for anyone interested in Craft, and why Craft is more important than ever. --Lee</span><br /><br />"We in the West have arranged our institutions to prevent the concentration of political power. … But we have failed utterly to prevent the concentration of economic power, or take account of how such concentration damages the conditions under which full human flourishing becomes possible (it is never guaranteed)." -- Matthew B. Crawford<br /><br /><span class="note"><strong>Editor’s Note:</strong> The original essay below, by <em>New Atlantis</em> contributing editor <a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/authors/matthew-crawford" title="Matthew Crawford"><strong>Matthew B. Crawford</strong></a>, was published in 2006. </span><span class="note">Mr. Crawford has expanded the essay into a bestselling book — <strong><em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594202230?ie=UTF8&tag=the-new-atlantis-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1594202230">Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work</a></em></strong> — published in 2009 by Penguin. To read excerpts from and reviews of the book, and to see interviews with Mr. Crawford, <a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft-book" title="Shop Class as Soulcraft (book)"><strong>click here</strong></a>.</span> <h2 class="sIFR-replaced" style=""><object data="/scripts/Bell-r436.swf" name="sIFR_replacement_0" id="sIFR_replacement_0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" class="sIFR-flash" height="40" width="660"><param value="id=sIFR_replacement_0&content=Shop%2520Class%2520as%2520Soulcraft&width=660&renderheight=40&link=&target=&size=30&css=.sIFR-root%257Bcolor%253A%2523000000%253B%257Da%257Bcolor%253A%2523000000%253B%257D&cursor=default&tunewidth=0&tuneheight=0&offsetleft=&offsettop=&fitexactly=false&preventwrap=false&forcesingleline=false&antialiastype=&thickness=&sharpness=&kerning=&gridfittype=pixel&flashfilters=&opacity=100&blendmode=&selectable=true&fixhover=true&events=false&delayrun=false&version=436" name="flashvars"><param value="transparent" name="wmode"><param value="transparent" name="bgcolor"><param value="always" name="allowScriptAccess"><param value="best" name="quality"></object><span id="sIFR_replacement_0_alternate" class="sIFR-alternate">Shop Class as Soulcraft </span></h2> <p class="author"><a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/authors/matthew-crawford">Matthew B. Crawford</a></p> <p> </p><p><span class="firstcap">A</span>nyone in the market for a good used machine tool should talk to Noel Dempsey, a dealer in Richmond, Virginia. Noel’s bustling warehouse is full of metal lathes, milling machines, and table saws, and it turns out that most of it is from schools. EBay is awash in such equipment, also from schools. It appears shop class is becoming a thing of the past, as educators prepare students to become “knowledge workers.”</p><p>At the same time, an engineering culture has developed in recent years in which the object is to “hide the works,” rendering the artifacts we use unintelligible to direct inspection. Lift the hood on some cars now (especially German ones), and the engine appears a bit like the shimmering, featureless obelisk that so enthralled the cavemen in the opening scene of the movie <em>2001: A Space Odyssey</em>. Essentially, there is another hood under the hood. This creeping concealedness takes various forms. The fasteners holding small appliances together now often require esoteric screwdrivers not commonly available, apparently to prevent the curious or the angry from interrogating the innards. By way of contrast, older readers will recall that until recent decades, Sears catalogues included blown-up parts diagrams and conceptual schematics for all appliances and many other mechanical goods. It was simply taken for granted that such information would be demanded by the consumer.</p><p>A decline in tool use would seem to betoken a shift in our mode of inhabiting the world: more passive and more dependent. And indeed, there are fewer occasions for the kind of spiritedness that is called forth when we take things in hand for ourselves, whether to fix them or to make them. What ordinary people once made, they buy; and what they once fixed for themselves, they replace entirely or hire an expert to repair, whose expert fix often involves installing a pre-made replacement part.</p><p>So perhaps the time is ripe for reconsideration of an ideal that has fallen out of favor: manual competence, and the stance it entails toward the built, material world. Neither as workers nor as consumers are we much called upon to exercise such competence, most of us anyway, and merely to recommend its cultivation is to risk the scorn of those who take themselves to be the most hard-headed: the hard-headed economist will point out the opportunity costs of making what can be bought, and the hard-headed educator will say that it is irresponsible to educate the young for the trades, which are somehow identified as the jobs of the past. But we might pause to consider just how hard-headed these presumptions are, and whether they don’t, on the contrary, issue from a peculiar sort of idealism, one that insistently steers young people toward the most ghostly kinds of work.</p><p>Judging from my admittedly cursory survey, articles began to appear in vocational education journals around 1985 with titles such as “The Soaring Technology Revolution” and “Preparing Kids for High-Tech and the Global Future.” Of course, there is nothing new about American future-ism. What is new is the wedding of future-ism to what might be called “virtualism”: a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. New and yet not so new—for fifty years now we’ve been assured that we are headed for a “post-industrial economy.” While manufacturing jobs have certainly left our shores to a disturbing degree, the manual trades have not. If you need a deck built, or your car fixed, the Chinese are of no help. Because they are in China. And in fact there are reported labor shortages in both construction and auto repair. Yet the trades and manufacturing are lumped together in the mind of the pundit class as “blue collar,” and their requiem is intoned. Even so, the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> recently wondered whether “skilled [manual] labor is becoming one of the few sure paths to a good living.” This possibility was brought to light for many by the bestseller <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671015206/the-new-atlantis-20"><strong>The Millionaire Next Door</strong></a></em>, which revealed that the typical millionaire is the guy driving a pickup, with his own business in the trades. My real concern here is not with the economics of skilled manual work, but rather with its intrinsic satisfactions. I mention these economic rumors only to raise a suspicion against the widespread prejudice that such work is somehow not viable as a livelihood.</p><span class="subhead" align="center">The Psychic Appeal of Manual Work</span> <p><span class="tallcap">I</span> began working as an electrician’s helper at age fourteen, and started a small electrical contracting business after college, in Santa Barbara. In those years I never ceased to take pleasure in the moment, at the end of a job, when I would flip the switch. “And there was light.” It was an experience of agency and competence. The effects of my work were visible for all to see, so my competence was real for others as well; it had a social currency. The well-founded pride of the tradesman is far from the gratuitous “self-esteem” that educators would impart to students, as though by magic.