"the awakened eye" via miriam louisa in Google Reader

the awakened eye - Gabriel Rosenstock

2011-10-25T07:03:13Z

Shared by miriam louisa
Please visit the awakened eye website to continue reading both Gabriel's text and haiku ...

gabriel rosenstock

the haiku moment : an alchemic mingling
in which you disappear

Since the Greek word for poetry, poiesis, means to make
it seems fitting to include here some fine samples of the art of making-with-words.
Gabriel Rosenstock's haiku are exquisite makings, evoking imagery
and emotion as effectively as any visual language.

The following notes are from Gabriel's book
Haiku: The Gentle Art of Disappearing
and are used with his generous permission.

Haiku ... One-breath poetry, traditionally 17 syllables (5-7-5), now increasingly practised outside Japan as a free-style form, usually in three lines. It owes its impact and inspiration to a meditative flash in which the experiencer of the haiku moment merges suddenly with perceived phenomena.

Disappearing in the haiku moment ... Think about moments of flow, ordinary or extraordinary events in your life in which you have experienced flow: it may have been entering another dimension while dancing, or when engaged in some aesthetic pursuit – music, pottery or painting; it may have been lovemaking, or the highlight of some athletic activity, or simply watching the dawn, or the stars, in some exotic location. You needn’t shine as athlete, hill-walker or lover, no need to book a trip to Kerala or Kerry. You can flow now with haiku, like water, like a cloud.

the awakened eye - Gabriel Rosenstock and Ron Rosenstock: photo haiga

2011-10-25T07:00:04Z

Shared by miriam louisa
Please visit the awakened eye website to continue reading and view these exquisite photo-haiga.

rosenstock
&
rosenstock

photo-haiga

Haiku Master Gabriel Rosenstock works with American master photographer Ron Rosenstock (no relation) to produce images and haiku or haiku-like aphoristic text which they call photo-haiga.

Haiku "owes its impact and inspiration to a meditative flash
in which the experiencer of the haiku moment
merges suddenly with perceived phenomena."
~ Gabriel Rosenstock

the awakened eye - Tess Cummins

2011-09-05T07:30:14Z

Shared by miriam louisa
To continue reading, and to see images of Tess Cummins' sculpture, please visit the awakened eye website.

tess cummins

unraveling paradox

The works function as portals to another dimension; taking ME there.

I am empowered by making objects that stand freely in my home; functioning as doorways to the unknown where I find answers to questions about life - the verities of time, fate, creativity, flow, and beauty.

They bridge a gap socially too by providing a point of departure for conversations about what I call "the playful unseen".

I feel clearly that such objects "make of the viewer a mystic". They become devices that feature the functionality of non-dual reality in duality; unraveling paradox.

the awakened eye - Tarchin Hearn

2011-08-28T05:52:10Z

Shared by miriam louisa
A short introduction to Tarchin's poetic essay. Please visit the site to continue reading. Enjoy!

how to stitch a robe

entering this mystery of nowful presence

She was born into this extraordinary world;
a living planet,
a dancing of millions of interdependent species,
this mystery that grows us;
flowerings of wonderment, reverence and awe.

It’s what we are.
It’s what we’re in.

It’s who we’re with.
It’s where we are,
and . . .
why we are.

the awakened eye - Colin Drake, artisan

2011-08-05T03:12:37Z

Shared by miriam louisa
Please visit the awakened eye website to view images of Colin Drake's ceramics.

colin drake
awaken, with no story
see creation in all its glory!

Awakening is Immensely Practical

Awakening is immensely practical,
Transformative rather than tactical.
Existential angst does it banish,
This fear and anxiety totally vanish.

In this, life unfolds with no personal ‘story’,
Manifestation appears in all its glory.
When the world is met with a clear mind,
So vivid and alive do it we find.

Every sensation comes on so strong,
When unfiltered through what’s ‘right and wrong’.
Thus seeing things as they truly ‘are’
Our opinionated ego cannot mar.

When each moment is directly met,
The past and future go we let.
When the mind is still it does not distort,
So our experience does not fall short.

Sat-Chit-Ananda is another name,
For the source and essence of this cosmic game.
Sat – ‘What is’, Chit – Awareness of this,
Ananda – of this awareness the Bliss.

