My Dharma name, Sōkei, means “vital joy,” and was given to me by my Zen teachers when I took the Buddhist precepts. It is both a gift and an aspiration. Vital joy is not something I can chase or create. It arises freely, without cause or condition.

In the Temple garden, the leaves are falling. Each one turning, gliding, and coming to the earth without resistance. Their descent is quiet, unhurried, and complete

In my art, in my Zen practice, and in my work with the Temple community, I keep returning to the same refrain: “Don't hold anything back.”

We often imagine we need to first understand the whole picture before taking a step. Yet life never asks us to solve it all at once.

The fading colors of late summer, the wilting flowers, and the softening evening light all whisper the presence of autumn to come. Their vibrance is fleeting, yet in that very evanescence lies their truth.

My practice, whether on a canvas or in the stillness of morning meditation, echoes the journey of the great nomads in the sky.

In my artwork, errors are a meandering road of missteps and discoveries. A mark appears in the wrong place, and suddenly, the possibility widens.

Are the sparrows perched high in the maples, or are the maples inside the cadence of their cry?

Each thing exists according to its nature. The tree leans in the wind because that is what the wind and the tree do together. Yet, we rarely meet things as they are.