Cézanne and Nature’s Eternity
The most recent addition to the awakened eye website is Rupert Spira’s excellent essay on Paul Cézanne, Nature’s Eternity. It’s actually one of a collection of essays in Rupert’s book The Transparency of Things – highly recommended reading for anyone interested in nondual awareness and its deepest implications. The following excerpt presents the first few paragraphs from Nature’s Eternity:
Paul Cézanne said, “Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn’t it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity.”
That statement must be one of the clearest and most profound expressions of the nature and purpose of art in our era.
What did Cézanne mean, standing in front of a mountain, Mont St. Victoire, one of the most solid and enduring structures in nature, when he said, “Everything vanishes, falls apart…?”
Cézanne was referring to the act of seeing.
We do not perceive a world outside Consciousness. The world is our perception of the world. There is no evidence that there is a world outside the perception of it, outside Consciousness.
The seen cannot be separated from seeing and seeing cannot be separated from Consciousness.
….. continued
~ Rupert Spira, Nature’s Eternity.
From his book, The Transparency of Things.
Read the whole essay at the awakened eye website
meditative process made visible
How does one define meditative process or practice? In the context of the awakened eye website, meditative artisanship (drawing, painting, crafting, sculpting …) is taken to mean working in way that stills the mind and disappears the self. The artisan-identity melts and is one with a creative rhythm referred to as flow.
For some, this occurs almost automatically when they begin work – in this case it would seem that they are creating from an already-still mind. zen calligraphy would be a good example.
For other artisans however, intention and application are required, hence the term ‘practice’.
For some artisans their work/practice becomes obsessive and addictive – with or without negative implications. (yayoi kusama, for example.)
For others ‘flow’ is quickly recognized as one’s natural state – the “way things are meant to be,” to quote rollo may.
Meditative process and engagement with flow is a common experience among artisans, although they might not refer to the experience in those terms. And many artists who practice meditation proceed to create ‘visionary’ or ‘mystical’ artworks – making images rather than paintings. In the context of this site these artists are not included.
The reason for this is simple: true meditation is a journey which leaves the self, its thoughts, ideas and opinions behind. The ego-artist-self doesn’t like this at first, and when anthropomorphic images arise in the imagination, it very quickly recognizes them and is comforted. The next step is an incredibly subtle projection of one’s identity into the image.
This is where the meditative artisan’s practice departs quite radically from that of the visionary artist – they don’t settle for the infinite array of images the brain is capable of generating. They wait for the end of thought. They wait for the silent mind. It takes a certain complex combination of personal experience and disposition – coupled with curiosity and courage – to enter into this no-thing-ness and await the clarity of action that inevitably emerges.
Action, not idea or design.
This is not to say that all meditative art will be non-figurative or entirely abstract. (Still Life can open a window onto the infinite: see amanda robins.) What it does imply is that there will be no accompanying narrative. The meditative artist doesn’t have things to say. He or she simply has things to make.
source – the awakened eye website
in total attention there is no center
I do not know if you have ever noticed that when you give total attention there is complete silence.
And in that attention there is no frontier, there is no center, as the “me” who is aware or attentive.
That attention, that silence, is a state of meditation.
~ J Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti had quite a lot to say about nondual perception. You can find some excerpts at the awakened eye website, along with links to sites connected with his work and places to purchase his books.
seeing without words
When you take photographs, just before you click the shutter, your mind is empty and open, just seeing without words. When you stand in front of a blank sheet of paper, about to make a painting or a calligraphy, you have no idea what you will do. Maybe you have some plan for a painting, or you know what symbol you want to calligraph, but you don’t actually know what will appear when you put brush to paper. What you do out of trust in open mind will be fresh and spontaneous. Opening to first thought is the way to begin any action properly.
~ Jeremy Hayward
Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. IV, #3
“I” is just a swinging door
breathscribe contributed a little prayer for Miriam (scribbler’s mum)
and some words from Shunryu Suzuki on breathing in and breathing out
gratitude!
acrylic light-reflective pigments, gold leaf,
silk paper, textured ground, dragonfly wing
When we practice zazen our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say “inner world” or “outer world,” but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, “I breathe,” the “I” is extra. There is no you to say “I.” What we call “I” is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no “I,” no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.
