Shodo: The Quiet Art of Japanese Zen Calligraphy, Learn the Wisdom of Zen Through Traditional Brush Painting

Zen had a great impact on the people, and during this period it exerted a formative influence on the arts of ink painting (sumi-e), Noh drama, the tea ceremony, flower arrangement, landscaping, and so forth. “The aesthetics nurtured in these arts was to remain a definitive force in Japanese culture during the following centuries” (ibid.).3

That’s called threefold logic, and that kind of logic could be used in designing or producing a work of art. We could describe that as the heaven, earth, and human principle used in the Japanese tradition of flower arranging, or as the three bodies of the tantric art of Tibetan vajrayana Buddhism—dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya.

Rikyu took the baton of artlessness from his predecessor, Ikkyu, when he introduced Korean craft pottery into his tea ceremony. The Korean potters, who might have made a hundred similar pots in a day, were probably totally devoid of any thought of artistic aspirations as they worked, and it was just this lack of intellect that proved so attractive

In medieval Japan, under the patronage of the Zen monasteries and the Kamakura shogunate, the prevailing preference for simplicity and modesty were slowly introduced into the styles of the ceramics produced.