Working With Hope, Fear And Blocks

Field Notes 16"x16"

Life is full of painting right now. My work table is covered in open tubes of paint, bits of oily rag, and multiple canvases and panels. I am doing an online course called "The Sacred Arts" with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, though nothing about my workspace looks sacred. The focus of the course  is creativity and part of that is working with what blocks us.

It is a given that true art, whatever it's form, comes from somewhere other than the head. Does it come from somewhere deep inside us or are we tapping into something outside of us, or maybe a combination of both? A lot of artists will tell you," I didn't feel like I painted that or wrote that, I felt like something came through me."

In the west we put a lot of value on our thinking minds.  The old "I think, therefore I am" permeates us at such a deep level we hardly notice it.  We believe in the power of our minds and in part we are right.  What we believe strongly influences what we do.  And yet it is not the whole picture.  My old Zen teacher used to say, "the mind is a good servant, but not a very good master.  This sounds a little medieval but there is truth in it. Sometimes the thinking mind is not enough.  Sometimes the thinking mind is the obstacle.

How To Get There 16"x 16"

In this course we have been exploring what blocks us in expressing our authentic creative selves.  We've been exploring fear and hope as blockages to our work.  Pema Chodron says the human condition consists of bouncing back and forth between hope and fear.  To allow our creative voices to speak we need to move beyond these conditions. Working from a place of stillness and spaciousness allows us to be open to what wants to be expressed through us. And yet we can't brush aside or ignore those hopes and fears.  What are your fears about your creative self and work? Do you fear you are a talentless lout? Do you hope it will be easy? Those thoughts flying below your radar might be standing between you and your best work.

On Mountain Time 12"x 16"

The course is a reorientation for me. I have big tendency to work from my head, to muck, to get frustrated, to believe I can't yet hope I will. (I think that last bit should be added to the definition of insanity!) And in the end it is about the having habits that support us and spending time working.  Ultimately our work will teach us everything we need to know if we pay attention. And the process is transferable to the ultimate art, the most precious canvas of our own lives.  Whatever we learn from our art practice seeps out into our life and the other way around. It is a rich, interconnected tapestry that we have the good fortune to be weaving. May your needle be sharp and your glasses never far away.

Thinking About Hope (and a little art)

Here's a new little 8"x8" Buddha called "Buddha In The Sky With Diamonds".  I would have been more short winded if the Beatles had treated Lucy with more brevity.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.  I have been sneaking a little more painting time this week, stealing time from the garden (a thief with paint & garden dirt on their jeans).  I have been so inspired by the wonderful art blogs out there (Lynne Hoppe, Michele Meister and on and on) that the studio is calling louder than the neighbours roosters.   And this weekend we took in some live art.  First we went to a "Art Off The Fence" on Pender Island with some friends.  The weather was stellar, there was great art and the location was stunning.  Here's a little peek.

When I typed the file name I realized I called it Art Offence.  I am guilty of a few of these!

And as a small diversion, we decided to capture Mt. Baker for Canada. It seemed so close, officer, we thought it must be ours.  So we raised the flag, passed go and took a "get out of jail free" card.

We also took in The Sooke Fine Arts Show which was totally amazing.  The quality of the work was incredible.  I was totally smitten by the encaustic monk done by Marlowe Jaxen.  It sounds a bit like the monk had terminal illness, but all you artists know what I'm talking about.

And of course there was Dharma chat with Dharma friends.  The topic flying around my old Sangha these days is one surrounding "hope".  In conventional terms we think of "hope" as something positive, something we should cultivate, right?  At first sniff, hope smells quite pleasant but when you breath a little more deeply you catch the scent of something slightly off.  The Oxford dictionary defines hope as "expectation combined with desire."  Hmm, from a Buddhist point of view, we're not starting with the best recipe ingredients, are we?  Hope implies something we want in the future.  It may be something perfectly wonderful, like world peace or a new subaru station wagon.  And baked into that hope are the seeds of suffering, if we don't get what we want.

Pema Chodron says something like, "we bounce back and forth between hope and fear", this is the common human state.  When we hope we may also feel afraid that we won't get what we hope for.  And then there is the disappointment when we don't get what we hope for, which inevitably happens if we're filling our shopping baskets with a list of hopes.  And after a while we feel the bruise of all this bouncing back and forth.  In fact we may feel like a human bruise.

