On Dharma, Art and Life

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Here I am, aware that I am in this body. Lying in a pram I am travelling backwards. I see my mother in front of me.  Cars hum on my right. Shop doors and windows pass on my left. If my mother was pushing me in the opposite direction, then the traffic would be on my left and shops would be on my right. I am about six months old. What is this miracle of embodied consciousness? Weird yet exciting things going on around me. Trying to make sense of it all. A friend once commented that I seem to live in a state of continual surprise. It feels like that.

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Who are we? Why do we have such a hard time? How can we be kinder to each other and live more harmoniously with each other and nature? How can we find wiser, more resilient ways to engage with life’s challenges? Exploring these questions has driven my life.

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Buddha’s Teachings (Buddhadharma)

Buddha’s teachings are vast and profound, concerned principally with the nature of suffering and how to permanently alleviate it to find the lasting happiness and peace of awakening or enlightenment. There is no mention of a supreme creator. Some feel that Buddhism is not a religion at all, but more of a psychology or philosophy. To understand the relationship between Buddhism and the arts, it is helpful to have a basic knowledge and understanding of some of Buddha’s teachings, particularly the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.

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Looking deeply into the nature of suffering, the Buddha saw its cause and discovered that when suffering and delusion dissolve, the enlightened nature of mind in all sentient beings is revealed, rather in the way the open, bright, spacious sky is revealed when clouds disperse. For Buddhists, enlightenment involves uncovering something already within us. Rather than actively creating something new or searching for something outside of oneself, anyone can realise this state with motivation, perseverance and training. Freeing oneself from suffering is a process of becoming aware and letting go of one’s own ignorance, aggression, greed, pride and jealousy. to reveal what has naturally been there – but concealed - all along: the compassionate, blissful, awake, knowing, empty essence of mind inherent in all living beings.

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(Insert Dharma teachings on 8 consciousnesses and awareness here)

 

October 1962, Hove, UK
Eight years old, I am sitting on a metal chair next to my mother, who sits blankly on another metal chair in a depressingly dark, Victorian hospital waiting room with high ceilings and gloss painted walls. No one else is there. A handsome young doctor in a white lab coat appears and gently tells my mother she has pneumonia and pleurisy and should be immediately admitted to hospital. We learn the next day she has tuberculosis and must go to an isolation hospital and that only Phil, my step father, can visit her. I go with her in the taxi to the hospital. Ten minutes later she waves goodbye to me from a window two floors up. I weep.

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My two-year old sister is put in foster care until it becomes clear she also has TB. At this point she joins mum in hospital. My fourteen-year old brother is living with our grandparents. Most cold, winter evenings Phil devotedly visits mum in hospital, leaving me alone for two hours in front of the telly with a paraffin heater (electric heating is too expensive), a hot water bottle, food, matches and a candle in case there is a power cut. It is the winter of the big freeze, with several feet of snow, black mould on walls and regular power cuts.

 

My whole world has collapsed. Everything seems very dark, very scary, unreliable and freezing cold. As there is nothing to hold onto for comfort except food, I am getting fat. The following April my mother returns home, but things continue to feel damp, dark and scary, exacerbated by her manipulative personality, frequent illnesses and the deepening poverty that followed after our increasingly depressed step-father gives up his job to look after us all.

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Impermanence and loss have arrived on my doorstep. I begin to experience deep suffering, the first Noble Truth as taught by the Buddha.

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(Insert Dharma teachings on 1st Noble Truth on suffering and impermanence here)

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Beginning interests in spirituality and art

From age eleven, attending an uptight Christian grammar school while trying to make sense of seemingly never-ending financial and dysfunctional family problems stimulate chronic anxiety, panic, depression and an obsession with Big Questions such as ‘Who am I/we?’, ‘What is the meaning of life?’, ‘Why do all these awful things happen to people, including me?’ which I discuss intensely with anyone willing.

 

At thirteen I have an AHA moment understanding that everything is interdependent and that how things seem to be depend on my state of mind. We create our own reality, so reality is just a matter of attitude. Although a profound insight, I have no idea how to use it to help myself or anyone else be wiser or happier. Very Buddhist, although I do not encounter Buddhism for another twenty years.

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(Insert Dharma teachings on 2nd Noble Truth, the causes of suffering here)

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I am 14. Interests in art, drama and dance begin emerging, enabling me to express pent-up emotions in a socially acceptable way. My grandmother pays for drama classes and arranges for a kindly old school friend to whisk me regularly around world-class art galleries, theatres and restaurants in London. I am so grateful and inspired. My head of art at school helps me keep going with art and survive yet another family trauma when I am sixteen: the suicide of my dear brother.

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Impermanence is no longer a house guest; it is a bedfellow and shadow. The world, including family, is not a solid, safe or reliable place. I am a psychological mess, but as there is no therapy or meditation around in 1971, I remain a psychological mess.

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(Insert Dharma teachings on the suffering of change here)

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1970

Years of pent-up, repressed energy blow: I rent a cheap bedsit in a sleazy area of Brighton above a photography shop where I work. This is not a popular move with my mother, as her compliant little girl has suddenly become uncontrollable and disinterested in maintaining a symbiotic relationship with her.  I am on a roll, experiencing anything interesting and profitable which comes my way. This includes taking LSD, cannabis, amphetamines, being a stripper earning good money travelling Europe, a property-owning seaside landlady, owning Danny, an adorable golden cocker spaniel, being a freelance illustrator, and a marriage which ends with my alcoholic, psychotic husband’s suicide. 

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What about artistic creativity? Designing and making impressive costumes, choreographing exotic dance shows and renovating derelict houses have been creative outlets providing money, power, ego inflation, and - most importantly - an illusion of the security I craved. LSD has opened my mind beyond conventions and there is no turning back from that. The wild life has been an exciting experience and much-needed release from childhood constraints. Conventional nine to five existence with a job, mortgage and 2.5 children in a blissful nuclear family seems like a prison. I want to do something more personally meaningful.

 

I am thirty years old.

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(Insert Dharma teachings on the basic desire for happiness and how seeking lasting happiness in impermanent phenomena is fruitless here)

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Waking up (a bit)

I am also still miserable, confused, anxious, depressed and selfish. What to do? After my alcoholic husband’s suicide, I wake up sufficiently to ask why these repeated dramas are happening to me. Once more obsessed by the Big Questions and utterly overwhelmed by repeated traumas, I go on a Theravadin Buddhist retreat without really understanding any of it, but everyone is very kind. A seed is sown.

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A Jungian psychotherapist befriends me, and while not being my therapist, becomes a surrogate mother crucial in helping me reorient towards a wiser way of living based on recognising how we create our own reality. I explore psychotherapy and art therapy and bioenergetics therapy and gestalt therapy. I read new age books, self-help books, study spiritual healing, paint, write copious journals, rent rooms in my house to therapists and university students, and embark on an intense spiritual search dipping my toes in the wisdom teachings within Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism.