a5817a_0c4523de04a74ccdb85e6362a2ac497b~

Using Dharma texts to support meditation, contemplation

and art practice

Here Not Here

When you look within and observe,
You will come to see yourself,
Yet there is nothing there to see.
This “seeing” is itself recognition.
It is this we call the view.

– Yeshe Tsogyal

The illusion of an independent, impermanent self and concrete phenomena are experienced,

yet are unfindable

when we investigate what they really are through contemplation and meditation.

In Mahamudra and Dzogchen practices we learn to recognise and rest in how illusions of self and phenomena arise from timeless, pure awareness-emptiness and compassion.

The process of making art is a support for learning this.

Exploration 1

Starting point for my own practice:

instructions for creating a palimpsest while contemplating a Dharma text

Do a regular awareness meditation practice
Select a Dharma text for contemplation.
Select 3 sheets of handmade 650g Khadi paper using any art materials and writing materials.
Contemplate the text and my own experience of the meaning of the words in my life using art materials. Just do art from that, let it happen. Contemplating meaning involves holding the text loosely in my mind. I am not trying to analyse it conceptually or academically. I am just holding it gently in awareness, and letting it seep. I can alternate contemplation with resting in awareness or rigpa/Nature of mind.
Work in layers so it becomes a palimpsest
Do a layer a day on each sheet of paper
The work is complete when I have arrived at a stable insight into the meaning of what I am contemplating. This is not an academic or conceptual insight or a passing ‘interesting experience’.

First Selected Dharma Text:

Chogyam Trungpa and Rigdzin Shikpo, 2003,The Way of Maha Ati,

in The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa, Volume 1, pp.461-465, Shambhala Publications.

"In meditation see through the illusion of past, present and future.

The past is just a present memory,

The future is a present projection,

and the present itself vanishes before it can be grasped."

1/4

What Happened

Journal

11.1.2021

I write the words using watercolour pencils, chalk pastels, water and gesso very loosely, naturally, contemplating, feeling their meaning while resting in awareness
Working in layers, as palimpsest, letting letters and words come and go. Aware of impermanence, referencelessness, interdependence, changing
No conceptual analysis, just being and doing
Aware of when I start grasping, referencing to the art world. Relaxing and letting be in awareness again

I am interested to see how this process evolves. How can the words can be contemplated, experienced, realised through the process of playing with art materials? It feels like a way of internalising, absorbing, integrating their meaning. This is using an activity as a support for contemplation and awareness.

12.01.2021

Resting in alaya/don’t know mind
Aware of no reference point other than awareness of bodily energy, sensations of materials, freely doing
Relaxed, letting be, enjoying
Keeping sessions short times undistracted non-meditation as instructed by my teacher
Working until concepts kick in.
? Maybe take concepts as practice tomorrow
No agonising, Freer
Not bothered about outcome, just aware of process.
Felt sense: beauty, truth, can’t put into words.

13.01.2021

Contemplating text while doing creative activity shifts the emphasis of creative practice:
- Just being with my awareness of images as I write the text and then it dissolves as I add the layering
- Emphasis shifts away from having to prove I am a ‘good’ artist
- Not so lost in resistances, blocks and other neuroses, although I am aware and alert to their possible arising. Kleshas arise, but OK if I am resting in awareness-referencelessness
- But the words, with their blessing, help me rest more easily in the mirror of awareness, and dance with all the creative reflections
- Then any blocks feel less solid; they are just appearances that I don’t have to follow unless I want to
- I still experience pain, emotions, sensations which are not particularly pleasant, which are part of being human.
Art materials I am using for multiple layering:
- Gesso, tape, watercolour pencils, graphite, gouache, watercolour, shellac, Japanese paper, hinging tissue
How to record the process? Stills? Video? Change studio layout to do video. Keep it simple and do-able.

14.01.2021

This is becoming a real contemplation due to doing it repeatedly each day. It’s like a koan.
I hold onto it loosely as a contemplation while learning to not be lost in it, staying aware, like shamatha with support leading me into vipashyana and awareness-referencelessness
There seems to be many layers of resting with it when using a Dharma text. In this teaching alone, the full text contains hundreds of profound phrases which can be used as a starting point for meditation, contemplation and creative practice.

16.01.2021

I discovered this is not a Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche text but a Chogyam Trungpa and Rigzin Shikpo text. That’s fine as the point is not an academic analysis of the finer points of syntax, but how the text stimulates my experience of the Dharma as taught to me by my main teacher and how creative practice supports this
Palimpsest:
- Layers have now gone dark and heavy to which I feel aversion. Yuk. That’s OK, keep going.
- This repeated layering and contemplation are taking me to a place where there seems to be no difference between past, future and present. I don’t want to conceptualise this, and don’t know if this is just a passing thing or some kind of insight-ette. Just stay with awareness of unfolding without judging or asking questions, then I can just BE with the process.
- Very helpful returning repeatedly to the contemplation over days. I think doing Mindweathersong helped me see how this process of daily repetition helps understanding /insight to seep in slowly at a deep level beyond the conceptual. I knew intellectually that all experience is in the present and that the present itself is unfindable, but this is different from an experiential insight.
- Daily or almost daily, repetition is a key. Just plugging repeatedly at it. Doing it once is not enough. Like meditation training, it has to be repeated; perseverance is needed for lasting insight to filter through a mind as resistant and deluded as mine.
- The more I do these art and meditation practices, the more clearly I see that creative activity can be a real support from awareness practices.

20.01.2021

Palimpsest process and contemplation:
- Working on more layers, including asemic writing, masking tape, shellac, acrylic paint then paint over them with white gesso.
- The underneath layers invariably bleed through. Traces like vague memories are there, but unreadable, unclear, just a feeling, a hint of residual presence. This feels like an equivalent for embodied awareness and remembering
- Destrying marks by covering them with white gesso is like a return to essence, the simplicity of being and knowing
- Repeatedly re-contemplating each day on the text meaning and responding to evolving work. I need to be mindful of my tendency to want to create a meaningful or good picture. The point is that it is what it is.
- This process is also experientially affecting my perception of ego, self, identity; it’s like collapsing perception of time has a knock-on effect with other perceptions
Past, future, present continue to fuse into one in my mind. Then this starts collapsing.
Only a vague experience at the moment, but much clearer than just sitting on a meditation cushion
Astonished by how art-making-as-meditation is affecting my insight into the nature of past, future, present. Doing this as a koan-like activity seems to go deep as does meditation. Art and meditation together seem to be a doubly incisive trekcho (Tib: cutting through delusion) tool. Surprised!
The writing on this cave wall, marking now, challenges me to sit with, be with no reference point, not trying to make a picture OF something, just not knowing, movement and stillness together, the movement is an expression of the stillness.

24.01.2021

This really feels like a koan.
If I want to realise the meaning of the text, going over and over it over time impacts the mind deeply, and seems to loosen something up
When I get stuck in trying to do a picture OF past, future, present, then this is just solidifying concepts. All sorts of conceptualisations do arise, this is part of the process of exploring koan through palimpsest.