</p><p>I was sometimes quieted at the sight of a gang of conduit entering a large panel in a commercial setting, bent into nestled, flowing curves, with varying offsets, that somehow all terminated in the same plane. This was a skill so far beyond my abilities that I felt I was in the presence of some genius, and the man who bent that conduit surely imagined this moment of recognition as he worked. As a residential electrician, most of my work got covered up inside walls. Yet even so, there is pride in meeting the aesthetic demands of a workmanlike installation. Maybe another electrician will see it someday. Even if not, one feels responsible to one’s better self. Or rather, to the thing itself—craftsmanship might be defined simply as the desire to do something well, for its own sake. If the primary satisfaction is intrinsic and private in this way, there is nonetheless a sort of self-disclosing that takes place. As Alexandre Kojève writes:</p><blockquote><p>The man who works recognizes his own product in the World that has actually been transformed by his work: he recognizes himself in it, he sees in it his own human reality, in it he discovers and reveals to others the objective reality of his humanity, of the originally abstract and purely subjective idea he has of himself.</p></blockquote><p>The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering <em>interpretations</em> of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a boy does, who has no real effect in the world. But craftsmanship must reckon with the infallible judgment of reality, where one’s failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away.</p><p>Hobbyists will tell you that making one’s own furniture is hard to justify economically. And yet they persist. Shared memories attach to the material souvenirs of our lives, and producing them is a kind of communion, with others and with the future. Finding myself at loose ends one summer in Berkeley, I built a mahogany coffee table on which I spared no expense of effort. At that time I had no immediate prospect of becoming a father, yet I imagined a child who would form indelible impressions of this table and know that it was his father’s work. I imagined the table fading into the background of a future life, the defects in its execution as well as inevitable stains and scars becoming a surface textured enough that memory and sentiment might cling to it, in unnoticed accretions. More fundamentally, the durable objects of use produced by men “give rise to the familiarity of the world, its customs and habits of intercourse between men and things as well as between men and men,” as Hannah Arendt says. “The reality and reliability of the human world rest primarily on the fact that we are surrounded by things more permanent than the activity by which they were produced, and potentially even more permanent than the lives of their authors.”</p><p>Because craftsmanship refers to objective standards that do not issue from the self and its desires, it poses a challenge to the ethic of consumerism, as the sociologist Richard Sennett has recently argued. The craftsman is proud of what he has made, and cherishes it, while the consumer discards things that are perfectly serviceable in his restless pursuit of the new. The craftsman is then more possessive, more tied to what is present, the dead incarnation of past labor; the consumer is more free, more imaginative, and so more valorous according to those who would sell us things. Being able to think materially about material goods, hence critically, gives one some independence from the manipulations of marketing, which typically divert attention from <em>what a thing is</em> to a back-story intimated through associations, the point of which is to exaggerate minor differences between brands. Knowing the production narrative, or at least being able to plausibly imagine it, renders the social narrative of the advertisement less potent. The tradesman has an impoverished fantasy life compared to the ideal consumer; he is more utilitarian and less given to soaring hopes. But he is also more autonomous.</p><p>This would seem to be significant for any political typology. Political theorists from Aristotle to Thomas Jefferson have questioned the republican virtue of the mechanic, finding him too narrow in his concerns to be moved by the public good. Yet this assessment was made before the full flowering of mass communication and mass conformity, which pose a different set of problems for the republican character: enervation of judgment and erosion of the independent spirit. Since the standards of craftsmanship issue from the logic of things rather than the art of persuasion, practiced submission to them perhaps gives the craftsman some psychic ground to stand on against fantastic hopes aroused by demagogues, whether commercial or political. The craftsman’s habitual deference is not toward the New, but toward the distinction between the Right Way and the Wrong Way. However narrow in its application, this is a rare appearance in contemporary life—a disinterested, articulable, and publicly affirmable idea of the good. Such a strong ontology is somewhat at odds with the cutting-edge institutions of the new capitalism, and with the educational regime that aims to supply those institutions with suitable workers—pliable generalists unfettered by any single set of skills.</p><p>Today, in our schools, the manual trades are given little honor. The egalitarian worry that has always attended tracking students into “college prep” and “vocational ed” is overlaid with another: the fear that acquiring a specific skill set means that one’s life is <em>determined</em>. In college, by contrast, many students don’t learn anything of particular application; college is the ticket to an <em>open</em> future. Craftsmanship entails learning to do one thing really well, while the ideal of the new economy is to be able to learn new things, celebrating potential rather than achievement. Somehow, every worker in the cutting-edge workplace is now supposed to act like an “intrapreneur,” that is, to be actively involved in the continuous redefinition of his own job. Shop class presents an image of stasis that runs directly counter to what Richard Sennett identifies as “a key element in the new economy’s idealized self: the capacity to surrender, to give up possession of an established reality.” This stance toward “established reality,” which can only be called psychedelic, is best not indulged around a table saw. It is dissatisfied with what Arendt calls the “reality and reliability” of the world. It is a strange sort of ideal, attractive only to a peculiar sort of self—gratuitous ontological insecurity is no fun for most people.</p><p>As Sennett argues, most people take pride in being good at something specific, which happens through the accumulation of experience. Yet the flitting disposition is pressed upon workers from above by the current generation of management revolutionaries, for whom the ethic of craftsmanship is actually something to be rooted out from the workforce. Craftsmanship means dwelling on a task for a long time and going deeply into it, because one wants to get it right. In management-speak, this is called being “ingrown.” The preferred role model is the management consultant, who swoops in and out, and whose very pride lies in his lack of particular expertise. Like the ideal consumer, the management consultant presents an image of soaring freedom, in light of which the manual trades appear cramped and paltry.</p><span class="subhead" align="center">The Cognitive Demands of Manual Work</span> <p><span class="tallcap">I</span>n <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0143035576/the-new-atlantis-20"><strong>The Mind at Work</strong></a></em>, Mike Rose provides “cognitive biographies” of several trades, and depicts the learning process in a wood shop class. He writes that “our testaments to physical work are so often focused on the values such work exhibits rather than on the thought it requires. It is a subtle but pervasive omission.... It is as though in our cultural iconography we are given the muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no thought bright behind the eye, no image that links hand and brain.”