Paint A Starry Night Again

Does this look familiar? No it's not another slothful, shameless repost of recycled art. It actually is half of a new painting. It's a custom piece for someone who liked the colours and sentiments of the first, similar, but smaller work. This one is done on a 9"x12" cradled panel with more texture than the first work. I'll have to post the right hand side of the Buddha next time! I find myself drawn to work on board these days because I like how it can hold rough texturing of products like sludge and spackle and other mediums.

I feel a metaphor lurking in the sludgey shadows here. Somehow I am finding it is the roughness,craggy lines and bits of pattern that lend a texture to my work, a texture that adds character and richness, something extra to play with. Perhaps life's textured and rough spots do that too on a grander scale. (Forget the botox, kids, those lines add character!)

We often imagine how we'd like things to turn out, just to our liking; every day sunny, everyone agrees with us, we accomplish each challenge we face with ease. But life often has different plans and sometimes that's where we really develop vision and grow. We can become more compassionate, kinder humans sometimes, after we hit a few rough spots in the road. I heard an executive say one time that he never hires any upper management people that haven't had some sort of rough spot or failure in their life.

When I sit down with the empty board I never really know how a painting will work out, how one colour might show through another, how a rubbed off bit will add some interesting shading, how unexpected outcomes can improve the work (or how sometimes I have to wipe off and repeat and repeat, until things seem done). Life is like that too, good at showing us that ultimately we are not in control, that much is left to serendipity, karma and a bigger picture than our little self can imagine. It's process centred as opposed to results oriented. And sometimes it all takes practice, over and over and over.

So in the same flowing creek of thought that says, you can't stand in the same stream twice, so you can't paint the same painting twice. Working on a piece like this reminds me that we can't go backward, that the flow of life is always onward, and I get nervous when someone requests a specific piece. I have concerns about their expectations. And of course my little self worries that they won't like it. But there it is, practice in a nutshell. Just paint. It always makes me think of the Joni Mitchell quip when people are shouting out song requests to her on the live album "Miles of Aisles", "you know no one ever asked Van Gogh to paint "A Starry Night" again. I'm not so sure of that given the nature of our human tendency to go with the familiar, the known! And of course it is a compliment.

So that's what this little painting reminded me of as I worked away at it. It reminded me that it's all good, that I'm not in control and that I just need to do what needs to be done.

Rest Your Life On The Dharma

Ah, it's a slippery slope and I'm already at the bottom.  You don't want to hear about it.  Another piece of photo art instead of studio art.  As my friend the Buddhist monk and I sometimes chuckle we are "delinquent" types often ready to bend and play with the rules.  And yes I have excuses.  We delinquent types always do.  But I won't bore you with them.  

This delicious rock is from the beautiful Quadra Island and reminded me of an abstract painting lying there on the beach.  How could I not bring it home?  How could I not share it with you?  I could say something like "the Dharma rocks" but you won't catch me saying anything so foolish and age inappropriate as that, even if it does.  

And if I were to use this photo as a jumping off point for writing about the Dharma I would refer back the solid nature of that rock,  how it is such a good solid foundation to rest things on.  And from my earliest encounters with my Zen teacher I found that practice and the Dharma brought sanity to my life and gave me a foundation on which to make wiser, more wholesome choices in my daily life.  Not that I could always do it, not that I could always get it right, but the Dharma helped me point myself in that direction.  Dharma as bow, me as arrow.  As time went on I came to have a first hand understanding  about the suffering that leads to the end of suffering, instead of the suffering that leads to more suffering.  I could work with my life, now that was exciting stuff.

In my previous incarnation as a Dharma dabbler I felt battered about by life, the winds and waves of human interaction and emotions.  It made me crazy sometimes and I didn't understand why.  Why does this happen to me?  What am I doing wrong?  Trekking  the peaks and valleys of daily life just tired me out and puzzled me.  But the Dharma made the crazy, broken puzzle I lived in make sense.  It was a place to rest my longings and frustrations, a place of great logic and wisdom.  Suddenly the fuzzy bits started coming into focus.

I can no longer imagine how I lived my life without the Dharma to help me through the narrow spots, over the rapids, around the sharp broken bottles of life.  How do you work with your anger without the Dharma?  How do you understand the strange things (sometimes unkind things) that people do?  How do you have cancer without the Dharma?  How do you become kinder without the Dharma?  How do you learn to plunge in and savour fleeting chats with strangers without the Dharma?

