EXPLORING
A FEMININE VISION OF THE SPIRIT, part 2
(1989)
I have wanted
to paint the desert and I haven't known how . . . So I brought home
the bleached bones as my symbols of the desert. To me they are as
beautiful as anything I know. To me they are strangely more living
than animals walking around . . . The bones seem to cut sharply to
something that is keenly alive on the desert even tho' it is vast
and empty and untouchable -- and knows no kindness with all its beauty.
Georgia O'Keefe
the painting
"Deer Horns"
To convey a symbolic
understanding of something vast, empty and untouchable, the quest
into the realm of the unknown through the media of visions and sounds,
painting and words. I touch these untenable vistas through various
spiritual practices as well as continuous awe-filled interaction with
nature and am pursued with the passion to translate the experience.
Passion for life, passion to find out who I am. The creation story;
painting, poetry, dance, rituals, chanting and music-- ways of making
an offering back, completing the circle of energy so that growth and
the renewal process may continue to unfold unceasingly for the benefit
of all. Taking the name compassion it is an act of reverence and gratitude
to that which sustains and embodies me, revealing its true nature
through the kindness of all forms of life, our interdependence and
interconnection. Since childhood I have reveled in deep communion
with nature which bore the fruit of a deep intrinsic, though abstract,
understanding of principles that underlie the ultimate nature of reality,
themes that I explore in these paintings. It is only in the last few
years that I have engaged experientially and intellectually with the
teachings of the Buddha, slowly weaving an infinite tapestry mind
of such beauty, the warp--my revelations in nature, the woof--the
Four Noble Truths, the Eight-fold Path and a lineage of practitioners
who sought truth. All of these brightly colored threads are apparent
in the process of translating the visual experience of my paintings
into words.
I have come to
realize again that the inspiration, the creative process, the source
for the images is a multifaceted jewel, that refracts light in many
directions creating a continuous movie flow of distractions and illusions
that veil the true substance and color of the gem. It can become a
complex process to penetrate the layers of conditioning and armor
that protect this tool of wisdom and understanding. The source for
the images and words, our artistic inheritance evolves through many
layers of our own unique perception and distortion before it flows
from brush or pen. In Buddhist philosophy this is talked about in
terms of the aggregates (called "dharmas" in Sanskrit)..
A commentary on
the Heart Sutra reveals some insights on the aggregates.
"Form is
empty; the first profundity is the emptiness of inherent existence
of phenomena. It is a call of profundity because emptiness is a profound
topic that is difficult to realize and because the realization of
emptiness leads to the profound attainment of complete liberation
from all suffering. It is called the profundity of the ultimate because
emptiness is the ultimate nature of phenomena. Avalokiteshvara's words
`form is empty' reveal the ultimate nature of form and thus reveal
the first profundity of form. `Form', here, refers to the aggregate
of form, which is one of the five aggregates: 1) form 2) feeling 3)
discrimination 4) compositional factors 5) consciousness. In general,
the five aggregates include all impermanent phenomena . . . those
of a person include the particular impermanent phenomena that constitute
a person . . . Although objects that are included in the aggregate
of form appear to exist inherently in this way, in reality they totally
lack inherent existence. The way in which these objects actually exist
is quite different from the way in which they appear to exist."(1)
These finalize
the experience of the solid "I" which creates fear, boundaries
and the feelings of separation or isolation from the rest of creation,
as well as isolation from the "self as pure infinite potential,"(2)
the creative void. Art embodies truth, the truth of emptiness birthing
form, the truth of that form reflecting emptiness. It is an ultimate
gift to the artist who reaches so deeply for authenticity, and to
the viewer who reaches out to embrace it with his senses.
I am constantly
amazed at the contortionist dance we do to hide the truth of things
from our conscious mind. Our deceptions are limitless and we need
to be constantly creating new ways to excavate the ancient ancestress
temple from the innumerable grains of sand that bury Her. When the
shovels of my interior task force become words, a totally unfamiliar
avenue of expression, my expert archeologist mind asleep with habit
and familiarity become an ever-curious and courageous beginners mind.
I literally stumbled into the secret passageway that led to the center
of the maze. The creative process once more became comforting, healing,
natural, a deep communion with that which nourishes and restores health.
I say naturally because there is an obvious creative energy in life
that seeks to create itself everywhere, tiny tender sprouts growing
out of stone and cement. As a teacher of mine, Vernice Solimar, said,
"Get in touch with that process to find out what it is, sit with
a plant. Creating is fun. Godesss must be in constant bliss creating
over and over again unceasingly." I refer to the Goddess throughout
these writings and paintings that chronicle a continuous dance with
Her beloved presence in my life. My perception of the divine has been
that of the feminine principle complete within Herself, continually
and joyously birthing form, nurturing its development and receiving
it back into Herself in death. I expound on this theme in one way
or another in each piece, but perhaps most thoroughly in the last
one `Hawkwoman'. A creation myth of the Goddess I've recently encountered
and become very fond of is in Starhawk's' Spiral Dance, a
story of the creative void.
