Floating, tenacious, tenuous leaves, filled with light. Knowing it won’t last long, I am saturated in colour!
Aware of the thinness of the light, its seeping away….
The Zen state
Ken Wilber talking about his early life….
“The one area I was unfamiliar with was the ultimate unity consciousness, the mystical state, the Zen state, Satori, Nirvana….. I read D.T. Suzuki’s “Essays in zen Buddhism”……… You have this satori, you see this unity with everything….! I’d never heard anything about that. For three days I was enraged. This exists, and nobody ever told me about it? How can it exist and nobody knows anything about it? How can there be a culture which doesn’t even know about this thing….?
"Hearing with the Eyes"
https://vimeo.com/7312114
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"Zen on Water" : Talk and Meditation by Barbara Jikai Gabrys Roshi
Jikai Roshi was to deliver a talk entitled “Zen On Water” on 13th March as part of the exhibition “Being Water”.
Unfortunately this had to be cancelled due to the outbreak of Coronavirus. So here is a talk on the same theme (link below) which she gave at the Quaker Summer Retreat Day on 2nd June 2018, at Oxford Meeting House.
http://www.zenspace.org.uk/zen-on-water/
"Water Seeing Water": My artist's talk
A rather tentative and nervous talk on the process which culminated in the exhibition for an audience of 17 — many more than expected. Thank you so much for your interest.
A different way of knowing
“…the only real proof for God’s existence is injunctive (!). To the question, “Does Spirit exist?” the only accurately acceptable answer is not “Yes”; it is not “No.” It is not, “Spirit is the transcendental Ground of All Being.” It is not, “Spirit is the Fullness and Freedom of all reality.” The only correct answer is, “Sit comfortably in a chair, clear your mind, and gently repeat, with each breath, ‘Consent to the Presence of the Lord.’ Do that for several years and see what happens.” Or, “Sit in a full or half lotus, let go of all thinking, desiring, and clinging, and follow your breath, counting each breath from 1 to 10, and then start over. Do this an hour or so each day for several years, then let’s talk….”
Ken Wilber, Integral Semiotics
http://www.kenwilber.com/Writings/PDF/KenWilber-IntegralSemiotics.pdf
"Being Water"
Opening event for my first solo exhibition, “Being Water” at Exchange Place studios last night. This has been a long time coming, and it is a joy and relief to show it. Indeed to even know what it looks like! For years I have only been seeing small parts of it at a time…..
I am hugely grateful to Darren Richardson for his skills in installing the work.
"All things are like sunlight on the water of a pond"
All things in all worlds are liberated as they arise. All things are like sunlight on the water of a pond. It all shimmers. It is all empty. It is all light. It is full and it is all fulfilled. And the world goes on its ordinary way, and nobody notices at all.
Ken Wilber
A Self-organising cosmos
“The incessant self-organising creativity that produces all things can never be perceived or comprehended in itself, apart from its particular manifestations. And yet in the most important sense we can know it – we do know it – because we are it. The same generative principle that produces solar systems and countless plant and animal species is also taking form as this sentence that I am wiritng and as the thought that forms in your mind as you read it. To realise that the activity of your own mind is another expression of the cosmic creative process is to find yourself truly at home in the universe.”
Loy, D. (n.d.). New buddhist path - enlightenment, evolution, and ethics in the modern world. somerville: wisdom publications, pp.89-90.
How wolves change rivers
The reintroduction of wolves to the Yellowstone National Park started a process of “trophic cascade” —”an ecological process which starts at the top of the food chain and tumbles all the way down to the bottom.”
“And here’s where it really gets interesting….. The wolves changed the behaviour of the rivers. They began to meander less. There was less erosion. The channels narrowed. More pools formed. More riffle sections….. 3.08
The river came alive again — not by humans cleaning it up, but by rewilding and letting the natural processes do the work. I find that lovely. Of course. It is our fundamental delusion to think that things exist independently, like building blocks. Including ourselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q
Temperature dropping
This morning was chilly, around 2C. But the temperature of the water at Wire Mill Dam was still 5C. It must take a long while for the whole body of the water to change. Waiting. Will the water look any different at 4C, the temperature at which the properties of water change?