</p><p>Skilled manual labor entails a systematic encounter with the material world, precisely the kind of encounter that gives rise to natural science. From its earliest practice, craft knowledge has entailed knowledge of the “ways” of one’s materials—that is, knowledge of their nature, acquired through disciplined perception and a systematic approach to problems. And in fact, in areas of well-developed craft, technological developments typically preceded and gave rise to advances in scientific understanding, not vice versa. The steam engine is a good example. It was developed by mechanics who observed the relations between volume, pressure, and temperature. This at a time when theoretical scientists were tied to the caloric theory of heat, which later turned out to be a conceptual dead end. The success of the steam engine contributed to the development of what we now call classical thermodynamics. This history provides a nice illustration of a point made by Aristotle:</p><blockquote><p>Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena are more able to lay down principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development; while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations.</p></blockquote><p>Another example is the Vernier scale used on machinists’ calipers and micrometers. Invented in 1631, it is a sort of mechanical calculus that renders continuous measurement in discrete digital approximation to four decimal places. Such inventions capture a reflective moment in which some skilled worker has made explicit the assumptions that are implicit in his manual skill.</p><p>In what has to be the best article ever published in an education journal, the cognitive scientists Mike Eisenberg and Ann Nishioka Eisenberg give real pedagogical force to this reflective moment, and draw out its theoretical implications (“Shop Class for the Next Millennium: Education Through Computer-Enriched Handicrafts,” in the <em>Journal of Interactive Media in Education</em>). They offer a computer program to facilitate making origami, or rather Archimedean solids, by unfolding these solids into two dimensions. But they then have their students actually make the solids, out of paper cut according to the computer’s instructions. “Computational tools for crafting are entities poised somewhere between the abstract, untouchable world of software objects and the homey constraints of human dexterity; they are therefore creative exercises in making conscious those aspects of craft work ... that are often more easily represented ‘in the hand’ than in language.” It is worth pausing to consider their efforts, as they have implications well beyond mathematics instruction.</p><blockquote><p>In our early work with HyperGami, we often ran into situations in which the program provided us with a folding net that was mathematically correct—i.e., a technically correct unfolding of the desired solid—but otherwise disastrous. Figure 7 shows an example. Here, we are trying to create an approximation to a cone—a pyramid on a regular octagonal base. HyperGami provides us with a folding net that will, indeed, produce a pyramid; but typically, no paper crafter would come up with a net of this sort, since it is fiendishly hard to join together those eight tall triangles into a single vertex. In fact, this is an illustrative example of a more general idea—the difficulty of formalizing, in purely mathematical terms, what it means to produce a ‘realistic’ (and not merely technically correct) solution to an algorithmic problem derived from human practice.</p></blockquote><p>I take their point to be that the crafting problem is in fact not reducible to an algorithmic problem. More precisely, any algorithmic solution to the crafting problem cannot itself be generated algorithmically, as it must include ad hoc constraints known only through practice, that is, through embodied manipulations. Those constraints cannot be arrived at deductively, starting from mathematical entities. It is worth noting in passing that this has implications for the theory of mind favored by artificial intelligence researchers, as it speaks to the “computability” of pragmatic cognition. It would be a task for cognitive science to determine if these considerations place a theoretical limit on the automation of work, but I can speak firsthand to how one area of work is resistant to algorithmic thinking.</p><p>Following graduate school in Chicago, I took a job in a Washington, D.C. think tank. I hated it, so I left and opened a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond. When I would come home from work, my wife would sniff at me and say “carbs” or “brakes,” corresponding to the various solvents used. Leaving a sensible trace, my day was at least imaginable to her. But while the filth and odors were apparent, the amount of head-scratching I’d done since breakfast was not. Mike Rose writes that in the practice of surgery, “dichotomies such as concrete versus abstract and technique versus reflection break down in practice. The surgeon’s judgment is simultaneously technical and deliberative, and that mix is the source of its power.” This could be said of any manual skill that is diagnostic, including motorcycle repair. You come up with an imagined train of causes for manifest symptoms and judge their likelihood before tearing anything down. This imagining relies on a stock mental library, not of natural kinds or structures, like that of the surgeon, but rather the functional kinds of an internal combustion engine, their various interpretations by different manufacturers, and their proclivities for failure. You also develop a library of sounds and smells and feels. For example, the backfire of a too-lean fuel mixture is subtly different from an ignition backfire. If the motorcycle is thirty years old, from an obscure maker that went out of business twenty years ago, its proclivities are known mostly through lore. It would probably be impossible to do such work in isolation, without access to a collective historical memory; you have to be embedded in a community of mechanic-antiquarians. These relationships are maintained by telephone, in a network of reciprocal favors that spans the country. My most reliable source, Fred Cousins in Chicago, had such an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure European motorcycles that all I could offer him in exchange was regular shipments of obscure European beer.</p><p>There is always a risk of introducing new complications when working on decrepit machines, and this enters the diagnostic logic. Measured in likelihood of screw-ups, the cost is not identical for all avenues of inquiry when deciding which hypothesis to pursue. For example, the fasteners holding the engine covers on 1970s-era Hondas are Phillips-head, and they are <em>always</em> stripped and corroded. Do you <em>really</em> want to check the condition of the starter clutch, if each of ten screws will need to be drilled out and extracted, risking damage to the engine case? Such impediments can cloud one’s thinking. Put more neutrally, the attractiveness of any hypothesis is determined in part by physical circumstances that have no logical connection to the diagnostic problem at hand, but a strong pragmatic bearing on it (kind of like origami). The factory service manuals tell you to be systematic in eliminating variables, but they never take such factors into account. So you have to develop your own decision tree for the particular circumstances. The problem is that at each node of this new tree, your own, unquantifiable risk aversion introduces ambiguity. There comes a point where you have to step back and get a larger gestalt. Have a cigarette and walk around the lift. Any mechanic will tell you that it is invaluable to have other mechanics around to test your reasoning against, especially if they have a different intellectual disposition.