The Bad Boys of Emptiness

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was starting a new text drawing. The piece is called Nausea, and it is the Sunyatasaptati (Seventy Verses on Emptiness) by Nagarjuna, formed with letters that I'm cutting from the novel Nausea by Sartre. The piece is coming along quite nicely. It took me a while to get into it, though. Pretty dry stuff. No, not Sartre - he's a total chucklehead compared to Nagarjuna. This guy's a real pill. Check out this passage from the Sunyatasaptati:

"Without being there is no non-being. Being neither arises from itself nor from something else. This being so, this being does not exist: so there is no being, and therefore no non-being."

Party on, dude. See what I mean? Pretty opaque stuff. So in order to break things up a bit, I tossed in some passages from Nausea - scattered them into the text, just to lighten things up. Ha! now there ya go - the bubbly Sartre as a source of comic relief. These two guys are like the bookends for emptiness. An obscure Buddhist philosopher on one end, a cranky Existentialist on the other, and a couple millennia of emptiness between. Had they lived in the same era, I think they'd have made a great team, sorta like the Laurel and Hardy of existential despair. Nagarjuna as the swaggering straight man, and Sartre the bumbling underdog.

"If nirvana resulted from cessation, then there would be destruction. If the contrary, there would be permanence. Therefore it is not logical that nirvana is being or non-being."

[Canned laughter].

I'd be hard pressed to say which guy surprises me more: Sartre, for how positively enlightened his realizations were, or Nagarjuna, for what a Buddhist butthole he appears to have been. He applied a zero tolerance rule on emptiness: don't ask, don't tell, don't even THINK that there is anything but emptiness. Or else. Okay, okay! I get it, Nagar! Emptiness rules!

The irritating thing is that he's right. Any way you slice it, you come up with emptiness. The notion that reality has substance just doesn't hold water. It's a miracle that a cup even holds water. Whether you're a Buddhist, a Trappist, a quantum physicist, a philosopher, or a Wall Street banker, you end up at the same conclusion: there's nothing there. Your reality is based on illusion, presumption, and projection. Projection of what? Desire. Everything we do, all that we see, is a manifestation of desire, either yours or someone else's. Think about that.

Why is it that my life is so radically different than, say, that of a Wall Street banker? I simply don't project the same desires that she does. Financial security? Planning for retirement? A husband with a twelve inch stock portfolio? Nah, I'm good. The movie that we project onto the screen of our life creates our reality. Turn off the projector, and our reality ceases. What's left? Emptiness.

Try it. Look around the room. You may be in a small loft like I am, an office, a double-wide, or lounging by the pool of your summer estate. Wherever you are, see how your space is the reflection of your desires. What if your desires came to a grinding halt? I don't mean that they changed, I mean that they stopped altogether, and you desired nothing. What would you be left with?

When we turn off the projector and our desires cease, we're left with the substance of who we are - that is, the lack of substance. We're nothing more than consciousness. We conduct our lives as if we are our bodies and our accumulation of things. As if we could take all of our belongings, plop them in a crate, jump in the crate along with them, and say, "This is me." No, that's just your projection of who you are. YOU are something entirely different. YOU are the awareness of the desire; YOU are the awareness behind the desire. The breath inside the breath, according to the Upanishads.

Back to Nagar and Jean-Paul. Their shtick is to do away with all our illusions about ourselves, and strip it down to the basics. When we do that, we find at the core of reality a gaping maw of emptiness, and it's upon this emptiness that the mind builds its castles. Does this make you feel a little queasy? Yeah, me too, but don't worry - we all have our bouts of nausea.

Above: Nagarjuna (right) scolds Sartre (left) for succumbing to the illusion of nausea.

My New Love: Kirtan

Meet the new love in my life: Kirtan. The other night I was bored (hey, it happens), had to get the hell out of my studio, so I decided to go to a kirtan in Manhattan. I've been hearing about this for some time, so I figured I'd check it out, go somewhere afterwards for a pint, then head on home. Three hours later I was so blissed out on chanting that I totally forgot about the beer.

For those of you who don't know, kirtan is another word for devotional chanting. The person leading the kirtan - the kirtancar - chants a mantra, and then the rest of us repeat. Endlessly. Hypnotic chords sustained throughout, drumming on tablas, some guitar or sitar. The point of kirtan is to get your vocal chords to form the Sanskrit sounds, even if you don't know their meaning. By chanting the mantras over & over, you allow the healing power of the chant to resonate in your nervous system, and you enter a state of letting-go, letting-be, and finally, bliss. And when you have a large group of people doing it, the energy in the room gets sort of transcendent. Sublime, even.

I always thought of kirtan as something that the orange-cloaked folks do. You know, them. The ones with red ash smudged between their brows, who have shaved heads, stinky armpits, and wear rancid patchouli oil. If there was any 'chouli in the room, it escaped my nasal radar, and the smelliest armpits were my own, at least in my nasarsphere. No, these folks were as 'normal' as I, although admittedly that may not be the best barometer. But it was a great group of people nonetheless - warm, welcoming, open-hearted, and no one seemed to mind one bit when I broke into a devotional yodel. (Yes, I'm not serious).

When the chanting was over, the room became very quiet, filled with energy that can only be described as love. Devotional love. So many wide open hearts, all in one room. We all sat there in silence. Most eyes were closed; others, including mine, wide open and blinking. Wow. What is this? Phenomenal. After what seemed like a very long time I turned to the woman next to me and she looked completely blissed out - I mean, she was gone. Didn't want to bug her, so I turned to the guy on my right and asked him if kirtan was always this way. He nodded, leaned over, and whispered, "Welcome to kirtan."

