  Painting was among the Japanese aesthetic practices referred to as geidō 芸道. One of the sinographs shared among the compounds for archery (kyudō 弓道), martial arts (jūdō 柔道), calligraphy (shodō 書道), flower arranging (kadō  華道), tea ceremony (sadō 茶道) is the sinograph dao  (道), (dō or michi in Japanese) indicating the philosophic-religious orientation of the practices. To move according to the dao is to move with a natural spontaneity as an embodiment of the well-known concept “non-action” (wuwei 無爲). Acting spontaneously involves moving beyond the binary of activity or passivity; that is, the world moves the body as much as the body moves in the world. Accordingly, as Nishida comments, we can say that “Sesshū painted nature or that nature painted itself through Sesshū” (Nishida 1990, 135). The graceful naturalness of the swordsman, the calligrapher, or the Nō actor is also characteristic of the painter’s gestures. All are bodily practices that seek to harmonize with the spontaneous motions of the dao through non-action. Thus, to estimate the aesthetic value of Sesshū’s brushwork is to appreciate its religious source in Daoist-informed Buddhist practice. Because observers can harmonize their own bodies with the movements animating the painting, the work elicits more than aesthetic judgments, it is itself a site for cultivating religious-philosophic discipline.