This does not negate that in this everyday life we need to have plans and aspirations.  And of course our lives are filled with the activity needed to bring these things to fruition.  But what we're really aiming for is to accept what happens along the way.  We plan to go on holiday but then mom gets sick.  We aspire to be a better parent and then we goof up.

We want to be mindful of where we're aiming ourselves and take the necessary actions. We don't want to stand there like Dorothy with our eyes closed, clicking our heels together, hoping that we'll get to Kansas.  Hope may not be our best strategy.  I hope you know what I mean.

Objects In The Rearview Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

There has definitely been a samsaric quality to the last several weeks. And that's okay, as long as samsara proves to be an educational experience (ah, I have spent many years in Samsara Elementary). What's important is that the suffering you encounter is the suffering that leads to the end of suffering as opposed to the suffering that just leads to more suffering. There has been a quality to some of the days like the dark, foggy fumblings of a bad dream. As in a nightmare, unpleasant things happen and I wander aimlessly in search of solutions. Only on this occasion I am awake, well, sort of.

In this little personal nightmare I am suffering from the effects of stress and environmental toxins brought on by house renovations. There have been the usual host of surprise findings and expenses. We were warned, but like so many things you don't really pay attention until the tarantula lands in your lap. For some reason even though I chose no VOC paint, cork underlay for the wood floors I completely overlooked the issue of off gassing from new cabinetry. And while I chose lovely cement coloured porcelain tile I neglected to consider the chemicals in the grouts and glues used in plumbing sealants. And so what I left unconsidered came to haunt. Isn't that a good Dharma lesson? Doesn't that hold in so many of the arenas of our life? In this case chemical sensitivities stirred with a vengeance. My body offered yet another lesson.

So while my home normally feels like a place refuge, a place to recharge and regroup, I got to experience life with nowhere to take refuge. In a strange way I was homeless, ungrounded, as home became a place that made me feel ill. I had nowhere to hide. The inclination to spin stories of how this would end were enormous. The call of the sirens of depression were alluring. What now? Do I need to rip my kitchen out? Do I need to move? Thrown into all this were some social obligations that left me feeling like a wandering ghost, moving from place to place, going through the motions, feeling unwell, feeling sad that I was unwell, imagining all others as well. Samsara on the personal big screen.

I tried to muster the stations of faith, reminding myself to look up, rather than despair. One moment I could remember, the next I was lost in confusion. I imagined the worst. My physical symptoms seemed stuck. No matter how much wheatgrass juice I drank, how many salads I ate, how much oil of oregano I sucked back, my symptoms were stuck. I followed the little trail of breadcrumbs toward a solution. I even had a nightmare about being trapped in a cul de sac in a hillside neighbourhood! I inched along like a sad little, blind worm. I called a naturopath I have seen. I researched ways of dealing with off gassing. I wandered, disheartened in samsara, looking for an escape hatch. I asked for help. Sometimes I wallowed, sometimes I groped my way forward.

And while I am a rather staunch believer in the worst outcome, this time I was proven wrong. I followed a thread to a biological dentist (my cold symptoms had morphed into dental pain). Surprisingly this grey haired, Harry Potter glassed, wizard helped dislodge my stuck physical symptoms with his bag of holistic tricks. Another day as I sorted lethargically amongst some papers I found a pamphlet for a product from AFM that when painted on cabinetry, minimizes offgassing. Slowly I was making headway and revisiting the land of the living as I wobbled back and forth between hope and despair. Slowly I was cultivating a landscape of possibility.

I learned that the stories I had conjured were habitual delusions and that yes, Virginia sometimes there is a Santa Claus (no dental work required!). I learned how hard it is to rest in the unknown, how it is so uncomfortable that I often prefer a bad bedtime story to no story at all. I learned that some deeply entrenched fears habitually send me heading straight for the panic button. This time around I noticed there is another button on the dashboard. Faintly I read it's tiny letters, "equanimity".

It has been a long, tiring couple of weeks. And there it is, samsara receding in the rearview mirror. But I am reminded that vigilance is an important quality in this life of the Dharma. Sometimes you find your reminders in the strangest places: printed on the bottom of that rearview mirror I find the words: "Objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear."

The Taste of Attachment

Another enso. Another day. More Thoughts.

