SHAKKYO Writing Meditation

Shakkyo is copying out a Sutra or Buddhist teaching as meditation with brish and ink within a simple ritual to promote sacred concentration.  Since the ritualized copying out the sutra silently requires complete concentration in the activity, by doing so we become one through the activity with the words on the page as the ink touches the paper. This activity harmonizes body and mind, through the flow of creative energy.

Usually this is the Heart Sutra in Chinese characters, or a drawing of a Bodhisattva. If you feel copying out the characters would be too intimidating a task, alternately you may copy various Buddhist figures such as the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

At Jizoan you can do Shakkyo in front of the Stone garden.


it isn't anything as hard as it might look!


What does it say?


well the main theme of the Heart Sutra is that 'all things are formless, and yet all things take form, therefore this life is form and formless at the same time. All things are beautiful and ugly and temporary and pernamence at the same time - this is the truth of all things'.
As we concentrate we bring this formless mind into being.

Sutras are Buddhist teachings, some of them are transcibed from the Buddha's own teaching, others have been added later by other Indian and Chinese Buddhist thinkers. Generally the Sutras are philosophical discussions about the nature of everything from the Universe to Self.

SATURDAY and SUNDAY mornings after zazen and morning tea 9.15am (it might take an hour to do).