Spiritual Path in Pictures

Auckland-born artist Max Gimblett’s new versions of the Buddhist ‘Oxherding’ series — ten drawings which represent a parable about the conduct of Buddhist practice, most commonly attributed to a 12th-century Chinese Zen master – feature in the spring issue of American Buddhist review Tricycle. Gimblett’s paintings are shown alongside fresh translations — by Lewis Hyde — of the original poems. Tricycle’s managing editor met with Hyde and Gimblett at the latter’s painting studio on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he has worked for nearly 4 years to talk about the collaboration. Gimblett, who is a practising Rinzai Buddhist, said: “My glory comes from the unconscious. What I did was I drenched myself with Lewis’s texts. I read them hundreds of times. I slept with them under my pillow. I read them and read them. That’s the way I do a text. It absolutely enters into me and becomes one with me, and then the thing springs out.” Gimblett moved to New York in 1972.