"Not knowing how to work with thought means one is controlled by thoughts. Knowing how to work with thought means that thought is brought into awareness and used either for positive purposes and virtuous action or is liberated into its empty essence. This is how thought is utilized in the path. In the same way, we can bring delusion, suffering, and any experience whatsoever into the path. But to do so we must understand that the essence of all that arises is empty. When we do, then every moment of life is free and all experience is spiritual practice: all sound is mantra, all form is pure emptiness, and all suffering is a teaching. This is what is meant by “transforming into the path.” - Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Teaching, suffering, attachments, lots of thoughts all mixed together in a gooey stew. This was today's meal. And when it was served up we got to chew on some hard bits and some bitter tastes we didn't much care for but there you have it, life stew 101.

You need all the tastes, salty, sour, sweet, bitter and pungent to create a really memorable dish. Today's meal was made up of the news that the owners of this lovely property are not ready to sell it. While we understand, we were filled with sadness and disappointment. We got to see how attached we'd become, how we rested our hopes on a few spoken sentences. And how this imbued meaning, these thoughts created suffering. Simple story. And the work was to not deny our disappointment but to spend some time with these weighty feelings, shed a few tears and not run with a story. Not to call ourselves foolish for harbouring hope, not to incriminate others for speaking words that fostered hope, but simply to know this is a common human dance. If we were wiser beings we might have been completely open to whatever came along. But being lesser mortals we drifted in and out of sadness and disappointment

But nothing is ever wasted if you learn from it. We learned how quickly hope can build and how little is needed to fuel it. And we learned that it's all okay. No one did anything wrong. It is an opportunity now to move in a different direction. My old Dharma teacher always said, "a no is as good as a yes". It is an opportunity to look up and have faith and trust that things work themselves out, that there is a bigger picture that we don't see.

And as we ate our dinner we remembered to have gratitude for these folks who have generously shared their beautiful home with us. It was a wonderful, magical welcome to the island. We look forward to the next step into the great unknown. May life bring you what you need.

Dharma Demons & A Trauma To The Head

I have been awol from the blogging world this week. If I had to write a note to the teacher it might look something like this: "Carole has been absent this past week because of a severe trauma to the head. She incurred this while trying to build an iweb site and register a domain name. She is still a bit dizzy and more stunned than usual so please excuse her from gym class."

Anyway the end result of banging my head against the internet is that you can visit www.zendotstudio.com and see an online portfolio which may be useful to me for more purposes than knocking myself silly.

I have noticed a couple of Dharma demons who visited me this week. The first one is what I would call an "habitual tendency", a term used by my Zen teacher. Over at Full Contact Enlightenment she links to an article which describes our "emotional signature" (which sounds a lot like habitual tendency). Don't you love that term, emotional signature? So we can say to friends, "Oh yes I signed that little drama we had yesterday with my emotional signature. Do you like the little flourish on the s or the way I always forget to dot the i?" No, not so much?" Anyway check out this piece by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, it is a very interesting read. And looks like he has a book coming out this fall called "Rebel Buddha". I love that title. I don't get too attached to words do I?

But I have digressed. Remember the Dharma demon I referred to a few thousand words back? My partner got sick, either a touch of the flu or food poisoning or something like that, on Monday. Well for me, a little alarm button goes off, all whiny, a fearsome little buzzer that goes something like: oh no, I hope I don't get this. I always catch everything. I don't want to be sick. I hate being sick. I will probably catch this, I always do." says she who has been shell-shocked by a number of illnesses in her adult life. I recognized the little refrain right away and immediately called in the mind to do a little remedial work. " We've got an emotional clean-up in aisle 6. And call out the neural pathway crew to lay in a new groove and put up "don't go there "sign on the old road." The crew did their work rather efficiently and while I imagined feeling a little unwell, the week passed sans stomach upset.

Demon #2 dropped in for a little visit yesterday while we were chatting with a friend about finding a house and property to buy here on the island. Several small, off-handed remarks by the chatee (or was he the chatter?) threw me into spasms of fear. Oh no, what if we can't find a place? What if everything is too expensive? too small? too ugly? Yada yada yada.