When awake we respond, rather than react,
To each situation depending on the fact.
Spontaneously does the mind our problems solve,
If unclouded by self it will not ‘revolve’.

So I urge you all to awake,
Abandon self-image the great fake.
Investigate, discover what’s really here,
Leading to a life with no angst and fear!
~ Colin Drake

the awakened eye - Colin Drake - awareness and creativity

2011-08-05T03:06:44Z

Shared by miriam louisa
The article continues at the awakened eye website ...

awareness and creativity

creativity is a property of consciousness itself

The following article was written especially for *The Awakened Eye* website
by author, poet and potter Colin Drake

The universe is the manifestation of cosmic energy, which is consciousness in motion, for energy is synonymous with motion and consciousness is the substratum in (and from) which all things arise, in which they exist and back into which they subside. Another name for consciousness, when it is still, is awareness, for by definition consciousness is conscious and thus aware of everything occurring in it. So ‘The Awakened Eye’ is a good definition of awareness itself which is always awake and ‘sees’ every movement (thing) occurring in it.

So it can be readily seen that awareness is endlessly creative, continually creating everything that arises in the universe, and also continually destructive in that every ‘thing’, which is ephemeral, finally returns back into that. For all motion arises in stillness, exists in stillness, is known by its comparison with stillness, and eventually subsides back into stillness. For example, if you walk across a room, before you start there is stillness, as you walk the room is still and you know you are moving relative to this stillness, and when you stop once again there is stillness. In the same way every ‘thing’ (consciousness in motion) arises in awareness (consciousness at rest), exists in awareness, is known in awareness and subsides back into awareness. Awareness is still, but is the container of all potential energy which is continually bubbling up into manifestation (physical energy) and then subsiding back into stillness. [1]

the awakened eye - Carole Leslie

2011-05-30T02:18:36Z

Shared by emellesse
Please visit the awakened eye website to view paintings and collages by Carole Leslie.

carole leslie

the courage to move into the unknown

My life is a spiritual experiment, a living laboratory of sorts, where my artwork simply becomes one facet of spiritual exploration. I have no hypothesis, no fixed method but I am open to observation.

Because simplicity beckons me, it has been my aim to integrate my life and art as much as possible. They are not two separate things for me.

There is only this art/life, moving and flowing like liquid paint back and forth across a pair of joined canvases.

My work is process oriented. Robert Motherwell said, "I begin each painting as a series of mistakes." That about covers it for me. And I have always found I learn most in this life from my mistakes. They are always humbling and always a source of insight if I am willing to look.

It is my aim to express something that is authentically me, something that surprises me as much as anyone.

Making art part of my spiritual practice offers me the opportunity to see how I work with frustration, how I work with fear, what brings me joy and equanimity, how each brush stroke is really about having the courage to move into the unknown, to not be attached to outcomes.

The exploration of what comes out from the inside and presents itself on canvas is nothing, if not a primer in getting to know this self and by extension all the other selves I meet in my daily travels.
~ Carole Leslie

the awakened eye - Kongtrul Jigme Namgyel

2011-05-17T01:49:13Z

Shared by emellesse
Please visit the awakened eye website to view paintings by Kongtrul Jigme Namgyel

kongtrul jigme namgyel

creative energy : the essence of everything

When we trust our creativity we encounter a supreme kind of enjoyment -
an amazement at the natural unfolding of life
beyond our ordinary way of looking at things.

Meeting reality directly requires confidence in the fundamentally positive nature of our being. The more we trust what arises in our mind to come from this creative source, the more we can let the mind be as it is, rather than approach it with judgment, fear or manipulation based on our likes and dislikes. My hope is that my paintings communicate the beauty of this unhindered practice of free expression.
~ Kongtrul Jigme Namgyel

Jigme Namgyel (b.1964) is the present Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. He is also an abstract expressionist painter. Kongtrul Rinpoche views creativity as "something very large - the essence of everything". His training in the arts began at an early age with the practice of calligraphy, music, ritual dance and other traditional Tibetan arts. After his introduction to Western culture, Rinpoche became increasingly interested in modern art, particularly abstract painting and the work of Picasso and Kandinsky. He began painting under the guidance of his teacher, Yahne Le Toumelin in the mid 1990’s..