</p><p>My shop-mate Tommy Van Auken was an accomplished visual artist, and I was repeatedly struck by his ability to literally <em>see </em>things that escaped me. I had the conceit of a being an empiricist, but seeing things is not a simple matter. Even on the relatively primitive vintage bikes that were our specialty, some diagnostic situations contain so many variables, and symptoms can be so under-determining of causes, that explicit analytical reasoning comes up short. What is required then is the kind of judgment that arises only from experience; hunches rather than rules. There was more thinking going on in the bike shop than in the think tank.</p><p>Socially, being the proprietor of a bike shop in a small city gave me a feeling I never had before. I felt I had a place in society. Whereas “think tank” is an answer that, at best, buys you a few seconds when someone asks what you do, while you try to figure out what it is that you in fact do, with “motorcycle mechanic” I got immediate recognition. I bartered services with machinists and metal fabricators, which has a very different feel than transactions with money, and further increased my sense of social embeddedness. There were three restaurants with cooks whose bikes I had restored, where unless I deceive myself I was treated as a sage benefactor. I felt pride before my wife when we would go out to dinner and be given preferential treatment, or simply a hearty greeting. There were group rides, and bike night every Tuesday at a certain bar. Sometimes one or two people would be wearing my shop’s T-shirt. It felt good.</p><p>Given the intrinsic richness of manual work, cognitively, socially, and in its broader psychic appeal, the question becomes why it has suffered such a devaluation in recent years as a component of education. The economic rationale so often offered, namely that manual work is somehow going to disappear, is questionable if not preposterous, so it is in the murky realm of culture that we must look to understand these things. To this end, perhaps we need to consider the origins of shop class, so that we can better understand its demise.</p><span class="subhead" align="center">Arts, Crafts, and the Assembly Line</span> <p><span class="tallcap">A</span>t a time when Teddy Roosevelt preached the strenuous life and elites worried about their state of “over-civilized” spiritual decay, the project of getting back in touch with “real life” took various forms. One was romantic fantasy about the pre-modern craftsman. This was understandable given changes in the world of work at the turn of the century, a time when the bureaucratization of economic life was rapidly increasing the number of paper shufflers. The tangible elements of craft were appealing as an antidote to vague feelings of unreality, diminished autonomy, and a fragmented sense of self that were especially acute among the professional classes.</p><p>The Arts and Crafts movement thus fit easily with the new therapeutic ethic of self-regeneration. Depleted from his workweek in the corporate world, the office worker repaired to his basement workshop to putter about and tinker, refreshing himself for the following week. As T. J. Jackson Lears writes in his history of the Progressive era, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226469700/the-new-atlantis-20"><strong>No Place of Grace</strong></a></em>, “toward the end of the nineteenth century, many beneficiaries of modern culture began to feel they were its secret victims.” Various forms of antimodernism gained wide currency in the middle and upper classes, including the ethic of craftsmanship. Some Arts and Crafts enthusiasts conceived their task to be evangelizing good taste as embodied in the works of craft, as against machine-age vulgarity. Cultivating an appreciation for <em>objets d’art</em> was thus a form of protest against modernity, with a view to providing a livelihood to dissident craftsmen. But it dovetailed with, and gave a higher urgency to, the nascent culture of luxury consumption. As Lears tells the story, the great irony is that antimodernist sentiments of aesthetic revolt against the machine paved the way for certain unattractive features of late-modern culture: therapeutic self-absorption and the hankering after “authenticity,” precisely those psychic hooks now relied upon by advertisers. Such spiritualized, symbolic modes of craft practice and craft consumption represented a kind of compensation for, and therefore an accommodation to, new modes of routinized, bureaucratic work.</p><p>But not everyone worked in an office. Indeed, there was class conflict brewing, with unassimilated immigrants accumulating in America’s Eastern cities and serious labor violence in Chicago and elsewhere. To the upper classes of those same cities, enamored of the craft ideal, the possibility presented itself that the laboring classes might remain satisfied with their material lot if they found joy in their labor. Shop class could serve to put the proper spin on manual work. Any work, it was posited, could be “artful” if done in the proper spirit; somehow a movement that had started with reverence for the craftsman now offered an apologetic for factory work. As Lears writes, “By shifting their attention from the conditions of labor to the laborer’s frame of mind, craft ideologues could acclaim the value of any work, however monotonous.”</p><p>The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 gave federal funding for manual training in two forms: as part of general education and as a separate vocational program. The invention of modern shop class thus serviced both cultural reflexes of the Arts and Crafts movement at once. The children of the managerial class could take shop as enrichment to the college-prep curriculum, making a bird-feeder to hang outside mom’s kitchen window, while the children of laborers would be socialized into the work ethic appropriate to their station through what was now called “industrial arts” education. The need for such socialization was not simply a matter of assimilating immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe who lacked a Protestant work ethic. It was recognized as a necessity for the broader working-class population, precisely because the institutions that had previously served this socializing function, apprenticeship and guild traditions, had been destroyed by new modes of labor. Writing in 1918, one Robert Hoxie worried thus:</p><blockquote><p>It is evident ... that the native efficiency of the working class must suffer from the neglect of apprenticeship, if no other means of industrial education is forthcoming. Scientific managers, themselves, have complained bitterly of the poor and lawless material from which they must recruit their workers, compared with the efficient and self-respecting craftsmen who applied for employment twenty years ago.</p></blockquote><p>Needless to say, “scientific managers” were concerned more with the “efficient” part of this formula than with the “self-respecting” part, yet the two are not independent. The quandary was how to make workers efficient and attentive, when their actual labor had been degraded by automation. The motivation previously supplied by the intrinsic satisfactions of manual work was to be replaced with ideology; industrial arts education now concerned itself with moral formation. Lears writes that “American craft publicists, by treating craftsmanship ... as an agent of socialization, abandoned [the] effort to revive pleasurable labor. Manual training meant specialized assembly line preparation for the lower classes and educational or recreational experiences for the bourgeoisie.”