Okay, I'm hooked. Sign me up, baby.

So it turns out that there's this huge kirtan community here in Manhattan. Who knew? And why not? There's a community for everything else in this city, from 'Shamans for Shamu' to 'Gnitting for Gnostics'. Why not chanting? I can croon every night of the week if I want to - how cool is that? So what started out as the summer of my discontent has turned into a Madgefest of transcendent bliss. Texting by day, yodeling by night - does it get any better than that?

Satsang with Guru Sartre

Just in case you haven't had enough Nausea, here are a few more enlightened quotes from the Self-Realized One, Sri Baba Sartrananda. I've recently dragged him from his existential closet, kicking and screaming, to be exposed as one of the great teachers of Advaita.

"So this is Nausea: this blinding evidence? I have scratched my head over it! I've written about it. Now I know: I exist - the world exists - and I know that the world exists. That's all. It makes no difference to me."

"The Nausea has not left me and I don't believe it will leave me so soon; but I no longer have to bear it, it is no longer an illness or a passing fit: it is I."

"...usually existence hides itself. It is there, around us, in us, it is us, you can't say two words without mentioning it, but you can never touch it. When I believed I was thinking about it, I must believe that I was thinking nothing, my head was empty, or there was just one word in my head, the word to be. "

"But that all happened on the surface. If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered, in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form which was added to external things without changing anything in their nature. And then all of a sudden, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself."

"I realized that there was no half-way house between non-existence and this flaunting abundance. If you existed, you had to exist all the way, as far as mouldiness, bloatedness, obscenity were concerned."

"And without formulating anything clearly, I understood that I had found the key to Existence, the key to my Nausea, to my own life. In fact, all that I could grasp beyond that returns to this fundamental absurdity."

"Existence everywhere, infinitely, in excess, for ever and everywhere; existence - which is limited only by existence. I sank down on the bench, stupefied, stunned by this profusion of beings without origin: everywhere blossomings, hatchings out, my ears buzzed with existence, my very flesh throbbed and opened, abandoned itself to the universal burgeoning. It was repugnant."

- from Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Om shanti shanti.
Amen.

The Joy of Text

Today I'm going to write a little more about the use of holy scripture in my creative process. Now pipe down, everyone - no pushing, no shoving, and single file, please. This riveting subject has been covered in previous posts, but my massive fan base is demanding to know more, always more. Or at least in my mind they are. So without further ado, please take a seat so I can get started.

The interesting thing about holy scripture is what humans have done with it. The meaning behind the words is considered by some to be so significant, so rife with spiritual substance, that the text is said to be inspired by God. Some take it a step further and say that the text is the word of God, and therefore infallible. The Bible, the Koran, the Tablets of Baha'u'llah - sacred stuff, all of it. I don't challenge this; indeed, I regard it with the deepest respect. Even if I don't follow the path covered in the text, if it's considered to be the word of God, then it is sacred, and I treat it as such.

I'm not being patronizing or politically correct. I really do believe that it's sacred. If someone believes that such-and-such text is holy writ, who am I to reject it? If it doesn't ring true for me, is that any reason to deny its authenticity for someone else? I honor the person by honoring their faith. Look, I'm an advaitin, which means that I believe that we're all enlightened beings, here for the sole purpose of self-realization. It doesn't get any nuttier than that. So I repeat: who am I to deny one's chosen ideal? I bow to everyone's path, and their God, and glean from the teachings, however impenetrable they may be to me.

I must admit that I take some guilty pleasure from feasting on the riches of so many spiritual traditions. It's a veritable smorgasbord: the poetry, the prose, the inexpressible joy that comes through in the writing, the heart wrenching grief - in short, the expression of what it is to be human. And while I'm cutting up one sacred text to form a passage from another, the words and their meanings begin to blur, and I forget which text is which. I try to keep it straight, but after a while it no longer matters. This is the precise moment when my work comes to life: when the texts merge into a unified expression of devotion. It is then possible to penetrate even the most opaque text, as it expresses the universal desire for heart connection.

And another thing. Think about some of the mind-blowing accomplishments that mankind has under its belt. Man on the moon. Quantum theory. Mozart's Mass in C Minor. Beethoven's Ninth. E = mc2. DNA mapping. Face transplants. Viagra (actually, that was probably invented by womankind). It's endless. So where in the long list do we include the sacred texts that have emerged to give hope, direction, and glimpses of the divine? Are they to be regarded as inventions or interventions? Does it really matter?

Well, I'm not here to answer these questions, nor am I going to suggest that we meet for coffee and donuts to discuss the matter further. I only mean to convey that the sacred writings of humankind are among our loftiest achievements and worthy of, if not our devotion, at least our respect. Like relativity theory, they could be regarded as the ground at which human intellect runs head-long into the immortal, generating the divine spark which has the power to completely transform individual lives, as well as change the course of history.

So this is why I use holy texts. Simply put, there's palpable, transformational energy in them. It has nothing to do with the particulars, but with the underlying faith that launched the belief into orbit to begin with. Whether you call it Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, or Brahman, the belief originates in the human craving for love and connection, and when you get right down to it, what else is there?

Above: Nearer My God to Thee, (detail). Methodist hymn. The letters were cut from the Tablets of Baha'u'llah, the sacred text of the Bahai faith.

