You Are The Canvas

work in progress

My meditation room (read living room without furniture) is like a projection booth for my mind. This morning the image of self as landscape painting was showing on the big screen. Trouble is, I was a lovely, large canvas smeared with muddy hues along the horizon line, a painting gone awry, tinged with shades of frustration and envy. But that was okay in a strange way because I was  big enough to hold it all.  And beneath the lashings of poorly mixed student grade paint was a large, clean canvas, simply bearing witness to what came to rest on it. It could go any way.  It could be repainted at any time.

 With lots of studio time lately and a strong aim to find my voice in abstraction I find my brush frequently dipping into pots of frustration. I am suffering the distance between what my work should look like and what it does. Ira Glass talks about that here. I am suffering from my pursuit of beauty, that Peter London reminds us, in his book "No More Secondhand Art" is not the real aim of art.

My head can recite a long list of clever lectures to myself on the topic of frustration, telling me how I shouldn't be attached to outcomes, how I should not compare myself to others, how it is all creative compost.  And while this is all true my mind thinks it can push frustration away by arranging the alphabet in a certain way and spitting it out in frustration's general direction. And yet the truth is frustration arises, bubbling up from somewhere deep inside. It takes no notice of fancy words. It stays close to me, like any faithful companion.

Frustration and I are deeply connected in this lifetime. It has crossed my mind that I might make friends with frustration. If we're going to spend time together, why not quality time? I have sniffed around her a bit, trying to get to know her without getting too close. She's agitated, speedy, and completely without patience. She can make my stomach churn one time, my chest to tighten another.  My attempts to banish her having failed, I can think of nothing else to do but get close enough to know her scent. It is only my judgment that finds frustration not worth knowing.  It is my pleasure seeking self that would like to usher the difficult visitors quickly out of the studio, so I can enjoy more pleasant company.

More work in progress

 When frustration leaves the building envy has been coming to brush up against the canvas I call me.  I suspect envy has been lurking greedily around the corner almost forever. My little self hates her palour, her odour.  Who welcomes the likes of envy? And yet, there she is. Again clever mind tells me I shouldn't compare myself to others, that is my source of envy. I shouldn't lust after the success and accomplishments of others like there is only a finite amount to go around. I should not feel deflated by seeing others soar. Clever self makes me feel worse for all it's lectures about envy.  Yet I feel her hot,  brushstrokes bleed across my canvas. I feel the raw sting of her close companion, shame.  Shame rides snuggly in the pocket of envy. It's just one of those combos: bacon and eggs, toast and jam, envy and shame.  And yet there is a strange twist to this painting.  I want to get to know shame and envy. I dip my finger into their muddiness. I reach it to my lips and taste it. It is sour and bitter, like wormwood and vinegar mixed. I breath it in and hold out a cup of tea at arm's length. Come, come, feral visitors.

So these are my companions. And while the canvas seems caked with mud at some points of the day, for whole days sometimes, underneath it lies the still white canvas, host to it all.  It is only me, looking for beauty and gratification that deems one canvas covering lovely and another one unacceptable. I am learning gradually to appreciate the colours of the day as fine. I am learning that though I prefer chartreuse green to mud, there is value to it all and when viewed skillfully from the eye of practice, the wise curator, there is beauty in the mud. Like all good sculptors know, mud can be worked. It is part of my story.  What's yours?

There Are Always Openings To Be Near My Own Discomfort & Desire

As part of a workshop I am doing I am spending a lot of time exploring the artistic process. I have become increasingly aware of the struggle involved in the process and my inability to manage it in some way that feels skillful or graceful.

I have also been hearing the call to work in other ways as well as "buddha images". There has been some inner nudging to work in more abstract form and so this is part of my exploration these days. Going off in new directions can be difficult ground to cover, like going off to kindergarten for the first time. Where do I hang my coat and who will play with me at recess?

One thing that has followed me around the studio, in a harassing kind of way is my judgmental mind (excuse me officer, I'd like to file an harassment complaint against my mind).

As part of my exploration I am learning to be more patient and kind as I work. I am building new mind habits, slogging my way out of the old neural cow paths. There are so many elements of this process that are like any aspect of working with the mind, doing good solid mind training.

First I have to wake up to the process and see clearly when I am heading down the well worn trail of self judgment and frustration. Once I wake up and see this, instead of just rushing headlong down that tangled path, and getting scratched and torn in the brambles, I can stop. If I don't stop, what I have learned is that a paint brush and frustration = a mucky, contorted mess. Pretty simple equation.