</p><p>Of the Smith-Hughes Act’s two rationales for shop class, vocational and general ed, only the latter emphasized the learning of aesthetic, mathematical, and physical principles through the manipulation of material things (Dewey’s “learning by doing”). It is not surprising, then, that the act came four years after Henry Ford’s innovation of the assembly line. The act’s dual educational scheme mirrored the assembly line’s severing of the cognitive aspects of manual work from its physical execution. Such a partition of thinking from doing has bequeathed us the dichotomy of “white collar” versus “blue collar,” corresponding to mental versus manual. These seem to be the categories that inform the educational landscape even now, and this entails two big errors. First, it assumes that all blue collar work is as mindless as assembly line work, and second, that white collar work is still recognizably mental in character. Yet there is evidence to suggest that the new frontier of capitalism lies in doing to office work what was previously done to factory work: draining it of its cognitive elements. Paradoxically, educators who would steer students toward cognitively rich work options might do this best by rehabilitating the manual trades, based on a firmer grasp of what such work is really like. And would this not be in keeping with their democratic mission? Let them publicly honor those who gain real craft knowledge, the sort we all depend on every day.</p><span class="subhead" align="center">The Degradation of Blue-Collar Work</span> <p><span class="tallcap">T</span>he degradation of work in the last century is often tied to the evils of technology in one way or another. And it is certainly true that “technical progress has multiplied the number of simplified jobs,” as one French sociologist wrote in the 1950s. This writer pointed out a resemblance between the Soviet bloc and the Western bloc with regard to work; both rival civilizations were developing “that separation between planning and execution which seems to be in our day a common denominator linking all industrial societies together.” Yet while technology plays a role in facilitating this separation of planning and execution, the basic logic that drives the separation rests not on technological progress, but rather on a certain mode of economic relations, as Harry Braverman has shown in his masterpiece of economic reflection, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0853459401/the-new-atlantis-20"><strong>Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century</strong></a></em>. Braverman was an avowed Marxist, writing in 1974. With the Cold War now safely decided, we may consider anew, without defensive ire, the Marxian account of alienated labor. Braverman gives a richly descriptive account of the degradation of many different kinds of work. In doing so, he offers nothing less than an explanation of why we are getting more stupid with every passing year—which is to say, the degradation of work is ultimately a cognitive matter.</p><p>The central culprit in Braverman’s account is “scientific management,” which “enters the workplace not as the representative of science, but as the representative of management masquerading in the trappings of science.” The tenets of scientific management were given their first and frankest articulation by Frederick Winslow Taylor, an unembarrassed evangelist of efficiency whose <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1897363893/the-new-atlantis-20"><strong>Principles of Scientific Management</strong></a></em> was hugely influential in the early decades of the twentieth century. Stalin was a big fan, as were the founders of the first MBA program, at Harvard, where Taylor was invited to lecture annually. Taylor writes, “The managers assume ... the burden of gathering together all of the traditional knowledge which in the past has been possessed by the workmen and then of classifying, tabulating, and reducing this knowledge to rules, laws, and formulae.” Scattered craft knowledge is concentrated in the hands of the employer, then doled out again to workers in the form of minute instructions needed to perform some <em>part</em> of what is now a work <em>process.</em> This process replaces what was previously an integral activity, rooted in craft tradition and experience, animated by the worker’s own mental image of, and intention toward, the finished product. Thus, according to Taylor, “All possible brain work should be removed from the shop and centered in the planning or lay-out department.” It is a mistake to suppose that the primary purpose of this partition is to render the work process more efficient. It may or may not result in extracting more value from a given unit of labor <em>time</em>. The concern is rather with labor <em>cost</em>. Once the cognitive aspects of the job are located in a separate management class, or better yet in a process that, once designed, requires no ongoing judgment or deliberation, skilled workers can be replaced with unskilled workers at a lower rate of pay. Taylor writes that the “full possibilities” of his system “will not have been realized until almost all of the machines in the shop are run by men who are of smaller caliber and attainments, and who are therefore cheaper than those required under the old system.”</p><p>What becomes of the skilled workers? They go elsewhere, of course. But the competitive labor-cost advantage now held by the more modern firm, which has aggressively separated planning from execution, compels the whole industry to follow the same route, and entire skilled trades disappear. Thus craft knowledge dies out, or rather gets instantiated in a different form, as process engineering knowledge. The conception of the work is remote from the worker who does it.</p><p>Scientific management introduced the use of “time and motion analysis” to describe the physiological capabilities of the human body in machine terms. As Braverman writes, “the more labor is governed by classified motions which extend across the boundaries of trades and occupations, the more it dissolves its concrete forms into the general types of work motions. This mechanical exercise of human faculties according to motion types which are studied independently of the particular kind of work being done, brings to life the Marxist conception of ‘abstract labor.’” The clearest example of abstract labor is thus the assembly line. The <em>activity</em> (in the Aristotelian sense) of self-directed labor, conducted by the worker, is dissolved into abstract parts and then reconstituted as a <em>process</em> controlled by management.</p><p>At the turn of the last century, the manufacture of automobiles was done by craftsmen recruited from bicycle and carriage shops: all-around mechanics who knew what they were doing. In <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521091950/the-new-atlantis-20"><strong>The Wheelwright’s Shop</strong></a></em>, George Sturt relates his experience in taking over his family business of making wheels for carriages, in 1884, shortly before the advent of the automobile. He had been a school teacher with literary ambitions, but now finds himself almost overwhelmed by the cognitive demands of his new trade. In Sturt’s shop, working exclusively with hand tools, the skills required to build a wheel regress all the way to the selection of trees to fell for timber, the proper time for felling them, how to season them, and so forth. To select but one minor task out of the countless he describes, here is Sturt’s account of fabricating a part of a wheel’s rim called a felloe:</p><blockquote><p>Yet it is in vain to go into details at this point; for when the simple apparatus had all been gotten together for one simple-looking process, a never-ending series of variations was introduced by the material. What though two felloes might seem much alike when finished? It was the wheelwright himself who had to make them so. He it was who hewed out that resemblance from quite dissimilar blocks, for no two felloe-blocks were ever alike. Knots here, shakes there, rind-galls, waney edges (edges with more or less bark in them), thicknesses, thinnesses, were for ever affording new chances or forbidding previous solutions, whereby a fresh problem confronted the workman’s ingenuity every few minutes. He had no band-saw (as now [1923]) to drive, with ruthless unintelligence, through every resistance. The timber was far from being prey, a helpless victim, to a machine. Rather it would lend its own special virtues to the man who knew how to humour it.