And here is a wonderful quote from the Dhammapada that reminds me that the Dharma is like a sumptuous piece of cheesecake or chocolate cake, meant to be shared:
The gift of Dharma excels all other gifts.

The flavor of Dharma excels all other flavors

The pleasure of the Dharma excels all other pleasures.

One who has destroyed craving overcomes all sorrow. 
Pass it on.

What Is Your Work?

A Day's Work

Mixed Media on Matte Board

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

$25 includes shipping in North America

"Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it." the Dhammapada.  I bought a card with a beautiful Buddha and this quote on it when I was on my way to a Meditation retreat quite a few years ago.  It spoke to me because my koan at that time was "what am I supposed to be doing?"

Work has a lot of meanings and connotations.  At it's deepest level we talk about our life's work.  What is it?  For me there are two important aspects to our life's work and they aren't necessarily separate.

There is our spiritual work and if we are fortunate our spiritual work and our work in the world have an obvious connection.  They feel integrated somehow.  But if I had to say what the most important work is that we do in our lifetime here I believe without a doubt it is our spiritual work.  Here's a good example. My mother has known for a long time that not having love shown to her as a child resulted in her being unable to communicate love to others.  At 94, through the work we have done together, she has realized with great shock, the impact this has had on others.  When she talks about it I hear the deep regret in her voice and suggested that just having this realization is such a big accomplishment for a lifetime. I told her that this well could be her life's work.  I think it releases a lot of karma and allows for her to move past that position in her next life.  My friend the Buddhist monk suggests that my mother still has the opportunity to change her behaviour now, in this life time, to act on that realization.  While we are alive it is never too late.

Finding our work in the world can be confusing for a lot of us.  Not that long ago I used to quip "I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up."  Many people confessed that this was also true for them.  But it seems in the last couple of years I have committed to my art and writing.  Rather than doing it half heartedly or citing all the reasons it won't work, I have learned to just do it, to quote a running shoe commercial.  I don't ask questions, or tell myself it's foolish.  I don't get too attached to making a great sum of money from it.  I just follow what it seems good to do, stumbling along the way, getting up, dusting myself off and carrying on.  For the most part I have given up trying to understand it with my head.  These are my passions, what I feel called to do and I don't need to ask the unanswerable question, "why?"

Some people have the good fortune to be born knowing what their work is and the rest of us, it seems, need to spend some time being still enough to receive some insight on the question of what to do and then be willing to hear what comes up.  Step number 3 it seems is to just do it and have faith that we are doing what we are supposed to.  This doesn't mean we can't adjust our course or take input from other places, it just means that like so many things in our life, the direction comes from deep inside, from that "still, small voice" as my Zen teacher calls it.  And sometimes we have to be very quiet to hear it over the din of everyday life and all the adverts and mainstream culture that tugs us in different directions.  What are you hearing?

The Dharma Is Waving At You

I have been hijacked by the real world and become a faint shadow to the blog-osphere.  This implies that somehow the world in which we are commun-icating here is something less than real?  Which leads to the next question, what is reality anyway?  Oh, oh, I'm not going down that rabbit hole, Alice.

But I think you get my gist.  I have been preoccupied with the Bricks and Mortar, flesh & bones world of creating art, finishing work, organizing work, etc, meeting other artists and folks interested in art.  And sometimes I have been composing blog entries in my head but my fingers have not quite gotten to the keyboard.

We went to the Opera for the first time on Saturday and as always there was the Dharma, standing right in the middle of it all, waving at me.  Wherever you go, there it is!  It was the Magic Flute  and so many times during the wonderful pre Opera talk that we attended and during the show I wished I'd had a pen to jot down "that's Dharma".   So I forget many of the specific references but unbeknowningly Mozart was definitely speaking the Dharma which reminded me that all enduring art speaks some kind of truth and of course what else is the Dharma but an expression of eternal truth.  How could they not coincide?!

You could see how some of the characters in the story were simply aspects of the self, our poisons (greed, hate, delusion) our confusions and delusions.  And really what else is the search for love, which is the main tale in the Magic Flute, but our search for wholeness and happiness and harmony, uniting aspects of the self.  There was the symbol of 3 which apparently was supposed to represent the Free Masons, but is an archetypal symbol in both Christian and Buddhist religions.  There was so much more but I won't bore you with details.  It was a great evening of  story and music and  people watching, that reminded me of how delicious people are to watch in their wonderful variety and quirkiness, the delight of people dressed in their varied finery.  I could have been happy just to watch the Opera goers all evening.

And in two days of Open Studio I got to watch myself and as a young Dharma friend expressed so well "move back and forth between hope and fear".    I might not necessarily call it fear but I could see all the expectations of how it "should go" and the disappointment when these expectations were not meant.  Mornings were quiet, afternoons busier.  I had some wonderful Dharma chats with friends.  One friend who has been doing some very hard spiritual work talked about how painful it was.  And then we could talk about "the suffering that leads to the end of suffering" which is the hard stuff but you are doing your work and and then there's the suffering that leads to more suffering when we're just falling in the hole.  Another friend I hadn't seen in a long time and struggles with addiction issues talked about how strong the draw is to these things and how hard it is to get unstuck.  She has done some hard work lately too and said she could see her own "willfulness" more clearly now.

I met some delightful fellow artists and one particular treat was to find a woman whose work I love and have admired visiting my studio.  So while the weekend was perhaps quieter than I'd hoped for it was rich with Dharma and connections.  And as my friend the monk always reminds me "we can never really please the little self".  I reminded myself that we never really see the big picture, that our expectations are formed out of a pretty limited world view.  And in the evening as I read my bedtime bits of the Dhammapada I was reminded of this in Easwaran's commentary," ... to make progress we become eager for opportunities to go against self-will, especially in personal relationships. There is no other way to gain detachment from the self-centred conditioning that burdens every human being.  The Buddha calls this "swimming against the current", the concerted, deliberate effort to dissolve self interest in the desire to serve a larger whole, when eons of conditioning has programmed us to serve ourselves first."  I am sure these opportunities await us all today out in the world somewhere.  May you find them, rise to them and savour them!

Day 100 - A Ferry Ride With The Buddha

Well  this is it the 100th day of Dharma. How did that happen?  That might be my cue to talk about impermanence but I don't think I will.  A hundred days can pass and we hardly remember what happened between then and now, such is the fleeting nature of life. I love this quote attributed to the Buddha, "This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning."  So how important are all those little things that go on in between then and now.  I'm thinking about the things we fret about; mostly gone without a trace.  That's instructive for how to live our lives, don't you think?

But that's not really what I want to talk about right now.  My bedtime reading has been the Dhammapada for the last little while (I'm still on the intro!).  Last night I was reading about "Turning the Wheel of the Dharma" and it felt like it had some significance in terms of my 100 Days of Dharma.  That's what we're doing here aren't we, turning the wheel of the Dharma, thinking about our lives in terms of the Dharma, considering the teachings of the Buddha and then adjusting our daily course according to what we find and what it seems good to do.

After his enlightenment when the Buddha was questioned about who he was he answered "I am awake" (budh, from the sanskrit root, to wake up).  When he started teaching he said:  "I have found the deathless, the unconditioned: I have seen life as it is."  And really isn't that what we're aiming for, the truth, the end of suffering when we practice.  To see our lives like the movies or dramas they are and watch them, unattached, with joy and amusement and sometimes with a great big hanky.  That is the aim I think, to be passionately involved in life and at the same time know that it's all okay.  Haven't we simply been inspired by figures like the Buddha to believe that it is possible to attain this state.  They say that he was pictured as a ferryman asking the question, "Anyone for the other shore?"  Man I'm interested in one of those tickets! 

And what's the fare?  Well it's not cheap.  And the seats?  Best in the house.  The meditation cushion.  Such an important thing to remember, that the key to practice, to attainment is sitting, the foundation of all our work with the Dharma.  How did the Buddha attain Nirvana, not from talking or reading, or wandering, or thinking but through disciplined  sitting.  He sat through all the assaults of Mara, through desire and doubt.  Without the sitting we won't make much progress and even with the sitting it is a lifetime process.  So I am thinking about the important things today and sitting is one of them.  And I think part of why I decided to write 100 Days of Dharma is for the discipline, which is the same as getting to the cushion, doing what needs to be done, over and over and over.  Building that muscle to do it whether we feel like it or not, whether we are tired, or depressed, or grumpy, or sick, or ecstatically joyful, or filled with unrest.

