I’m Bad at Calligraphy

But I can tell that I’m bad, so that’s a plus. I got an idle (but still appreciated) comment on a Siddhaṃ oṃ, and I could see the sharp and strange curve of the tail, the inconsistency in the increase of weight from the left to the right side of the sky stroke, underneath the Moon dot.

But I can tell that I’m able to at least do “it”. Siddhaṃ calligraphy is such an arcane thing to pick up as a Westerner living on an island far away from India, China, and Japan. It’s not surprising for me to pick up, given my general life trajectory and the current movements of my Buddhist practice, but it’s… eccentric.

This gives me perhaps a space of grace, a “he’s doing his best” regardless of the actual skill or knowledge I have. Scratching together information from books and scant YouTube videos, I can’t be blamed for being bad, it’s not like I have a teacher whose valuable lessons I am simply ignoring in favour of brutish soft brush scrawl.

The practice is not calligraphy, here. The practice is not even just humility of “I’m bad!” — the practice is ensuring that I understand that being eccentric doesn’t mean I’m special. I need to maintain no desire to be an expert, be unique, or even be individual. Siddhaṃ is perhaps in some ways the ideal script for this, with highly regular forms established by historically key calligraphers, whose forms are to be learnt and applied. My goal is not to become a calligrapher, but to become someone who can let calligraphy happen.

Peace,
⭕

---

---