</p></blockquote><p>Given their likely acquaintance with such a cognitively rich world of work, it is hardly surprising that when Henry Ford introduced the assembly line in 1913, workers simply walked out. One of Ford’s biographers wrote, “So great was labor’s distaste for the new machine system that toward the close of 1913 every time the company wanted to add 100 men to its factory personnel, it was necessary to hire 963.”</p><p>This would seem to be a crucial moment in the history of political economy. Evidently, the new system provoked natural revulsion. Yet, at some point, workers became habituated to it. How did this happen? One might be tempted to inquire in a typological mode: What sort of men were these first, the 100 out of 963 who stuck it out on the new assembly line? Perhaps it was the men who felt less revulsion because they had less pride in their own powers, and were therefore more tractable. Less republican, we might say. But if there was initially such a self-selection process, it quickly gave way to something less deliberate, more systemic.</p><p>In a temporary suspension of the Taylorist logic, Ford was forced to double the daily wage of his workers to keep the line staffed. As Braverman writes, this “opened up new possibilities for the intensification of labor within the plants, where workers were now anxious to keep their jobs.” These anxious workers were more productive. Indeed, Ford himself later recognized his wage increase as “one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made,” as he was able to double, and then triple, the rate at which cars were assembled by simply speeding up the conveyors. By doing so he destroyed his competitors, and thereby destroyed the possibility of an alternative way of working. (It also removed the wage pressure that comes from the existence of more enjoyable jobs.) At the Columbian World Expo held in Chicago in 1893, no fewer than seven large-scale carriage builders from Cincinnati alone presented their wares. Adopting Ford’s methods, the industry would soon be reduced to the Big Three. So workers eventually became habituated to the abstraction of the assembly line. Evidently, it inspires revulsion only if one is acquainted with more satisfying modes of work.</p><p>Here the concept of wages as <em>compensation</em> achieves its fullest meaning, and its central place in modern economy. Changing attitudes toward consumption seemed to play a role. A man whose needs are limited will find the least noxious livelihood and work in a subsistence mode, and indeed the experience of early (eighteenth-century) capitalism, when many producers worked at home on a piece-rate basis, was that only so much labor could be extracted from them. Contradicting the assumptions of “rational behavior” of classical economics, it was found that when employers would increase the piece rate in order to boost production, it actually had the opposite effect: workers would produce less, as now they could meet their fixed needs with less work. Eventually it was learned that the only way to get them to work harder was to play upon the imagination, stimulating new needs and wants. The habituation of workers to the assembly line was thus perhaps made easier by another innovation of the early twentieth century: consumer debt. As Jackson Lears has shown in a recent article, through the installment plan, previously unthinkable acquisitions became thinkable, and more than thinkable: it became normal to carry debt. The display of a new car bought on installment became a sign that one was trustworthy. In a wholesale transformation of the old Puritan moralism, expressed by Benjamin Franklin (admittedly no Puritan) with the motto “Be frugal and free,” the early twentieth century saw the moral legitimation of spending. Indeed, 1907 saw the publication of a book with the immodest title <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1410215059/the-new-atlantis-20"><strong>The New Basis of Civilization</strong></a></em>, by Simon Nelson Patten, in which the moral valence of debt and spending is reversed, and the multiplication of wants becomes not a sign of dangerous corruption but part of the civilizing process. That is, part of the disciplinary process. As Lears writes, “Indebtedness could discipline workers, keeping them at routinized jobs in factories and offices, graying but in harness, meeting payments regularly.”</p><span class="subhead" align="center">The Degradation of White-Collar Work</span> <p><span class="tallcap">M</span>uch of the “jobs of the future” rhetoric surrounding the eagerness to end shop class and get every warm body into college, thence into a cubicle, implicitly assumes that we are heading to a “post-industrial” economy in which everyone will deal only in abstractions. Yet trafficking in abstractions is not the same as thinking. White collar professions, too, are subject to routinization and degradation, proceeding by the same process as befell manual fabrication a hundred years ago: the cognitive elements of the job are appropriated from professionals, instantiated in a system or process, and then handed back to a new class of workers—clerks—who replace the professionals. If genuine knowledge work is not growing but actually shrinking, because it is coming to be concentrated in an ever-smaller elite, this has implications for the vocational advice that students ought to receive.</p><p>“Expert systems,” a term coined by artificial intelligence researchers, were initially developed by the military for battle command, then used to replicate industrial expertise in such fields as oil-well drilling and telephone-line maintenance. Then they found their way into medical diagnosis, and eventually the cognitively murky, highly lucrative, regions of financial and legal advice. In <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140121455/the-new-atlantis-20"><strong>The Electronic Sweatshop: How Computers are Transforming the Office of the Future into the Factory of the Past</strong></a></em>, Barbara Garson details how “Extraordinary human ingenuity has been used to eliminate the need for human ingenuity.” She finds that, like Taylor’s rationalization of the shop floor, the intention of expert systems is “to transfer knowledge, skill, and decision making from employee to employer.” While Taylor’s time and motion studies broke every concrete work motion into minute parts,</p><blockquote><p>The modern knowledge engineer performs similar detailed studies, only he anatomizes decision making rather than bricklaying. So the time-and-motion study has become a time-and-thought study.... To build an expert system, a living expert is debriefed and then cloned by a knowledge engineer. That is to say, an expert is interviewed, typically for weeks or months. The knowledge engineer watches the expert work on sample problems and asks exactly what factors the expert considered in making his apparently intuitive decisions. Eventually hundreds or thousands of rules of thumb are fed into the computer. The result is a program that can ‘make decisions’ or ‘draw conclusions’ heuristically instead of merely calculating with equations. Like a real expert, a sophisticated expert system should be able to draw inferences from ‘iffy’ or incomplete data that seems to suggest or tends to rule out. In other words it uses (or replaces) judgment.