And why do we study the Dharma?  Why do I sit?  Well I think we always start with the wish to free ourselves from suffering.  And as time goes on, whether consciously or unconsciously we are adding to the compassion in the world, we are sending off little threads of wisdom and compassion without even knowing it, kind of like little human prayer flags.  We contribute to the world in a positive way.  Just by looking at what we do and making choices, active informed choices about how to live our lives.  And perhaps as time goes on our presence becomes a little calmer, more grounded and just our energy contributes in a positive way to the world.  This is what we are doing I think, one person at a time, one day at a time, one breath at a time.

So while 100 Days of Dharma have passed, I will continue to write about life and the Dharma as things come up that seem important to me.  It has been interesting to see that I was never really stumped for a topic, that something always presented itself, though I often wondered if it would.  Maybe I'd run dry like an old well and just cough and choke and sputter out some letters of the alphabet and embarrass myself in public (maybe I have and I am too dense to notice!)  So it has been a real privilege to share a 100 Days of Dharma with you and I expect we will continue to visit as we all have purchased a lifetime ticket to the other shore.  May your journey be a good one, filled with joy and sorrow and passion and gusto.

Bows to you all.

Sunday's Mud Bath

Yesterday was a day when you could wear a Spring coat and feel the sun on your back.  We met friends at a little Italian place tucked away in the corner of a downtown plaza and  feasted on grilled vege and pasta and then took to the streets.  We wandered and chatted and passed a Saturday afternoon in the most pleasant of ways.  When they headed for home to rescue their dog from standing cross legged by the door we browsed in a favourite book store and I ended the afternoon by snagging a "just like new" copy of "The Dhammapada" translated by Eknath Easwaran. 

Here is a quote from the beginning commentary that felt appropriate for today:  "Nothing in it (the world) happens by chance -- not because events are predestined, but because everything is connected by cause and effect.  Thoughts are included in this view, for they both cause things to happen and are aroused by things that happen.  What we think has consequences for the world around us, for it conditions how we act."

I am thinking about this quote not only because it is a very good basic description of karma but it is a good thing for me to consider in light of how the day went.  It started off fine, with a sit and some household chores, a nice walk on the ocean path with my partner.  The sun was shining and the path filled with Sunday strollers and their 4 legged friends (egads there was even a ginger cat on a leash!)  One of us was feeling grumbly (and I won't mention names) and that's where the conversation headed.  By the time we got home I was feeling grumbly too, perhaps doubly grumbly as my efforts to cheer fell flat.

Now that should have been the occasion to regroup or let go but it seems that dark little cloud of a mood gathered.  It didn't really take much to send me into a funk, thinking of all the things that weren't turning out as I'd like.  And it was interesting to watch the momentum of the darkening energy.  It seemed larger than warranted like it had some origin somewhere deeper that was waiting to surface.  And I find it's a tricky thing.  It is unpleasant so what do you do? Are you pushing it away at this point or are you letting it go?  Is it possible to just let go or do you have to wait for it to run it's course and pass of it's own accord.  Was I hanging on to the misery just because that's what I do sometimes?  Is it an a habitual tendency of mine?  Is it the little self just engaging in a some drama to stave off boredom?

In the end the quote from the Dhammapada reminded me to be careful about how I use my mind, to be more vigilant.  My grumpy thoughts "were aroused" by things that happened, as the Dhammapada pointed out, but then my subsequent thoughts "could cause things to happen", a little domino effect.  It reminded me that feeling grumpy was really a kind of sloppy, lazy response to someone else's grumpy thoughts.

Both of us fell into wrong view by allowing our mood to be determined by situations that were happening out there in the world.  You know those little things that influence your mood.  Our real estate plans were not turning out as we'd hoped, house fix up's and work projects not progressing as quickly or smoothly as hoped for.  There's always something, if you want to see it that way.  Or you could say, as the Dhammapada points out "nothing happens just by chance" and a bigger picture is playing itself out.  Perhaps the timing is not right for what "I want" right now or perhaps this is an opportunity to learn a little more about perseverance.  Maybe it is an opportunity to practice acceptance of what is rather than insisting that the universe comply with my desires.  Here is one of the big causes of suffering, the gap between what is and what we want.  Now of course this never means that we should collapse ourselves into inaction but it does offer us an opportunity to look at what we're  doing and contemplate our next options.   So as I head off to find a cup of tea I will think about this line from the verse on the elephant from the Dhammapada: "Be vigilant, guard your mind against negative thoughts. Pull yourself out of bad ways as an elephant raises itself out of the mud."