Zen Tenets from Zen Art for Meditation
Holmes & Horioka

1) The realities of life are most truly seen in everyday things and actions.

2) Everything exists according to its own nature. Our individual perceptions of
worth, correctness, beauty, size and value exist inside our heads, not outside them.

3) Everything exists in relation to other things.

4) The self and the rest of the universe are not separate entities but one functioning whole.

5) Man arises from nature and gets along most effectively by collaborating with
nature, rather than trying to master it.

6) There is no ego in the sense of an endlessly enduring, unchanging private soul or personality that temporarily inhabits the body.

7) True insight does not issue from specialized knowledge, from membership in
coteries, from doctrines or dogmas. It comes from the preconscious intuitions of
one's whole being, from one's own code.

8) In emptiness, forms are born. When one becomes empty of the assumptions,
inferences, and judgments he has acquired over the years, he comes close to his
original nature and is capable of conceiving original ideas and reacting freshly.

9) Being a spectator while one is also a participant spoils one's performance.

10) Security and changelessness are fabricated by the ego-dominated mind and
do not exit in nature. To accept insecurity and commit oneself to the unknown
creates a relaxing faith in the universe.

11) One can live only in the present moment.

12) Living process and words about it are not the same and should not be
treated as equal in worth.

13) When we perceive the incongruity between theories about life and what
we feel intuitively to be true on the nonverbal, nonjudging plane, there is
nothing to do but to laugh.

14) Zen art has this characteristic quality, that it can fuse delight in a work of
visual art, knowledge of life, and personal experiences and intuitions into one
creative event.

15) Each of us develops into a unique individual who enters into unique
transactions with the world as it exists for him.

SOURCE: Zen Art for Meditation. By Stewart W. Holmes and Chimyo Horioka. Rutland, Vermont, Charles E. Tuttle, 1973. 115 pages. ISBN: 0804812551. pp. 15-16. Each of these "Tenets" is explained in relation to Zen themes in Japanese and Chinese visual arts.