Enter & Be Nourished

Enter And Be Nourished

Mixed Media Collage

8" x 8" matted, image dimension 3.75" x 4.5"

$25 includes shipping in North America

The chopsticks in this little mixed media piece are talking to you.  Never had a conversation with a pair of chopsticks, before?  These ones are particularly wise.  Here's what they have to say, listen up:  "By expecting nothing we gain everything."  Sounds like a bit of Zen wisdom, wouldn't you say.  And here we are talking about expectations again. 
The other stick bears the title of the piece, "Enter and be nourished."

So let's talk about nourishment?  What nourishes you?  Are there different kinds of nourishment?  The other day a friend suggested we might do something together.  He is a raw food chef.  Dinner and art he suggested.  And these words came to me in the shower.  (I think the shower is a nourishing place for me; I get some of my best ideas there!):  Food to nourish the body and art to nourish the spirit.  Then it felt like we needed one more thing (to create that magical threesome).  Meditation to nourish the mind.

And can we really separate the 3 or is the separation artificial?  Is this just the western preponderance to chop things up and put them in a can before serving?  Are we bloated on a diet of concepts?  When I feed my body things which are truly nourishing I suspect I am also nourishing my  mind and my spirit.  I am creating an environment in which all aspects of myself are nourished, an environment where each imaginary limb supports each other.

And if I nourish my mind, perhaps I build discipline and awareness that assist me in making mindful food choices and eating more mindfully.  If my monkey mind is tamed even slightly, I suspect it aids things like digestion and in subtle mysterious ways nourishes my physical health.  The whole quote on the chopstick is: "Enter & be nourished by traditional Zen training,"  which seems to speak to both mind and spirit.

And my spirit?  How does it fit in to the nourishment buffet?  I suspect when it is nourished and uplifted by some inspiring or meaningful activity or by human connection it too, supports the other forms of nourishment.  The physical body responds to a joyful, peaceful spirit with health and vigour .  The mind is deeply connected with the spirit;  feelings of joy and peace produce more positive, grateful thoughts.  

And in the grand scheme of things we can't be carved up, reduced or boiled down.  At least not if we are to continue our little human life here.  We are a complex whole swimming in a cosmic soup, always connected in ways so subtle and overriding that we can barely understand.  Scientists talk about psychoneuroimmunology.  We can talk about the unity and mystery and deep intuitive knowing of our true selves.  How at some level we are in touch with what nourishes us on every level.  We know in every cell of our body if only we will trust and have faith in our deepest knowing.

So here it is.  A bowl of something to nourish us, some talking chopsticks to offer wise counsel.   Summer has arrived.  Let's spread out the table cloth, break out the lemonade and throw a few nourishing thoughts on the barbie. ( I hope  Ken won't feel left out.)

Are You Surprised By Your Expectations?

Oh!

Mixed Media on Matte Board

8"x8" matted, image dimensions 3.75" x 4.5"

$25 includes shipping 

Oh makes me think of surprise, especially a big black O on a magenta pink background.  And what makes us feel surprised?  Expectations?  When something turns out differently than we expected we are surprised, sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not so pleasantly.  I was talking to a friend today and we mentioned a mutual friend.  I commented that there is a thing this person does that "pushes my buttons".  Her comment was that it might push hers too if she had expectations.  And that is it, isn't it?  We often have unspoken expectations, ones we're not even aware of .... until things don't go as expected.  These expectations float just below the surface until something dislodges them and they bubble up.

 I might say I have no expectations about some new situation I'm going into.  But as things progress I find that in fact I do.  A friend gave a talk to a small group, thinking she had no expectations.  But at the end of the evening she found a whole little constellation of expectations twinkling around her.  She expected she would like her host, that she would feel some rapport with him.  She expected she would be treated in a certain way by him, a way that denoted respect to her.  She felt disappointed and slightly agitated when these expectations weren't met.  Sometimes when we think we have no expectations what we really mean "I don't know what is going to happen."  And during or after the fact we can see that we often have subtle and unconscious expectations.

The situation where we feel most free is where we have no expectations.  It's okay whatever happens.  We know that the universe does not exist to please us.  The next best thing is to be aware when expectations arise.  We can feel their tug but it's a bit like the monster in a nightmare.  When we turn around to look at him, he looses a lot of his power.  So just to see, helps loosen the reigns of expectation.

And now I am going to stumble off in the direction of bedtime without saying anything amusing or foolish.  What did you expect?

Where Is Perfection?

A Perfect Ten

Mixed Media on Matte Board

8"x8" matted, image dimension 3.75"x 4.5"

$25 includes free shipping in North America

That phrase popped into my mind when I saw the "10" appear in this mixed media piece..... "A perfect 10".  I'm not much on popular culture but if my mind serves me well it comes from some rating system of the opposite sex that seemed everywhere for a while.  Was it in the '90's?  Did it apply to women only?  I don't really remember but it shows the strange bits of flotsam and jetsam the mind holds.  Give it a little poke and out fly the strangest things.