"Alone, awesome,
complete within Herself, the Goddess, She whose name cannot be spoken,
floated in the abyss of the outer darkness, before the beginning of
all things. And as She looked into the curved mirror of black space,
She saw by her own light her radiant reflection, and fell in love
with it. She drew it forth by the power that was in Her and made love
to Herself, and called Her "Miria, the Wonderful."
"Their ecstasy
burst forth in the single song of all that is, was, or ever shall
be, and with song came motion, waves that poured outward and became
all the spheres and circles of the worlds. The Goddess became filled
with love, swollen with love, and She gave birth to a rain of bright
spirits that filled the worlds and became all beings."
"But in that
great movement Miria was swept away, and as She moved out from the
Goddess She became more masculine. First She became the Blue God,
the gentle laughing God of love. Then She became the Green One vine-covered,
rooted in the earth, the spirit of all growing things. At last She
became the Horned God, the Hunter whose face is the ruddy sun and
yet dark as Death. But always desire draws him back toward the Goddess,
so that He circles Her eternally, seeking to return in love."(3)
The original theme
of this writing project was "Mother Goddess: A Transformative
Journey Through the Womb of Creativity." The journey itself evolved
during six years of internal and external research; a year of traveling
in Asia, the death of my artist-husband, a grief retreat at Green
Gulch Farm Zen Center under the direction of two women teachers (Yvonne
Rand and Wendy Johnson), a life-changing plunge into the depths of
Tibetan Buddhism Tantra with my teacher Tara Rinpoche, a re-entry
into the world with my husband-teacher, Buddhist psychologist David,
and constant creative endeavor taking many forms-- gardening, flower
arranging, painting, writing and now ritual theater. The effect of
these numerous causes was a shift of interest away from total concentration
on the feminine towards integration of the masculine and feminine
principles, the union of the bliss and the void on all levels of my
being. It was apparent that this integration process and holistic
orientation needed to happen in the cultural, spiritual outer-world
for the survival of the planet; it was more slowly revealed to me
as an internal dichotomy as well and finally the profound proposal
of an inconceivable ultimate reality of non-duality or truth in the
teachings of the Buddha. My exploration of the Goddess religions in
the East and West birthed a part of me that had died generations ago,
a heritage of power, creativity, sexuality and spiritual communion
with Nature, my womb. This re-awakening was powerful, but left me
wanting -- it did not fill my need to understand the intrinsic nature
of suffering. Eve's plight in the garden, as described in my writing
on "Aphrodite-Eve", created a western world view that had
left me cold and barren. In Spiral Dance, a book on modern
Goddess worship from a western perspective, Starhawk effectively dodges
the issue, putting her view on life atop a pedestal of `wonder', ignoring
the upraised arms of those who suffer below. They fall into the realm
of Buddhists and she enforces this criticism by quoting -- "the
First Truth of Buddhism, that All life is Suffering."(4)
She does not refer to the Second, Third and Fourth Truths that reveal
the `cause': Suffering comes from grasping desires, the `medicine';
Grasping can be let go of and the `cure': the eight-fold path
leads to the liberation from grasping, Nirvana. This path and its
systematic approach in teaching techniques that reveal Right Views,
Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right
Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Meditation provided me with skillful
means to approach the paradox of my life. I experience the wonder
almost simultaneously with the suffering at times, a theme explored
extensively in the writing `Heart Sutra' which evolved from my first
intimate experience with death, watching the breaths final exodus
from the body of a loved one. Wonder is one of my favorite words and
it weaves its reverence for all forms of life and each moment of directly
perceiving them. A system of thought and practices in Buddhism on
Dependent Origination(5) again teaches method for those of us who get it
directly through spontaneous interaction with the glories of Nature
but have a little more difficulty finding it during our commute hour
or at work.