The essential practice of meditation is to allow the mind to express itself freely without fear or judgment. In each moment of awareness we encounter impressions of the outer world through our sense perception as well as our inner world of thoughts, feelings and emotions. When, through the process of meditation, we are able to let this incredible array of experience be, without trying to reject what we fear or pull in what we feel attracted to - when we relax into experience without trying to manipulate it in any way - we have a complete experience of mind, naked and unaltered. Art, when it is free of such notions of beauty and ugliness, ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’ can be used to express this complete experience of mind. When art evolves from this understanding it provides the possibility for those who see it to also experience the natural and unfabricated nature of their own awareness.
~ Kongtrul Jigme Namgyel

the awakened eye - Bohm and Roualt's Clown

2011-04-06T05:36:58Z

david bohm meets rouault's clown

and encounters a new dimension of perception

Georges Rouault, Clown ca 1937

I should perhaps [mention] here that my first reactions to modern art were almost entirely negative. However, in some respects, I have changed my mind.

For example, with regard to Rouault, I first felt that his pictures were very discouraging and depressing. Gradually, I began to see them in a new light. In particular, last year in London, I saw a picture of his, The Old Clown …

At first, it seemed to be rather a mixed up set of patches of colour. But gradually, it began to take shape. In particular two patches struck my eye, one in the face of the clown and another outside him, which seemed to complement the first. My eye began to move back and forth from one patch to the other, a pulsation was established, and suddenly it ceased, to give way to a remarkable new steady vision which I can best describe as seen in a new dimension. It was not so much that the clown became visible in three dimensions, this was true but only a minor point.

The major point is that there seemed to be a flow or a current in which the whole being of the clown poured outward to reveal itself, all his feelings, thoughts and emotions etc., and a counter-flow in which the outside (including the viewer) was drawn into him, to emerge again in the outward flow. It was a very striking experience for me, one that I shall always remember. Whether the artist intended the picture to be seen in this way, I don’t know of course, I would be interested in knowing whether it struck anyone else in this way.

~ Bohm – Biederman Correspondence, Vol 1: Creativity and Science p18
Edited by Paavo Pylkkanen

F David Peat, who was a close collaborator and friend of David Bohm,
shares interesting insights into both Bohm's creative ideas and his process in this essay:
David Bohm, Paul Cezanne and Creativity

scientist meets philosopher:
David Bohm and Jiddu Krishnamurti

the awakened eye - Dennis Cordell

2011-02-26T04:44:26Z

Shared by emellesse
Please visit the awakened eye website to view a small selection of Dennis Cordell's photographs.

dennis cordell

the subject is the echo of its creator

For me, composing the portrait through my viewfinder is homologous with the Indian notion of darshan. Literally, darshan implies “to see” or “sight.” But more specifically darshan is concerned with an event in consciousness that creates an interaction between the seer and the seen. Thus darshan heightens consciousness. Another term is rasa, literally meaning “juice” or “essence.” Rasa denotes an essential mental state dominated by a primary experience of the viewer by what is viewed. For me rasa is a vital component in photographic composition, similar to what Roland Barthes has called the photograph’s noeme.

I feel that photography has a melody but not a song. It is a story without diegesis…a fetish without an aura. A photo is a receptacle without utility, the dance without movement. A painting is hyperbole, whereas a photograph is litotes. Photography is the crown jewel of austere poverty. It is what the Japanese poet Hakuin Ekaku has called “the sound of snow.”

A photograph can be the answer to a koan that is not information but consciousness. There is an energy that flows between the photographer and the subject. This energy is the source of inspiration and has a classical association to the muse. This muse, or exuberance is known as prana or “life force” in Sanskrit, rlung in Tibetan, ch’I or qi in Chinese, pneuma in Greek, spiritus in Latin, ruwach in Hebrew, and, perhaps the word “soul” in English. Sometimes it is necessary to be very patient for this vitality to arise. Often an external element such as the light and shadow on the subject is an inappropriate ebullience for the “breath” of the muse to arise, but when the “breath” proceeds, the camera photographs and the photographer and subject fuse to create an amalgamation of beauty. The subject is the echo of its creator. As the photographer Minor White said, “Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer it has chosen.”

