Tangled Up In Blue

And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn,
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew,
Tangled up in blue. — Bob Dylan

Hearing With Our Eyes, Seeing With Our Ears

Dancing With The Mystery

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The Tergar meditation group that I've been sitting with takes a different approach than the zen center. There's a relaxed casualness about it all from the space we sit in to the actual meditation itself. The simplicity is refreshing. There are no robes, no altar, no candles and incense. But it also gives me pause. A bowing gassho in the doorway as I enter the room is second nature, and here it's starkly out of place. The lights are bright and colorful meditation cushions dot the floor; no neat rows of black  zafus and zabutans arcing around the instructor. Opening and closing recitations sound wooden compared to the rhythmic chanting voices of the zen community. Sometimes there is a small bell signaling the start of meditation; sometimes not. The same is true at the end of meditation. When there is a bell, everyone moves and stretches and talking begins immediately over the sound of the bell.

Hanging from the wall of the zendo of my old zen community is a large hand-made bell. It's approximately 12 inches tall and darkened with age. The doan (meditation time keeper) must strike the bell just so. Hit the wrong spot, or strike it too hard and it klangs with a dull, metallic noise. Hit it too softly and it's signal is lost in the expanse of the zendo. As a new doan, I wobbled back and forth for months making variously abrasive gongs and klangs to signal the beginning and end of meditation. The stillness of the zendo received whatever the bell and I gave without complaint. I was humbled by the bell, never knowing what it would say when I struck it. I admit there were times when I thought of jazzing it up, playing a little tune, to make light of my ackwardness. There was no hiding in the silence of the zendo. The bell told all. It pinged with my insecurity; it bonged with my over-confidence. It took a while, but eventually the bell and I sang together, making unique new sounds that grew more clear each time the bell was struck. With each peal of the bell you feel as though you have been struck; one's whole being vibrates with it. No one moves in the zendo until the last faint echo of the bell disappears. I'm confounded sitting in this new meditation experience that seems so casual and indifferent to the sound of the bell (when there is one). Confounded and curious to explore it all including the surprising pangs! of emotion that have come up around the new meditation approach.

Like striking the bell, I never really know what will come from my brush to the paper. There is a certain joy in not knowing, in nurturing curiosity and learning to embrace and work with whatever evolves. Forever humbled by what comes out on the paper, I'm learning to let go of expectations and paint with the flow of the water and pigment instead of muscling my way through a painting. In addition to it's luminosity, the fluidity of watercolor never stops teaching. Much like the breath in meditation, when you let go of controlling it and follow, new fountains of creative energy open up.

We can experience vibrations of sound and the rhythm of our own breath, but what of vibrations of color? Do you associate color and sound, or how about flavor or smell? Russian artist, Wassily Kandinsky wrote about the scent of colors, the tactile sensations they can evoke, even ascribing tastes to colors. (Please do not ever munch on your pigments! They are toxic!) He is said to have experienced synesthesia, a kind of mixing of the senses. Sensory words are juxtaposed for effect in poetry (like loud perfume or an icy voice); the visual artist is challenged to use his/her senses as well. Kandinsky is said to have painted music using color as counterpoint. A painter, writer and poet, Kandinsky once wrote, "The sound of colours is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would try to express bright yellow in the bass notes, or dark lake in the treble." I am not so musically inclined (maybe it was arrested by those 5 am piano practice sessions or the horror of recitals), so I find the idea of color vibrating as sound to be very curious indeed. Working with design elements— line, shape, value, color, pattern and size— we can create rhythms, and to fully experience these rhythms we need all of our senses. But I find it more difficult to hear these rhythms than to sense them. Curiously, as I delve into meditation, I find more and more, that distinctions between the senses blur into one whole vivid experience. It's as though we can hear with our eyes and see with our ears. "I shut my eyes in order to see," Paul Gauguin supposedly said. T. S. Elliot wrote about, "music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music." The more we paint, the more we realize the senses are not the distinct, definable things we thought they were.

