This very moment - Dharma Series

'This Very Moment'
A4 gouache on bristol board
Prints and original available: www.faunawolfcreation.com

In one of her many talks Pema Chodron tells this story about having a lot of anxiety bubbling up for an extended period of time. It was relentless and she kept sitting with it and working with it and finding that it just wouldn't go away, so eventually she went to her teacher and told him about what was going on. 

Her teacher was very receptive and had a lot of questions. He wanted her to really go into great detail about the sensation, where it was, what it felt like, did it have a texture or a taste? She described it for him as intimately as she could and then he clapped and said, "Ah! That's the Dakini bliss!" 

This was the first and only reference to a Dakini I had heard in all my study and practice until a few months ago. In Pema's story she goes on to say that she realised that bliss did have the same intense qualities as the anxious feeling she was describing and she was eager to get back to meditation - but when she did the feeling had gone because her resistance to it had gone. 

I thought Dakini was just a Tibetan word for an an emotion or something. In September last year I learned just what, exactly, a Dakini was. 

In fact, pin-pointing the ‘what’ is a bit of a challenge as the Dakini comes in many forms, but the essence is she is a representation of wisdom in female form. Although even that is an over-simplification from what I’ve learned thus far. 

I am the very fortunate owner of a signed copy of Dakini’s Warm Breath by Judith Simmer-Brown and I’ve been dipping in and out of it for some weeks now. I’ve also found Dakini stories popping up in talks I’m listening to by various teachers. My understanding of the Dakini is that they show up when you’re ready for them. 

This piece itself was one of those ones that was entirely unplanned. I sat down to sketch one evening and found myself drawing a Dakini. I decided to paint her using gouache, something I’ve not worked with in some time, and the words came to me during this process. 

I do feel this is just the first of many I will create as I continue my Dharma series. I also want to delve deeper into the words and why I chose them but at this moment I'm finding a total lack of flow in that regard. I will revisit the topic as the whole practice of life and experience as teacher is something I'm coming to appreciate more and more every day. 

Basic Goodness and Being Kind

'Kindness'
A4 Portrait pencil crayon & ink on bristol board
Prints and original available through www.faunawolfcreations.com

Everyone is basically good. This doesn't mean everyone can't also be a total asshole sometimes. And that also means you are occasionally a total asshole - whether you realise it or not. 

Which is rather liberating really because it means you don't have to be perfect. But you certainly can be kind and compassionate, and ultimately, that’s what basic goodness is about. 

The idea of ‘basic goodness’ as I understand it from studying the Dharma, is not ‘good’ in the sense of virtuous or correct but good as in: we all want to be happy. The best way I ever heard it put was by Pema Chodron when she said, “No one does anything because they want to feel worse.” 

When we put on a jumper because we feel cold, when we shift position so a limb doesn’t fall asleep, when we put a band-aid over a paper cut so it doesn’t sting - these are all signs of our basic goodness. Our basic compassion and care and kindness. 

It may seem easy to argue against basic goodness. We could say that the news is full of examples of basic badness. People kill each other every day. People shoot, bomb and set-fire to others. 

It might seem totally naive to say people are basically good in light of the atrocities that are committed on a daily basis. 

But saying people are basically good is not the same as saying people are basically sane or people are basically self-aware or people are basically skillful. We are all neurotic in our own ways and the discomfort we feel about our neurosis is what drives a lot of our actions. We go into a default mode to try and make ourselves feel better in a constantly changing, unpredictable world. 

We feel like, if we would just bring the world to a perfectly fixed stand-still with everything totally in balance, then we might feel sane. 

So we act foolishly, carelessly, even unkindly or outright viciously. Some more vicious than others. But these actions are still based on this basic goodness, this basic longing we have to be happy. 

The teachings on basic goodness are not saying that we are virtuous. They are saying we all have a longing to connect to happiness, to feel love and belonging. 

Cynics (And cycnism is healthy - no teaching has any value if it doesn’t agree with your own sense of reason. You don’t have to buy any of it and it’s important to test it against your own experience of the world) might say, “Someone who shoots up a school or who convinces a ten year old to be a suicide bomber is evil.” 

Verse 6.39 in the Bodhicharvatara provides a helpful contemplation in this regard: 

If those who are like wanton children

are by nature prone to injure others, 

what point is there in being angry -

like resenting fire for its heat? 

This asks us to consider - if we believe that some people are basically bad then we’re rather foolish for resenting them. Resenting someone for their supposed inherent nature would be like getting angry at a rock for being hard or fire for being hot. 

What greater proof of basic goodness do you need than our expectation that someone shouldn’t harm us? We only think people should know better because we believe they CAN know better. 

In fact, our very shock at reports of violence, our aversion and disbelief, is further proof of this basic goodness. If we truly believe that people are basically bad then we would never be surprised by the things we read in papers. 

And when we read something horrific and we think to ourselves, “I can’t imagine being angry enough to kill for my belief,” that is a sign of our own basic goodness. 

The things we do that cause harm are not born of some inherent evil within us. We are all confused beings scrambling in the same impermanent world. Not a single living creature doesn’t want to feel safe, secure and content. This is the motivation for our actions. 