~ Dennis Cordell - from his website

the awakened eye - Barbara O'Sullivan

2011-01-11T04:20:13Z

Shared by emellesse
Please visit the web page to view images of Barbara O'Sullivan's art works.

barbara o'sullivan

painting the paradox of emptiness

The studio is the place where there are few rules and so my practice is based on the question ‘what will happen if’’? Trying to pin down the opposites of figure and ground is fraught with the frustration of trying to solve a nonsensical problem, however, I have discovered that the language of paint is such a subtle and magical thing that it is able to speak for me. The energy I bring to the painting studio is transmuted into the work itself and becomes the life of the paint. Each time I lay down a colour, spread and mingle different tones, explore the effects of texture and make decisions about presentation, I am becoming the paint itself and it becomes my voice. There develops an awareness that the paint, the painting and the painted merge into one and the sense of separateness dissolves. The clear PVC sheet becomes a membrane, a thinly spread division between the temporal and spiritual, which then dissolves because it too, is empty.

Concentration, awareness, and a belief that the act of searching for the answer actually provides the answer through the process itself, is the key to my studio practice. As a work of art is created and witnessed, the see’er, the seen and the seeing coalesce into the union of subject and object.

I am inspired to create work which may demonstrate some of the qualities emptiness embodies; namely openness, spaciousness and the union of opposites.

Because emptiness encourages a deep appreciation of the physical world, I am motivated to reinterpret that appreciation in my work. I have been compelled to ‘rethink the way things actually are’ and simultaneously reconsider the processes by which I complete my studio work. It is this affirmation of creativity that I take into my studio and underpins ‘the leap of faith that artmaking entails’.

My experience of emptiness produces immeasurable, sustained feelings of joy which is impossible to impart in words and therefore it is my intention to attempt to convey some of this joy through painting. In the words of [Ken] Wilber, I need to “to send forth, reach out, and celebrate.” This need underpins my entire approach to painting. It is for this reason that the work is colourful, active, expressive and evocative of some of that exuberance. The paradox of this is that through the realisation of emptiness, colour is inextricably linked to transparency, movement linked with stillness and the sense of self as an individual is linked with the connectedness of all life.

The interpretation of emptiness and form into figure and ground provides a tangible means to translate opposites into material form and lead to a new understanding of how the creative act can promote the apprehension of emptiness, that most fulfilling, profound and healing of experiences, the experience of “no separation”. ... Dualistic concepts are removed, self and other are reconciled, figure and ground become one, form is no other than emptiness and emptiness is no other than form.
~ Barbara O'Sullivan.

the awakened eye - Unmani

2011-01-11T04:19:09Z

unmani

oneness beyond all appearances

Just a look, just a touch and all worlds fall away.
Melting into one.
Falling into the other.
Never been separate.
Oneness beyond all appearances.
All boundaries are meaningless.
All concepts, ridiculous.
No me, no you.
No inside, no outside.
~ Unmani, Die To Love

All there is, is this perception. Perception is not owned by a someone or by a body/mind. Perception just is. All that is perceived, is just appearing in perception. All appearances are simply perception, including the appearance of this body/mind or that chair. There is no separation.

I am absolutely alone. There are no others. There is not even a character 'me'. The character 'me' is also a perception. Thoughts are perceived. Emotions are perceived. It is all perceived. What perceives is Life itself. Life perceives the whole play. I am life and as this, I am the play of whatever happens.

Closed eyes and there is only nothing. There is only sensation felt in nothing. This nothing is the emptiness in which everything happens. This nothing is alive. Open eyes and there is a rush of perception. Nothing overflows as everything. Eyes closed or open, the fabric of life is alive nothingness.
~ Unmani, I Am Life Itself

the awakened eye - Douglas O Smith

2010-12-04T23:58:04Z

Shared by emellesse
Please visit the web page to view artworks by Douglas O Smith

douglas o smith

the love of the inexplicable

I have been attempting to describe my search for the love of the inexplicable using my hands and eyes for over 40 years now.

