Lineage

In 1978, when my buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa said, "It is possible to make a brushstroke that expresses one's whole life" I took that to mean a very LARGE brushstroke. This was the beginning of my Big Brush practice.

I had been walking the calligraphic path for many years, working with the alphabets from Roman times  to the Renaissance, developing my precision with these broad-edged pen forms. When I began to study Tibetan buddhism with Chögyam Trungpa, I was grounded in western calligraphic tradition and discipline, and drawn to the possibility of something new.

I began to teach western calligraphy at Naropa and met Ed Young, a tai chi teacher and well known children’s book illustrator. He showed me the straight line brush practice (ichi) that he had learned from his teacher Professor Cheng Man’ching. Watching Ed move his brush across the paper I felt I was witnessing a joining of west and east, a universal artistic expression in the making of a line.

I assisted Ed in his Grounding Brush classes during the summer sessions at Naropa. He taught an embodied brush process that was a seated tai chi practice. He also introduced us to the ancient and universal language of Chinese pictograms.

At one point I arranged a meeting between Ed and Chögyam Trungpa, I thought it would be good and appropriate to bring these two teachers together. You can read about my awkwardness and insight during this meeting in Encounter.

Chögyam Trungpa was teaching widely in the 1980s, presenting Buddhist teachings in a fresh, contemporary way. His articulation of the Asian principles of Heaven, Earth and Man settled deep inside me. Watching him make a brush stroke, create a flower arrangement, design an environment or gesture with a fan, I felt something natural and elegant guiding him.  What is the nature of beginnings ?  How does one follow through? And what brings something to resolution and completion. I was listening and watching closely.

Feeling this inner calling to work larger I learned how to make my own big brushes out of horsehair, wrapped with twine and attached to bamboo handles. I brushed big wet strokes on lengths of paper. Since I was not following the path of a letter or character I needed a deeper structure to hold me. 

Heaven, Earth and Man (Human) gave me that structure.

Heaven is the space of beginning, the broad gesture, the big vision. It is expansive, full of potential, activating the emptiness of the page. One’s approach to heaven can have a quality of trembling.

 Earth is the experience of making contact, moving into action, grounding, stabilizing, following through. Earth counterbalances heaven and creates a dynamic conversation.

The human mark completes. It comes in close, intimate. It brightens and resolves, activates and surprises.

Heaven, Earth & Human, Sky, Earth & Heart, Beginning, Middle & End.  This natural order of the world can hold and guide. It is the inherent path of any creative act, the unfolding of a day; the journey of a life.

When I joined the Creative Process team at the Authentic Leadership in Action conference in Halifax in 2001 I was asked to lead large groups in the making of a mark. Heaven, Earth and Human became the structure that guided the experience. A calligraphic act, with brush and ink, became a community art ritual.

Over the past thirty years the big brush has woven through my life, each time offering that same trembling, exhilarating experience of leaping into unknown space and landing on the page of my life.