When a natural disaster occurs I can’t help noticing that the first thing people do, when they realise they can’t do anything else, is reach out to help one another. 

The bodhisattva lives by this. The bodhisattva sees clearly that ultimately, every situation is unknowable and the greatest thing they can do is be there for others. They accept that the world is not a fixable place. There is no single idea of what a ‘perfect’ world would be and even if there was no war, no famine and we weren’t a threat to one another, we would still have to contend with old age, sickness and death. They realise and accept that the greatest gift we can give is to be present for others, to care for them, and to be kind. 

We Are Given What We Need - Dharma Art

'We Are Given What We Need''5.14X5.12 pencil crayon and ink on bristol boardPrints and original available

"Our suffering doesn't make us special."

- Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel

I spent some time contemplating the phrase 'Everything happens for a reason'. I've written about this before but with this Dharma piece and the wording I chose to accompany the Kapala I drew, I wanted to go deeper. 

I much prefer 'Everything happens' and was once explaining my thoughts around this to a friend. I was giving examples of how the idea of having a 'reason' implies some sense of pre-determination or fate. Because the future really is unwritten and we have no idea what might happen next, it's a phrase that simply doesn't fit with reality. Or, if we are to presume that somehow things are predetermined, it implies reason to atrocities. 

I feel it would be immensely unhelpful to tell someone who was raped or who lost their family in a bombing that 'everything happens for a reason.' Giving reason to such pain feels unreasonable and can also lead people into spirals of guilt or shame - like they brought something on themselves or somehow deserved what happened. 

My friend, who was listening very thoughtfully through all this, then said, "How about, everything happens and the meaning it has is all in how you work with it?" 

I loved this and immediately related it to something my psychologist has often said, which is that life is not out to get us and we are never given more than we can handle. Life is perfect this way. And perfection doesn't mean without flaws. 

We are given a lifetime of experiences and as sentient beings we are also given the wonderful tool of our mind to worth with. Any experience we have is an opportunity, whether we label it positive or negative or neutral. How we work with life is the choice we have. We can choose to shut down, to feel victimized by it and go numb to it, or we can choose to be curious about it, to engage with it - even to embrace it. 

Life is a perfect teacher. 

Progress

I've been working on more Dharma art lately, as the Oolong Sketch to Lens exhibition was such a success (Thank you again to everyone who purchased my art - without such support funding the creation of more is a challenge). 

In the past I've taken a teaching, come up with some text based on my understanding of it, and created some art to go with it. But lately I've found myself going the other direction. I'm exploring traditional Buddhist art more and more, as well as really saturating my life with the teachings, and the result is a lot of rich symbolism to explore. 

I'm finding there is much less deliberation in the imagery I'm choosing. I find myself looking at a blank piece of paper, listening to a talk, and then suddenly sketching without having planned to. 

I'm also finding myself taking more time with each piece and expanding the materials I'm using. In the case of a Dakini piece I've been working on I decided to paint it with gouache. I've not used gouache in years and forgot how much fun it is to blend. The colours are vivid and traditional thangka paintings often use gouache, so it seems appropriate. 

I'll be posting the finished pieces to my blog as and when they are completed, but for now you can see the full collection as it stands through my website. Prints are available of all of my Dharma Series. 

Work with your own mind - Dharma Art

'Everything is Workable'
5X5" ink, pencil crayon and gouache on bristol board

When I was very small, like three or four, my mum gave me my first lesson in the importance of working with my own mind. I wanted to go play outside but it was raining and I couldn't. I began to cry and throw a tantrum (Something I was monumentally good at) and she told me point-blank that I could cry all I wanted but the rain wasn't going to stop.

I have no recollection of this occurance but it's become one of many family stories so I've heard it often enough for the message to be delivered multiple times.

When I first discovered Ani Pema Chodron and realised my Buddhist nature, I quickly discovered this to be an essential teaching in all my studies of the dharma: You cannot change external circumstances. You can change your outlook.

This message is in no way unique to Buddhism or any other school of thought. Cliches like 'You can't change people' are pointing at it. Over and over again, this is presented to us in life.

Generally we feel that life would be so much easier if things went our way. If our partner didn't do that really irritating thing. If customers were less difficult. If our boss listened to us. If other drivers obeyed the rules of the road scrupulously.

Despite the delivery of the lesson to my toddler self, it's only been very, very recently that I've understood and began truly applying it.

I cannot change my external circumstances. None of us can. Life happens how it will whether we like it or not.

The only thing we have any control over, the only thing we can work with, is our own state of mind. And this is infinitely workable. Every situation, regardless of how we perceive it, is workable when we approach it from the level of our own mind.

The inspiration for this piece comes from the Garuda - a mythical creature that represents the ability we have to exist without reference points, without the need for external validation.

That Which Changes Us - Dharma Art

Pencil crayon & ink on bristol board
5X5"
Original and prints available through www.faunawolfcreations.com

"The bodhisattva practices in the middle of the fire."

-Pema Chodron

In Tibetan Buddhism the dragon represents clear seeing, wisdom and compassion. It strips away our delusions and shows us how to have an open heart to everything life offers. 

