Daiensai Kuden Bonseki Dojin, Nicholas' father, a renowned artist and ordained Buddhist Priest and a Rochi, whose career ranged from museum shows nationally and internationally to the walls of coffeehouses of some of the beat generation that included Jack Kerourac and Allen Ginsberg.
Nicholas (later known as Honshin) would often accompany his father to these venues. "The musicians were often referred to as "real cool cats' . Because they were also practicing Buddhism the name evolved to 'Zen Cat'. As a child this profoundly captured my imagination." he recalls.
Later as a young man living in Seattle and one of the founders the Kirsten Gallery where he personally designed and built an accompanying Zen Garden. He would often meditate and read the Buddhist sutras in this garden setting, his only company being his cat.
“I would read the sutras out loud to the cat,” Says Honshin “And she was in such stillness, such presence I would think ‘she is getting this more than I am’.”
This acclaimed series has resulted in his best-selling Zen Cat Wall Calendar, which is a meditation in art and words on the interconnectedness of all life.
**Like the French Impressionist artists of Paris, the Beat writers were a small group of close friends first, and a movement later. The core group consisted of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg Neal Cassidy and William S. Burroughs who met in the neighborhood surrounding New York's Columbia University in the mid-40's.
They then migrated to San Francisco where Gary Synder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure and Lew Welch became a part of the group and their focus started to move toward expanding consciousness with Buddhism, Jazz and Poetry. **