My images stand alone and frankly do not need much introduction. They have my life all over them. They are open, I am not afraid to use my open heart in them. Some might consider that a trifle, but to me it is the all, the everything of what I hope to achieve.

I am not interested in hiding behind an intellectual supposition and I am certainly not interested in shocking the viewer with my provocations, except perhaps of a quiet gentle nudge to see the possibility of a greater realm in our perceptions.

I am interested in making a space where people can see perhaps love, perhaps beauty, perhaps joy. To me this is where the changes can happen. My gods are the great poets who reach for the sublime ethers. This mining for the greater gold is what keeps me going.

I know and have experienced suffering as most do but my polestar, my guide, is the reckless seemingly illogic of a greater good and truth. Every time I put color to canvas I strive to capture this fleeting moment. I know fully well how difficult this task is, but still I raise my eyes once again to enter into this task still ahead of me.

If there is one consolation I can claim from this endeavor, it is that many others, lifetimes of others have trod this very path, and so maybe I am not mistaken in my choice of direction after all, or at least maybe can see their nobility in such choices and take heart in this. May we all find something worthwhile to do in our limited time on this planet.
~ Douglas O Smith, Artist Statement

the awakened eye - Kazuaki Tanahashi

2010-12-04T23:56:56Z

Shared by emellesse
Please visit the web page to view artworks by Kazuaki Tanahashi

kazuaki tanahashi

an act of one instant

Kazuaki Tanahashi, born and trained in Japan and active in the United States since 1977, has had solo exhibitions of his calligraphic paintings internationally. He has taught East Asian calligraphy at eight international conferences of calligraphy and lettering arts. Also a peace and environmental worker for decades, he is a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science.

If each moment is our entire life, how dare we kill time? If each stroke is our entire breath, how dare we correct it?

You can’t hide anything in a line. You are there whatever line you draw. And you will stay there, even when you go somewhere else. If your personality is interesting enough, the line will be interesting.
To do this you have to be fearless.

You cannot have accuracy without simplicity.

What pleases our eyes is not dangerous enough.
~ Kaz

Kazuaki Tanahashi doesn't broadcast his words on the web - it's been a challenge to track down his ponderings although his website has plenty of examples of his work. But I've wanted to feature his work here for a long time so I am making a very subjective exception to the normal presentation format of these pages, by publishing some examples of his work alongside a beautiful passage from D T Suzuki. They just seem to go together.

Life delineates itself on the canvas called time, and time never repeats; once gone, forever gone; and so is an act once done, it is never undone. Life is a sumiye-painting which must be executed once and for all time and without hesitation, without intellection, and no corrections are permissible or possible. Life is not like an oil painting, which can be rubbed out and done over time and again until the artist is satisfied. With a sumiye-painting any brush stroke painted over a second time results in a smudge; the life has left it. All corrections show when the ink dries. So is life. We can never retract what we have committed to deeds; Zen therefore ought to be caught while the thing is going, neither before nor after. It is an act of one instant. This fleeting, unrepeatable and ungraspable character of life is delineated graphically by Zen masters who have compared it to lightning or sparks produced by percussion of stones.

The idea of direct method appealed to by masters is to get hold of this fleeting life as it flees and not after it has flown.

~ D T Suzuki, Essays in Buddhism, vol. 1

the awakened eye - Robert Sinclair

2010-12-04T23:55:35Z

Shared by emellesse
Please visit the web page to view artworks by Robert Sinclair

robert sinclair

a visual haiku

My work is
‘subject matter’ oriented

it has never been descriptive

it is about exploring, possibly as a
metaphor, what is our reality

the answering or exploring of this
question will always be visual

not philosophical

Much like sumi-e the most important
part of my work is that which is not
painted or that which is left unsaid

The work is about searching for
balance, specifically a
balancing of opposites

In a sense the ‘yin and yang’ of things

Concurrent to this disciplined
approach to form is a free and lyrical
use of colour

The result is a stillness as if one is
meditating or being presented with a
meditative process

‘The inward path’

The approach has always involved
what is called

‘beginner’s mind’

A state where you know you are
unknowing and open to what is being
presented to you

~ Robert Sinclair

the awakened eye - Cecil Collins

2010-12-04T23:54:15Z

Shared by emellesse
Please visit the web page to view artworks by Cecil Collins

cecil collins
1908 - 1989

the vision of the fool

The fool does not see the world with the disillusioned knowingness of the scientist;
rather he marvels; he looks with the eyes of a child.