For a very long time I felt like I could be a stable, functioning human being if only things could level out for a bit. If I had the 'right' job or the 'right' home or the 'right' relationship then maybe I'd find equilibrium and a sense of ease in the world. 

This line of thinking increased my anxiety exponentially and ultimately led me to have a full mental breakdown. Because the world doesn't work that way. Life isn't fair. But life isn't unfair either. It gives us exactly what we need and I've come to learn the most from the difficult situations in my life. 

When I was twenty-three my relationship ended. I was told I was no longer loved and left just six weeks before what was meant to be the wedding of my dreams. 

The experience was incredibly painful and I was offered many platitudes. Most commonly I was told: "Better before than after!" 

Well, several years later I was married and very committed to what that meant for me. Marriage is a curious institution and not one I entered lightly. I set the aspiration to love unconditionally, to do whatever work was required of me for the relationship and to accept the other person as they were. 

But it takes two and after a while I felt the pain of heartbreak as I was once again left by someone who no longer felt the same way. 

I can tell you from experience, totally honestly, that it was no less painful to be left before a marriage than after a marriage. Both experiences involved a lot of heartache and the need to grieve. 

But I don't ever wish either had never happened because I learned so many valuable things from both.

I learned what it means to forgive, truly. I learned that forgiveness is something that can, and indeed must, be offered without having received an apology. It is not condoning the actions of another - someone may have committed murder and forgiveness is not saying that murder is acceptable. Forgiveness is seeing the complexity of another human being and accepting that they didn't know any better. 

And forgiveness is something we do for ourselves as much as we do it for the other. Because forgiveness allows us to heal and it is much better to forgive than to hold onto resentment, anger or righteous indignation, which simply cripple us emotionally and create a sense of 'us and them', which has never served anyone. 

The other valuable thing I learned was what compassion truly means. Genuine compassion, not idiot compassion born of feeling sorry for another or being overwhelmed with the dark and sad things we see in the world. Compassion as a way of seeing our own humanity and that of another and seeing that being kind is the greatest thing we can do to benefit the planet. This does not mean putting ourselves in the path of harm or letting ourselves remain in abusive or mentally distressing situations. 

Without compassion we cannot have forgiveness because it's compassion that allows us to see our shared human experience. It's compassion that lets us see all of ourselves, our own confusion, arrogance, spitefulness and cruelty and recognise that none of us are any better or worse than anyone else. We're all complicated creatures with our own stories. 

I have the greatest compassion for those who lash out at the world around them because I can see so clearly how they make their own lives that much more difficult. These are not people who need more anger directed towards them - they generate enough of that themselves. It's a heartbreaking experience, when we can feel this genuine sense of love for even the most anonymous stranger. 

I was once fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to ask Pema Chodron a question and my question was about compassion. Her answer to me was that compassion is good for the heart. Ultimately, regardless of the situation, if we work on our own mind and heart with a genuine aspiration to cultivate compassion it will do us far more good than holding onto spite, anger or jealousy. 

At the time I was struggling to let these things go and I wasn't about to take her word for it. I spent the last year since asking that question experimenting. When I open my heart to others, when I am kind and don't expect people to be any different than they are, what is the result? 

I can honestly say from experience that it is far better to have compassion than not and that the more I practice in this way the more it becomes my default setting. The world is a much friendlier place when we don't look at other as enemies but rather as comrades in the same challenging, ever changing situation as our own. 

Learn to Respond - Dharma Art

Pencil Crayon & ink on bristol board
5X5"
Original or prints available through www.faunawolfcreations.com

The tiger is a symbol of confidence and awareness. It's a calm but powerful symbol, representing an animal that knows its place and purpose and sees very clearly. It is a humble but powerful creature. 

Learning how to respond in life is taking the things we learn, the wisdom we find from our experiences, and actually applying them. I've found, more and more often, that answers cause a lot of trouble because an answer assumes that something can be pinned down or that if there is a 'right' answer then there is also a 'wrong' one. 

Life is not so black and white. Life is rich and complicated and what may work well in one relationship or situation may be entirely unhelpful or even detrimental to another. 

Learning to let go of fixed ideas of how things 'should' be is a huge part of my life now, but it wasn't always. I often tried to come up with answers in an attempt to get ground. If I 'knew' something then I could take comfort in that. 

Of course, as soon as I thought I knew something this view was often challenged. The older I get the more I realise I know very, very little. But this doesn't scare me. Instead I find it liberating. Because if there are no definitive answers then every moment can be taken as it is - freshly, with great curiosity and a sense of wonder. 

Even the most mundane of exchanges become an experiment, something I rather enjoy as I was raised by parents who encouraged an inquisitive mind. In fact, my dad has called me a scientist because of my interest in figuring out how things work, in hypothesizing and checking and re-checking results. 

When we approach our life with curiosity it really changes our experience of the world. Suddenly things aren't happening to us so much as happening for us. 

Difficult co-worker? An opportunity to learn clear communication and how to work with frustration. Annoying family member? A chance for us to learn how to accept someone as they are and not try to make them be how we want them to be. Cancelled train? A moment when we can explore our impatience and sense of entitlement and let that humble us. 