I have decided that my painting, my canvas is like a living being and deserves the same kind of consideration I might offer to other living beings. I need to ask it what it needs and then I need to wait until it answers. Then I proceed as best I can with kindness and care as I attempt to deliver what it needs (I'm like the milkman, excuse me painting was that chocolate milk? one quart or two?) Sometimes I get the order wrong but I don't have to get (all pissy about it, as my daughter would say). If I am careful I can go whoops, I just gave you a litre of sour milk and some cottage cheese, let me take that back, it's not lookin so good on you)

And so the process continues. I have been following my heart in choosing materials. I love little bits of words from magazines and books, vintage sewing patterns and flat, matte paint. Gesso and conte crayons are calling to me, as are lots of texture and bits of old fabric. I just explore putting them all together. And I am enjoying working in simple neutrals as I explore form. It seems if I put colour on hold I can focus better on form.

I am having this delicious time mixing licorice blacks and smokey greys and whip cream whites. I have been using text as form but also discovered I can apply words so they retain some of their quirky entertaining meaning which is a joy to me.

I don't think you can see the words on this canvas so here's a little sample of how I have been entertaining the canvas with words. Under the circle it reads "Later, I ran into reality and invited him to dinner. There are always openings to be near my own discomfort and desire, no matter where."

In the upper left framing a square the text reads: "Brace yourself, this is where you get to see we all have grace sometimes." To the side of this the text reads: "Everyone has amazing talent which is just covered up while eating ice cream. Regardless of the journey every movement has depth and wings"

And if you start in the upper left of the circle you can follow the story around: "what can you imagine on a park bench by a river. Every word has a world behind it. I catch a glimpse of make believe. Eyes are tricky. It was like seeing the hand which would hold the secret unable to be kept anymore. Walls painted with dreams and intention , life without coincidence had never seemed important to me until that moment."

So that's the bedtime story, kids, stream of consciousness painting. I'm calling it "Every picture tells a story." I'm just learning how to listen

Zen Master Clothes Line

The other day my new and dearly beloved clothes line and I were having a little disagreement. Somehow the plastic line came off the metal pulley causing it not to work. This became the occasion for a little Dharma teaching; me as somewhat unwilling student and clothes line as Zen master.

I thought I would just quickly right the problem and slip the line back on the metal pulley and get on with things. I tried to do this in the easiest and quickest manner possible, not paying that much attention. "Let's get this done, should be easy."

First try entailed a fair bit of struggling and resulted in a product where the lines were crossed. At that point I was getting a little testy. The project seemed to require more strength than I had in my hands and I was getting tired of this. After a fair bit of gnashing and wrangling I realized that my frustration was nothing more than desire, wanting things to be my way. Oh and by the way they should be easy! It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, I was outside, yet I was annoyed and frustrated. When the truth struck me upside the head (Zen masters like to give a little wack when necessary) I decided to pause, take a breath and examine things from another angle. How did the pulley and line fit together? And maybe it just required a little concentrated attention, some awareness perhaps.

Sure enough in a minute or two I had it fixed. And I could see that my frustration was nothing more than desire sporting a different outfit. It seemed there were two kinds of frustration, one that is very much like that aggressive, shouting anger. How dare this happen? What a pain. I have better things to do. And the whiney depressed defeated frustration that says I'm never going to get this fixed. Why doesn't someone just come rescue poor me. I'm not strong enough for this task.

So that was how Zen Master Clothes Line offered up the Dharma for the day. I apparently have a thing for clothes lines. This little collage above is from a very old series called "Life On The Line" comprised of many scenarios on clothes lines, weddings, baby things, bears, gardening accoutrements, underwear, dogs, cats, even hockey things. You're getting the picture. And by the way, does anyone know how to use the little pulley contraption that connects the two lines?

The Dharma of PhotoShop

I'm not gonna write about frustration today, nope I'm not.  I'm not going to tell you about spending hours with photoshop trying to figure out #**!! how to manage image size.  You don't want to hear about any of that.  What I can tell you is that no injuries were incurred by any piece of hardware or software, nothing was dangled out the window by its cord, no rude emails were dashed off to Adobe Systems(okay maybe composed in my mind), no clumps of hair were removed from either my own head or that of the cat.  All in all I think I behaved rather well for a cranky, self diagnosed, technophobe.  

So where does frustration fit in to the Dharma?  I am wondering about it now.  Before I just was frustration, after the fact I can wonder about it.  I guess it's about impatience which I have heard said is really just a form of anger.  And anger reduced is just one of the 3 poisons (hatred).  When you stop and think about it impatience is an aggressive kind of energy.  Frustration turned outward might result in some unpleasant words spoken.  Frustration turned inward might be some disparaging self-talk.