Water power
The power of the River Don at Castlegate yesterday…. Exhilerating but fearsome. The torrential rain continued well into the night. I can’t imagine what it would have been like in the small hours. A dark motorway of water energy.
Dark light and day light
Appreciating Gensho for his dedication and the opportunity of joining his monthly Zen sesshin retreat here at home. (Plus a good temple breakfast.... ) Starting in the early morning darkness, watching the world rise into existence for a while and return into darkness. Occasional deep moments during sits but mostly what felt like spadework! And yet today a sense of seeing through to the heart of things, attuned to the dark light supporting the day light in this time of transition. Seeing dark light (dark energy?!) emanating from the colours. this is thin light — the sun pouring what in this part of the world at this time seems to be its limited resources into the world.
."In daylight, the world of phenomena is visible, and you can distinguish everything very clearly. In darkness, you cannot make any distinctions. So in Zen Buddhism, darkness often represents truth, or the ultimate principle of existence. Sometimes we say "equality" because when you cannot distinguish things, everything becomes equal. Daylight and darkness seem to be completely separate, but we cannot separate them as they are dynamically interconnected." Dainin Katagiri, "The Light that Shines through Infinity"
In Chinese cosmology, the Tao (The Way) is represented by the Yin-yang diagram.
“Yang, in the form of light and heat from the sun, increases during the morning to reach its maximum at midday, the same moment that yin, which represents darkness, begins to emerge. Through the afternoon yin augments while yang recedes until midnight, the apex of yin, at which point yang begins to increase again, perpetuating the cycle. Every moment and every phenomena is an ever-fluctuating mix of yin and yang, in which the prevalence of one or the other is relative and subject to change.” “the Hidden Secrets of Water”, Paolo Consigli.
I love the idea that there is a balance……..as one recedes, the other augments, and that the seed of one is present in its opposite at the time of its zenith.
Syntropy
I am fascinated by Syntropy, or Negentropy as it is often called. It’s the opposite of entropy. Syntropy, like entropy is a universal law, the self-organising tendency of matter towards energy concentration, order, organization, harmony, diversity and life. It counteracts entropy, the tendency towards energy dissipation, disorder, chaos and death.
Both are needed. Indefinite concentration of matter and energy is unsustainable, and the breakdown of these is part of the ongoing process.
An example of syntropy is the way that simple units come together to form complex organisms. Eg
Quarks → Neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons, photons and neutrinos → Atoms → Molecules → Cells → Organisms → life
https://integral-review.org/issues/vol_5_no_2_padelford_consciousness_in_evolution.pdf
https://integral-review.org/issues/vol_5_no_2_padelford_consciousness_in_evolution.pdf
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/6e.html
As I contemplate syntropy, I experience a build up of energy/vibration, and patterns/waves begin to come into formation, become animated, in call and response.
Calligraphies in the water
As autumn sets in, and the temperature falls, I experience a thrill of anticipation at the coming transformation of the water in the ponds. The mirror surface will hold dazzling calligraphies drawn by the bare branches. Greens and browns will be replaced by a wide range of metallic blues, greys, silver and pinks.
The properties of the water itself begin to change in a process called “seasonal mixing”.
During the summer warm water rises, allowing pond weed to thrive. Colder water, being more dense, sinks to the bottom. At 4 degrees C it reaches its maximum density. But when the water temperature falls below 4 degrees C, water begins to expand again, becomes lighter and floats to the surface. At 0 degrees C, ice forms. “This seasonal process causes a lake’s waters to mix. Wind also plays a role. Winds get stronger during fall and help to mix the whole water column, from top to bottom. This seasonal mixing, called turnover, also occurs in the spring.”
https://www.michiganseagrant.org/lessons/lessons/by-broad-concept/earth-science/water-quality/weather-and-water-temperature/