Consider life as a game with no rules other than everything will change and the only piece you can control is your own mind and your own outlook. In this way we can learn to respond to things as they are, rather than trying to make them fit into the ideas we have about them or how we wish or hope or think they should be. 

Avalokiteshvara

'Avalokiteshvara'
24X36in acrylic on canvas
Exhibiting at the Oolong Teahouse in Calgary December 1 - 31

I've been studying Buddhism for seven years now - ever since I discovered the very eloquent and clear teachings of Pema Chodron. In the last year and a half my practice has become significantly deeper as I've taken my understanding of the various techniques and actually started applying them in my life. 

As my dear spiritual companion described it, "It's like I've been tilling the soil and now things are starting to grow." 

The growing experience is so astounding to me because I'll have heard a teachings dozens of times before it clicks. But when it clicks the experience is transformative. It's the difference between intellectually 'getting it' because it makes sense versus having an actual lived experience of something. A moment when the words I've read or listened to match my personal experience of the world. 

Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva of compassion and known by many different names depending on the lineage. But the essence is always the same - to love fully and compassionately. 

I'm a huge advocate of this and can honestly say that my experience has shown again and again that it is much better for everyone involved to show love and kindness than anger or aggression. In fact, I've often felt like I'm just not an aggressive person so all these teachings about working with aggression didn't really apply to me. 

But here's one of those moments when I have listened to a teaching and heard it differently: 

I was listening to a talk by Khandro Rinpoche. She was talking about this sense of compassion and embracing basic goodness and being kind. She began to describe our emotional turmoil as aggression and made a list: "Anger is aggression. Fear is aggression. Sadness is aggression." 

I considered what she was saying and it was like feeling puzzle pieces of so many teachings before sliding into place in my mind. I suddenly realised that when the teachings are talking about working with our aggression they don't mean 'don't be angry' or 'work with your anger' - they mean aggression is a fundamental resistance to our experience. 

In short, resistance to the fundamental ambiguity of being human is aggressive. 

It can manifest as anxiety, fear, sadness, depression - but it's all based on wanting to get away from what is, rather than embracing and working with whatever arises. 

Suddenly I realised I'm incredibly aggressive! My anxiety has always communicated my resistance, my shutting down around an experience. And now I can see it, I can work with it. Having had this realisation the way I'm working with my mind now has shifted significantly. 

Avalokiteshvara reminds us to be gentle with ourselves as well as with others. We can only have compassion for others if we have it for ourselves because it's based on understanding shared human experience. 

My understanding shifted considerably as I realised that I was no less aggressive than anyone else. That the term 'aggression' is not being used in relation to anger or rage but in relation to this resistance we all have to the unpredictability of life. 

How liberating. 

The power of an open mind

The first time I published my Manjushri piece I wrote about the power of questioning and how this piece was an exploration of that. 

(I also spelled it with the more traditional Tibetan spelling but apparently you can spell it with out without the 'h' - Fun fact!) 

But I digress. 

The Dharma is something to be constantly explored, applied and revisited. As Chogyam Trungpa said, "Live life as an experiment." 

To me this means adjust your hypothesis, try things again, change the control group, never assume and always, always be willing to change your mind. A flexible mind is one that knows nothing can be pinned down. 

A print of this piece is currently being exhibited at Oolong Tea House in Calgary, along with most of the rest of my Dharma series. The original is hanging on my bedroom wall (But available for purchase, if anyone is interested) and therefore the object of regular contemplation for me. 

I continually visit the final line of text in the piece, along with the strong imagery representing the importance of cutting through the ideas we think we have of the world. 

When we look at things as being just one way it causes a lot of grief. An example I like to use for this is eating in our favourite restaurant. 

Say there's a restaurant that we love, that we've gone to dozens, possibly even a hundred times. We enjoy it immensely but one day we go and we get food poisoning. Suddenly we write the restaurant off. We can't go back because we had a single bad experience. Regardless of the high percentage of great experiences, because we had a single negative one, and because that negative experience was our last experience, we may never return again. 

But the restaurant was never 'perfect' to begin with. It couldn't have been. Because it wasn't everyone's favourite restaurant and because not everyone might like the food they serve. Regardless of food poisoning, some people just might hate the cuisine so much they'd never consider it to be a nice place to eat. 

The value we put on things is a projection of our mind based on experience and understanding of the world. But when we think we 'know' something (or someone) we put a box around it. We stop being able to see it from different angles, different points of view. 

Using a restaurant is a rather safe example and one I feel confident in using to communicate my thoughts on the subject, but this applies to everything. No human being, no ideology, political structure, religion - is ever just one way. 

When we can see this it liberates us because it means we're getting closer to seeing things as they are and letting the fluidity of the world we live in touch us. It means we're able to experience the richness and fullness of life. 

To purchase a print or the original piece visit: 

www.faunawolfcreations.com/manjushri.html

Dharma Series - Be Unapologetically Magnificent

I recently volunteered myself to paint the fence and deck in the garden of where I live. This resulted in a trip to a local building supplier where an account was officially set-up (Faunawolf Creations now counts as a 'builder' business) and supplies were purchased.

My first step was to paint the bit of stone wall as I figured this would be a quick job I could do on a Sunday morning. I was right, it was a very quick job. My brother is a professional painter/decorator and I think he would be very proud of the end result - which was largely thanks to his advice on the matter.

With the wall painted I began to clean up, but not before thinking it was a lovely blank canvas I'd just created. Evidently, my landlady thought the same thing as a moment later she said, "You know, a mural would look quite good on that." 

I laughed and told her I'd just been thinking the exact same thing and then I realised, she was quite serious. I could have cried with joy, to be perfectly honest, as I've got this thing about doing large scale paintings. 

I asked her what she might be interested in and she gave me a little guidance but was quite happy for me to come up with what I wanted. I considered the space and an idea immediately sprang to mind in line with my Dharma series. I love the shape and elegance of Japanese maple and knew my landlady was partial to the previous piece I did using them. 

The first thing I did was draw and cut out some templates. 

Then I did a quick sketch of the wall and worked out the shape of the branches I wanted to draw. I consulted with the client once more, making sure she was just as pleased as I was with the concept and design. She thought it was brilliant and told me to proceed. 

The branches...

Leaves at the end of the first day of painting

Finished the leaves, now to the text!

'Be Unapologetically Magnificent'

I thought this project would take me a week at least but I've found myself so enthralled with the space and that I've spent both Monday and Tuesday evening working on it, until it was quite suddenly complete! 

The finished piece!!! 

The text for this piece is less my own and more a quote from the recent retreat I attended. Jane Hope was talking about meditation being a way for us to connect with our magnificence - to allow ourselves to BE magnificent. 

This reminded me of a teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh that I'm rather fond of. He talks about being able to see the entire universe in a tree. When you look at a tree you can see the sun because without the sun, there is no tree. And you can see the clouds because without clouds there is no rain and then there is no tree. And you can see the air and the wind because without your breath and mine there is no tree. 

Trees are magnificent. 

The woman I painted this for is magnificent. 

You are magnificent. 

Just admit you're a fraud. You'll be much happier.

I spent last weekend on a meditation retreat. It was one based in London so it wasn't like I was out in the boonies somewhere, totally disconnected from civilisation. I did refrain from using my phone for most of the weekend and only went on my computer late Sunday after it had ended.

After a retreat I'm exhausted. 

This can be difficult to explain because how does one get so tired just sitting around all weekend?

But meditation isn't just 'sitting around'. Meditation is about being present and for anyone who has ever meditated - even once - you'll be very aware of the fact that we're almost never present.

In fact, the entire theme of this particular weekend, presented by the incredibly delightful Jane Hope, was about recognising the stories we tell ourselves and learning to see what actually is, rather than what we perceive there to be. 

One of my favourite bits of the whole weekend was when Jane was talking about studying these teachings and grasping them at the level of mind (intellectually) but having moments when the teachings suddenly sink deeper and we 'know them on a cellular level'. I found this to be such a wonderful apt description for what happens when our understanding of the world around us deepens because it really does feel like that.

In the case of this particular retreat I found myself revisiting an old wound - seeing a lot of messiness about myself that I always hope I'm leaving behind or that people can't see but that I know is there. Effectively, I spent the weekend just totally embracing that I'm a fraud. 

I never really think I'm 'together' but I know how easy it is to mask something or cover it up and feel like maybe I'm actually more stable than I realised. This was a weekend of seeing my neurosis, how deep it runs and still loving myself regardless. Because I know the people who matter most in my life can see all the messy stuff too and they still love me regardless. They accept me as the complex, messed up human being that I am because the people closest to me know they're just as complex and messed up too. We love each other for it - even if it's not always easy.

So I spent this weekend seeing how much I've not shed and where I'm still messing up and causing pain and being arrogant or foolish. And the neatest thing about it was that it didn't break me because I know that I can't work with anything I'm not willing to see. And I can't accept things as they are if I pretend to be something different. And ultimately, none of this stuff defines me.

But I've rambled on quite enough. I felt this was a good opportunity to share a snippet of a photo piece I did back in February when I shaved my then blue and pink hair off. This is just the first instalment of a triptych which will be on display at my exhibition come December.

Just Be - Dharma Series

There are many wonderful stories, metaphors and similes used in Buddhism to illustrate the meaning behind a particular teaching. One in particular that has resonates with me is about being like a heron - still and serene, waiting for the fish to come, poised elegantly and fully aware of its surroundings and purpose.

For the longest time I felt like I was grading myself when it came to my spiritual practice. Actually, if I'm totally honest, I've often felt like I grade myself in everything I do. I wondered if I was doing it right or doing it effectively or doing enough.

Doing. Doing. Doing. 

When I began to meditate I was under the misconception that meditation was a tool to get rid of the unwanted aspects of myself - a way to transcend the uncomfortable things in life by going deeper or having some incredible revelation where I would suddenly be unflappable.

Enlightenment was my goal and I knew I should meditate as much as possible and I should be reading Buddhist texts and I should find a teacher.

I've already referred a few times to my visit to New York last year, when I finally got to hear Pema Chodron speak in person and was also fortunate enough to get to ask her a question. While the retreat was amazing I didn't start to genuinely appreciate the teachings by both her and Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel until I got the recordings of the weekend and began listening to them.

