Book Review: Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan’s Most Rigorous Zen Temple

By Kaoru Nonomura – Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter.

For anyone who has ever considered becoming a Zen monk this account is a serious wake up call to the rigours that novitiates at Eiheiji Temple in Fukui Prefecture, one of two main temples of the Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism, have to endure.

Founded by Dōgen in 1244 its claim that Dōgen was in residence at Eiheiji tends to outshine its rival Sōjiji, the other main Sōtō school of Zen with which it tends to compete, which is located in Tsurumi near Tōkyō, though in spite of the ‘rivalry’ those undergoing zuise training to complete their

Book Review: Japanese Stone Gardens: Origins, Meaning, Form

Written by Stephen Mansfield with a foreword by Donald Richie!

With a foreword by the formidable Donald Ritchie, in itself a recommendation, the Japanese Stone Gardens is divided into two parts. The first covers the pivotal points during the development of the Japanese dry landscape garden (kare-sansui), often referred to these days as a Zen garden. It explains how this developed from the pre-animistic use of stones as markers of space to their use as connections to the natural world and the landscape, their use as mystical vectors with which to communicate with the Gods, the influence of Korea and China, their eventual

Interview: Award Winning Artist Gen Miyamura At ICN Gallery “Image Langue: Linear Code”

“Image Langue: Linear Code” ICN gallery 19 January – 22 February 2012

The latest exhibition at the ICN gallery in London entitled “Image Langue: Linear Code” is perhaps the most intriguing so far. Award winning contemporary artist Gen Miyamura presents an innovative definition to his Bokusho (abstract expressionist calligraphy) art works as the alphabet and attempts to give Sho (calligraphy) new meaning.

It may at first sound like a complicated