If I were to imagine sound emanating from this painting, I think it's deep, quiet notes, reminiscent of the bell in the zendo. Do the yellows vibrate in the treble notes or base? It's a mixed media piece, comprised mostly of acrylic paint, and scrubbed with alcohol to reveal underlying layers of color. The density of acrylic paint smothers the surface of the paper with shiny plastic, and the alcohol dulls and dissolves the plastic creating a pitted surface opening to the colors underneath. Tough, sinewy acrylics coat the paper with a kind of plastic armor, while watercolors merge with the surface allowing the paper to breathe. They each have a unique character— perhaps one is a string quartet and the other a brass band! A brass band made of plastic instruments?

I'm curious if the more musical among you, attribute sounds to colors.

Meditating With The Four Immeasurables

May All Beings Enjoy Happiness

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This fall I've been attending a Tergar Meditation Group under the guidance of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche  and my meditation practice has been rejuvenated with a fresh taste of beginner mind. Blissfully anonymous, I soak up meditation instruction and commentary by the students in this new group. For several years I was actively involved in the busy-ness of a local zen community; now I am actively uninvolved. I'm just sitting, cultivating meditation practice.

The Tergar group has been meditating with the four immeasurables— loving-kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. These meditations seem like kin to western psychology's cognitive therapy in that they transform thought patterns. This is a very different style of meditation for me and I'm encountering some ambivalence. Currently we're working with empathetic joy, rejoicing in the happiness of others. It sounds simple enough. But meditating on empathetic joy is not all sweetness and light. Do you ever have a sense of not being good enough, smart enough, creative enough? Do you know these not enough feelings? We all encounter them from time to time. Critical feelings like these can permeate our lives and block feelings of joy for ourselves and others. Thoughts and emotions, critical or positive, are not who you are and struggling to change them into something more desirable will not end the cycle of not enough. In my experience, looking at the mind, examining the thoughts and emotions passing through, is the most helpful way to loosen their grip. You have to see them for what they are— intangible,  and you can only do this by continuous examination. I wish for anyone who delves into this meditation, courage and resolve, because there is an endless supply of thoughts and emotions! That in itself is key. Like waves on the ocean, thinking is the natural function of the mind. Where do waves of thought come from? Finding a living breathing meditation teacher to guide you is best, but if that's not possible there are many good books on meditation. One of my favorites is Turning The Mind Into An Ally by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche; Ken McLeod's Wake Up To Your Life is invaluable as is The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.

It's also important to question— what is joy and happiness? I spent several months on the painting you see here, May All Beings Enjoy Happiness. It was a year of turmoil and tragedy in the world, but I wasn't aware of painting with any concept of joy and happiness for all. Words get in the way. I just paint. Concepts usually come later in my process, sometimes not revealing themselves until the title of a work emerges if at all. Though most of my artwork appears realistic, to me everything is abstract. I learned methods for breaking the white of the paper, for taking that initial leap into an abstract painting, from artist John Salminen whose work I admire. This piece started with cut out shapes from old magazines and scraps of paper. Some were glued to the painting, some were simply used as guides for the painted shapes. I also used stencils and lifting techniques. The light bursting through the heavy dark shapes, feels to me like a heart or mind breaking open. The light depends on the dark shapes for it's form and identity, just as joy and happiness depend on suffering. What does happiness mean to you? Can it include those experiences you define as suffering?

Of course everyone wants joy and happiness. We think we've found happiness, then it slips away again. We wish with all our heart, the best for all beings, but sometimes the good things we wish for lead to suffering. So it really is important to consider, what does joy and happiness mean to you? Superficial trappings of happiness, all the stuff we work so hard to get more of in order to feed these insatiable desires, keep us mired in dissatisfaction. When we wish for all beings to know joy, we are really wishing for hearts and minds to break open to the freedom beyond concepts of happiness and suffering.

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, 
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

—Jelaluddin Rumi

May all beings know immeasurable joy.

The Heart of Watercolor– Luminosity

Our natural inclination is to mix color on the palette or, easier yet, use premixed color straight from the tube. Color is certainly more predictable that way. But the beauty of watercolor— luminosity, is best revealed when color is mixed on the paper. This is where watercolor quite literally shines! The transparent nature of watercolor allows light to pass through and bounce off the white of the paper. This is not a medium for the heavy handed. Those loose, delicate washes of color appear effortless, yet they require much of the artist wielding the brush. Watercolor practice will develop patience and the ability to focus. It will fine-tune all of your senses. And, it can show us how to live wide awake and paint with that vivid awareness. There probably will be moments of discouragement, but don't fret! The mingling of water, pigment and artist on the paper is a truly sublime experience that makes any momentary discouragement pale by comparison. Set aside desires for predictable outcomes and formulas to get them. Watercolor, like life, is full of surprises. It is the unexpected that makes it so endlessly captivating. Though modern pigments are crafted for longevity, the luminosity they impart has a decidedly ephemeral feel. I love that we mix earth and water as we paint and express what is most important to us. If you pause to contemplate the life of the colors on your palette, you see that you hold the whole universe on your brush.

When you made the chart of your primary colors, you learned how to deepen a color by glazing, or layering one stroke of color over another. The palette chart documented your pigments showing their hue, transparency and staining qualities. Now we'll use the same glazing technique to create new colors. Lay down a good sized stroke of each primary color.

We're going to mix secondary colors— orange, green, purple— by glazing with your three primaries. Are those strokes dry yet? Check with the back of your fingers. (The oil from the skin on your fingertips can transfer to your paper and create paint-resistant spots, so use the back of your fingers.) Now, paint a stroke of yellow over half of the dry red stroke. Where the two colors layer over one and other, you should see a nice glowing orange. Next, paint a stroke of blue over part of your yellow swatch. You should see green where they overlap. And last, paint a stroke of red over part of your blue swatch. Voilá! Purple!

Glazing is one of the most important watercolor techniques you can develop. It's key to building luminosity and depth. Of course you can also mix the secondary colors right on your palette— red + yellow for orange, yellow + blue for green and blue + red for purple. Mix the secondaries and then paint swatches of them on your paper to compare with your glazed secondaries. How do they look? The glazed secondaries should have a unique glow as one color shines through the other. Mixed colors have a more solid appearance depending on the ratio of water used.

You may have noticed new hues appearing on your palette as pigments dripped and bled and mingled creating whole arrays of colors. Let's do this on watercolor paper. This time lay down strokes of clear water and drop brush loads of primary colors into the watery strokes. Let red and yellow mingle, red and blue, and yellow and blue. The water and pigment move by themselves, attracting and repelling depending on the characteristics of each pigment. If you get antsy, you can help them along by tilting the paper, adding more pigment or water, or by removing water or pigment with a thirsty, dry brush. You have just experimented with the wet-in-wet technique. It's a beautiful, loosely controlled technique that can loosen one's penchant for studiously building form. And did I say how deliciously fun it is!? Notice the glowing quality of these orange, purple and green colors that appears almost magically, when we pause and allow the colors to mingle.

So there you have a few ways to experiment with color mixing. Are you going to try them out with a little painting? How will you use the natural luminosity of watercolor to express what's important to you?

Just As It Is

The creative process, like a spiritual journey, is intuitive, non-linear, and experiential. It points us towards our essential nature, which is a reflection of the boundless creativity of the universe.

—John Daido Loori

The Zen of Creativity

Cultivating Your Artistic Life

I'm saddened to hear of John Daido Loori's imminent passing. As a photographer and American Zen Master, Daido Loori erased boundaries between art and life itself. His Art In Nature series are some of my favorite pieces. At first glance his work appears to be abstraction. It is not. He photographed nature just as it is.

Deep bows, Mr. Loori. You will be missed.