I can't tell you when the shift in my understanding happened because it wasn't like a switch. It was more like a gentle settling - like I'd been working at a puzzle for hours and then suddenly all the pieces just started fitting together and then the whole image was so obvious I was amazed that I'd not been able to see it all along.

I already knew that meditation wasn't about 'getting rid' of anything. I knew it was a tool for remaining present. This made sense to me. But I didn't know how to remain present when things were uncomfortable. Meditating when I was upset or hurt seemed terrifying because it meant sitting with a feeling I didn't want to have in the first place. 

But I persevered and it was listening to the recordings from that weekend that connected the dots.

I've written before about my five days of wakefulness - the experience of being able to drop the storyline no matter what was coming up and just appreciate my surroundings and whatever was happening in any given moment. I don't think there was any one thing that contributed to it and I don't believe I could 'make' it happen.

Because it wasn't a doing. 

It was a 'being'. 

Just being. 

Just be. 

Dharma Series - Fearlessness

Teachings on fearlessness can be so difficult to grasp. While I didn't struggle to grasp the concept on an intellectual level, truly embracing teachings around fearlessness proved to be very challenging for me. 

The translations from Tibetan or Sanskrit become misconstrued and muddled due to a lack of an English equivalent, making overcoming the Western definition of 'fearlessness' half the challenge. Sometimes it's described as 'unconditional confidence', which I think can muddy the waters even more. 

But the idea isn't about being unflappable or untouched by the challenges of life. It's not some ideal of 'perfection' where you sit there with a beatific smile on your face and nothing bothers you in the slightest. 

It wasn't until I heard a particular talk by Pema Chodron that the concept began to make sense on a deeper level and it was because she talked about resistance to fear. 

I'm familiar with this but didn't realise it until I heard her explanation. Resistance to fear is about not being willing to feel an inevitable emotion. It's putting up walls or wrapping ourselves in a cocoon so the world doesn't touch us with anything that makes us uncomfortable. 

I had Panic Disorder for nearly seven years. Panic Disorder is an anxiety disorder whereby the individual experiences a constant sense of anxiety. Constant. Every single moment of every single day I felt an underlying feeling of worry that was higher than average and not healthy.

Anxiety is rooted in fear. I've come to learn that my anxiety is at its worst when I ignore that something in my life is not okay. The anxiety isn't caused by the thing that isn't okay. It's caused by my resistance to see what's actually happening. 

This seems like a great defence mechanism because it does shield us from painful things - but only in the short-term. 

We can only tell ourselves 'Everything is just fine and peachy keen!' for so long. Denial merely masks the truth and creates a ticking time-bomb. In my case that time-bomb went off and put me in hospital and on medication for the first time in my life. It also lead me to my psychologist and, consequently, to Pema. It taught me how to listen to my gut and trust it. It taught me the importance of this. 

Which brings me back to fearlessness and this particular piece, which features a Snow Lion. 

Fearlessness is not about putting on a brave face, ignoring the things that scare us or shrugging off life's challenges as if they don't matter. Fearlessness is about accepting that things will fall apart. The rug will be pulled out from under us and we will be let down, abused, hurt, sad, angry, disappointed and have to grieve. 

Fearlessness is seeing all of these things and seeing that, as difficult as they may be, we also know they won't last forever and we will survive them because we will take care of ourselves. We will allow ourselves to feel the emotions and let them run their course. We will give ourselves time and space to heal. We appreciate that part of the joy of being alive involves feeling these things, getting through them, and growing from them. 

Because we will also feel joy, happiness, love, elation, delight, amazement, awe, wonder and beauty. Life is rich and when we open up to it, all of it, we have nothing to fear.

Dharma art - Manjusri

Dharma Art
'Manjusri'
24X36" Acrylic on canvas

A bodhisattva is a person who wishes to benefit others through their own enlightenment. They post-pone their enlightenment so they can be there for other beings and in traditional Buddhist teachings many of them embody specific characteristics attributed to an enlightened mind.

The bodhisattva I identify with most strongly is Manjusri, the bodhisattva of wisdom. Depicted in various ways, depending on the specific Buddhist tradition, Manjusri is most commonly shown holding a flaming sword in one hand and a book in the other. The book represents knowledge and the sword represents doubt. The sword is used to cut through the book, destroying it and the sense of 'knowing' we may think we have when we decide there is a 'right' answer.

The message is to seek questions, rather than answers. To be open and aware of the paradoxical nature of life and to doubt what we perceive to 'know' on the basis that the universe is constantly changing.

The words I used on this piece are as follows:

The universe does not lend itself to being conclusively known. 

This becomes clear when we are awake to the present moment. 

We can see nothing is ever just one way. 

I have great respect for doubt and questions. In my experience answers cause a lot of trouble because an answer assumes there is something 'right' and therefore something or someone can be 'wrong'. But dualistic concepts are subjective.

After reading 'A Brief History of Time' I have spent time reflecting on the second law of thermodynamics. In it's most basic description the idea is that there are statistically more versions of chaos than order. As Stephen Hawking so brilliantly illustrates - one can shake a box of puzzle pieces and there is a chance they will all fall into place as a fully formed image but there is a much greater chance of the pieces landing chaotically.