But it makes me think.  What is perfection?  In this context it appears to be a  value judgement.  My daughter who works in a Vegan Restaurant told a very funny story about a numerical rating system. The dishwasher who has limited English knows that "number 1" is very good so when someone does something he doesn't appreciate he tells them they are number zero.   We like, we don't like, we assign some rating and ranking system.  It might have numbers, it might not.  We do this in subtle (and not so subtle) ways all day long, judging, preferring, attaching, craving.  

But there must be another dimension to perfection.   Philip Toshio Sudo, in his book, "Zen Guitar" says: "The point of training is to strive for perfection.... Being human, mistakes are unavoidable.... Many mistakes arise from self-consciousness -from too much focus on what the body is actually doing.  The only way to overcome self-consciousness is through practice.... Our skill becomes natural - part of what zen masters call our ordinary mind... With practice our muscles no longer rely on the mind."  Ah, a movement toward perfection involves not relying on the mind.  Perfection is greater than this little conscious mind, deeper than my little self.

So is there really perfection in this human realm?  Is it really perfection that we find in something we see or hear or taste, or experience; the perceived pleasure in some "thing" or "action"; the perfect meal, the perfect gift, the perfect day.  Or is it just a turn of phrase?  Perfect today, imperfect tomorrow.  And then there is Toshio Sudo's "striving for perfection", the act of trying to do your best.  Perhaps this is as close as we get to perfection in this human realm, moving toward perfection.  And being okay with that.  And this seems like a perfect point to make my exit and hope that you don't shout number zero at me as I leave.

Is Life Puzzling?

Life Can Be Puzzling

Original Mixed Media on Matte Board

8"x 8" black matte

window opening 3.75" x 4.4"

$25 includes free shipping in North America

This little mixed media piece is asking a question.  It's asking what puzzles you?  Today, yesterday, on an ongoing basis.  Where are the puzzling bits in your life?  We all have them.  Sometimes they are like those giant 1000 piece puzzles with blue sky and ocean and reflections that drive us mad.   Solutions elude us, questions follow us around. 

There is so much we can't understand with our rational minds, so much that we find puzzling.  We spend a lot of time trying to label and categorize and get things under our control.  We think if only I could understand this, everything would be okay.  We mostly have a hard time just being, letting go of the need to understand with our minds.  I am reminded of the simple state that requires no more of me than just knowing how to be, by the poet and Zen master Ryokan, when he says, "Sometimes the moon and I sit together all night."   In that state I can give up the puzzle and the questions.

And if we want to talk puzzles there is the Zen puzzle, the koan.  They are always there if we're willing to see. My favourite kind of koans are the ones that appear in everyday life; situations or problems that comes to greet us again and again. They are the things we can't quite negotiate; what angers us, defeats us, what makes us crazy. Here's a little koan I have worked with over the years.  It involves a relative (let's give her a yellow no-name label). No matter how much I try, she has the uncanny knack of dragging me into some petty squabble or irritated retort.  Each time I swear I am not going to bite but every time she manages to get me to have a little nibble on the hook.  I avoid the hook I swallowed at the previous fishing event but she always has a new one, barbed and waiting for the foolish, prideful, annoyed part of me.  This is a cross word puzzle (I couldn't resist!).

Our personal life puzzles mostly resist our logic and will.  They balk at all the muscle we apply to "make things happen".  At some point we usually realize we we may even give up.  But eventually in time if we keep the puzzle in mind, the answer makes itself clear; maybe in a dream or in the shower or when we're sitting in meditation or driving to the hardware store.  The solution comes from that deep, mysterious inner place, a place so vast and deep and unfathomable it makes our logical mind look like a children's plastic swimming pool.  Now that's puzzling, don't you think?

The House of Scribble Moon

The House of  Scribble Moon  

Original Mixed Media On Matte Board

Matted size 8"x8"  Inside window dimension 3.75" x 4.5"

$25  includes free shipping in North America

More little houses.  There is something so lovely and comforting about these little houses for me.  I could think of a thousand reasons why, but I prefer to say it's a mystery why I find these little paper abodes so satisfying, a lovely mysterious puzzle, like so much of life.  And I love the bit of poem that insisted on being the title for this piece ... Scribble Moon.

Tonight I am thinking about faith which for me is a kind of mystery in itself.  It has this bigger than human understanding quality.  It is about letting go and standing back.  Kind of like setting off fireworks, in a way.  You light the wick, stand back and then watch wide eyed to see what happens.  Sometimes there is a fantastic show and sometimes they just go phphphtttt.  We don't know why and yet we know there is a reason.

I am thinking about faith because I was talking to my daughter tonight about some new direction she's taking in her life.  She was looking at a new job, but the trial run didn't work out so well.  It didn't feel right, it didn't stimulate any passion or enthusiasm and then she didn't hear back about it.  As my Zen teacher would say, "A no is as good as a yes."  It moves you closer to an answer by eliminating one option.  So she is on to step 2, checking out some schooling options.  And oddly some money has appeared as if from nowhere that will make this possible if she decides her heart is there.  