Sartre the Bodhisattva

I've changed my mind about Sartre. I no longer believe that he was a closet Buddhist. I now think that he was a fully realized Bodhisattva, disguised as a tragic Existentialist. He makes Nagarjuna, the great Buddhist philosopher on emptiness, look like an amateur. Seriously. Check it out and see for yourself:

"Now when I say 'I', it seems hollow to me. I can't manage to feel myself very well, I am so forgotten. The only real thing left in me is existence which feels it exists. I yawn, lengthily. No one."

"A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness ( ... ) and suddenly the 'I' pales, pales, and fades out."

"Lucid, forlorn, consciousness is walled-up; it perpetuates itself. Nobody lives there any more. A little while ago someone said 'me', said my consciousness. Who? Outside there were streets, alive with known smells and colours. Now nothing is left but anonymous walls, anonymous consciousness. ( ... ) Consciousness exists as a tree, as a blade of grass. It slumbers, it grows bored."

"There is knowledge of the consciousness. It sees through itself, peaceful and empty between the walls, freed from the man who inhabited it, monstrous because empty."

"But no one is there to suffer and wring his hands and take pity on himself. No one, it is a suffering of the crossroads, a forgotten suffering which cannot forget itself."

- from Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre. Above: Guru Sartre Rinpoche.

More on Creativity & Consciousness

"I think of our art and the process of making it as a blueprint for the rest of our life. If, on the canvas, one can push through the known, safe and familiar, and confront one's fears, it is possible that the boldness and honesty it takes to create authentic art will carry over into the rest of one's life. But, one has to ask, which came first: the consciousness to be self aware, to make changes, followed by the art that is the manifestation of expanded consciousness? Or vice versa. Frankly, I'm not sure. I suspect its a combination of both."

- Claude Smith. (Above: from the "Interstate Transit" series by Claude Smith, oil on panel, c. 2006).


The chicken or the egg ... tough call. I'll stick my neck out there and go with the egg. That is, I believe that the compulsion toward transforming ourselves and moving in the direction of expanded consciousness is something we're born with. There must be some cross-fertilization at play; some wayward set of molecules that escaped from the gene pool and splashed into our consciousness during conception. (Who knows? Maybe your great-great-great grandmother had a fling with a rebel while her husband fought in the Civil War, and you get to reap the benefits of his rebellious DNA. For that matter, maybe it's her DNA that makes you tick).

Why do I think we're born with it? Because I know some people who are not artists, and who aren't particularly creative, but who are earnest and brave seekers. Their predisposition toward self construction is perhaps more staid (psychoanalysis is pretty dry stuff), but their courage is no less than that of the artist, as they slog through year after year of self inquiry. My hat's off to them.

However, a self-seeker will discover that her awareness expands exponentially faster when she taps into her creative energy. When you engage in a form of self-expression such as painting, writing, dance, theater, music, whatever, you connect with the universal energy that is uniquely and powerfully transformational. Creative energy is paradoxically creative and destructive, in that through the act of creating, our cherished notions of who we are and what is true for us are destroyed. How does this happen?

Everything you create is you. Every brush stroke, erasure, weld, click, sentence, jot, tittle, C sharp, B minor, pirouette, sonata, pinyata - it's all you. And so if what we've created doesn't jive with the notion of who we think we are, things can get a little tense. We're forced to confront the disparity between what we believe - our comfort level - and what our art reveals to us. This probably doesn't hold true for the Sunday painter, btw. There has to be an ongoing, continuous engagement with the creative juices for transformation to occur. And it's also not enough to partake in another person's creative efforts, in hopes that it will brush off on you. It's one thing to read a book, it's quite another to write one. The latter requires intense self scrutiny and the proverbial peeling away of the layers of onion.

So yeah, if you're serious about bettering yourself, expanding your consciousness, and becoming a realized chimp, take up a creative pursuit. Knock yourself out. You think you're painting apples and oranges? Ha! Buddy, you're painting your Self.

Creative Energy & Self Construction

I had a good phone conversation with my friend Claude Smith recently. Even though we live on different coasts, I'm in touch with him more than all the other people in my life put together. He's an artist too, and a seeker, and the most decent guy I know. Integrity? He wrote the book. So he was telling me that he thinks an artist progresses in their internal life in direct proportion to how their art evolves. In other words, as our work develops and matures, and as we find our voice as an artist, we also develop and mature as conscious individuals, in a way that parallels the external work.

I know this is true for me. I've done a whole lot of work on myself, from psychotherapy to psychoanalysis to psychobabble, and then of course meditation, yoga, prayer, and drugs. They all have their benefits. But there's nothing, nothing that has penetrated my consciousness like my consistent engagement with creative energy. Why is this?

I think it's pretty simple. When we reach inward in search of some form of creative expression, we come face to face with ourselves. There's no way around it. You can cop a persona to the rest of the world, but when you're alone, it's not going to do you any good. So there you are, just you and the canvas, and what comes out is 100% YOU. For hours on end, month after month, year upon year, you observe yourself painting, and you watch what comes out of you. No wonder there are so many hysterical fits, broken brushes, and the odd suicide. It's really tough, folks. Creative energy can be ruthless, and the canvas-as-mirror unrelenting.

Every now and again there's a breakthrough. Your work moves to another level, and your consciousness shifts to let more light in. Pure bliss. This is what we live for. Nothing else much matters (mortgage? what mortgage?), as long as there are these moments of joy. Make them last and squeeze them dry, because they'll eventually level out and become ordinary. But not to worry - there will always be another shift, another summit, another plateau.

