![]() ![]() They never had a family temple and they were kind of revolutionary. There were a lot of monks in my father’s family, but they were not regular monks. So he tried to fashion me to become like her. My grandmother, Ai, was my father’s ideal woman. Long before I was born, Ai committed suicide, possibly because she was ill with incurable tuberculosis and possibly because of her despair over the political oppression of the times. ![]() A devout Buddhist and a passionate socialist, she was admired by everyone as a woman of great compassion. My paternal grandmother, Ai, was a Nichiren revolutionary in the 1920s. Many who were leftists or anarchists took on Nichiren chanting practice. Nichiren was a twelfth-century revolutionary monk who was executed because of his political views. I was forced to sit in front of the altar in gloomy rooms and we would chant together: NAM MYO HORENGEKYO, NAM MYO HORENGEKYO. As a child I thought about death a lot, because it was very, very close. Life-threatening experiences were primal for me. I have childhood memories of fearing that someone would kill me, of not having enough to eat, of being evacuated to the country and separated from my father and grandparents, of returning to Tokyo on a pack train. ![]() I wanted to be somewhere else, where it was peaceful. Sometimes air-raid sirens filled our town as well. Huddled under the dim light, we listened to the news of the bombing in Tokyo. My earliest memory is having a tantrum in my crib, being very, very angry. I was born in the middle of World War II, on the edge of Tokyo. My past doesn’t seem to exist behind me, but here with me creating the present. Out of pain and confusion, art is a means for my survival. Even when I feel sad and tired, the unfolding shapes of cauliflower, lettuce and purple cabbage gives me energy to create. But, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Suffering is not enough!” Why should I add more suffering by painting something awful and depressing?Īt a time when I was very sad, I painted vegetables. I hope to express the joyfulness and playfulness of female vitality. ![]() I hope to make a positive and uplifting statement in my art. I love to sketch lettuce and purple cabbage spreading their leaves open like the mandala of the Buddha fields, revealing the mystery of creation. Sometimes my goddesses burst from the sea like Venus sometimes they float in the night sky. East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1985. Thirty-two color prints) and a pamphlet she wrote for an exhibition sponsored by the Institute of Culture and Communication, Mayumi Oda Retrospective (8pp. The quotations are excerpts from Mayumi’s book Goddesses (78pp. The following article is a collage of quotations from Mayumi, drawn from her interview with Inquiring Mind and her books. Inquiring Mind editors Wes Nisker and Henrietta Rogell interviewed Mayumi this fall and gave me the privilege of editing the transcripts. Drawing on the themes and motifs of traditional Japanese and Buddhist mythology, she celebrates women and the female form by changing the powerful masculine gods, the wind god, the thunder god and others, into their radiant, playful, female counterparts. Mayumi Oda, an internationally recognized artist and a Zen practitioner, resides in Muir Woods, near San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm. Born in Tokyo in 1941, at the time of Pearl Harbor, Mayumi shares Thich Nhat Hanh’s understanding of the sufferings of war, coupled with a passionate commitment to the expression of joy. This was, indeed the perfect context to meet Mayumi Oda. It wasn’t until Thich Nhat Hanh’s retreat at Green Gulch Farm last fall that I met the creator of these goddesses. They trailed colorful scarves, ribbons and flowers as they cycled, sailed, swam into my dreams. greeted me from the walls of other kitchens, living rooms, bathrooms. As time passed the sisters of this goddess, thunder goddesses, wind goddesses, sea goddesses, goddesses of snow and the sunset. Several years ago a naked goddess with full breasts and buttocks, red cheeks and red nipples, swirled her colorful scarf at me from a silk screen print in a friend’s kitchen. When that treasure ship arrives I dream of loading it with rice and vegetables, wild flowers, beasts and people I love and setting sail toward the light of my lucky direction. Early in the morning when the sun lifts into the sky from the distance of the horizon, the treasure ship. ![]()
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