In short - the universe is not a 'fixable' place. It is not and cannot be static and yet most of us live as if there is a 'pause' button whereby if we get everything 'right' then we can expect smooth sailing.
The teachings of Manjusri (who may or may not have existed) and many others ask us to doubt our ability to 'know' and relax into accepting the universe as dynamic. 

I have been working on shifting my thinking to grasp this concept with greater and greater clarity and painting this piece has acted as creating a reminder.

I am working on having it imaged so prints will soon be available.

Dharma Series - Thoughts

Thoughts are funny things. They seem so incredibly solid and yet, most of the things we think have absolutely no ground when we actually try to pin them down.

This idea of the fluidity of our thoughts comes up in many schools of thought. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is all about changing the way we think on the basis that unhelpful thoughts can cause us a lot of mental anguish where there is no justification for it. Neuro-Linguistic Programming challenges us to use language to shift the way we think. Meditation teaches us to see our thoughts as 'clouds in the sky' - shifting, changing, impermanent.

Our way of thinking is habitual and just like any habit, changing the way we think and learning to let go of our thoughts is no easy task.

As a regular meditator I have spent six years working with this practice. The key instruction I have followed is to 'drop the story-line'. Reading 'My Stroke of Insight' really opened my eyes to how our left brain naturally generates a storyline that's often not true. The storyline is very powerful though because it provide structure and often gives 'reason' for our experience. I've found dropping the storyline extremely challenging because so much of 'me' is wrapped up in it.

In November, however, I had a profound experience whereby I was finally able to let thoughts go for an extended period of time. It was profound in that I was able to keep from getting hooked by the thoughts and as a result I could experience an emotion without all the drama. So instead of 'I'm sad because that person did that thing' or 'I'm angry and hurt because they were so cruel' it was just 'This is what sad feels like' and 'this is what anger feels like'.

Without the thoughts to fuel them, the emotions ran their course quickly and I would soon return to a state of calm and contentment. No extreme feelings one way or another.

For five days this was my experience and in those five days I had a heightened awareness of just how incredible the world is. I've always appreciated nature and the minute there's sun you'll find me outside - but this was different.

I felt like there was no hurry to be anywhere. Just being was enough. And in being I could be absorbed in the way the sun lit the clouds from behind or how the rain sounded as it fell into the tree tops. I found myself noticing more - robins (the English sort) flickering in and out of a holly bush, a parakeet watching cautiously from a hole in a nearby tree, the smell of a fire burning somewhere and how crisp the air felt on my skin contrasting against the warmth of the sun when it broke through the grey mass above.

My wakeful experience ended but I don't feel any loss because I gained something very valuable from it. I know that it's possible to drop thoughts and I understand the descriptions these teachers I listen to are getting at. I have direct experience of the benefit of being able to do this and that in itself has shifted my meditation practice from feeling like I should be doing it to wanting to do it.

In creating this piece of art I wanted to capture the enigmatic smile of the Buddha - a smile that conveys the sense of ease that comes from letting go of the storyline and letting life genuinely touch you.

Dharma Series - Regardless of the external

One thing I really appreciate about Buddhist teachings is the many different ways I come across the same message. Buddhism in itself is just one package for a sort of wisdom I encounter regularly. I find people embracing secular humanism, Socratic teachings or Taoism and the messages are extremely similar. 

No formal belief system is required at all, which is the beautiful thing about the human species. We are lovely individuals and for every individual there is a unique path to enlightenment. 

In the case of this piece I included a lotus flower because it is a classic representation of this seed of enlightenment all sentient beings possess. The image it conjures is of a seed buried deep in the thick, black mud at the bottom of a pond. With the right elements in place the seed will unquestionably grow and become a full lotus blossom on the surface of the pond. 

The lotus blossom doesn't 'spring' into existence but grows over time - sometimes faster, sometimes not so fast. Wisdom is the same. Wisdom is incremental. Someone can have profoundly wise insights and still act foolishly. In fact, until enlightenment is reached, this applies to all of us. We all have these seeds of wise insight at various stages of growth. We feed them through reading, discussion, and exploration of the world around us. 

In this drawing I have shown one piece of wisdom I've come to understand very clearly, represented by a single lotus flower. Through listening to many teachings and applying a regular meditation practice in my life I have been able to shift my understanding of this teaching from intellectual to a deep knowing. Like opening my eyes to see what's really there instead of what I hoped to see. 

I have come to understand that to be genuinely happy is to have an appreciation for the richness of life and the wonder of the present moment. The idea that if sadness is present happiness can't be limits our experience and traps our mind with dualism. 

In a single moment I have experienced joy, sadness, comfort and pain and felt appreciation for the very fact that this is possible. It is possible to feel these things without needing to 'do' anything. The idea that we can only experience one emotion at a time, and in order for one to go another must replace it, causes so much suffering. When we stop 'doing' and shift into 'being' there is this incredibly vast space in which we live life fully. 