I recognized how little it takes to awaken those demons of fear and worry, a classic human habitual tendencies, I think. We bounce back and forth between fear and hope, I once heard Pema Chodron say. And again, once I could see what old monkey (or was that gorilla) mind was up to he collapsed like one of those inflatable clowns (not before he'd bounced around my mental landscape for a bit).

So that was my week, pursued by demons, brutalized by digital thugs. In between I had enough time to have lunch with friends in Victoria and deliver some art to ArtCraft for their summer show. How's your week been?

Paper Buddhas & Tennis Balls

Here's a paper Buddha. Somehow it called to me as I looked through iphoto this morning. You've heard of paper tigers? I feel a bit like a paper Buddha these days.

We have been scrambling to keep the house neat as a pin, refreshed with flowers, garden watered as the gazillion folks make their way through our house to see if they'd like to buy it. After having to be out of the house all day we return to feedback and requests for more showing times. We feel the need to take care of our tenant who lives downstairs and not subject her to too much stress and visits. This is life in a faster lane than I usually live it.

I get to see the inclination to run with stories the mind creates and how emotions easily take hold when I am tired and stressed. I see my Taurus nature to get a little "uppity" when negative information is directed at me.

It is a prime opportunity to hold my seat and just let it all wash over me like a play. I am watching a movie really, just seeing it all unfold and yet..... it is so easy to get caught up in this little scene or that, to cling to what seems good and true to me.

There I am bouncing back and forth between hope and fear like a little tennis ball. It is a tiring thing, living life as a neon green tennis ball. Sometimes I take time out and decide with mindfulness that I will spend some time on the side lines, just me in green furry-ness, sitting peacefully on the edge of the court.

So today I am reminding myself to hold my seat as offers are called for at noon and to not go with the stories, to just let things unfold. This is my aim for the day, to enjoy my adventure, the movie that is my life, to keep my wits and not be drawn down the river of great emotion, that swirls with muddy confusion. I wish the same for you as you go about your day.

Tasting Life: Sweet, Salty, Sour, Pungent Or Bitter?

I just received my complimentary copy of "Buddhadharma Magazine" and I will have to post my art that appeared there as the credits that often appear in the "gutter" (which is the inside edge along the fold of the magazine) got lost. I had so much fun with that one when they suggested I look in the gutter for the credits. No I couldn't find myself in the gutter, although I know I spend some time there on a regular basis! Anyway I will get credit in the next issue which is just fine.

But what I am getting around to is a piece by Ezra Bayda, a Zen teacher whose clear, pragmatic writing I like a lot. In his Buddhadharma commentary called "The False Promise" he talks about how we spend a lot of time, years in fact trying to "be free of the anxious quiver of being". What a great image, "the anxious quiver of being." It can be almost too much to bear sometime.

And I think if we're honest most of us go there, trying to escape the anxious quiver. We embrace and lean into the comfort and try and get the uncomfortable out of the way as quickly as possible. We're hoping through our practice that we'll become less angry, less fearful, less gripped by our emotions, more clear and wise, less greedy. Some look forward to some sort of "enlightenment". We might hope to be calm and tranquil or clear, maybe blissful. We all spend some time with our hopes.

But Bayda points out: "One of the hardest things to understand in practice is that we don't have to fulfill our idealized pictures of how we're supposed to be or what life is supposed to be. All we have to do is experience and work with what our life is right now. It doesn't matter what arises. Nor does it matter how we feel about it. This may be hard to accept, but all that matters is whether we can honestly acknowledge what is going on and then stay with the present-moment reality of the experience."

So if we're attentive we will see ourselves in our little games, wanting, hoping, expecting. We'll see ourselves trying to control our environment or trying always to figure things out. Why did this happen, what does it mean? As our house hit the market on Thursday I could see this. Until now we have just been working away, focused on the many hours of painting, sprucing and tidying that went into preparing the house for sale. What, the closets need to be neat as a pin, all the kitchen cabinets too, and the basement? But underlying all this work is some expectation that this will make the house sell. I even (for shame) snuck into the yard next door and tidied the pile of old barbecues and strollers that sat in clear view of one of our windows. Pragmatic yes? Am I trying to control outcomes? Yes. I did it out of frustration and longing after several friendly chats with the upstairs neighbours produced no tidying results.

