"Clear and distinct" mei rekireki 明歴々 | Ōmori Sōgen 大森曹玄 (Rinzai Priest) | 1904-1994

Ōmori Sōgen was a Japanese priest of the Rinzai Zen school. He was a supervisor of the Tenryū-ji line in Arashiyama and became president of Hanazono University in Kyoto in 1945.

 The calligraphed maxim on this scroll painting is popular among Zen priests. Especially in this spiritual-religious discipline, the demand for "clarity and distinctness" (which is associated with notions of logical dispute) may at first seem surprising. However, the Zen understanding of clarity and distinctness is a mind purified by meditation, which intuitively and instantaneously recognizes the world and existence in their true nature.

 The most important character for Ōmori Sōgen in this maxim is the first: 明. It is a combination of sun 日 and moon 月. These two celestial bodies combined guarantee brightness. It is astonishing that the calligrapher heavily distorts the character, one might say makes it "indistinct". The sun part 日 looks like a mouth 口, and of the moon 月 not much is recognizable for the normally educated person.

But calligraphy is not "writing as correct communication". Calligraphy aims and should point beyond the "communication vehicle" that a character is - not to inform about a content, but to make it perceptible with mind and soul. The left half here represents, as it were, only an opening from which a light suddenly escapes with a straggly brushstroke. (Note on this straggly connection: The calligrapher lived in the 20th century and, as an educated person, must be aware that the moon only shines because it receives light from the sun. Whether he was aware of this during the calligraphic process cannot, of course, be verified)

Through the deep black arc, we perceive a glow that this black arc – almost returning to the opening on the left – encloses. Here, the term "bright" is therefore not written with 明 (the sun-moon combination), but is made perceptible as a light source emotionally through an empty form.

The much more complex character for "distinct" 歴 is rendered much smaller and (despite sweeping simplifications) more clearly as a character to its left. Its repetition is an abbreviation commonly used in writing 々. The use of abbreviations may seem surprising in calligraphy, but here we are back in Zen thought: one wants no unnecessary embellishments (characters); what can be said briefly (as an abbreviation) should be brief.