PRAJÑĀ

I’m not going to be able to describe the Buddhist concept of prajñā  with any adequacy.  Yet I will try, as the fundamental precept speaks to our Transparent Drawing purposes.

If I had to summarize my understanding of prajñā in one word, that word would be knowledge.  Common terms applied to prajñā are wisdom, insight, and discriminating knowledge (Wikipedia).  As we know, a central purpose of Buddhism is to understand true, in the moment, reality.   I will not begin to even attempt to describe any sort of Buddhist theory, belief, practice, etc., as any of these might relate to prajñā.  Yet, I do believe that if we even apply a superficial understanding of prajñā to our purposes, it will be helpful.

So let’s start with a passage from Suzuki:

“Prajñā-intuition may thus be defined as differentiation undifferentiated;  here the whole is intuited together with its parts; here the undifferentiated whole comes along with its infinitely differentiated, individualized parts.  The whole is seen here differentiating itself in its parts, not in a pantheistic or immanentist way.  The whole is not lost on its parts, nor does indification lose sight of the whole.”  p272-3.

The relationship of parts to the whole.  The intuition of the parts within the whole.  The integration of the parts into the whole.  Any of these phrases describe the Transparent Drawing approach:  we draw all the parts, the parts are undifferentiated from the whole, the parts become the whole of what we draw.  We establish holistic solutions exactly because we pay attention to all of the parts, simultaneously.  This operative understanding maps, at least with superficial ease, onto Zen’s conception of prajñā.

“The Unconscious means to be conscious of the absolutely one; to be conscious of the absolutely one means to have all-knowledge, which is prajñā.”  p194

We draw, ultimately,  for knowledge.  And I believe that drawing for knowledge is fundamentally different than drawing to see.  We draw, if not for all knowledge, then at least for the most knowledge that we can.  And when we draw for knowledge, we intuit the whole from the parts.

Some of the concepts that we have looked at which support our inclusion of prajñā as an operative term are:
–Unvisible.  We draw so as to reveal as much of the unseen that we can.
–Inevitable.  Our solutions are free yet self governing:  much of what we draw is inevitable.
–Knowledge.  We knowledge on our paper.
–Time.  Our knowledge window is long:  it is time.

In this very brief and remedial discussion of prajñā, I hope it is somewhat clear how this Buddhist term helps to inform our mission.  And to be clear, I am not saying that there is any sort of profound relationship between Buddhist prajñā and Transparent Drawing.  It just seems that, with the first few layers of meaning, this holistic approach to knowledge provides another view of our path toward understanding.

1.  Suzuki, D.T. Zen Buddhism, Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki. Ed. William Barrett. Doubleday Anchor, New York. 1956. Print.