~ Shunryu Suzuki
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
perceiving without naming
We have forgotten what rocks, plants, and animals still know. We have forgotten how to be – to be still, to be ourselves, to be where life is: Here and Now.
Whenever you bring your attention to anything natural, anything that has come into existence without human intervention, you step out of the prison of conceptualized thinking and, to some extent, participate in the state of connectedness with Being in which everything natural still exists.
To bring your attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal does not mean to think about it, but simply to perceive it, to hold it in your awareness.
Something of its essence then transmits itself to you. You can sense how still it is, and in doing so the same stillness arises within you. You sense how deeply it rests in Being – completely at one with what it is and where it is. In realizing this, you too come to a place of rest deep within yourself.
~ Eckhart Tolle
Stillness Speaks
I in the Nothing
The dusky darkness spread like the network of a great tree. In an elm the thrush was singing. He was so hidden and one with the bushy twigs that I could only see him by his tail which twitched when his song altered. Everything else was motionless except a broken twig which stirred and swung by a strip of bark. As I went along I made an effort to climb out and get into these things – into the mysterious darkening and sealing of the earth, the quietening that is as the loveliest psalm of rest. And at last I did. I stood leaning on a gate. I was behind the sky. I was in the ground. I was in the space between the trees. My meaning grew in the earth and the firmament – I in the Nothing in which all is related.
The Winter Journal, p39
The Autobiography of Margiad Evans, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1943
source: the nonduality highlights
moonlight becomes you …
To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true nonduality. If emptiness cannot dance, it is not true Emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass, then you are only looking at your own empty dream. I say, Wake up! Then, your heart will be flooded with a Love that you cannot contain.
the artless arts of zen
The arts of Zen are not intended for utilitarian purposes, or for purely aesthetic enjoyment, but are meant to train the mind, indeed, to bring it into contact with ultimate reality.
~ D.T. Suzuki
The Artless Arts of Zen: Zen Aesthetic and Your Everyday Life
A retreat at Zen Mountain Monastery with John Stevens: July 10-12
The creative process, like a spiritual journey, is intuitive, non-linear, and experiential. It points us towards our essential nature, which is a reflection of the boundless creativity of the universe. Zen Buddhism and, particularly, the Zen arts are a rich source of teachings to help us understand and cultivate our creativity. They contain a treasure house of techniques and insight into the creative process. And they point to a way of living that is simple, spontaneous, and vital.
Although Zen mind is expressed in many art forms, the primary vehicle for manifesting the Zen spirit is calligraphy and painting. There are few teachers in the West more capable in transmitting the spirit of this artless art of Zen than John Stevens. The main themes of Zen calligraphy and painting will be discussed and we will have a look at numerous examples of Zen art, past and present. The afternoon sessions will be hands on. We will brush most of the “one-word barriers” central to the Zen tradition: ichi (one), mu (no!), do (way), ku (empty), shin (heart), and others. The characters themselves are simple to learn — most of them belong to the group of kanji taught to Japanese first graders — but profound in meaning from the Zen perspective. There will also be a chance to practice brushing enso (Zen circles), paintings of Mount Fuji, and creating portraits of Bodhidharma. At the conclusion of the retreat, each participant will brush a subject of his or her choosing on clean white paper to serve as an object of personal reflection — even a single brushwork perfectly reflects one’s state of mind.
From the Zen Mountain Monastery website.
the doorway to love 2
scribbler had to temporarily retire her blogs – and most other activities – in the past year. She became her sweet mother’s Mum and found the task all-consuming. Multi-tasking wasn’t an option. There’s no conflict when there’s no choice, and in this case Love was calling the shots.
Again the doorway to Love stood wide open, this time as mother and daughter melted into the timeless hours of a being’s last breaths.
She left at 04am on the 4th day of the 4th month: 96 brilliant orbits of the sun on her odometer.
scribbler slowly and rather tentatively takes up her pen and paintbrushes again, and gives thanks for the life of this remarkable woman. She was goodness and joy incarnate.
