Dharma art - progress

After completing my last Dharma piece I decided I wanted to continue with the trees. I love trees, I really, really do, and have always struggled to capture their detail and beauty when I've tried drawing them. In fact, I generally dislike the trees I draw. I just feel they're flat and lacking in everything I admire and love about a tree, especially an old gnarled tree with years of regrowth and the odd disease that adds character and depth to the bark and twisting branches. 

I decided to do the last piece while I was sitting in meditation. I've recently started sitting for a half hour each time, at least twice a day. So I was sitting there, following the breath, labelling thoughts as thoughts, that whole thing - and suddenly I just saw this Bodhi tree in my mind and I saw all the lines of the detail. 

Now, you may have noticed that my art doesn't generally entail a lot of intricate detail. I really admire art that does and have often wanted to create something with such fine lines - but I've found it comes across as forced and then I lose the pleasure for what I'm doing. 

Until now. 

I feel like I could draw the lines of trees forever. It's almost addictive. Like, I'm creating the character and richness of the surface of something that's been standing for decades, possibly even hundreds or potentially thousands of years. 

I met a 3,000 year old tree in Japan. It was impressive and humbling. It makes me think of the wonderful teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh about seeing the entire universe in a tree. Without the sun, there is no tree. Without the clouds there is no rain, so there is no tree. Without the earth, the minerals in it, there is no tree. 

It's a beautiful example of interconnectedness, interdependence. Very suitable for my Dharma series. 

Bodhicitta - Dharma Series

"Your Mind is Not a Problem"
11.7X11.7in ink & gouache on bristol board

Lately the focus of my Dharma study has been Bodhicitta. I first encountered the word through - surprise, surprise - reading and listening to Pema Chodron. It’s one of those very difficult to translate words because there isn’t exactly a direct translation available. 

Instead teachers point at different words which capture the essence of what Bodhicitta is all about. Pema herself describes it in so many different ways. 

Bodhicitta is awareness of our compassionate nature. Or Bodhicitta is the ability we have to be big enough for our world and our experience. Bodhicitta is our awakened mind. Bodhicitta is our Buddha nature - the nature of all beings to see the world free of reference points. Bodhicitta is recognizeng interconnectedness, or as Thich Naht Hanh says, ‘interbeing’. 

Our ability to awaken Bodhicitta is our ability to show up for ourselves and for others. In order to do this we work with our own mind, with gentleness and dedication. The more we can see our mind, the more we can sit with our experience, and the most honestly we show up for ourselves, the more we are able to open up to others. 

Our minds may seem like the enemy, at times, which is why gentleness is so important. I’ve recently realised I experience anxiety at its worst when I’m being impatient with myself. The more harsh I am about what I’m feeling, the more challenging working with my mind becomes and the more intense my emotions. But when I’m kind to myself, when I see my mind as workable rather than something that needs fixing, the whole experience softens. My heart opens up and I genuinely feel big enough for my life. 

I didn’t come up with the text for this piece. The person who did is incredibly wise and I am so appreciative of the ways she reminds me to be gentle. The moment she said these words I knew they were the ones that would accompany this piece. 

Your mind is not a problem to fix. 

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. 

Thank you!

I'd like to thank everyone who popped down to Oolong in December to see Lyn's and my pieces. I'm immensely grateful to everyone who purchased an original. It means so much to have my work appreciated by others. 

I create it for myself, to deepen my understanding of the Dharma and help me be a kinder, more generous and compassionate person in the world. To have my artwork appreciated by others is icing on top of the joy I get from sharing my creativity. 

I will be adding more to the Dharma series this year and am excited to keep sharing pieces with you through this blog and my Facebook page and Twitter account. 

A great crowd came out of the evening 

Feeling pretty spiffy to be having another exhibition. My third in five years.  

A very happy customer with her original piece. 

The artist and the photographer, pleased as punch and immensely grateful for all the support. 

If you'd like to order a print of any of the pieces you can do so through my website: 

www.faunawolfcreations.com/dharma-art.html

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. 

Prints! The art formally known as an original.

While my Dharma series is on exhibit at the Oolong Tea House in Calgary I don't want those not in snowy Canadia to miss out. If you'd like to order a print of any of these pieces you can do so through my website:

www.faunawolfcreations.com/dharma-art.html

I promise to do my damndest to get them delivered to you in time for Christmas!

You can click on the images to be taken straight to them on my website: