I can't remember if I heard him say these words at Book Passage or read them in one of his books but I copied them into my journal, inspired, and then forgot, but today, lifted on the wings of this new year, I do what he says.
I open LLewellyn Vaughan-Lee's book, For Love of the Real, to the words of Hsu Yun. I choose from his words "Everything depends upon the stroke of our brush," and begin writing, remembering back to my love of painting on silk, and how I hung the paintings in hoops, Sacred Hoops. I feel the stroke of the brush within me now. I painted my heart on silk. Where do I paint my heart now?
My intention is kindness, and I understand the bold stroke, the continuity of the circle, the sweep and swoop, and I settle neatly into the circle I paint, pregnant with eggs of creativity, at rest in my nest.
Here are the words of Hsu Yun.
In the beginning there was nothing,
nor was anything lacking.
The paper was blank. We pick up the
paint brush and create the scene ...
The landscape, the wind whipping water
in waves.
Everything depends upon the stroke
of our brush.
Our Ox lets the good earth lead it,
Just as our brush allows our hand to move it.
Take any direction, roam the world to
its farthest edge.
All comes back to where it started ...
to blessed Emptiness.