Masterpeace

In our Soto Way, this Life-Practice-Enlightenment is the constant painting of a picture … a masterpiece ever created and simultaneously complete in each stroke by stroke by stroke.
The goal is not to strip away the surface image in search of blank canvas.
Nor is it a finished masterpiece, done once and for all, then hung in a museum to gather dust.
It is not something one sees outside oneself, as if one merely need see the painting hanging on a gallery wall and is thus done.
It is not simply a matter of realizing that the image on the canvas is a fiction, or real as real can be, or something in between (although all of those). It may be a dream, a dream within a dream … yet even a painted rice cake can fill all hunger, says Master Dogen.
Rather, it is the art of creation, mastery of the brushwork … whereby, one is free in life to paint a master stroke, or an ugly stroke, in each here and now instant stroke … free to create [...]