But for me where I really get lost is in the "how I feel about it" part. I love working with what arises, that is my passion, seeing where I hope, seeing how I try to control or make sense of the unknowable. But I am easily lost in the "I wish that didn't make me so mad" or "I wish I was more compassionate", or "I shouldn't feel that way."

So Bayda's article really called out to me, reminding me that it's all okay, the passing clouds of the day. Yes I can do my practice and yes it may change me in the long run but it's really about just being here with "the anxious quiver of being"

There is lots of grist for the mill as our house hits the market, as I prepare to do my mother's paper work and settle her affairs. I will even confess to using a feng shui method to help with the sale of the house, (hoping in action??) that Erin from Dragon Horse told me about. It's a fun little tidbit that you want to know, right? She gave me a little red envelope. In it you put some dirt from your garden, something metal from your kitchen and a piece of wood from a baseboard. You throw all this into a fast running river! Have I resorted to magical thinking or am I just working with unseen energies?

So there it is. Our life as the path. Mostly we know this but it is so easy to loose our way. What comes to us is our practice, not our ideas of how practice or life should or shouldn't be. Each little morsel of our experience is as flavourful as the next if we just let the taste rest on our tongue, not preferring the sweet to the bitter.

Painting The Buddha

This Buddha is part of a large piece (30x40") which has 3 Buddhas in it and is probably the largest piece I've done.  The piece starts with squares of colour and pattern, an abstract painting really, and then the outline of three Buddhas rest on the background.  It took a long time to complete with lots of staring at it and reworking and leaving it rest for periods of time.  At one point the colour was completely different and the Buddhas were simple coloured silhouettes.  It was in fact a totally different painting.  But it wasn't quite right.  It was flat and tentative.  In the end I am happy with the piece.  It is alway a feeling rather than any sense of logic that dictates what it is good to do next and when a piece is actually done.   My work in the studio teaches me a lot about how to live the rest of my life.  I learn about patience and perseverance and riding out difficult emotions. 

It's a bit of a puzzle sometimes in deciding what to do with a piece, like the experiment of life.  I often know something doesn't work but can't quite figure out then and there how to make it work.  It can feel frustrating, accompanied by the sense that maybe this time I might just have to chuck it in the end.  But somehow, if I pay attention and keep going  it always seems to come out the other end.  I like some end results better than others, but mostly  things are reworked until I have that sense of completion and a sense that they are as they should be.  It makes for a long process sometimes.  There are days when I am on a roll and things go well and there are days when nothing seems to work, things get glued on upside down and all the paint needs to be wiped off and reworked the following day!  I have learned to just be with the days that don't work, for the most part.  There are days when things move so slowly that my feet seem stuck in molasses.  I have learned that I am mostly slow and meticulous and my process is long and windy for the most part.  

Today it was dark and rainy and I wasn't feeling very motivated.  There was an unidentified darkness hanging around.  I didn't like the look of what I was working on and really didn't want to get started.  But I finally did anyway.  I suspended judgement and just worked, quietly and attentively.  And surprisingly by the end of the painting day I was pleased with what had emerged.  It was so interesting to watch the resistance.  Lunch took a long time, then I looked at a magazine.  I knew I was working in an "uninspired" sort of space but still I persevered and as the Dharma would have it, this feeling, this state passed and I felt the strength and energy of not giving in to my old friends "sloth and torpor"  

There is so much Dharma in anything we do, in the process, how we work, how we approach our work, how we use our minds, and the emotions that rise and fall, like tiny gusts of wind or huge tropical storms of angst and pain.  Just energy passing through really.  But there we are liking the energy that feels "good" and labeling as "undesirable" the darker energy.  In the end if we can suspend judgement it is all just energy.  From my painting I learn to just stick with it and not judge.  I get to see how I never really know where I'm going or how things will turn out.  It is not necessarily dependent on my state of mind or feelings at the beginning of the task.  I may start out feeling a little low and have a great studio day and vice versa.  It reminds me that my job is just to do what has to be done,  and not trouble myself with the rest, with thinking about or anticipating the results.

I am reminded of my friends comment, that as she looks for a job and a place to live, she moves between hope and fear, back and forth.  But it doesn't really matter.  If we can manage to stay detached from these states and not believe the little stories that swirl in our hearts and minds then it is all okay.  If we can remember not to prefer hope over fear, we are truly enlightened.  That is our work really.  And as my teacher would say, it is all good.