The result of
this shift in focus toward wholeness resulted in a new philosophical
recipe. Here both Buddhism and Goddess reverence are ingredients of
exploration as well as a little Sufi ecstatic poetry, a watery dash
of Taoism, a cup of Gaia, a tablespoon of Hindu myths, a cosmic Zen
egg, a teaspoon of Hopi salt, Confucianist garden herbs, Findhorn
fairy sprinkles whipped together with Robert Bly's masculine energy
blender, cooked with Christian love and enjoyed with Jewish zeal for
life. I pray over it and hope the offering will be interesting rather
than confusing to the palette. In deference to my root deity, Arya
Tara, the Goddess of Compassion in Tibetan Buddhism, I am reminded
to add that the feminine principle is not deleted from Buddhism. A
beautiful example of this is given by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso in his
commentary on the Heart Sutra.(6)
"This sutra
is given the name `Mother' because the perfection of wisdom that reveals
itself is often called `Mother'. In general, both emptiness and the
mind understanding emptiness are referred to as `Mother' because superior
beings are born from them. A superior being (Sanskrit - arya) is a
person who has directly perceived emptiness, the ultimate nature of
reality."(7)
This current project
of translating my visions (paintings) into words (prose poetry?) began
with the intention to heal an age-old wounding separation of my own
mind; the elite-misunderstood-anti-intellectual-artist-heroine isolated
from society and her disparate lover, the story-teller who uses words
and intellect to elucidate amorphous mind and reconnect with the human
race. (Flowers, trees, plants, animals, birds were always easy to
talk to!) It seemed that the only way to reconcile my Goddess-consciousness
and perception of interconnection with a devastating lack of it manifesting
its reality through people in everyday life. This disconnection I
perceived as an inability to communicate meaningfully with a God-consciousness,
intellectual, me-first oriented society and culture. The themes that
emerged as I wrote about each painting led me to an understanding
that these ideals were just one small facet of the jewel. I had actually
linked into the deepest, most pervasive intention of my spiritual
commitment to life; for the benefit of all beings to unceasingly and
courageously seek the truth. Building the bridge of creativity over
and over again, continually finding ways to communicate the conventional
truth as varied, multi-dimensional and complex as Her human expressions
are numerous and as simple and pure as the all-encompassing wholeness
of Her body. The Bodhisattva vow took on new meaning as it repeatedly
does, and I'm reminded that growth is continual, an infinite mala
(rosary) of moments refracted over and over again through time and
space. My thesis advisor Gail Sher told me to write about "What
I didn't know yet," and the thought of it shoved me through the
door into endless space without even wings to support me. What an
idea, can it be, how can I do that? It reminded me that painting was
also a doorway of equal proportions and magnitude, (a theme explored
in Moon Mother Watching Over the Birth of Spirit, Dharma
Wheel, Turn to the Light, and Mother Goddess: Chalice of
Life and Death), but that I had become cautious and timid, exploring
the reflection of the jewel's radiance without penetrating its hidden
depth of color and luminosity. In light of this awakening to the authentic
source of intention and concern in my creative endeavors, it is not
surprising that I would find innumerable compatriots from various
traditions and occupations exploring these ideals with rich diversity
and unique understanding -- such as Georgia O'Keefe at the beginning
of this article.
Adrienne Rich
comments on this search for truth with deafening clarity and frankness
in Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying:
-- The liar leads
an existence of unutterable loneliness.
-- The liar is
afraid.
-- But we are
all afraid; without fear we become manic, hubristic, self-destructive.
What is this particular fear that possesses the liar?
-- She is afraid
that her own truths are not good enough.
-- She is afraid
not so much of prison guards or bosses, but of something unnamed within
her.
-- The liar fears
the void.
-- The void is
not something created by the patriarchy, or racism, or capitalism.
It will not fade away with any of them. It is part of every woman.
-- "The dark
core" Virginia Woolf named it, writing of her mother.
-- The dark core.
It is beyond personality; beyond who loves us or hates us.
-- We begin out
of the void, out of darkness and emptiness. It is part of the cycle
understood by the old pagan religions [and Buddhism] that materialism
denies. Out of death, rebirth; out of nothing, something.
-- The void is
the creatrix, the matrix. It is not mere hollowness and anarchy. But
in women it has been identified with lovelessness, barrenness, sterility.
We have been urged to fill our "emptiness" with children.
We are not supposed to go down into the darkness of the core.
-- Yet, if we
can risk it, the something born of that nothing is our truth.
-- The liar in
her terror wants to fill up the void, with anything. Her lies are
a denial of her fear; a way of maintaining control.(8)
Filling up the
emptiness with anything to avoid facing the truth . . . . A western
doctor who straddles the east/west paradigm of medicine and healing
by also studying auryvedic medicine and Tibetan Buddhism approached
this amorphous dimension of `truth' from a similar, yet diverse, perspective.