The interesting thing about creative energy is that while it seems to ebb & flow, it is in fact a constant source of energy. Like electricity. It's just there, in the psychosphere, waiting to be tapped into. So why, then, does it seem to disappear at times? It's got to be something internal, my friend Claude would say. Something clogging the pipes, preventing the energy from passing through freely. That's when it's the toughest for an artist - working through the obstructions. They can last for months, even years. Most artists give up - it's just way too depressing. And well it should be - you're not just dealing with paint and canvas, but personal issues and mental constructs that you inherited from your ancestors. Replacing your neurons and rearranging your DNA - now there's a Herculean task for you.

So next time you meet an artist who's been at it a long time, give them a nod of appreciation. Whether or not you like their work, just show your respect. Claude happens to be an extremely accomplished painter. He's been at it for maybe 45 years, and his work is open, free from mental obstructions, authentic, and intensely honest. Here's to you, Claudey. Thanks for sharing the above ideas with me. You can check out his work at: www.claude-smith.com

Above: Knot, detail. Acrylic on paper.

Classical Art vs. Advaita Art

If my mom had it her way, I'd still be painting still lifes and portraits. According to her, I should be painting pictures of things, not ideas. People don't want ideas on their walls - they want to look at pretty paintings. For crying out loud, don't make people think - just make them happy! You'll sell a lot more art that way. Or so she says, and she's probably right.

Okay. Where to begin. I stopped making people happy long ago. I have a classical training in art, and although I don't consider myself a master by any means, I'm reasonably good at it. But somewhere along the way I lost interest in reproducing the world in paint. What's the point? It made sense in 15th century Europe, when it was the avant garde. Until then, no one had tried to paint the world around them with much accuracy, so this was a major achievement. But that was 500 years ago! It's a little dated now, and we have this new thing called a camera that does a nifty job of it. As for me, I just got ridiculously bored with realism. I felt that as an artist I was reduced to reporting what I saw, like a visual newscaster. Nothing sublime about that.

See, classical art is grounded in the presumption that what we see is 'true'. How can anyone deny these pears? This chair? They're right here in front of me, I can touch them, so by God I'm going to paint them! In so doing, I reinforce the wild assumption of their existence, and of my own being, since a painting infers a painter. (Isn't that interesting, btw? That a work of art is evidence of the person who conceived it? Like a leaf bearing witness to the tree. Next time you're in a museum, try to see the painter, not the painting).

By reproducing the world around them, the artist perpetuates the myth of separation. It's like we - all of us - are trying desperately to convince ourselves that our conception of the objective world is the correct one. When we as artists depict nature, even in an abstracted form (i.e., the Cubists), we cling to our illusions of the world of objects as being a solid, fixed place. And each time we look at a painting, we succumb to the preposterous delusion of our mistaken identity.

That's my definition of classical art: one which perpetuates the illusion of separation, or duality. Advaita art, otoh, is one which demonstrates the unified nature of reality. It doesn't just depict it or illustrate it: it IS it. The art is an extension of undivided existence. The artist and the medium are one, and the act of creation is carried out through complete synthesis of intention. There is no fragmentation, because there are no mental constructs to interrupt the creative flow. Which isn't to say that there is no concept. But the concept is subordinate to the expression of unity.

So. Back to pears and chairs. I guess one could find a way to paint them that expresses nonduality. I hope they do. But me, I'm sticking with my text drawings. They don't aim to reproduce nature, or reinforce some mental construct of my identity. Instead, they are a slice of nondual experience, and a gateway to the sublime experience that I am That.

Above: Pears, 1988, acrylic on panel. From the collection of my mother.

My Nature Walk through Bushwick

Yesterday morning I went out early - bright & chipper, pumped on caffeine - and what's the first thing I see? A rat on the sidewalk with its head gnawed off. Gad. There goes the muffin. I mean, I realize that this is Bushwick, not the Berkshires, and they probably have their share of headless rats up there as well. But why must my morning include such carnage? As for the rat, poor old sot - what the hell'd he do to deserve that? Was he late on his rent? Did he cheat on his wife? Or was he just a decent, hard working rat who got in with the wrong pack?

And while I'm at it, what about good and evil? Who gets to decide another's fate? If the rat was an evil rat, then you could say that justice was served. If he was a loving and honorable rat, then we'll agree that it's a crazy world to end his life so viciously. But is it fair to make such a distinction? Let's say that he was a rat of a rat; that he raped, pillaged, and murdered other rodents throughout his adult life. Did he deserve to die in such a way? I mean, sure, he's just a rat, and a bad-ass rat at that. But would you be willing to sentence him to such a violent end? And if in fact he's innocent, why would a just God allow such an unjust act? How are we supposed to reconcile a world with such injustice, and still hold onto the idea of a just God?

According to advaita, this is an example of dual thinking. The idea of good versus evil is a mental construct that we drag around with us, and one which prevents us from seeing the world as it really is. From the advaita perspective, without evil, there is no good; they are interdependent. Without darkness there is no light; without sorrow there can be no joy. Nisargadatta, the great enlightened teacher, had no patience for people who whined about God being cruel. He stated that God is whatever God wants to be! S/he makes the rules, and breaks them when She sees fit. So if you see some egregious injustice in the world, don't try to use it as evidence against God. It's not going to stand up in a court of law, any more than my using the abundance of love, joy, and goodness as proof that He exists. God is above all of that, and it's outrageous that we should presume to know the mind of God on any issue. Beheaded rats included.

Turns out that the photo I pulled off the web (above) is actually called a Blue Berkshire rat. Ha! Well, that clears things up a bit. He really did get in with the wrong crowd. Poor guy. He should've known that Brooklyn is no place for a decent rat.

