Something To Sink My Teeth Into

Here's the latest addition to my sporadic painting efforts. Done in watery blues. I can never resist adding in a little green and then blue goes so well with yellow, why not a little "Indian yellow" which I love. And of course drips. It's hard to know if I love drips (the watery, runny painty kind) or the addition of some form or text more. Things seem so naked without one or the other. I had even been thinking of adding in a little bit of Buddhist scripture somewhere and maybe I still will but for now the painting is at rest.

I noticed, as I read one of my favourite blogs (Marcus' Journal), that where my name appeared in the blogroll it showed I hadn't posted for 5 days. Has it been that long, I thought? Doesn't seem like it. I do notice in myself, less of a draw to post. In a way it seems like right speech. If I don't have anything to say it's good to not say anything at all. (I believe it was Thumper in Bambi, who used a version of this, as in "if you don't have anything nice to say....) Marcus was also commenting on finding the balance in our lives between writing and reading about the Dharma and actually sitting. It was a good reminder that we can mistake "talking" about something for actually "doing" it, whatever that "it" may be. The words occupy us, fills some hole in us, use up our energy and then we forget we haven't actually done "it".

Another blog I love is Meg Hitchcock's and she's been doing some serious ego wrestling lately, down in the ego wrestling pit. I love her art and identify deeply with her darkly humourous relationship to life. Hey, it's all grist for the humour mill in my book (as long as it's not at anyone else's expense.) And her ego wrestling reminded me of my last couple of days. I've been having a serious non transcendant dental experience (there's a joke about that somewhere isn't there?). A tooth has been brewing up a little storm which produced a lot of pain and subsequently an abscess. Where does my mind want to go? It wants to crawl all over, "what's it all about? In the middle of some house sale happenings. Why now? What does this mean? What should I do with it?" Oh and I forgot to mention the "I don't want this, why me, why now" part of the muddy stream of consciousness (looks alot like Rudyard Kiplings "great, grey, green, greasy Limpopo River").

What I learned was, that all I could do was carry on as best I could amid the pain. The ego got a rest. That ego is an energy sucker, man. Yes, go see the monks, yes go to tai chi, yes go home and lie down. And the rest just falls away. And I could see how the rejecting of the whole experience just intensified the suffering; the asking of the questions that can't be answered. Things just are. "The universe is not answerable to our wishes," my Zen teacher used to say. I could see how much of what I've been labouring over lately doesn't really matter, doesn't really require the energy and attention of that busy, yappy, little self. It's just that I am used to "stewing" over the juicy or tough little bits of life and wondering how things will turn out and trying to anticipate what will happen and what to do.

And so here is my message wrapped up in abscessed little package. Things happen, you're not in charge and oh yeah, don't forget your practice. If you're old like me you will remember all those old British "Carry On" movies. Tons of different topics (Carry on Doctor, Carry on Spying) but they all started with "Carry On". What else is there to do really?

Off To Dreamland Barking Furiously

Off To Dreamland Barking Furiously

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8" x 8' matte, image size 3.75" x 4.5"

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Okay I write foolish stuff, I might as well have some foolish art to go with it.  I would love to be thought of and remembered as a Zen fool but I think I might have a lot of work to do to get the Zen part right.  I love polka dots - just look at that word - how can you not like it, dots doing what?   Why the polka of course - all over the page.  And then there is the strange little animal ripped and born from bits of brightly coloured paper.  And of course like a cherry on top, just a few random words cut from a vintage Children's story book.  I love nothing better than creating crazy bits of ransom note text.  Maybe I should write a whole blog in this way?  Pure and utter nonsense.  What?  What's that you say?  "I already have a license on the pure and utter nonsense part."  Why thank-you.  Just what I was aiming for.  Oh, oh.  We're on a slippery slope, kids.  I think I better get off the crazy carpet quick.

I found this quote today in an old journal and I loved it, among many others I'd copied down from Ryokan,

 "If you don't write of things deep inside

   Your own heart

 What's the use of churning out so many words?"  

Did he read my blog???  Do his words stand in contrast to what I've written above?  I don't think so.  There is foolishness and lightness and playfulness inside my own heart.  There is in truth nothing I like better than a big, juicy chunk of foolishness.  And it always goes with the Dharma in my mind.  They can sit quite comfortably on the same plate.  Stir fried crazy Dharma hash with tofu.  I think sometimes some practitioners get too serious for their own good, or maybe that's for my good.  They take themselves and their practice too seriously.  Can get a little boring and lifeless.  And of course there is a balance here.  It would never be my intention to be disrespectful.  Some of the most sincere practitioners I know have a great sense of humour.  And watch the Dalai Lama, a lot of laughter goes on there.