Dharma Series - The Joy of Being Alive

For this piece I wanted to create something based on the more traditional look of Thangka paintings. Thangka paintings are classic depictions of various Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and mandalas rich in symbolic representations of Buddhist teachings. 

The figures in these pieces will have their hands in various placements which are called mudras. Each mudra has a symbolic meaning, such as the warrior spirit of the compassionate being or the balance of an awakened mind.

My favourite mudra is the ground touching or Bhumisparsa Mudra. The story of this mudra is that when Gautama Buddha reached enlightenment he was first challenged by the god Mara. As Gautama sat in meditation beneath the Bodhi tree, Mara threw all manner of temptation and difficulty at him.  He insulted him, summoned his daemon daughters to tempt his lust, threatened him with fire and spears and finally, at the very end he challenged his commitment.

Mara asked, "What difference does it make, all this sitting in meditation. There is no proof of your commitment or understanding. You have no followers, no witness to your pointless task."

Is is said that Gautama reached one hand down and touched the Earth, as if to declare that the Earth was his witness. The Earth was his solid support in all he did and the ground beneath him was all he needed for him to see the truth of the world around him free of attachment, lust, desire, anger, hatred, and longing. 

The words I chose speak to this presence of mind free from fixation. There is joy to be found in the very act of being alive.

When we view the world with the wonder and fascination of a child it's pretty awesome.

To watch a sun rise or see a flower bloom or see the fine shapes of a thousand snowflakes or think that we have the ability to communicate with people on the other side of the planet in a matter of second or that we can send living beings into zero gravity - it's all pretty damn impressive and wondrous.

And beyond that, even when life is at its most challenging, when we are facing a seemingly unbearable difficulty, we have the capacity, as sentient beings, to work with our minds. We can use these experiences to wake up, to see that we were never only one way to begin with and that life is never black and white but an infinite rich spectrum of emotions and experiences. 

Dharma Series continued!

'Non-Attachment'
Pencil Crayon and ink on A4 Bristol Board

The Buddhist concept of non-attachment is often misunderstood in Western culture. For example, I once told a friend I was going to buy a set of mala beads to help me with my meditation practice. Her comment was that buying something wasn't very Buddhist.

I retorted by saying non-attachment wasn't about not owning stuff. I could have a whole house full of stuff but what would be Buddhist of me would be accepting, if that house burned down, the loss of all my possessions.

Since then my understanding of this has deepened quite a bit and I can see my own explanation as quite weak because non-attachment is not rooted in the physical world.

One thing I've learned while on my path is there will be a shift from intellectual understanding of a teaching to a deep 'knowing'. Intellectually I understood that letting go would result in an overall improvement to my sense of wellbeing because obviously, if I put less importance in 'stuff', the loss of said 'stuff' wouldn't bother me so much.

This made perfect sense to me and was reflective of one of the many important lessons my mum taught me when I was growing up. She made it abundantly clear that if my brother or I were to break a glass, for example, it was far more important that we weren't hurt than that we'd been careless. As human beings we had more value than a thing.

Recently I experienced the shift from intellectually grasping this idea of letting go, to a deep 'knowing'. I came to see how attachment has nothing to do with the 'thing', but with our perception of it. To genuinely practice non-attachment we must learn how to view the world without expectation. 

It's not about letting go of things but letting go of perceptions and ideas about how the world should or shouldn't be. Effectively, non-attachment is accepting the world as dynamic, fluid, ever changing. 

My intention was to capture this realisation in this piece of work. Whether I accomplished that or not is unknowable, but I enjoyed making it and ultimately, that's all that matters.

Buddhist Art

Just before moving to London and in my first six months of living here I completed two different paintings exploring Buddhist teachings.

'Without Limits' featured a blue Buddha and my own text exploring the theme of unlimited potential or the 'seed of Buddhahood' that resides in all beings. 'Worthy of Love' employed a laughing, green Buddha accompanied by text about the importance of having love and compassion for oneself.

I've had many ideas for a whole series of these paintings bouncing around in my head but inspiration has been abruptly lost and I now have a small selection of unfinished canvases not dis-similar to this:

Somewhere along the way my spark went out and I found myself just unable to keep painting as the canvas grew messy and the image in my head simply wasn't translating onto the white surface. 

Recently I found two unfinished sketches from ago. It was a particularly sunny day so I took the sketchbook outside, along with pencil crayons, pens and pencils, and set about completing them. 

'Genuine Happiness'

'Unfixated Mind'

Upon finishing the drawings I realised there was space to incorporate words. Just as with those past pieces, the words came to me without much deliberation - my own reflection of the Dharma. 

Having finished these two I felt an overwhelming desire to keep going. I wanted to do more pieces this way, to continue with the hand drawn, hand coloured process and see just where it would take me. 

I've now been working on these for nearly a month. With each new piece I find more inspiration for the next. There is a series unfolding here and I'm finding myself once again drawn to canvas. 

It feels wonderful to have a project like this to work on! My Tarot Card series and the original two Buddha paintings were completed ages ago. I've felt like my art has stagnated somewhat and as I've been working on design I find myself in front of the glow of a screen for too long during the day. It's refreshing to have a project which requires no technology in its execution. 

We shall have to see where it takes me, but for now I can say there is no end in sight.