Archive for July, 2009
slipping a gear into oneness
On one unusually radiant day, I took a walk up the burn above the house and into a steep-sided corrie. It was sheltered there and magnificent – mountains on both sides, and below, tiny stands of water which looked like handfuls of shiny coins tossed down. I sat on a rock and ate cheese sandwiches. And there, quite suddenly, I slipped a gear. There was not me and the landscape, but a kind of oneness: as though the molecules and atoms I am made of had reunited themselves with the molecules and atoms that the rest of the world is made of. It was very brief, but I cannot remember feeling that extraordinary sense of connectedness since I was a small child.
~ Sara Maitland © 2008
From ‘A Book Of Silence’
http://www.saramaitland.com/Home.html
Source – http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/08/sara-maitland-silence-addiction
science and nonduality conference
The Science and Nonduality Conference has been created to provide an arena where various aspects of nonduality can be explored, discussed, and experienced.
Part seminar, part festival, part conference, this event explores and shows how science combines with meditation, philosophy, art, music, dance, lovemaking, shamanism, and entheogens to point the way to nondual experience, to aid in integrating nonduality into daily life, and to deepen the understanding of a fundamental nondual reality.
The arts celebrate and cultivate the experience of nonduality. From painting to filmmaking, music to typography, sculpture to found art, horticulture to cooking, poetry to digital media, ballet to tai chi, literature to architecture — nonduality is muse, subject and symbol.
EARLY-BIRD DISCOUNTED TICKETS
now AVAILABLE
You can also register by clicking on the banner
at right.
NB – Rupert Spira will be presenting a workshop at the conference: ‘Contemplating the Nature of Experience.’ More details later!
consciousness, contemplation and creativity
The artist has to re-present our world of conceptualised objects, separated and extended in space and time, as it really is. He has to reinterpret our model of reality in line with direct experience and to convey this ‘taste of eternity’. We could call this twofold activity contemplation and creativity. Contemplation is the passive aspect; creativity is the dynamic aspect. These are two inseparable aspects of consciousness.
~ Rupert Spira
ceramic bowl by Rupert Spira
I reasoned that if these two elements – the presence of an object in itself and the consciousness to which it appears – are essential ingredients of every object, there must be a relationship between them. So I began to explore the relationship between consciousness and its object, between that which sees, hears, feels and thinks and that which is seen, heard, felt and thought about. I reasoned that if there is a distinction between the two, there must be some perceivable interface or border between them. I looked for such a border between the subject and its object, but could not find one.
~ Rupert Spira
Source – Rupert Spira’s website
See more of Rupert’s ceramics and read more of his writing at the awakened eye website
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