Boredom & the Creative Process

Hands down, the most boring activity I engage in is my creative process. Which is funny, because it's also the thing I do the most. I spend the first few hours of the morning working, since it's the only time that my Brooklyn neighborhood is quiet. Then I generally work for a while in the evening before bed, and my weekends are pretty much dedicated to studio time. That's a lot of time to be bored out of my mind. Which is exactly the point: getting out of my mind.

I used to be a painter, but I stopped, for reasons explained elsewhere. Paint is an incredibly sensuous medium, and there's rarely a dull moment in the process. But my new medium - cutting up sacred texts - is anything but sensual. Off-the-charts, mind-numbing boredom. I think I know why monks wear hair shirts - it's to break up the monotony. At least the pain gives them something to think about. Since the cutting & pasting process is too boring to engage me, my mind launches off into the night sky in search of distant galaxies. It searches high & low for some kind of cerebral delight, while I, back on Planet Madge, plod on with my x-acto blade, hacking away at my texts as if my life depended on it. It may. So I just watch my mind, where it goes, how it circles & swoops, like a hawk looking for a morsel to scoop up, or a vulture looking for carrion to pick at. There's never a shortage of either.

So my job is to work through the boredom. To get on the other side of it. I get to wade through all the usual mind conversations: What am I going to have for dinner? You already had dinner. What am I going to do on Saturday night? Oh wait....this is Saturday night. How much longer do I have to go? Just under 3 hours. When is this going to get fun? In another 2 hours. And so on. All the time cutting, gluing, cutting, gluing.

And you know what? Something happens. My mind gets tired. It comes back to rest & refuel, and then starts to watch what I'm doing. It begins to engage. It generally takes a couple of hours for this to happen. It becomes fascinated with the process of cut, glue, cut, glue. The repetition, the chant-like monotony, the beauty of pure form, and the action that it takes to create the form; my mind actually becomes an observer, and I am the observed. Completely absorbed into the creative process, my mind finally shuts up, shuts down, and I am free.

Pure, undiluted bliss.

Above: Hymn to Vishnu (detail). The letters were cut from the Methodist Hymnal.

Enlightenment & "Me"

It occurs to me that what with all my talk on enlightenment, you may be wondering if I am enlightened. (It also occurs to me that I may flatter myself by wondering if you're wondering...) For the record, I'm not. Enlightened, that is. Or, I guess I am, in the sense that we all are. The advaita teachings say that every one of us is enlightened already, it's just that we don't realize it. Yet. So I'm one of those gals who isn't self-realized. Yet.

But here's a warning for you: If you ever ask someone if they're enlightened and they say they are, the chances are good that they're not. A truly awakened being doesn't have much need to tell anyone. I know a guy who brags about his enlightened state continuously, and next to him, I feel pretty dang radiant. See, if a person says, "I am enlightened", she's still ego-centered. The use of the "I" is a dead giveaway. Call it semantics if you want. But the use of language is a fairly good indicator of one's mindset.

When Adyashanti, the enlightened teacher on the West Coast, had his awakening, he didn't even tell his Zen teacher for months. He writes that he didn't think it was important to do so. There's a wonderful tale (maybe apocryphal - who knows?) about a seeker who was chopping wood when he had his awakening. He stopped, looked up, had a good laugh, then went back to his chopping. I love that.

So apparently it's not one of those thunder clap moments that we yearn for; instead it's sort of a pass-the-butter-please moment, where in one nondescript moment you're centered in ego consciousness, and the next you've shifted to Self consciousness. The sense of "me" as a separate entity melts away, and there's no longer a pivotal identity to wrap your consciousness around. I suppose you can take drugs and get a similar effect, but then your senses are dulled to a nub. From what I understand, once you awaken, there is great clarity, a heightened sensory perception, and your awareness expands exponentially. And, of course, there is the essential shift from a dual "I" to the non-dual "That".

There's nothing that I'd like more than to be enlightened. But see, there's the rub: the more I perceive it as something to attain, the more it recedes from grasp. That's bad news for an achievement slut like me. Enlightenment isn't something that can be earned; indeed, attempting to do so will guarantee that it remains elusive. So there's really nothing to be done but to be still, be present, and maybe chop some wood.

All-You-Can-Eat Advaita

I know, I know - by now you're thinking I have an arrangement with the local Advaita Union, right? I get a kickback for every conversion? One buck for every Christian convert, 2 bucks a Buddhist, and 5 bucks an atheist. Hey, it's a living.

Actually, and seriously, I don't think it's possible to persuade anyone into advaita. It's not something that most people find very plausible, unless they're already inclined toward it. Which probably sounds like a cop-out, but how would you react if someone told you that you already ARE enlightened, and that all you need to do is to realize it? Or that you and Brahman are one and the same? Jesus went around telling everyone that they could and would do far greater things than he was doing, and even he had a hard time convincing anyone. So if Jesus couldn't do it, how the hell am I supposed to?

Once or twice someone's asked me what advaita is, and I thought I did a pretty good job of explaining it in its simplest terms. Which is all I can handle, since I'm a baby advaitin. But lo & behold, the glazing of the eyes sets in, the stifled yawn, the scratching of the triceps, the averted eyes, and I'm dumbfounded to see that they're not buying it. Wtf? Then I realize how insane it sounds, give it up, and order another round of beers. No, I think it's best just to keep it to yourself, because once you tell someone you're an advaitin, they think you're dating someone who looks like this (see photo, above).

Advaita is one of those things that waits for the right moment, and when the seeker is ready, it enters their consciousness like a beam of pure light. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And then look out, because it seems to appear all over the place. Everywhere I turn now, I'm finding advaita. My life is like Advaita Central. Teachings, books, classes - I even had an advaita hotdog the other day. The guy made me one with everything. (Sorry - no more bad jokes, I promise).

