Feeling the Notes

The other day I heard a poet on the radio. She was getting airtime because she had received the greatest number or tweets that casted votes in her favor.

At one point, she said that all the tweets affirmed her poetry and her decision to become a poet. Her statement might sound reasonable.

But let’s back up.

What if she hadn’t won the popularity vote? What then, neighbor? Would that make her poetry or her decision to be a poet any less valid?

It’s no vice to enjoy the admiration of others. But to gauge your art worthiness, your dharma, by a show of hands is a tragic misstep—one way or the other.

You are on sacred ground when you know where you stand.

Emelia’s Starry Night

From An Artist Empowered:

Art & physics
Earth | Space | Time

A fair question.

Why all this information about physics and quantum theory in a book for artists on how to persevere?

While no one can show you how to be original, you can be challenged with concepts that may prove ambitious to comprehend intellectually, but not intuitively—which also follows the path of art. If you engage your intuition for the truth of things, from theoretical physics to painting, you will add gravitas to your palette; remain steadfast and you will glimpse the consciousness behind the mystery of the universe.

If you don’t challenge yourself now, if you don’t free your mind and heart, how will you innovate, how will you create original work?

20 ft tall Buddha (off Canyon Rd, Santa Fe)

On this day practitioners of the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, especially those in Japan, celebrate the birth of the Buddha, who lived in India sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE and founded Buddhism.

The Buddha—himself born as Siddhartha into the warrior caste, was a severe critic of the caste system. He ridiculed the claims of superiority made by the priests, he criticized the theological basis of the system, and he welcomed into the Sangha, or community of monks, people of all castes, including outcasts: the untouchables.

His most famous saying on the subject is: “Birth does not make one a priest or an outcaste. Behavior makes one either a priest or an outcaste.”

Field of Temptation

Gautama Buddha, according to tradition, came to the Middle Path between extremes that leads to the cessation of suffering, after being confronted by Mara, a personification of death, delusion, and temptation.

While Siddhartha, the prince before he became the Buddha, sat under the sacred Bodhi tree of awakening, Mara assaulted him with doubts and temptations such as hunger, sensuality, fear, and sloth to dissuade him from pursuing the path toward enlightenment.

But all temptations failed and the Buddha attained Nirvana. The Lord of Illusion couldn’t seduce Gautama from his mission to see reality as it is. This parable is a favorite among Buddhist artists and teachers as it illustrates the pillars of character and spiritual striving: discernment, truth, renunciation, and calm.

Resolve or great art can’t exist without tests of character.

And, as the Zen master said: character answers all questions.

Flower in the Ashes

Today, I heard on the radio that the nuclear power plant meltdowns in Japan were ‘not as serious’ as Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.

Not as serious is misdirection. While this may be factual, the reality is that such ‘accidents’ poison the planet. And, after many decades, there is still no safe way to dispose of all the radioactive waste produced by nuclear energy plants. Do you want to live near one?

Of course, we are greedy for energy, and it must come from somewhere. Years ago, in the 1960’s, there were warnings about committing to the nuclear energy cold path. No matter how well built and designed, nuclear energy plants are fodder for disaster in Mother Nature’s volatile kitchen.

I am no luddite. There are organic means to humanity’s need for energy. Of course, politics, vested interests, and apathy keep us from such solutions. We have been riding the unsustainable bus, which is now speeding toward the cliffs of regret.

As artists, we see our art and our world as it is—without illusion or prejudice. With all the science at our disposal, humankind can’t create a single flower—like the one pictured, growing out of the ashes of our ignorance.