IN MAY 2025 I HANDED IN MY DISSERTATION EXPLORING WHETHER ZEN CAN BE REALLY EXPRESSED THROUGH ARTS?

three years ago I began an MA in Buddhist Studies with the University of South Wales. From the very beginning I knew I want my research to focus on Zen, and for it to be ethnographic in nature.

CAN ZEN REALLY BE EXPERIENCED THROUGH ARTS?

My research started with a wish to understand if the contemporary artists who engage in creative arts that originated in East Asia, and were often popularised by Zen Buddhist monks, have any connection to Zen Buddhism. I was curious to learn if their approaches to creative practices acknowledged the Zen tradition or has the link been completely removed? And if so, was this a conscious decision?

I decided to use a combination of ethnographic and grounded theory methodology which meant that I had not established a hypothesis at the beginning of the research but instead waited until the end to gather the emerging data and conclude whether any patterns or themes occurred. Throughout the dissertation research I intended to further explore the following questions:

Is art understood differently in East Asia in comparison to Western thought?

Can Zen really be expressed through Art? What does it take in order to do so? What does it mean for Zen to be expressed through a body of work?

METHODOLOGY

My objectives were achieved by conducting interviews with contemporary artists who performed ‘Zen Arts’ and engaged in the following practices: Tea Ceremony, Calligraphy and Brushwork and Ikebana. The interviews are accompanied with a photographic essay captured on 120 medium format film and 35 mm film cameras. I decided that choosing film over the digital medium gives me a very limited amount of frames which cannot be seen or manipulated until the film is developed. I was hoping that working this way will allow me to tap into the concept of Wabi sabi - an aesthetic Japanese philosophy which encourages one to embrace the imperfection and accept the transience.

I decided to include full transcripts of the interviews because they are ethnographic in nature, and this allows the voices of my interlocutors to be presented authentically and in their own words, while also making my presence and positionality as the ethnographer visible. I felt that relying solely on selected excerpts risked producing what Clifford Geertz calls ‘bleeding chunks’ - isolated fragments that lack context, potentially leading to misrepresentation. This approach felt particularly important in exploring the complexity and nuanced practices of artists I spoke to.