Zen Without a Master

Frenk Meeuwsen is a Dutch painter and draughtsman who has long been interested in Far Eastern philosophy and martial arts, he owns the black belt in karate. In the mid-1990s, he lived in the temple district of Kyoto, where many of the Japanese sketches he included in his first graphic novel 'Zen Without a Master' are located. The book is a collage of various materials: Meeuwsen's childhood in the Netherlands, Japanese everyday life, the history of Buddhism, instructions for meditation, reflections on drawing. How and whether a European can delve into the doctrine of Zen is the guiding principle. Overcoming internal violence can be a drive for this, Frenk Meeuwsen tells of how he wanted to take revenge on a classmate as a boy and this student actually dies without Frenk being to blame. Nevertheless, this haunts him for a long time through his dreams. Banishing the randomness and cruelty of life through reduction and ritualisation is one of the temptations of Zen Buddhism. Search for a