EJ Rascal

It all started when I drew an early bird and a night owl one day. My then 6-year-old son added a baby owl in diaper and asked me to draw two more lizards. We had so much fun, it inspired me to take a class on making comics. Now my son EJ becomes one of the main characters. I am happy to see my family and friends laugh when reading my comics. I hope you will enjoy my comics too.

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My teenager boy started to care about his hair SOOOOOOOOOOOO much. Maybe tooooooooooooooooooo much.

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Surprise birthday gift

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What are you reading now? Just finished Michael Singer’s Living Untethered. It’s so good I’m reading it from the first page again. He’s my favourite author along with Eckhart Tolle.

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The kid is starting to care about his hair. I mean really care about it

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EJ's hairstyle in the comic always changes with his real life hairstyle. Now it's middle part just like his dad when he was a teenager 🤣🤣 

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How kids clean up. Finally have time to draw comics. #ejrascal #ejrascalcomics #howkidsclean #comicseries https://www.instagram.com/p/CkopZnEPt3D/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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The abridged version of my CreateSpace public art booklet.

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I made a booklet/comic zine to go with my CreateSpace public art installation. Read more about this project and residency on my website: https://jenichen.com/residency/

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Part 2 to my "Who’s cooking tonight?" comic yesterday. Father-in-law wants to be in my comic. Not sure how he's going to feel about this one 😝 

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Who’s cooking tonight? .#ejrascal #webcomic #taiwansausage #whoscooking

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I designed my first floral pattern just for my friend Carol. 

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Drank too much tea, couldn’t sleep. Woke up and drew some comics. Found another Koan to draw, this time from “The Gateless Gate.” I decided to re-read the book Zen Buddhism by Christmas Humphreys. Also started reading Three Pillars of Zen by Philip Kapleau.

I feel it’s okay to use these imaginary, fun characters in my koan comics. A Zen master will probably laugh and ask what is “form” anyway? And they know who they really are so what form it took doesn’t matter.

I also feel that I should draw with free lines. As in Zen paintings that captured the essence of something with simple lines and lots of negative space.

I thought Buddhism was negative when I first learned about Emptiness. Now that I am older and started practicing meditation, I love the feeling of emptiness 空. Some other words that describe emptiness are The Void, no body, no one, no thing, no where in no time (from Dr. Joe Dispenza) and Spaciousness (from Eckhart Tolle).

I feel I need to sign the comic with my Dharma name given to me when I was a teenager.

I didn’t like the name back then because I didn’t understand the meaning. Now I really appreciate my Dharma name “Dao Jia” 道嘉 and aspire to it. Dao aka Tao means the way and all that which cannot be described by words. Jia 嘉 means happiness, goodness, beauty, luck and it’s one of the five ancient Chinese ceremony on celebration and connection.

I think this Koan means live in the now. You purpose in life is to do whatever you are doing right now with your full being. No future, no past, but fully present in the now. That’s the practice. I am recording here what I think about this Koan now. I would be fun to see this when I grow older and wiser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gateless_Barrier