Some practices for cultivating a spiritual approach to art and life

Some artistic practices/experiments

These practices go together in a deep sense, but we can attempt them individually, treating them as distinct. However, read all instructions carefully before attempting any of the practices, then select one practice to try. You may find it helpful to add a pointer from one practice to another, and reading them all can help rehearse in your mind the proper way to approach these practices.

For each practice, a basic framework applies. It has to do with rooting ourselves in a spiritual matrix, an ecology of wisdom, love, and beauty. We orient ourselves in accord with our highest values. Each practice thus begins with raising up our good mind, our good heart, and allowing the practice of art to arise as meditative conduct, activity based in clarity and presence. We enter the path of creativity as a practice of love, an activity of love, and of wisdom and beauty.

For these practices, it will help to take an offering with you, such as incense, tobacco, sage, or some kind of anointing oil.

It may also help to at least try, initially, to work with photography—for a host of reasons. It’s easy to do, and requires one relatively simple piece of equipment—a phone will do fine. It also will allow you to touch something momentary and fleeting, and to share and get some feedback. We won’t engage in any formal sharing of work, but, when you share work, be sure not to mention which practice you tried, and your audience can try and sense what they feel in the work. Once we learn the creative audience process, you can take a friend or family member through that process to find out how successful the work was.

Photography is not a requirement. It’s okay to work with other artforms. There is nothing superior about photography, and you can certainly adapt these practices to your preferred vehicle of creativity. But it really can be helpful in the first attempts at these sorts of practices, so maybe give it a try, and let go of any excuses or rationalizations. If photography is not the norm for you, this can actually become a significant benefit, as you have fewer bad habits and karmic tendencies.

Whatever your tools, handle them with care. Dogen would say, “Handle your camera the way you would handle your own eyes.” Relax. Touch with reverence. Ask it to cooperate with you. Send good thoughts to your camera or other tools. Offer your artistic tools some incense or sage smoke, and feel that it blesses, sanctifies, and purifies—that it brings joy to your tools and to you.

Recognize that spiritual materialism and unconscious complexes can enter all of our artistic activity, including these practices. Begin with a good mind, which includes humility. Renounce all self-deception. Move in the spirit of wisdom, love, and beauty.

1) Compassion

In this practice, go someplace in your local ecology and find a comfortable spot to sit. Cleanse yourself with some sage or incense, and offer some of the smoke to the landscape and its beings. Wish for their freedom and well-being, and thank them. Offer tobacco or some unburned incense or sage, or make some other offering to the place, its beings, and the powers that live themselves through the place and its beings. Appreciate deeply. Feel the gratitude and warmth of heart. Allow yourself a sense of wonder and serenity—which also means a sense of sacredness and even magic.

After raising the awakening mind, the mind of wisdom, love, and beauty, practice compassion meditation for at least 3 minutes.

Maintaining the feeling of compassion, the sincere wish for beings to be free from suffering, take a walk in your local ecology. Walk mindfully, can keep in touch with the feeling of compassion. If you need to stop and reenter the compassion practice, do so.

As you walk, allow the hundred sacred senses to open. Where do you sense that feeling of compassion in the local ecology? Where do you sense a resonance with your wish that beings be free and happy? What in the local ecology seems to radiate that feeling of compassion?

When you find it, remain still. Wait for your presence to be acknowledged. When and if it feels right, ask permission to make a work of art that allows this energy of compassion to express itself. For instance, you might use your phone to mindfully compose an image. Allow the ecology and the energy of compassion to guide you. Let go of all doing. Notice any attempt by the ego to “capture” something or “make” something, and let it go. No need to criticize or control. Just let it go and stay with the energy of compassion and the guidance from the larger ecology.

When you feel you have done what you needed to do, bow in gratitude. If you have brought something to offer, make sure it seems okay to do so. Tobacco is usually accepted readily, but we have to take some extra care with essential oils.

2) Receiving a teaching

After raising the awakening mind, the mind of wisdom, love, and beauty, practice a wisdom-based meditation for at least 3 minutes. You can use the method of maintaining a gentle but precise contact with each in-breath, and with each out-breath allow a sense of letting go. Focus on awareness itself, with the breath as a handrail to steady the mind. When thoughts come, let them come. When anything distracts you, return to the breath. When possible, let go of the handrail of the breath and rest as awareness.