He was helping me surface from a week-long illness/healing crisis
well that I fell into during a retreat in Bodhgaya, India. This intense
spiritual retreat and reconnection with my earth roots (that always
happens to me in India) was also a bridge between writing the prose
on my paintings and this introduction-conclusion. In a fear-filled
moment, feeling estranged from my old reality on all levels, he told
me that the overwhelming sense of loss I was experiencing in the pit
of my stomach after throwing up for three days was literally the emptiness
I had been filling with the comfort of food. Now was my chance to
learn to feel at ease with that void and really re-learn the needs
and sensitivities of my awakening body. He added that it was as much
like the emptiness we were daily exploring in our Buddhist practice,
a void in which new positive things could be born and old negative
patterns and habits dissolved. I thought to myself recently as I returned
`home' and began a new painting from that scary place -- `this is
the well of my creativity.' It occurs to me that the process was the
precursor of a chain of events which led me to grounding the experience
in my physical body and the beginning of being with my body, my spiritual
practice, my paintings, my relationships, my life with renewed gratitude
and devotion. The word wonder slips in again, the inspiration
in my work that keeps the energy circle moving. A reminder to me to
remain grateful and devoted within the law of impermanence; knowing
that when we have what we desire we're unhappy, afraid of losing it,
when we don't have what we desire we're unhappy, afraid we'll never
have it, that neutrality seems boring rather than peaceful. Anyway,
change is imminent and to just be happy we aren't locked in our ice-prison
forever, the sun is on the way.
A very powerful
metaphor that mirrored the emptiness-quest surfaced in my world religions
class under the direction of Vernice Solimar. We were discussing the
element in `new age' philosophies that tended to create a facade or
veneer, often glitzy to distract one from the essential nature of
truth or at most offer a fleeting glimpse of the ecstasy negating
the darkness from which this light is born. She suggested that the
ideal or vision was placed in front of the quester, and that it actually
created a wall of armor through which to perceive the world, creating
a sense of separation and distortion, though perhaps understood as
truth. She then revealed a beautiful image; "that we walk toward
the unknown with our vision, our highest intention behind
us, the force that motivates and propels us forward. You'll see from
the moment if you're in tune with it or not, and can face others directly
from the truth of the moment. You become a beautiful mirror-reflection
of the essence." Here is the realm of the roshi, (Zen Master),
the enlightened one moving from the clarity and spontaneity of the
moment.
This concept empowered
me to face the unknown, to look at my paintings and allow them to
speak to me. I realized a new intimacy with these works that had been
painted over the last ten years. Total emphasis and importance had
been placed on the `creation process'. I had overlooked the potential
of these images to mirror and reveal the sweet fragrance of my initial
intention. At first the writings just didn't ring true, they embellished
the paintings with decorative frosting that added glitz but no depth,
and actually took away from the images. I was reminded to face the
unknown and write what I didn't know yet, and sitting in uneasy audience
before paintings that now seemed totally unfamiliar, words started
to come. Words that at first seemed so ordinary and uninteresting
to my judging mind. Dorothy's from Kansas in a world of Glendas. Yet
I often found myself sobbing when I read them through new eyes, something
had happened. My favorite word became authentic!
My current involvement
with another realm of creativity, contemporary ritual theater, led
me to really appreciate the wise words of actor Richard Chamberlain
describing his encounter with the creative void:
Chamberlain first
tries to make himself a "complete blank" because, he says,
"Creativity
is in the present moment; it doesn't come out of words, and it doesn't
come out of thoughts and it doesn't come out of memories though all
of those things can create a basis or a context for it. But the new
idea . . . the new feeling . . . When I go over a script, I'll read
the same scene over and over again until, finally, the truth of the
character will start leaping out at me. It doesn't come from my mind;
it's not that I was real smart and thought it up. It comes from some
unknown place, and I think that's what creativity is: it's creating
a context and an intention and a focus, and then allowing that magic
thing to happen. It's inexplicable, but now that I think about it,
the context is necessary; the intention is necessary; the focus of
attention is necessary. Then you just kind of let it happen, and hope
for the best."(9)
The realm of magic,
of wonder, the time-less bliss of the creatress . . . . I see it in
the eyes of my husband, David, as he begins to guide his Dharma students
into the realm of non-ordinary reality, where they can begin to glimpse
the real meaning underlying the sutras or the paradoxical statements
of Nagarajuna. Words of wisdom from another time that often seem to
make no sense unless the eye has been drawn with magnetic titillation
to a world gone beyond, as it can be on the magic carpet language
of a guide who's been there and reveled in experiencing: "nagas
who come from the undersea Kingdom to listen to the Buddha's teachings,
who smear themselves with sandalwood paste so they needn't smell the
disgusting aroma of humans."(10)
Our present culture conditions us to forget about the world of fairytales,
myth and ritual as well as the images that portray them, not realizing
that this is our children's inheritance, the gift from our ancestors,
the emptiness that births their form. The fluidity of our childhood
becomes rigid, again the ice-castle prison.