</p></blockquote><p>The human expert who is cloned achieves a vast dominion and immortality, in a sense. It is <em>other</em> experts, and future experts, who are displaced as expertise is centralized. “This means that more people in the advice or human service business will be employed as the disseminators, rather than the originators, of this advice,” Garson writes. In his 2006 book <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300119925/the-new-atlantis-20"><strong>The Culture of the New Capitalism</strong></a></em>, Richard Sennett describes just such a process, “especially in the cutting-edge realms of high finance, advanced technology, and sophisticated services”: genuine knowledge work comes to be concentrated in an ever-smaller elite. It seems we must take a cold-eyed view of “knowledge work,” and reject the image of a rising sea of pure mentation that lifts all boats. More likely is a rising sea of clerkdom. To expect otherwise is to hope for a reversal in the basic logic of the modern economy—that is, cognitive stratification. It is not clear to me what this hope could be based on, though if history is any guide we have to wonder whether the excitation of such a hope has become an instrument by which young people are prepared for clerkdom, in the same perverse way that the craft ideology prepared workers for the assembly line. Both provide a lens that makes the work look appealing from afar, but only by presenting an image that is upside down.</p><span class="subhead" align="center">The Craftsman as Stoic</span> <p><span class="tallcap">W</span>e are recalled to the basic antagonism of economic life: work is toilsome and necessarily serves someone else’s interests. That’s why you get paid. Thus chastened, we may ask the proper question: what is it that we really want for a young person when we give them vocational advice? The only creditable answer, it seems to me, is one that avoids utopianism while keeping an eye on the human good: work that engages the human capacities as fully as possible. What I have tried to show is that this humane and commonsensical answer goes against the central imperative of capitalism, which assiduously partitions thinking from doing. What is to be done? I offer no program, only an observation that might be of interest to anyone called upon to give guidance to the young.</p><p>Since manual work has been subject to routinization for over a century, the nonroutinized manual work that remains, outside the confines of the factory, would seem to be resistant to much further routinization. There still appear developments around the margins; for example, in the last twenty years pre-fabricated roof trusses have eliminated some of the more challenging elements from the jobs of framers who work for large tract developers, and pre-hung doors have done the same for finish carpenters generally. But still, the physical circumstances of the jobs performed by carpenters, plumbers, and auto mechanics vary too much for them to be executed by idiots; they require circumspection and adaptability. One feels like a man, not a cog in a machine. The trades are then a natural home for anyone who would live by his own powers, free not only of deadening abstraction, but also of the insidious hopes and rising insecurities that seem to be endemic in our current economic life. This is the stoic ideal.</p><p>So what advice should one give to a young person? By all means, go to college. In fact, approach college in the spirit of craftsmanship, going deep into liberal arts and sciences. In the summers, learn a manual trade. You’re likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than as a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems. To heed such advice would require a certain contrarian streak, as it entails rejecting a life course mapped out by others as obligatory and inevitable.</p> <div id="bylines"> <center><hr size="0"></center> <p><em><strong><a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/authors/matthew-crawford" title="Matthew Crawford">Matthew B. Crawford</a></strong> is currently a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia and a contributing editor of </em>The New Atlantis<em>. He would like to thank Joe Davis and David Franz, both of the Institute, for their contributions to this article. Mr. Crawford can be reached via <a href="http://www.matthewbcrawford.com/"><strong>matthewbcrawford.com</strong></a>.</em></p> </div>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-61626974823401656532009-12-25T13:35:00.000-08:002010-03-01T07:08:29.108-08:00Getting beyond our funk of hubris.... (old post from another blog.)It is a lack of humility in our modern age that keeps us from acknowledging our influences. Rather than simply seeing tradition as something we only take from, Hamada saw the responsibility of the maker to make something original, but genuine, that we give back to the tradition. In his words:<br /><br />"Just to give oneself up to folk art will never do. One must chew and eat up mingei (folkcraft) -- eat it, consume it, put it in your belly; to put it in your system and digest it is what is required in this day and age. We are to assimilate it and do something of our own with this food."<br /><br />And more from other authors:<br /><br />Between Lies and Truth<br />Written by Shirasu Masako<br />for Bessatsu Taiyo, 1996, Heibonsha Publishing<br />Translated by Aoyama Wahei<br /><br />"Individuality derives from standing on the shoulders of tradition. By acknowledging the roads taken, by understanding history, we can finally arrive at discovering ourselves. By first understanding how to make something, it is our next duty to take it one step further. Even in the art of Noh (Japanese traditional theater), the most minute of details have been passed down in the form of procedural kata. Yet only when an actor masters the traditions, can he finally break free and turn them into his own. Those that simply follow what the "kata" formalities of tradition have taught them, will forever only be "kata" themselves. In the end, they will realize that they had not understood a thing."<br /><br />Whole essay found here: http://www.e-yakimono.net/html/jcn-4.html<br /><br />Here is a Navajo Chant:<br /><br />The mountains, I become part of it...<br /><br />The herbs, the fir tree, I become part of it.<br /><br />The morning mists, the clouds, the gathering<br /><br />waters,<br /><br />I become part of it.<br /><br />The wilderness, the dew drops, the<br /><br />pollen...<br /><br />I become part of it.<br /><br /><br /><br />And and Ojibway prayer:<br /><br />Grandfather,<br />look at our brokenness.<br /><br />We know that in all creation<br />Only the human family<br />Has strayed from the Sacred Way.<br /><br />We know that we are the ones<br />who are divided<br />And we are the ones<br />Who must come back together<br />To walk in the Sacred Way.<br /><br />Grandfather,<br />Sacred One,<br />Teach us love, compassion, and honor<br />That we may heal the earth<br />And heal each other.<br /><br />The last two are from Mayumi Oda's Japanese version of "I Opened The Gate, Laughing."Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-27498801466898383622009-12-04T13:48:00.000-08:002009-12-05T13:52:52.207-08:00Links for Anatomy Of Japanese Pottery Class.Charaku: <a href="http://www.charaku-tea.com/">http://www.charaku-tea.com/</a> My friend in Seattle, Tatsuo Tomeoka, sells fine tea from Japan, tea bowls and tea utensils you can purchase online. He also has information about teas and tea ceremony that are useful.<br /><br />The Book Of Tea by Kazuo Okakura:<a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tea.htm"> </a><a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tea.htm">http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/</a><a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tea.htm">tea.htm</a> The first book to shine light on the tea ceremony in the West. Okakura was a curator of Asia art and work with Ernest F. Fenollosa at the Boston Museum.<br /><br />Information about the health benefits of matcha: <a href="http://www.matchasource.com/matcha-health-benefits-s/14.htm">http://www.matchasource.com/matcha-health-benefits-s/14.htm</a><br /><br />See explanations of the word shino:<br /><a href="http://shinoglaze.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_archive.html"><br />http://shinoglaze.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_archive.html</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.charaku-tea.