Maintaining a sense of openness, stillness, and clarity as far as possible, walk mindfully in your local ecology with a mind receptive to teachings. Gently hold the question, “What teachings does this place wish to give me? What do I need to hear or receive right now?”

When something draws you in, remain mindful and allow yourself to abide in stillness. Wait for you presence to be acknowledged. Allow yourself time to feel with the body whether this is the place, this is the teacher. Wait to be acknowledged.

Do not expect the teaching to have any conceptual content. When you think you have received the teaching, ask permission to let the teaching come through as a work of art. For instance, you might use your phone to mindfully compose an image. Allow the ecology and the energy of compassion to guide you. Let go of all doing. Notice any attempt by the ego to “capture” something or “make” something, and let it go. No need to criticize or control. Just let it go and stay with the energy of compassion and the guidance from the larger ecology.

3) Expressing love

After raising the awakening mind, the mind of wisdom, love, and beauty, practice love and compassion meditation for someone you love. Practice for at least 3 minutes, and make sure to end the meditation with a clear feeling of love for the being you choose to meditate on.

Now, make a work of art that expresses the feeling of love you have for the being you meditated on—but they cannot be the subject of the work. Instead, walk mindfully in your local ecology. Allow the subject of the work to discover you, to call to you, to guide you. Set aside any notion of what you might make or photograph. Keep in mind, with an idea of any kind you limit yourself to two possibilities: You either find it or you don’t. In either case, you have cut off everything else that might happen, and you may have cut yourself off from guidance, become deaf to the voices of life, the voice of Gaia, of Sophia, the voice of the mystery and the imagination and insight of the larger ecologies of mind.

Abide in openness and non-distraction, non-neglect. Let the mind relax. When the mind moves, duality emerges, and with this the subject and object become separated, art and artist become separated, artist and viewer become separated.

When we let the mind relax, countless beings return. They verify us, nourish us, liberate us. We can experience with the hundred sacred senses. We can hear the call. We can wait to be acknowledged. We can experience intimacy. Seer and seen, knower and known, become non-dual.

Again, you may choose to work with photography, but, as with all these practices, any artform will do. Ask permission of the subject of your work of art if you can make a portrait of them. Abide in mindfulness, spaciousness, non-distraction, non-neglect. Relax. Let the creative activity happen all by itself. When you sense yourself getting in the way, relax and let go.

4) Making an offering

After raising the awakening mind, the mind of wisdom, love, and beauty, practice love and compassion meditation for at least 3 minutes. You may add a few minutes of wisdom-based meditation as well.

Walk mindfully in your local ecology. Allow the feeling of wonder and serenity to abide. Notice. Notice. Cultivate mindfulness and inquiry. Sense the interwovenness of things. Sense how much countless sentient beings do to take care of the conditions of life, and to cultivate the whole of life onward. Sense how they make your life possible. Sense how much intelligence that requires, sense the miracle of mindedness all about you.

Abide in openness and non-distraction, non-neglect. Let the mind relax. When the mind moves, duality emerges, and with this the subject and object become separated, self and world become separated, art and life become separated.

When we let the mind relax, a sense of wonder and serenity returns. We appreciate deeply. We naturally express gratitude and joy. We can experience with the hundred sacred senses.

You may feel tenderness too. Feeling tenderness, joy, gratitude, and wonder, sense what the landscape might enjoy from you. Sense what it wants or needs from you. When you receive the request, do your best to fulfill it. If it feels right, ask permission to create a work of art that allows your gift to express itself. It may be that you sensed a request to make a work of art that you leave there—for instance, an arrangement of leaves or branches. Ask permission to photograph it. You may receive a request to simply sit and breathe. You can ask permission to photograph the place, allowing the communion and connection you experienced to come through. But keep in mind that with this practice, you may not receive permission to make a work of art to be shared. It may not even feel appropriate within yourself. This practice thus broadens the meaning of art in potentially radical ways (of course, each of these practices carries that potential).

Be sure to listen carefully. We do not want to enter ecologies and disrupt them by projecting our agendas and our unconscious complexes. Err on the side of extreme caution if you sense a request to do anything that alters the landscape, and proceed with care, with abiding non-neglect and non-distraction.

nikos patedakisAugust 14, 2020