So I reminded her about faith when I spoke to her, that the direction is making itself known.  And it is just interesting to watch things unfold as she finds her way.  She was stumped for a long time, and just working, happily enough.  Now some less than satisfactory circumstances in the work place have been her call to action, her motivation to move to the next stage.  It is fun to watch when you have faith.  I don't feel disappointed that she didn't get the kitchen job she had applied for.  I am not worried that things won't turn out for her.  I am not attached to having her do a particular thing.  It has taken me a while to get to this place.  But I have faith that life is taking her where she needs to be.  I suspect things will unfold in a way that leads her away from working in a traditional kitchen environment to a job with more dimension but that is only my hunch.   I have faith that she will find her place in this world, a place where she can make a contribution (where as she puts it she can be part of the solution, not part of the problem).

I have faith that the moon will continue to rise and that I will continue to scribble.

Shirley Valentine Meets The Buddha

Peace Garden - Original Mixed Media

Matted 8"x 8"   Image Dimensions 3.75"x 4.5"

$25  free shipping in North America

This mixed media piece incorporates a sepia tone photo of  a Buddha statue from a Zen temple with some calligraphy paper that has been stamped and painted with acrylics and walnut ink and finished with some calligraphy pen work.  For me it has the feeling of a serene Japanese garden or a waterfall with the cool mossy greens.

I could talk about gardening which seems to be on everyone's mind these days.  But what I really want to talk about is the play we saw this evening  ....  Shirley Valentine.  A one woman show by Willy Russell, the production we saw at the Chemainus Theatre was a fundraiser for the theatre by the amazing Nicola Cavendish.  

Ostensibly it's about a middle aged woman, bored with her life who runs away to Greece.  But when you get past the personal details of her story, the protagonist could be talking about anyone.  She comes to see that her crime against God is her "unused life."  She realizes that at some point along the way she has stopped being alive.  She remarks that it's not as if something  happened that caused  it (as in the neighbour came home and found her husband sleeping with the milkman) but that gradually little by little her life grew smaller.

 I could hear the Dharma echoing through the play.  For me, if you scratch the surface of any good art, you will always find the Dharma peeking out.  The play provides an apt description of  how we choose comfort instead of the unknown, how we choose the stupefying boredom of the familiar and easy until that becomes our way of life or lack of life.  We are unhappy and we don't know why.  

 The Dharma reminds us to regard our lives as precious.  If we think deeply about our lives and try to live with some awareness,  we will sometimes make the difficult choice.  And often it is the difficult choice that leads us to a sense of aliveness.  We make these choices not simply because they are difficult but because they are right for us at this time.  They offer an opportunity to wake up.  Sometimes we need a big jolt to remind us to live our lives.  We may cruise along on auto pilot until we get an unwanted medical diagnosis or someone near to us dies or leaves us.  But Shirley Valentine's invitation to wake up and be truly alive is a ticket to Greece given to her by a friend. 

I think we all need that invitation, that ticket out of that reclining easy chair.  Have you picked up your ticket yet?  For me I need to get that invitation out on a daily basis and look at it.  Otherwise I might be duking it out with the cats and dogs for the most comfortable seat in the house. 

Who Is Thinking These Thoughts Anyway?

Moon Buddha - Original Mixed Media On Matte Board 

 8"x 8" Matte  3.75"x4.5" Inside Dimensions 

$25   includes  free shipping in North America

I have learned something today.  You can blog late into the night and that works just fine.  You can even paint ( a bit trickier because of lighting) or do design work late into the night but it is next to impossible to take a good photo of your work after the day has morphed into evening.  You see where I'm going with this....  So I am keeping honest.  I did create a new piece of art today but alas by the time I was done it was too late to capture with the magic box, so you are seeing a brother to the Brush Buddha of Day 1.  I was having so much fun I did several of these.  Just goes to show that it never hurts to have a spare Buddha in the freezer.  You never know when someone is going to drop by.

The fun part about today's piece of art is that it is very different from the two days that went before.  I have my own little surprise factory.  I never know what is going to come out of the studio's easy bake oven (remember those?)  It reminds me that we don't really know our own minds.  They are a mystery to us in so many amazing ways.  I can create something and be as surprised as if I am a stranger at what has appeared on the page.  It's kind of delightful.  It makes me wonder, who am I anyway?  And where do my thoughts and inspirations come from?  In a way these surprises that appear are like little road signs pointing toward the illusory nature of the self, the fact that no solid, substantial self exists.  It is always moving and changing and becoming something else.  It is not that solid, pinchable me that I normally take myself to be.

The little buddha in today's post is done on a page from a small chapter book I purchased at my door about 12 years ago.  A young man was selling two little books he had written, door to door.  I don't remember how much they were or if he left it up to the purchaser to decide but I was so taken with his bravery in doing this that I had to buy them.  If I remember correctly his name was Stephen Parks.  Sometimes I wonder where he is now and what he's doing. I liked his writing but over the years I have used his art to make mine.  One thing is always becoming another.  Impermanence, yes?

And so that is my story for today.  I have learned about shadows and the mysterious nature of the self, the odd things the mind remembers and how it is all part of the ever changing landscape.