Maybe the teachings of advaita have always been in abundance, and I'm only becoming acutely aware of them now because I'm ready. Or possibly there's a resurgence going on because we as a culture are ready for it. A little unity never hurt anyone, ya know?

Courage vs. Talent

What makes one work of art great and another work of art just plain boring? Is it technical skill that makes a great painting? A brilliant concept? Social significance? The "right" (read: influential) people agreeing on its worth? Talent?

I recently went to the Francis Bacon exhibit at the Met with a friend, who kept commenting on his talent. Like, maybe 40,000 times she said, "Wow, he was really talented!"  [Upload audio of fingernails on chalkboard]. Talent? Talent!!? Francis Bacon was great because he had talent? No, Francis Bacon was great because he was Francis Bacon. See, great art isn't something that happens on the canvas (or photo, or sculpture, or whatever). It happens before the brush even touches the canvas.  Great art is what happens when great people make art. Their art is evidence of their greatness. And what makes a person great? Honesty, integrity, conviction, blah-blah-blah, but what makes a person really stand out as exemplary?

Courage.  

Take Francis Bacon.  He wasn't received with much interest when he was getting started.  The fact that he was gay didn't help.  He didn't relent.  He remained true to himself and his vision. And in fact, he was able to manifest considerable success in his lifetime.  But one lap around the gallery at the Met will show you that this guy knew the many shades of existential despair. Talent?  Well yeah, sure, but so what? What's talent got to do with anything? A lot of artists way more talented than he will never hang in the Met. Bacon had the courage to persist in the midst of his angst. His lover died of an overdose on the eve of a big show. What did Bacon do? How did he deal with the unimaginable grief? He kept on painting. 

There's no definition of courage that can be applied to everyone. The things that make me courageous are no big deal to you, and vice versa.  So courage is a completely subjective thing, like comfort.  The closest I can come in defining courage, when it pertains to artists, is this: Courage is when you persist in your creative vision, even when you're the only one who 'gets' it. Even if all the world tells you your work is schlock, you stay with it, not because you think there's money in it, but because you have to. There's no alternative, so you buck up and persist, come what may.

Being an artist is not for the faint of heart or mind. I've written elsewhere that to be an artist requires conviction. Now I'm suggesting that to be a great artist requires courage. So what does it take to be a succe$$ful artist, you ask?

Connections, of course.

Nausea and the Void

More evidence to bolster my suspicions that Sartre was a closet Buddhist:

"When the Existentialist looks inside himself, what does he find? Nothing. Looking back beyond birth or forward beyond death, he sees the Void; looking into his own center, thrusting aside all knowledge, all memory, all sensation, he sees the chasm of the ego, formless and inconceivable, like the nucleus of an electron. And he is led to ask, as philosophers throughout history have asked: Why is there anything instead of nothing, why the world, the universe, rather than a void? By concentrating all attention on this nothing within himself and the underlying objective surface of reality, he gradually transforms nothing into the concept of Nothingness, one of the truly great accomplishments of human sensibility. Nothingness as a force, a ground, a reality - in a certain sense the reality. From this comes man's despair, but also, if he has courage, his existential integrity."

- Hayden Carruth, from the introduction to Sartre's Nausea. Image: Mahavajra Bhairava Mandala, Tibet, 14th century

Sartre & Nagarjuna

Today I'll start a new text drawing. I'm pretty excited about this one, and can't wait to get started. I don't have a title yet, but the concept is as follows:

I've been reading Sartre (right) (see previous posting) and am way interested in his description of emptiness. The existentialists were so close to Buddhism that they probably brushed elbows with a few Buddhas in the Void. (An aside: Some Buddhists are in fact atheists. I'm not sure how that works). So anyway, these two isms, existentialism and Buddhism, are like the proverbial two ends of the elephant, and I'll leave it to you to decide which end is which. So I'm re-reading Nausea, this time with a mission, and I'm fascinated with the parallels. Roquentin, the protagonist, describes the horror of waking up to his own existence:

"My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think...and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are as many ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence."

Sartre described an emptiness that was infinitely repulsive, without the possibility of intervention or escape. No hope, no exit. So I want to use this text to create another text on emptiness; one which describes the same Void, but offers a dollop of hope.

Enter Nagarjuna (above, with snakes). Next to the Buddha, he's easily the most influential Buddhist philosopher, and the dude who set the stage for such Buddhist masterpieces as the Prajnaparamita Sutras. You might say that he's the Godfather of Emptiness. Very little is known of this guy, except that he lived around 150-250 CE and he was a brilliant philosopher. From what I can gather, Nagarjuna was to early-millennium Buddhism what Martin Luther was to mid-millennium Catholicism. He literally wrote the book on emptiness. Actually, many books, but the one which is making me salivate (and other things) is Sunyatasaptati, Seventy Verses on Sunyata (Emptiness). Nagarjuna was waaay before his time. He was probably an existentialist, and it's rumored that he wore a black beret and smoked Galois.

So I'll be cutting the text from Nausea to transcribe the Sunyatasaptati. There are 10,551 CNS (characters no spaces), so I figure I'll finish it by September if all goes well. And since my massive fan base will be jonesing to hear of my progress, I'll be sure to send you regular updates from the trenches.

There you have it. Have a nice existence.

Bhairava's Greatest Hits

Tonight I finished an epic text. My fingers and knuckles are killing me. I'm pretty happy about completing this - ecstatic, even. I've been working on it since May, like every day, and it's part of my breath now. The working title is Shoonya: Vijnana Bhairava Tantra from the Torah (The Book of Deuteronomy). The long title hints at the process: I cut up the text from Deuteronomy with an x-acto blade, letter by letter, and pasted them to the paper that you see above to form the text of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. There were 20,157 characters no spaces (CNS). Thus the throbbing knuckles. My longest piece prior to this was 9,410 CNS.

The Bhairava Tantra is amazing. I had no idea what I was getting into. It speaks of the void (shoonya) at the center of existence. Sometimes it's referred to as emptiness; sometimes as fullness. Shiva tells us how to find it (there are many ways), and, once located, how we may enter the void. And then he reveals the mind-blowing news: Once the void is located and entered, you realize that you're not merely in it, you ARE it. You are Bhairava. So am I. Bhairava is supreme consciousness, which is the void, which is shoonya, which is everything. There is nothing that is not Bhairava.

I was aiming to create a shape with the text that was void-like. I'm not so sure that I succeeded, and who could? What exactly does a void look like? Mine turned out to be sort of a dancing void. I went to hell and back while doing this piece, btw. But a dancing void it is, and a reasonably content one as well.

Here are a few verses from the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, which I'll call Bhairava's Greatest Hits:

"If one concentrates on the body as a void, even for a moment, with the mind free from thought, then one attains thoughtlessness and verily becomes that form of void known as Bhairava."

"What people of little understanding believe to be purity is neither pure nor impure to one who has experienced Shiva. Nirvikalpa, or freedom from vikalpas [thoughts], is the real purification by which one attains happiness."

"By contemplating on Bhairava as all that which is void and cannot be known, grasped, or imagined, at the end realization [enlightenment] takes place."

And so on. By now I'm sure you've gone to Amazon and overnighted your very own copy of the Bhairava Tantra. Or maybe you're all about Deuteronomy. Now there's a page-turner. Well, time to rest my poor knuckles. If you have any champagne in the house, drink a glass for me, and say a toast to Bhairava, King of the Void.

Advaita & Enlightenment

The teachings of Advaita have resonated with me for some time. When I hear the words "I am that", something in me knows that it's true. I know on a cellular level that I am not this. I'm not what I think I am. Neither are you. We've bought into this incredibly convincing story about ourselves, and the illusion is so real that we believe it without question. We cling to our stories, we become our stories, and seemingly there's no alternative to the attachment. Pain, joy, jealousy, lust - we're caught in a web of emotions, and the only escape is to numb ourselves with painkillers to escape the tyranny of our passions. Or so it would seem.

But there's another way out. Recognize the illusion. See the emotions and the circumstances of your life for what they are - persuasive stories created by the mind. Notice who's at the center of each story, and who's always "right". That in itself should tell you that something is amiss. We should be so tired of spinning our stories, but we go right on doing it, and thus the pain persists.

Advaita teaches that there is only a nondual universe, and everything is made from the same soup, and that soup is God (or Brahman, or That). So instead of being an independent ego that runs around making itself the center of every story, you're actually That. It's the most mind- and ego-blowing piece of information that you'll ever receive, and something inside you resonates when you hear it. Advaita shows up in Christianity as well: Saint Francis (pictured above) said, "What you are looking for is what is looking." And Meister Eckhart: "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me." All the enlightened ones knew it, embodied it, and tried to show us that we too are it. You are it. There's nothing that you have to do. Running around and trying to find enlightenment is like searching hither and thither for your own nose. When you relax, take a deep breath, and let go of all effort, you suddenly realize that not only have you found your nose, but you've been breathing through it the whole time. Awakening to your true nature is like this. It's so simple that almost everyone misses it.

I love the simplicity of Advaita. It's so counterintuitive to our culture. We think we need to work hard to gain anything, and in most cases that's true enough. But not when it comes to enlightenment. There's nothing to achieve. Just a simple recognition of what is, and that's That.

Conviction or Bust

I'm unaccountably drawn to conviction. I think most of us are. What is it about conviction that's so appealing? Is it for want of it that we find it so attractive? And how do we recognize it in art? It's just there. You know it's there because you feel it. Conviction is a felt phenomenon; it's a presence that lingers after the artist has exited the painting. I'm not talking about belief systems or values. I don't care what a person believes, or about her morals. So what is conviction? And how is it recognized?

I've been pondering this for a while. I see so little evidence of conviction in contemporary art. There seems to be a perpetual question mark hovering over so much of what I see, as if the artist is asking the viewer, "Is this right?" When the artist is dependent upon the viewer to validate his ideas in order to execute them in some tangible form, there's a serious problem. The creative process must be independent of approval or opinion. (Yes, this includes art critics). Did Pollock think about approval while he dripped? No, and he didn't think about conviction either. He was conviction. Or, in his own words, "I am nature."

Conviction isn't something that we believe or cultivate, like tomatoes. Conviction is what we are. It flows in our veins. It's the internal sense of what is true, and the action taken to correspond to that truth. We don't need assurance that our conviction is correct, anymore than we need praise for breathing. When a person "has" conviction, it's very powerful. Even if his convictions vastly differ from our own, there's still a magnetic quality about him. And if that person happens to be an artist, her convictions will come through in her art. I don't know how this happens, but it does, and it's very seductive. We're naturally drawn to that person's work, because it resonates on the deepest level.