And while I might be accused of churning out a lot of words I think a good lot of them come from deep inside my own heart as Ryokan says.  I write about my life because that is the only way I know how to practice.  I wake up with the Dharma peeking at me as I open one sleep smudged eye.  It follows me around, it falls on me, jumps out at me from behind  doors, peers back at me in the mirror.  Sometimes I can accept it with grace and sometimes it stings when it squirts me in the eye .  And so I churn out some words here in my blog, like butter or ice cream and flavour it with tiny sprinkles of heart, and of course on a good day I put a reindeer on top.

Love Your Little Paint & Word Kids

Night Sky

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8" x 8" matte, image size 3.75" x 4.5"

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This little piece pleases me.  Is that a shocking thing to say?  In our Western world it is regarded as prideful or worse to say you like something that is yours, perhaps especially something that you've created.  When you stop and think about that, it is somewhat weird.  You are permitted to sing the praises of anyone else but yourself.  Now I'm not talking about boasting or feeling superior, but just the simple expression of "liking" something that is yours, in a down to earth matter of fact way.  In a way it is acknowledging our own "Buddha nature", it is a point of honesty and a mature position of self respect.  We should be able to say yes, these are my strengths without puffing our chests out or inciting gasps of surprise from others.  Yet this seems very difficult for most  of us Westerners.  We stutter and stumble and do the "oh gosh" thing.

The Dalai Lama couldn't understand the concept of "self loathing" that exists in almost every Westerner.  It had to be explained to him and it saddened him to tears if I remember correctly.  It is important I think, to extend credit and kindness toward ourselves.  As with so many things we must start in our own little patch of self.  Can we really love anyone else well if we don't love ourselves?   And when I think about what is helpful and encouraging for others, I know that it is love and encouragement and respect, helping them see where they shine and building on that.  So why would that be any different when I interact with myself?   When I think about it, being kind to myself and acknowledging when I feel I have done something well or worthwhile or kind, makes me feel strong and energetic and positive.  I then have  energy to do and be more and radiate it out into the world.

So those were my thoughts as I wrote the first line that said "this little piece pleases me".  It seemed like something worth talking about.  And why do I like this little piece?  I like it because it is simple and sometimes I can get too complex and overwork things.  Sometimes I think more is more and often more just means a fast track to the garbage can!  With this piece I stopped.  It feels vaguely like a brush painting and I like that.  It is abstract and beyond the thinking mind and I like that.  It has circles that please me.  And most of all it has weird ethereal words from an old poetry book.  They hint at things, but what things.  "The sky crawled into me."  Don't you love that line?  and then there is "I made a choice"  And being an existentialist from way back, it is my belief that even the non-choice is a choice.  We have no choice but to choose.  Man I'm getting twisted.  Someone hit me with the shut-up stick.  Good.  Thank-you.  I needed that.  End of story.  Go out there and like yourself and your creations.

Deep, Rich & Messy (are we talking chocolate cake here?)

The art here is part of a larger work (like the one posted yesterday).  I am getting a lot of miles from this and having a lot of fun because I don't usually work large enough to capture portions of a painting and have them stand alone.  It's kind of like a puzzle.  In the end I will post the large work.  In the mean time I have a few more "parts" to show before I bare the whole thing.  

And I am heading into the final leg of the 1oo Days of Dharma.  It's interesting to watch.  When I first started I had a gazillion topics I wanted to cover.  Ideas were easy to come by and as the days went on I wondered sometimes, what will I write about today.  But when I sat down something always seemed to materialize. The process has strengthened the muscles of faith and trust.

When I stop and think about it the process of writing 100 Days of Dharma parallels how things go for us in many places in life.  First we start out enthusiastically and then as time goes on the honeymoon wears off, we get a little bored, our minds wander and we look for new stuff.  If we're not careful we can live our whole lives in this way, never touching anything very deeply, always skimming along the surface, flitting like paper thin butterflies.  It can become an habitual pattern, that at some level is unsatisfying but comfortable.  Now this doesn't mean that we simply flip over and do the opposite.  That would be a mistake too.  This is where our contemplative practice comes in, sitting down at the end of the day and looking at what's gone on, "what niggles" as my Zen teacher would say.  

We can look and see what our tricky little selves are up to.  Are we wandering, are we avoiding, are we  speeding about, never devoting enough care to the details of our lives, do we run around like headless poultry?  Are we hanging out with our good friends sloth and torpor?  Or is it just not necessary in a particular situation to go any deeper.  Perhaps a little skim across the surface shows us where we do need to go and it is wholly appropriate to move on.  Only we can know in any given instance, whether it is a relationship, a job, a conversation, some chore around the house.  But if we never look, we will never know.

The other part of the process of writing 100 Days of Dharma that parallels life has to do with moving past our pre-conceived ideas, our likes, our dislikes, the comfortable, the easy.  It's about committing to something no matter what and just seeing it through.  Our minds are always throwing up resistance, that's what they do.  It is part of right effort to just pat the resistance on the head, say not now, and carry on.  This act of moving past resistance is common to athletes and artists and creative types of all sorts.  Sometimes the best work doesn't come until you have written a thousand pages of purple prose or painted a hundred pedestrian landscapes.  Sometimes it has to come from a place that is way past where you thought you could go.  And as with all aspects of the Dharma, it's about getting to know ourselves, experimenting with what might work and adjusting our course.  It's about living the examined life, the deep, rich, messy life that comes to us while we're grasping after the easy and the comfortable things that we think will make us happy.

