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. 

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. 

The Student & the Teacher - Contemplation

I’ve recently been accepted as a student of Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel and as a result I’ve been reflecting on what it means to be in a student/teacher relationship within the context of Buddhism. 

Elizabeth's Book

When I wrote Wise at Any Age I included a section on teachers. At the time I wanted to emphasize the idea that teachers come in many forms. A teacher isn’t necessarily someone you even like. In fact, I’ve learned a great deal from incredibly difficult people. The experience I’ve had and how I’ve had to work with myself as a result of living or working with a difficult person has taught me so much. 

But the formal student/teacher relationship within Buddhism is quite different and I’ve been exploring what it means to be a student and to have a connection with a teacher. 

In Buddhist texts this experience is often described as ‘falling in love’. When listening to students of prolific teachers there is a strong sense of this in the way they talk and express their gratitude. But one does not follow a teacher blindly. 

I’ve studied teachings from a great many people, including and not limited to Thich Nhat Hanh, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Khandro Rinpoche, Shunryu Suzuki, Judith Simmer-Brown, Reggie Ray, the Dalai Lama and of course, Ani Pema Chodron. 

They're all teaching the same things - Buddhist teachings are actually quite brief - but in very different languages. Some are more philosophical, others more academic. Some are more grounded in Eastern culture and traditions, others in the West. Some are far more cutting where others are gentle. 

I have benefited from all of them and continue to do so - but none have had such an impact on my practice as Elizabeth. 

Before I heard Elizabeth teach I had a puzzle of contemplations, thoughts and teachings in my head and I was struggling to put them together. I could ‘get it’ sometimes but it felt fleeting and often I’d revert back to old habits and frustrations. When I first heard Elizabeth teach and it was like the puzzle came together, falling into place easily. 

When we acknowledge the wisdom of others it is recognition of our own wisdom. Elizabeth speaks a language I understand with great clarity. When I listen to her I spend much of my time feeling a deep, profound sense of ‘Yes! That! YES!’. 

I find myself better able to articulate my understanding of the teachings and eager to apply practice to everything. 

As I go back and listen to talks from other teachers I draw lines from their language to hers, deepening my understanding and opening my mind further each time. 

It’s an incredibly powerful and yet also very simple experience. We have had limited contact due to her residence in the States and mine in the UK, and yet I feel connected and supported by her, entirely, because of the mirror she holds up to my practice and the work I’m doing.