In the Circus of Fear, What Colour Are Your Tights?

There is so much happening in the small space between my ears right now. I'm trying to coax it out onto the page in some recognizable, sensible form, but I think it's more likely to spill out in a tangled ball, like something the cat dragged out of the knitting bag. I'd prefer it to be eloquent and wise but as the Rolling Stones once pointed out "you don't always get what you want."

I have had the great pleasure over the holidays of visiting and spending time on a lot of new blogs; art blogs and Buddhist blogs. I have found lots of sharing of wonderful new inspiring art book and some looking forward and setting of intentions for the year to come. Lots to savour and digest.

Even though the calendar has flipped over to the new year and the party ice has melted in the sink I am spending a few more days in holiday mode. Our daughter is here from out of town until Wednesday so regular programming has not yet returned to this channel. It's an interesting time of year, watching the pre-holiday energy build, reach it's peak and then end. A little year end symphony. The consensus on a lot of blogs is that it's nice to be back to our inspiring work of making art and looking forward.

Today I am aware of a slightly melancholy sense of it all. I always feel a little sad when the Christmas tree leaves the building which happened here on Saturday. In the past I would push those feelings away because sad was an uncomfortable feeling, but now I am okay with that slightly bittersweet sense of it. I usually like the sense of returning to the serene post tree-in-the-house-look but this year there is a slightly edgy feeling as I take inventory of all the things that have to be packed up for moving. I will not be making the house beautiful and returning to my work. I will be going through things and deciding what to keep and what to give away. I am feeling the uncomfortable pulsing of impermanence. Adventure I remind myself, think adventure, not trepidation. Or perhaps don't think at all!

And today we got up in the dark and rain and made the ferry trip over to Salt Spring Island to look for a new place to live. We returned in the dark and rain, at the other end of the day, no house in our eco-friendly shopping bag. I could feel a little mist of worry and fear settle on me as we pulled into the driveway. I got to see the inclination to want to have things solved and settled. The human inclination, I think. I sat with that nubbly, wavy, uncomfortable sense for a bit. I did my stint on the tight rope of fear where the trick is to stay with it, but not indulge it, to let it pass without falling off (no net in this circus). The clown on the edge of the stage kept shouting at me to keep my eye on the ball and have faith. I looked at him a bit crossly and told him he had the wrong act.

So I feel that edgy sense of danger and opportunity in the new year more poignantly this year than others. I will need to sit a lot and pack a lot and keep my rope walking tights nearby. And in deference to right speech I promise not to shout at the clown next time.

Impermanence in a Scrap of Paper

I am in a bit of a time lag here. I will rewind myself to Saturday because it seems worth mentioning. On Saturday we went to see the monks dismantle their sand mandala. It was a strange and crazy day and so we were late arriving and the gallery was full. We watched from outside the glass doors of the gallery until some folks left and there was space for us inside. I could watch myself feeling dis- appointed that we'd been late and couldn't hear the talk about the meaning of the mandala and the explanation of the ceremony. We had visited the mandala often during it's construction and sat a number of times for the morning chant. We had long been anticipating this event. There we were on the outside looking in. But somehow there was such good energy surrounding the event, so many smiling faces, that it was easy to let go of the disappointment and just watch; to see without hearing, to watch the babes in arms, the little girl standing and twirling a long strand of her mother's hair, the restless grown-up or two that moved back and forth through the crowd.

And finally the monks got out their big sheep skin duster (which amused me) and swept up the mandala, 3 weeks of painstaking, meticulous work swept up like a messy floor or a dusty table (ah I see it now a ktel commercial, if you buy 1 of these mandala sweepers right now, we'll throw in another one absolutely free. Operators are standing by to take your order.)

But in seconds the lama pulled his duster skillfully outward from the centre and the once beautiful detailed patterns and figures were gone, gone, gone. In an instant he had sliced through our cherished ideas that we can, that we should, hold on to things. If we're listening with our eyes the tiny motes of dust remind us that the stories of how we are and how life should be are just that; insubstantial, impermanent clouds of thought we gather around us. The dust of of impermanence, of changeability, mutability floats through the gallery settling invisibly on everyone.

In one moment life takes one form and then shifts to something different the next. One minute we are breathing, the next minute we aren't. One minute we love our partner, the next minute they have angered us or hurt us deeply. One minute our children are tiny and need us, the next they have moved out and have a life of their own. One moment something is filled with beauty, the next moment it is a grey amorphous mass (ah artists you know how this can happen!). This is the truth, yet we resist it with great effort. It scares us, unsettles us. We want to think we can hold on to things, the things we love and cherish, that they are solid and substantial and will be there for us when we think we need them. We spend a lot of time and energy on these holding on projects.

The monks want to remind us that this is not how the world works. They want us to get it at the deepest level, that everything is always in flux, down to the tiniest of particles. And that's okay. It is our wanting to grasp on to the log that is floating downstream that causes us to suffer. We need to learn this everyday in small ways so that when the time comes to really let go and move on from this world, we won't be shocked or surprised, that we will understand it as part of life. Understanding impermanence offers us the opportunity to appreciate the bittersweetness of what is here now. Enjoy. Drink deeply and let go. That is what the particles of sand are whispering to us.

At the end of the ceremony at the gallery, little bags of sand were offered to those who came to view. You can see me in the photo up above, collecting my little grains of greyness in a scrap of paper, from Barry Till, the Curator of Asian Art. I have them at home sitting under my fat orange, happy Buddha in the dining room, reminding me of the wonder and impermanent nature of my world.

Refining Our Lives

I have reinvented "Bubblegum Buddha". In her first incarnation she had no face or detailing. She was simply an ethereal emanation of a Buddha. I liked her then and I like her now. She has been a resident in my studio for a while and lately I have been reinventing, retouching, adding to some older paintings.

Isn't this a lot like what we do to ourselves? Isn't that the refining our practice, taking the base metal of ourselves and turning it to something precious that shines? As time goes on things call out for attention and/or change and we attend to them as seems appropriate. Not that we are always wiser, but if we pay attention and do the best we can, that's all life really asks for I think. The older faceless Buddha seemed clumsier, this one more delicate and detailed.

So it feels like some stage of life, some point on the path where I am pausing to look back and adjust the work I had previously done. I feel a little more skillful in adding the detail to my paintings. And this seems to be the result that "confidence comes with doing, with practice." The more I paint, the clearer it becomes what needs some tweeking in previous work. So in life. Perhaps the eye becomes clearer, the hand more skillful?

I think I can carry over this lesson into other parts of my life. It reminds me that in Malcolm Gladwell's most recent book, "Outliers" he talks about the 10,000 hour rule. Basically that's how long it takes to develop competency at any craft or activity.

The Dharma lesson that has been arriving at my doorstep recently has to do with my relation to others, mainly friends and neighbours. I have noticed myself becoming irritated in several instances lately and wondering "why can't I be more understanding, more compassionate". As we get ready to put our house on the market I feel irritated at the new tenant next door who has filled the front yard with large plastic toys and hangs towels and mats up and down the stair railing close to our windows. A friend tells me a story that's troubling her over and over again, in great detail. In my mind I know it is my self centred view that makes me feel irritated in these situations. I am thinking about me and mine. I am not thinking about them. I see myself as the centre of the universe and it causes me to suffer.

I am clear that it is not helpful for me or my friend to hear the same story of her problem over and over. I recognize her agitated telling of her story as a fine example of what our minds do. I listen and empathize for a bit and offer the suggestions that most of where we go is speculation and not so helpful. We move on to other subjects. I also realize that I need to hold the neighbours in some space in my heart other than "annoyance" and so I work with this. Only then will I be open to a possible solution to the problem.

So while these things may seem small and petty they are the heart of the Dharma practice for me. ....Working with what comes to you. Working with these small things I chip away at my habitual tendencies and work to free myself from another layer of greed, hate and delusion. The following quote by Chogyam Trungpa seems particularly apt for me this week: "Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy."

nger regard people as a drain on your energy.”

A Buddhist Poke In The Eye With A Sharp Stick?

We need art with our Dharma, don't you think? Otherwise the offering wouldn't be quite complete. Just a little art patch on a monk style bag. Functional art, wearable art, whaddya think?

And the Dharma on my mind doesn't tie in remotely with the art other than the Buddha is some how implicated. A lot of teaching came to me via yesterday's post. If you read the comments you might have noticed that someone googled ICARUS and it's spokesperson and they were not to be found anywhere on the internet. When I went to search I found a posting on "One City, One Dharma" where they had gone through a lot of back and forth regarding this writing on "Buddhism As Best Religion" and the sniffometer was pointing toward something smelling a little funny. The product of someone's creative pen?

Now this clever creative pen offered some interesting teaching. Because the message in the piece seemed pleasing to me I just accepted it without question. Nothing oddly skunky until some-one pointed out that it perhaps smelled a bit off. I didn't stop to wonder why all the clerics from other traditions would jump on the Buddhist bandwagon and leave their own religion languishing at the station in the dust. So my logic and reason were lulled to sleep when the writer tapped into my pride (in that I do think Buddhism is a preferable religion, if I had to choose). A cautionary note to self suitable for many occasions. We often easily believe things that uphold our current opinions.

And while it is good in many instances not to be suspicious, questioning is what the Buddha asked us to do. "Think about things," he said. "Make them your own. Don't just believe what I tell you." This instance gives me the opportunity to look at the fact that sometimes I can trust too much, too soon. It is an opportunity to remember that it's good to take time (ah, patience) and digest things prior to swallowing them whole. You can get a nasty stomachache from swallowing things whole, especially if they are a bit off. So a little patience combined with some attention would have been good seasonings to have poured on this little email.

But in the end I was extremely amused that the whole thing was an invention by a creative mind. Someone who knows Buddhism it would seem, and someone doing a little instructive Dharma, don't you think? Helping us see how we get egg on our face. I loved the bit at the end where the article says no Buddhist could be found to accept the award. Ironically many of us were patting ourselves on the back for belonging to or being associated with such a selfless group. And yet weren't we accepting the award by believing the story and passing it around? An amusing piece of writing with a lesson packing a bit of punch. Maybe Brad Warner wrote it in his sleep before he was wide enough awake to throw in a few four letter words. I gather he likes to go about poking people with sharp sticks. Although this one definitely got me in the funny bone.

Are You Surprised By Your Expectations?

Oh!

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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?