Painting Enlightenment – Healing Visions of The Heart Sutra Presentation

Date: March 27, 2021

Time: 7 - 9pm PDT

Location: Online, 7 - 9pm PDT

Price: Free; suggestion if you donate $20
Email us about program

Painting Enlightenment – Healing Visions of The Heart Sutra Presentation

March 27, 2021

7 - 9pm PDT

Free.

Japanese biologist and visionary artist Iwasaki Tsuneo (1917-2002) painted the
resonances he discovered between scientific and Buddhist views of reality. Expressing
the interdependent, impermanent, and empty nature of phenomena, he shaped the words
of the Heart Sutra––a scripture prized for its concise expression of wisdom and
compassion––into imagery drawn from ephemeral beauties of nature, Buddhist cultural
life, and microscopic and telescopic wonders.

Free; donations gratefully accepted.

This is a slide show talk and presentation by the author of Painting Enlightenment: Healing
Visions of the Heart Sutra––The Buddhist Art of Iwasaki Tsuneo, Dr. Paula Arai

Paula Arai received her Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard
University, specializing in Japanese Sōtō Zen. She trained at Aichi
Senmon Nisōdō for 4 months under the tutelage of Aoyama
Shundō Rōshi. She is author of Painting Enlightenment: Healing
Visions of the Heart Sutra––The Buddhist Art of Iwasaki Tsuneo
(Shambhala Publications), Women Living Zen: Japanese Buddhist
Nuns (Oxford University Press), and Bringing Zen Home: The
Healing Heart of Japanese Buddhist Women’s Rituals (University
of Hawai’i Press). Approaching her research with focus on
embodied experience, she has received a range of support,
including from Fulbright and the American Council of Learned
Societies. She has curated exhibits of Iwasaki’s Heart Sutra
paintings at the Museum of Art at Louisiana State University, the
Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas, and the Morikami
Museum in Delray Beach Florida, which opens May 8, 2021. Arai
is currently a professor of Buddhist Studies at Louisiana State
University, holding the Urmila Gopal Singhal Professorship in
Religions of India.

 

Leader:
Dr. Paula Arai