These are tough times. It's hard to keep it together and pay the mortgage, much less rely on our convictions to put food on the table. But this isn't the time, nor is there ever a time, for an artist to be looking outside herself for approval ratings. Or second-guessing what a gallery will want, or a collector will buy, or a critic will write. Conviction doesn't ensure sales or launch an artist's career, but it gives the rest of us hope that there's something to strive for, or bust.

Why I Stopped Painting

I started drawing when I was around 5 years old. It was my favorite thing to do, and I got wonderfully lost in the process. I didn't start painting until I was around 20, and officially "became" a painter when I was 27, meaning that I dropped my career as a graphic artist and illustrator to pursue fine art. I took it very seriously, studied it intensely, got very good at it, and had some minor commercial success. So I'd been painting for almost 20 years when I moved to New York to pursue it as a career. Two years later, I quit.

Actually, I didn't quit; that sounds like I gave up. I was really into it. I loved what I was working on: a series of abstract Gates (see above). They were really taking me somewhere deep inside myself, and the pleasure factor was off the charts. (Painting is a very sensuous activity, in case you didn't know). So why'd I stop?

I lost faith in painting as an effective means of communication. I fear that it's become antiquated, like a record collection, and the only reason that it's still around is that 1) artists love to paint, and 2) people like stuff on their walls. In order for a painting to make some kind of coherent statement, it generally requires some accompanying text for elucidation. And even then you're often left scratching your head, wondering what drugs the artist was on when she wrote it. I'm not saying that all art has to be profound; sometimes a painting just wants to match the sofa. But my creative work is primarily conceptual, and I needed a medium that was sensuous, but also mentally provoking. Paint just wasn't doing it for me.

There's also the Yawn Factor. I go to Manhattan galleries often, and I see a lot of art. Pound for pound, the least compelling work that I see is painting. Which says something, since I'm a painter. There's a conspicuous lack of conviction in most paintings that I encounter. It's as if the artist is running on fumes, and hoping that talent will make up for the poverty of content. Sweeping generalizations, to be sure. But I stand by them.

So I had this idea of using text, and I experimented with it. It evolved over the course of a few months, and before I knew it I was cutting up holy books. It's not nearly as sexy as the process of painting. I miss painting, like, a lot. But I find that by using text I can be very precise in my intention, and I can manipulate the letters so that the work is visually stimulating. I may go back to painting some day, but it will likely be for self-pleasure rather than a form of effective communication. And who knows? maybe the day will come when the latter isn't so important to me.

Idolatry & Mea Culpa

My creative process involves cutting up sacred texts. I understand that this will be a problem for some people, and I'd like to say for the record that I don't take my actions lightly. I recognize the grave nature of my actions, but my intentions are not in any way intended to insult, mock, or defame a person's chosen belief system. On the contrary, my texts are deeply felt meditations on the many faces of God. I honor and respect the spiritual tradition that is behind the sacred texts that I cut up. But the book itself? Just paper and ink. You could set ablaze every Bible, Torah, and Koran in the world, and you'd never destroy its content, nor the belief system that it embodies. That's the beauty of faith - it simply cannot be destroyed.

There's this interesting thing called idolatry. All the Abrahamic religions forbid it, and Eastern religions, while a little more flexible, still frown upon it. Idolatry is the worship of anything besides your God. The Golden Calf is an obvious example (see Poussin's painting of Calf worshippers, above). The Christian Cross is a less obvious example. (Why is there a cross hanging above the church altar? Isn't that a form of idolatry?) The least obvious example of all, and the one which works in my great favor in this instance, is the worship of the printed word. It's just paper and ink. It points the way, like a signpost, but the object itself is not holy. I can pull up the Bible on my computer screen - does that make my computer holy? I can also pull up porn - does that make it profane? See, it's all in your mind. But I'll save that for another post.

So yeah, mea culpa, I cut up sacred texts. I do it with the deepest respect. If it offends you, I respectfully ask you to examine your disapproval, and see if it isn't a form of idolatry. And if you still disapprove, I should point out that I cut up all sacred texts. I'm an indiscriminate cutter. So if you're pissed off that I've cut up the Book of Mormon to create a Prayer to Shakyamuni, be assured that I've also cut up the Koran to create a passage from the Bhagavad Gita. It's all done in the service of something much greater that cannot be contained within the covers of a book.

Sartre & the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra

I've been working on a text piece for 3 months. It's my most ambitious piece so far, and it's called Shoonya: Vijnana Bhairava Tantra from the Torah, The Book of Deuteronomy. Shoonya is the Sanskrit word for void; mental vacuum; the state of complete nothingness. In this text, it is described as the precursor to enlightenment. VBT is an ancient tantric text, in which Shiva and Shakti, who are intertwined in a nondual state of oneness, separate to have a conversation about entering the state of Bhairava, which is none other than the Void itself. Shiva tells his lovely wife the many ways by which one can enter the Void, and from there enter into enlightenment.

I've also been reading Nausea by Sartre, the classic existentialist novel which talks about nothingness...pointlessness...emptiness. The parallels are fascinating. The existentialists were so close to enlightenment! Except that they didn't have much need for that kind of thing. The difference between a Buddhist and an existentialist, from what I can gather, is in their predisposition toward the Void. The Buddhist enters it with hope; she knows that it - Bhairava - is a temporary state, and on the other side of it is bliss, bliss, bliss. The existentialist enters it and abandons hope. He bucks up and faces the fact that there is no bliss to be had, no God to be found, and relies on his own resources to create meaning amidst the meaninglessness.

Noble paths, both.

I'm currently wallowing in the Void, with an occasional run-in with bliss. Not much fun, and not a recommended way to spend your summer vacation. The Bhairava Tantra has been a great teacher. So has Sartre.