And I think desire figures into frustration because there is an element of wanting implied.  I am frustrated because things are not working out as I'd hoped or planned.  Often it goes with "I want this to work out easily and I want it to work out now!"  It's about expectation in a way too, isn't it?  Because if I didn't expect it to be easy, well I wouldn't be surprised and irritated when it wasn't!  And do I detect an element of laziness in frustration, perhaps lurking quietly in a back pocket.  I am frustrated because I am having to put in more time and effort than I wanted to.  Ah, there is that word want again.

And what does frustration make us do?  Do we give up?  Does it put us off our plans?  Does it make us feel bad?  Or do we go damn it, I'm gonna figure this out?  Or where's that cheesecake?  Or bottle of whiskey?  Or do we say, "it's my mother's fault I'm not good at this!"  It all depends on our habitual tendencies I suspect and our karmic packages.  These things are our raw materials that figure into our reactions and let us know where our work is.

So when we meet frustration standing in the isle, arms crossed, looking a lot like a grumpy version of Mr. Clean what do we do?  Do we melt into a puddle or explode and burn up like a small human meteor (both damaging to the carpet)? This gets me thinking about skillful means.  Maybe it's about knowing when to stop, when to take a break, when to call an expert or a friend.  Or maybe for me, it's about learning to persevere, to regroup and learn to go through the manual (I'm the kind of person that only reads the instructions after the fact when all the buttons have been pushed and the warranty has been invalidated by my foolish actions).  I think the more we learn about ourselves, the more we see in each instance, what we need to do.  We're kind of like our own built in instruction booklet, don't you think?  But mostly we're so busy looking for the easy way out or for someone else to tell us what to do (preferably an expert), or maybe we'd like a generalization that will fit all circumstances.  And while we're busy looking in all those places we fail to read ourselves very well and see what we really need to do in this moment, in these particular circumstances.

So it's a good thing I didn't bore you with a big long winded story about my frustration because well, you would only have found the experience very frustrating.  And then what would you do?

Exploring the Mental Landscape

Okay I finally did it.  I was inspired  enough by my qi gong classmates and our teacher's constant reminder, that if you keep taking the pot off the burner the water is never going to boil.  Even though somewhere in the night, an hour went missing, I managed to find 2 one hour periods to sit in meditation.

In the morning I was thinking about Alice, a woman in our class who is always up front about her experience.  Yesterday she expressed a lot of frustration at not "feeling the chi" when she sits. She is feeling pretty disappointed by this, really wanting to experience it, and wondering in the end if she has any chi.  I could see some of myself in Alice and started to wonder what separates those classmates who are getting the "big chi buzz" and those of us who are asking where is this illusive chi hiding.

As I did my first sit this morning, it came to me.  Besides the hours of practice that the chi filled students have put in over the years, I could see three fundamental difference.  These differences seemed, to me, to all involve mental attitude, if we can call it that.  First those chi-key guys believe when they sit down that they are going to feel the chi.  Past experience leads them to feel this way.  They have no doubt that the chi is there and that they will feel it.  The rest of us aren't so sure.  We think thoughts like: maybe this won't work for me, maybe I'll never feel the chi, maybe I'm the exception.  Doubt in Buddhism is one of the five hindrances.

The other mental attitude that stands in our way is that feeling of frustration and impatience.  Where is that darn chi, it should be here by now.  I told it to pick me up at 5 o'clock and I'm still standing on the corner waiting.  Our frustration and impatience tightens our bodies, closes our minds and natters away in our ears.  Man it is a pesky companion!

And then there is desire, attachment (the good 'ol cause of suffering in Buddhist lingo).  We want to experience that feeling of chi.  We want, we want, we want.  We are so full of wanting there is no place for the chi to sit.  It's like the old comment that the Zen master makes about the archer in competition.  "His need to win prevents him from hitting his mark."

So these were my discoveries.   If I could just sit with some openness and presence and believe that the chi was already there in my lower dan tien that would be step number one.  Give up doubt.  Number two: let go of frustration. Don't waste  your energy checking in on the chi and then winding yourself up into a chi seeking pretzel because what you find doesn't meet your expectations.  And these expectations are linked to the wanting, the desire, the attachment that we taste so strongly that it obscures the flavour of anything else.  ....  So my work was to just sit and know that the chi was present (just like our Buddha nature) but that I am not quite skilled enough to feel it strongly, that it takes time and patience and tending and trust.  And so I relaxed and experimented and explored.  And interestingly by leaving the pot on the burner a little longer and adjusting my mental fedora which was slightly askew I seemed to have a more focused meditation and a greater sense of the growing chi.

It is so interesting to watch the impact our sometimes subtle (sometimes not so subtle) mental attitude has on how things play out for us.  Our minds are powerful little pieces of equipment.  It's too bad they don't come with a better operator's manual.  But knowing me I would never read the instructions until something went wrong!