Weekend Story – Sesshu Toyo’s "Bird and Bamboo" (15th century)

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Sesshu Toyo's "Bird and Bamboo" (15th century)

This week’s story is one more beautiful presentation of art from Japan, a technique called Sumi-e (literally “ink painting”). It is the Japanese art of brush painting with black ink. Deeply influenced by Chinese ink wash traditions and shaped by Zen Buddhism when it came to Japan in the 14th–15th centuries, Sumi-e does not seek to capture realistic detail. Instead, it expresses the essence of a subject with the fewest possible strokes. The aim is not representation but revelation, not “what something looks like” but “what it truly is.” 

 Zen painters believed the brush should move only when the mind is still. A single stroke of bamboo, done in a clear state, was more truthful than a hundred “planned” ones. The beauty came not from thought but from the empty, direct presence of the artist. The philosophy behind it was simple yet profound: the brush becomes an extension of the spirit, and one stroke reveals the state of mind more than hours of explanation could.

Sesshu Toyo (1420–1506) was perhaps the most celebrated Japanese master of ink painting. A Zen monk, he travelled to China, absorbed Song and Yuan influences, and developed a deeply spiritual, spontaneous brushwork style. His landscapes are considered timeless expressions of Zen awareness on paper.

His Bird and Bamboo, selected for our story, is a deceptively simple work: a stalk of bamboo drawn with bold, unhesitating strokes, leaves rendered with a flick of the brush, and a bird poised in delicate balance. At first sight it is modest; at second, it is profound. Bamboo is supple yet unbreakable, strong yet hollow, symbolizing both resilience and emptiness. Birds represent lightness, freedom, the possibility of rising above. Their pairing is not accidental. Together, they suggest harmony between rootedness and freedom, endurance and flight—qualities that emerge when the mind is free of its own compulsions.

In the brushwork, each line of bamboo is executed without hesitation. A single stroke, complete in itself, conveys vitality and rhythm. The leaves are born of movement, not calculation. In Zen, brushstrokes are mirrors of the mind: a noisy, self-conscious mind produces shaky marks, while a still and alert mind produces strokes alive with energy. Bird and Bamboo is thus not “about” bamboo and bird; it is a direct record of Sesshu’s inner state.

What Sesshu leaves unpainted is as important as what he paints. Much of the paper remains white, breathing, untouched. This emptiness is not a lack but a presence. It gives the bird air to hover in, the bamboo space to grow, and the viewer’s spirit a place to enter. It is the visual counterpart to silence in music or pauses in conversation—a reminder that what is left unsaid carries its own truth.

For Sesshu, the brush was not guided by restless thought but by awareness itself. The painting is born from a state of no-mind, the same state we touch in meditation or in rare moments of pure presence. In daily life, we too can aspire to this. Just as Sesshu trusted each stroke to the clarity of the moment, we can let our words, gestures, and actions arise from awareness rather than compulsion. Each act can be a brushstroke - simple, alive, and true.

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