Nature, The Ultimate Artist And Teacher?

Kanaskin Lake, BC

I think the artistry of nature has always astounded humans.  To view its sheer vastness, its startling beauty can leave us with only an oooo or an awww coming out of our cake holes.  A lot of art is either inspired by the natural world or seeks to imitate it.  As an abstract artist I'm not so interested in art that seeks to imitate the natural world though I can see how an image of a stunning scene above the couch would bring peace and joy to a home.  I am more interested in the translation of the natural world by the artist into form that evokes some feeling or response in us.  But that is my particular preference. Art is like spiritual practice in a way.  No one thing suits us all and so the many expressions of art. In a recent talk, Stephen Batchelor commented that the Buddha said his teachings were like medicine. Batchelor reasoned that not everyone has the same "illness" so not everyone needs the same medicine. So for art, if it feeds our soul, not all of us are nourished by the same thing. Even the same person may need different food at different times. Sometimes our soul requires peace, sometimes fiery inspiration.

Above Dawson City, Yukon, after midnight

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a teacher in the Bon tradition, likes to remind of the healing and nourishing qualities of the natural world, how just a short time connecting with the natural world can improve our state of mind and health. The earth can ground us, the sun can warm us and inspire joy, the water of a stream can remind us of the natural flow of all life.  A big sky offers a feeling of spaciousness and the wind shows us how things just move on through.  We can focus on these aspects of the elements to help us become more spacious, inspired, grounded or flowing or we can simply experience it all without thought and be nourished by it's wise and welcome presence in our life. Especially if we spend a lot of time indoors (and most of us do) or in cities, it can be interesting to commit to spending more time immersing ourselves in the natural world and experiment with its impact on us.

Rain passing through at Kinaskin Lake

As I travel through northern BC and the Yukon I am struck by the sheer expanses of untouched wilderness. With less tree cover than I am used to in the rain forested area where I live my heart is deeply touched by the spacious feeling of the big sky.  There is a drama to this landscape, it's wild openness, it's ability to startle, it's rough beauty. One feels a privilege in being able to witness it; to see the alpine tundra with it's permafrost along the Dempster Highway, to see a Ptarmigan half white still from winter, flowers bursting everywhere, wise about the shortness of opportunity. Vastness and drama are the words that come to mind when viewing this landscape.  One gets a sense of the forces of nature, the strength and intractability of the natural world.

Tombstone Park, view from Dempster Highway

To spend time in this open place, to watch weather pass through, experience the strangeness of 24 hours of light and it's effect on the body, to watch bears saunter out to the road with little regard for our presence, reminds me of our smallness in the grand scheme of things.  Someone recently remarked about all the talk of "saving the planet" but in fact what we are really concerned with is saving ourselves.  When you see the vastness of the natural world one senses the planet will survive despite the grave damage we may do, that it will remain in some form long after we have, in our greed and ignorance laid waste to ourselves.  If this sounds negative in some way, it is not meant to, it is simply a reflection based on the seeing the strength, intractability and vastness of this landscape.  With a bow to the unknowable source and presence of it all.

Two Things

36"x36"  From This Shore

I am thinking about 2 things. Not at the same time because that would cause my pea brain to explode and pea green would be a hideous colour on the walls...  But I digress into my ideas about colour theory and home decor.

 I've been mulling over the idea of "familiarity" after hearing a comment by a favourite teacher of mine, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. He answered a question about why we find it so hard to keep up a meditation practice by saying: "We are more familiar with our pain, our blockages, our darkness than with our bliss and warmth. We are trying to become more familiar with these qualities by going inside to our inner refuge. But what are you more familiar with your breakfast or your morning practice?  If you don't have your breakfast you will miss it because you know the immediate effect of your breakfast but you're not sure of the immediate effect of your practice so you go where there is no doubt.  If you trust your practice as much as you trust your breakfast your life will begin to change for the better." 

How many people have you heard say, "I can't meditate".  Maybe you have even said it yourself?  It seems simple and obvious really, that we are drawn to the familiar.  And yet we don't see how it blocks us from doing or being the things that we aspire to, those things that we have "intention" toward but somehow don't get to.  When we talk about familiarity we are really addressing the pull of habit in a slightly different way.  But somehow it seems more doable if I think to myself that I am increasing my familiarity with something, rather than feel that I am pushing against or trying to break a habit.  Perhaps it is just about language, but then language is a powerful thing.

I've also been looking at the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) difference between "thinking" and paying "attention".  This seems central to meditation and any awareness practice.  I am often startled to see that when I think I have been "aware" of something, I am actually just thinking about it.   Jan Frazier describes the difference  so clearly in her book, "The Freedom of Being" : "One of the great discoveries in the life of spiritual inquiry is the difference between attention and thought.... Attention is encounter, without any charge to it. It simply looks. There is a feeling of stillness... Attending is simply being with, acknowledging the presence of something.. There's no resistance, no mental activity, no reactivity... Thinking involves processing, applying prior learning, projecting ahead. There's a tendency to label, analyze, imagine and rehash... Thinking about something is more likely to stir anxiety, excitement, obsessiveness, unlike attending which is more calm."

36"x36" Ode to Jimmy Wright

And don't get me wrong I am not tossing out thinking with the bath water, it serves a perfectly good function (the bath water), in it's place.  But the fact is we would suffer less and lead lives of much more sanity if much of the time we simply attended or were aware of things.  Ideas and solutions could bubble up out of this spacious place of awareness, instead of the dog's breakfast that comes from chewing the bone of our familiar thoughts, especially when something troubles us (says she to herself).

I am all about the words this week. A friend has me listening to some Stephen Batchelor talks that he wants to talk about and I liked Batchelor's translation of delusion, the last of the 3 poisons that Buddhism refers to (greed, hate and delusion). Instead of delusion, Batchelor talks about bewilderment.  I certainly observe my own bewilderment often enough. I can cosy up to bewilderment. I reserve delusion for others :)

So there it is. I have spent part of my week pondering words and part purging old photographs in an effort to clear away some of the things in my home that I never use or even look at. Last week it was clearing away the snowbanks on the old paper trail.  It feels like a little ritual of "as on the outside, so is the inside". It must be Spring.  And of course there is always time to paint.  Hibernation seems to be lifting. I am rising earlier.  I feel more energetic to actually "do" things, rather than simply nestle into the lair.

Wishing you some good words of your own to explore, some glimpses of Spring and perhaps the inclination to clean a drawer or two in either your inner or outer homes, or both.