In the early 1940s, Collins described his way of seeing the world in words. In a short book called The Vision of the Fool, written in the early 1940s and first published in 1947, he affirmed his belief in that which is ‘universal and eternal’, above and beyond the world of the intellect and the senses, ‘but not beyond the reach of the humility and hunger of the human heart’.

Collins’s paintings do not contain representations of objects seen in the visible world: indeed, he often reverses those rules of drawing and perspective through which artists attempt to transcribe appearances. And yet, despite his rejection of surrealism, or, come to that, of conventional religious belief, he insists that there is no meaning in life or art ‘excepting that which springs from the immortal surreality of that Eternal Person’.

The fool - whom he identifies with the artist and the poet – embodies ‘the eternal virginity of spirit, which in the dark winter of the world, continually proclaims the existence of a new life, gives faithful promise of the spring of an invisible Kingdom, and the coming of light’.
There was a time, of course, when Collins’s ideas sounded anachronistic, but he has always insisted that they are ‘modern’, in the sense that he is concerned as much with the present and the future as with the past. He has often said that he is more interested in the beginnings of a new civilization than in the passing of the old.

Indeed, it is part of his argument that our culture has itself become moribund and stale. ‘The only future I can see for it’, he once said, ‘is to make a new covenant with divine reality… And for art to return to its normal function, which is to reflect that covenant’. In other words, he is seeking a radical rejection of much contemporary aesthetics; he wants to re-instate that old idea of art as a channel of grace providing a link between the visible and invisible realities.

© Peter Fuller Memorial Foundation 2008
(This article was originally published in Modern Painters magazine, Vol 2, no 2, 1989)
Source: www.artinfluence.com

the awakened eye - encounters with nondual awareness

2010-12-04T23:52:15Z

the awakened eye

is the eye that perceives without labeling
- we could also call it the innocent eye,
or the eye of beginner's mind

Many artists and artisans have understood that the practice of drawing, and engagement in creative encounters in the visual arts, can - by making explicit one's conditioned responses - open the mind to another way of seeing, a way that transcends habitual dualistic assumptions.

Nondual awareness occurs when consciousness is no longer divided into subject and object; when an inexplicable wholeness pervades and one's actions flow seamlessly from and as that Oneness. Yet we have no language with which to speak of this seamlessness - even to use the phrase "encounters with nondual awareness" invites confusion, for, within the encounter there is no entity separate from that nonduality. Logically and experientially it is clearly meaningless to speak of 'subject' and 'object', and yet speak one must.

Throughout history there have been - and still are - many wise teachers who speak of this transcendence of duality as one's original nature - an a-priori 'beingness' which we seem compelled to simultaneously seek and reject. Their teachings are sometimes referred to as advaita, which means "one without a second" - or more simply, nonduality. Regarded in this wider context the awakened eye is synonymous with the awakened I.

This website and its blog have been conceived as places where ideas and teachings on this topic put forward by artists, educators, scientists, philosophers, sages and saints, can be accessed; a rich and varied smorgasbord of offerings. No claim that the visual arts have exclusive rights to either the 'eye' or the 'I' that awakens is being put forward - they simply happen to make up my personal creative milieu, the playground in which I first encountered the mysterious merging and began a lifelong attempt to make sense of it. Writers, poets, athletes and performers are similarly familiar with this experience of merging, often referring to it as flow. Indeed it seems so common in human experience that it can hardly be seen as unusual. Why then, is it so elusive for most of us? Why does it vanish the minute it's stalked?

I hope that you will find inspiration and encouragement here to support your inquiry. While the content offered here may be of little interest to those who are not familiar with nondual awareness, I'm aware that many of my fellow artisans are intimate with the 'encounter'. This site is for you, and all those who have had a taste of awakening. May it be of benefit!

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sitemap

The title of this site offers a bow of respect and gratitude to
frederick franck
a true Renaissance Man, and one of my most influential teachers.