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"></span></a>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-59451606277905336912009-11-02T06:21:00.000-08:002009-11-08T07:05:08.180-08:00There are, it seems, two muses:<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/photo/8567.Wendell_Berry" rel="nofollow" title="Wendell Berry"><img alt="Wendell Berry" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1209652700p5/8567.jpg" /></a> "There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."<br /><span class="text_exposed_show"></span>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-66908743558738111382009-10-09T07:35:00.001-07:002009-10-09T07:35:29.738-07:00"The land of eternal youth is behind the house, a beautiful land fluent within itself."<h3 class="post-title entry-title"> <a href="http://wc1.worldcrossing.com/WebX?128@@.1de0c522">Anam Ċara – A Book of Celtic Wisdom</a> </h3> In our time, there is much obsession with spiritual programs. Such spiritual programs tend to be very linear. The spiritual life is imagined as a journey with a sequence of stages. Each stage has its own methodology, negativity, and possibilities. Such a program often becomes an end in itself. It weights our natural presence against us. Such a program can divide and separate us from what is most intimately ours. The past is forsaken as unredeemable, the present is used as the fulcrum to a future that bodes holiness, ntegration, or perfection. When time is reduced to linear progress, it is emptied of presence. Meister Eckhart radically revises the whole notion of spiritual programs. He says that there is no such thing as a spiritual journey. If a little shocking, this is refreshing. If there were a spiritual journey, it would be only a quarter inch long, though many miles deep. It would swerve into rhythm with your deeper nature and presence. The wisdom here is so consoling. You do not have to go away outside yourself to come into real conversation with your soul and with the mysteries of the spiritual world. The eternal is at home--within you.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">The eternal is not elsewhere; it is not distant. There is nothing as near as the eternal. This is captured in a lovely Celtic phrase: "Tá tír na n-óg ar chul an tí--tír álainn trina chéile" -- that is, "The land of eternal youth is behind the house, a beautiful land fluent within itself." The eternal world and the mortal world are not parallel, rather they are fused. The beautiful Gaelic phrase fighte fuaighte, "woven into and through each other," captures this. </span><br /><br />Behind the facade of our normal lives eternal destiny is shaping our days and our ways. The awakening of the human spirit is a homecoming. Yet ironically our sense of familiarity often militates against our homecoming. When we are familiar with something, we lose the energy, edge, and excitement of it. Hegel said, "Das Bekannte überhaupt ist darum, weil es bekannt ist, nicht erkannt" -- that is, "Generally, the familiar, precisely because it is familiar, is not known." This is a powerful sentence. Behind the facade of the familiar, strange things await us. This is true of our homes, the place where we live, and, indeed, of those with whom we live. Friendships and relationships suffer immense numbing through the mechanism of familiarization. We reduce the wildness and mystery of person and landscape to the external, familiar image. Yet the familiar is merely a facade. Familiarity enables us to tame, control, and ultimately forget the mystery. We make our peace with the surface as image and we stay away from the Otherness and fecund turbulence of the unknown that it masks. Familiarity is one of the most subtle and pervasive forms of human alienation.<br /><br />In a book of conversations with P. A. Mendoza, a Colombian writer, <i>Gabriel Garcia Márquez, when asked about his thirty-year relationship with his wife, Mercedes, said, "I know her so well now that I have not the slightest idea who she really is."</i> For Márquez, familiarity is an invitation to adventure and mystery. Conversely, the people close to us have sometimes become so familiar that they have become lost in a distance that no longer invites or surprises. Familiarity can be quiet death, an arrangement that permits the routine to continue without offering any new challenge or nourishment.<br /><br />This happens also with our experience of place. I remember my first evening in Tübingen, Germany. I was to spend more than four years there studying Hegel, but that first evening Tübingen was utterly strange and unknown to me. I remember thinking, <i>Look very carefully at Tübingen this evening because you will never again see it in the same way.</i> And this was true. After a week there, I knew the way to the lecture halls and seminar rooms, the canteen and the library. After I had mapped out my routes through this strange territory, it became familiar, and soon I did not see it for itself anymore.<br /><br />People have difficulty awakening to their inner world especially when their lives have become overly familiar to them. They find it hard to discover something new, interesting, or adventurous in their numbed lives. Yet everything we need for our journey has already been given to us. Consequently, there is great strangeness in the shadowed light of our soul world. We should become more conversant with our reserved soul-light. The first step in awakening to your inner life and to the depth and promise of your solitude would be to consider yourself for a little while as a stranger to your own deepest depths. To decide to view yourself as a complete stranger, someone who has just stepped ashore in your life, is a liberating exercise. This meditation helps to break the numbing stranglehold of complacency and familiarity. Gradually, you begin to sense the mystery and magic of yourself. You realize that you are not the helpless owner of a deadened life but rather a temporary guest gifted with blessings and possibilities you could neither invent nor earn.<br /><br /><i>--John O’Donohue in</i> <b>Anam Ċara – A Book of Celtic Wisdom</b>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8416768953769483322.post-74360428988755999622009-09-21T05:50:00.000-07:002009-09-21T05:51:56.162-07:00- John O'Donohue, "A Blessing," from the book "Benedictus- A Book of Blessings"<div style="text-align: center; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-family: arial black,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" >"<span style="font-style: italic;">May you awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial black,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" > <span style="font-style: italic;">May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial black,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers beckon.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial black,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">May you respond to the call of your gift and find the courage to follow its path.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial black,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" > <span style="font-style: italic;">May the flame of anger free you from falsity.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial black,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and may anxiety never linger about you.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial black,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial black,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" > <span style="font-style: italic;">May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial black,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial black,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder."</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial black,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" > </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial black,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" >- John O'Donohue, "A Blessing," from the book "Benedictus- A Book of Blessings"</span></div>Togeikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03718418401458480928noreply@blogger.com0