The Zen of Writing Without Words

When I started writing "100 Days of Dharma" at the beginning of January I didn't think about how many words I'd be spilling out on to the page.  It never occurred to me that I'd become conscious of talking too much.  There are many things we can't see when we set out on our travels, namely what lies round the bend.  So here I am thinking about  "right speech", one of the tenets of the eightfold path that leads to the end of suffering.  One of the aspects of right speech is not engaging in idle chatter.  Now I don't think of this as idle chatter, but on many occasions I have thought of it as too many words.  

So then I have my koan, how do I write "100 Days of Dharma" without words?  I could simply say enough words and stop, or write less frequently (which in truth would be much more convenient for me) but I want to complete my 100 Days of Dharma for a variety of reason.  I guess I am curious to see if I can do it.   And it feels like good Dharma practice to go through with it,  good discipline.  When I look inside, the combination of writing and the Dharma have clicked into their little lock position.  And it's a way to build a little writing muscle, weight lifting the alphabet.  

Originally it was my plan to just write in a private journal, you know one with a lovely cover and lined pages.  I think if I'd done that I might not be wondering if it were too many words, but that's speculation at this point.  I ended up in the blogosphere because of an Etsy tip that suggested a blog was a good companion to your shop.  Supposedly I was to write about Etsy related stuff.  Yet the blogging immediately took on a life of it's own that doesn't have a huge amount to do with Etsy other than providing a little welcome mat to the shop.

When I started I thought the blog will make me more committed, less likely to abandon the empty page when the first pang of sloth & torpor hit (sound like a couple of cartoon characters don't they?).   The threat of a little public shaming is apparently effective for me.  But I think the public nature of the writing is also what leads me to ask  " is this too many words?"  Then I have to ask why is this?  Is it my ego, my little self again, primping and straightening in front of the mirror?  Am I simply worried that you will think I'm a blabbermouth, a bag of self inflated hot air, a windbag of tornado proportions, a blathering bombastic Buddha babbler (okay enough already) ?  I think if I am to be truthful there is some of that.

So I am thinking about silence, the fact that we need silence to get to know ourselves, that our true realizations often come when we are sitting silently.  And that in general I know I'd be better off if I listened more and talked less.  And so there is the work for today and always. And so I will end with fewer words than usual perhaps, a fitting ode to silence and right speech and with a quote from Sengstau, the 3rd Zen Patriarch "The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth."  I think I am going to need a very big bag of bread crumbs to get me home, Hansel.

100 Days of Dharma

In September walking along a blue skyed beach, watching grey whales spout the idea popped into my head that I should write 100 days of Dharma.... (did the spouting of the whales make me think of my own spouting off?? eek)  My plan was I should find time everyday to write something that pertained to the Dharma, some aspect that was up on my radar or that I had been working with in daily life. The 100 days came from a qi gong class I was taking where this amazing qi gong master suggested that 100 days was what it took to really get acquainted with something, to experience it at a deeper level.  

I started out with great enthusiasm on day 1 and then as the days passed I seem to get busy with other things, things like watering the garden, having breakfast.  You know the things that make up a day.... and I would find myself writing later and later in the day until one day I just didn't write.  The next day I posited that it could still be 100 days of Dharma but not necessarily consecutive.  The mind is a slippery creature!  And so I carried on...thinking it better to write than not to. But then I got a cold and that was my excuse, so after a couple of weeks the 100 days of Dharma fell into a place that so many good intentions do, that dark closet of good ideas and projects and plans collecting metaphorical dust, piled up next to the heap of forgotten dreams and abandoned aspirations.

But here it is peeking its head out of the closet, the 100 days of Dharma, timidly I admit, but hopeful in a way you might expect from the Dharma....patient and kind, slightly bemused at this silly human.  When I started writing this blog it was mainly as a vehicle to promote my Etsy site (gasp!)  I had read this was a good thing to do and that lots of Etsians (not related to Martians) did this.  But after a day or two of writing I remembered how much I love to write... and being a simple sort I like the idea of one pot dinners so why not combine all my passions: art, Dharma and writing.  If I committed in some public kind of way maybe I would actually do the 100 days.  Does fear of public shaming count as discipline?   When my Zen teacher talks about discipline she talks about "grasping the will."  So here it is the first of 100 days.  It is about lots of things, discipline, about building new habits, its about refining the art of whatever by repetition (Malcom Gladwell whose books I love, says in his latest book called "Outliers" that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to really master something).  And ultimately it's just about the doing, the mystery of starting something and finding out where it takes you, the following of your bliss as Joseph Campbell referred to it.  So what forgotten project is peeking its hopeful little head out of your closet hoping for 100 days of attention???