This writing process
led me repeatedly back into my childhood to explore the transition,
the rite of passage no longer deemed sacred and natural or supported
by ritual. The changes that threw me into a world no longer receptive
and nurturing, creating a being who felt like an alien on her home
planet. It took years to re-parent myself, finding my parents in mythical
mother earth and father sky. Tara Rinpoche emphasizes that in our
daily practice of chanting, visualization, mudra, mantra, and prayer
that we are opening ourselves to this non-ordinary reality. I am eternally
grateful to teachers like Rinpoche and David that make our eyes again
shine the awakening child within and hope my paintings are another
venue to this world gone beyond.
To this artist,
who seems to revel in complexity of image, paintings containing worlds-within-worlds-within-worlds,
it was an important and liberating experience in my search for thematic
alignment within my works, to discover coherence and universality
in addition to the diversity of symbols. A pertinent cultural analogue
is the contemporary search within the complexity of Buddhist thought
(as well as other major world religions) through oceans of commentaries
and translations--for the primary teachings and truth of the Buddha's
enlightenment experience. My intuition leans toward accepting the
paradox that eventual resolution must include both directions of practice,
ultimate diversification folding into infinite one-ness and simplicity.
The single brushstroke of Japanese brush painting and the infinite
universe's of Tibetan tankas.
My concluding
thoughts take me back to the enchanted garden surrounding the stupa
at Bodhgaya and the word passion. Passion is the story of
the Buddha and reminds me to ask myself the question continually --
"How much time and energy are you willing to put into finding
out who you are?" Under the Bodhi tree in that garden I could
feel whole-heartedly that the Buddha made it a life-death situation,
that the hub of the wheel of Dharma, the center of the Buddhist world,
was here and that I would always carry that place in my heart.
Beth Ames Swarz
reiterates this message of passionate life in her paintings Celestial
Visitations.
"Their real
beginning was in 1982." Exhausted and stricken with an illness
partly attributable to the hazardous processes she used to make her
fine paintings (various minerals, sand and earth were combined with
processes of burning and burial to produce her extraordinary Israel
Revisited series), Swartz had reached an empty place. "In
every philosophical system," she says, "there is a moment
where you can't get any further without surrendering. The Cabala calls
it `the abyss'. I had reached `the abyss'. But the Chinese also call
such moments dangerous opportunities." For Swartz, the
abyss provided the necessity and opportunity to travel new roads.
"After the fire paintings, it took me a year and a half to do
my next painting," she says. "I was being pressured by deadlines
[interesting word, `deadlines'], but for me the old processes no longer
worked. I had to surrender to this new journey, I had to heal myself;
I had no choice. As George Land says, it was `grow or die'."(11)
Interesting word,
`dead-lines'. I think a new poem can be born from that one, dream
time carries me away.
Alas, Maya Angelou,
the black poetess brought me snapping back into the realm of paradox,
on a poetic voyage through the smile-masks of her slave ancestors.
Her words echoed in my womb, tearing the walls with burning reminders
that throughout history whole races of wondrous beings have been saved
from extinction by wearing the smile-mask that veils the truth. Heroes
and heroines who created their truth moment by moment by hiding it.
Who are we? Who am I? It takes great courage to create ourselves anew
every moment.
A Paradox
I know you love
me better cold
Strange as the
pyramids of old
Responselessly.
But I am frail,
and spent and weak
With surging torrents
that bespeak
A living fire.
So, like a veil,
my poor disguise
Is draped to save
me from your eyes'
Deep challenges.
Fain would I fling
this robe aside
And from you,
in your bosom hide
Eternally.
Alas! you love
me better cold
Like frozen pyramids
of old
Unyieldingly?
by Georgia
Douglass Johnson (1886-1967)(12)
1.
That things are other than they appear is the central realization
to keep in mind if one wants to learn about the world around one.
2.
Solimar, "J.F.K.U. Syllabus: Buddhism", p.2
3.
Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, p.17
4.
Ibid., p.27
5.
Komito, David, Nagarjuna's "Seventy Stanzas", pp.25,
110-121, 172-178
6.
See endnote 8, Part I, "Heart Sutra"
7.
Gyatso, Heart of Wisdom, p.5
8.
Rich, Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying
9.
Morgan, "Richard Chamberlain", Magical Blend, p.48
10.
Lecture by David Komito at Zen Center, March 1989
11.
Carde, "Beth Ames Swartz; Celestial Visions," Artspace,
p.22
12.
Bernikow, The World Split Open, p.236
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