Emergence
Emerge into life, enter death
— Lao Tzu
The mandala: ‘An Emergent Reality’
Bubble-like forms hover over a partially transparent image creating a rather ethereal feel. There is a sense of delicateness and tenuousness to this painting, as if, perhaps, without the sturdy golden yellows and oranges, one could blow it all away. There is a grace to this painting; it is both steadfast and afloat. Perhaps one could say that it is suspended between two opposing forces.
There is a gentle inward-outward movement contained within the mandala. The bubble forms and shafts of light both lead one in towards the centre and out towards the periphery. Similarly, the two interlocking linear forms spiral in opposing directions: the one clockwise, the other anti-clockwise. The combined effect is of a subtle repulsion-attraction dynamic, where, whilst spinning, the one force holds the other in careful check, much like the protons and electrons of an atom. The tension created by this dynamic equilibrium is delicate but crucial. There is the sense that if this balance were upset perhaps the image would either collapse in on itself or expand forever outwards.
Within both the centre and periphery of the mandala there is nothing -nothing but emptiness. There is the hint of a journey within this painting: a circuit from nothingness to something back to nothingness. The only difference between the emptiness of the centre and the emptiness of the periphery is that the peripheral emptiness contains the whole memory, all the information of the ‘something-ness,’ within it. Much like the journey of life and death, life and death.
Is the image form that is spirit-infused, or spirit that has taken form? Is it coming or going? Is it moving or static? Is it anchored or afloat? Is it empty or full? The questions begin to fall away -the answer is always neither and both. It is whole. It is a composed state of balance, poised whilst gently rhythmic; a dynamic equilibrium. A precarious and delicate space to hold. I wonder what, if anything, emerges from this space of wholeness?
‘Emergent Reality’ began in a tiny studio space in Melbourne on a busy street with road works below, not quite the ideal peaceful painting space for me. Life had been jammed-packed with matters of the mind, studying Chinese Medicine and Buddhism. My body, once muscular from nature activity, become rather skinny and frail. Headphones on I escaped further into a world inside and painted.
The painting of this mandala was quite intense and moving. I felt it emerge from me quite physically, from the space between my eyebrows, the third eye region. The purples that emerged, colours of the upper chakras, which pertain to spirit more than body, seemed somehow apt. Sometimes when I was painting it, the image shimmered and vibrated. Each time I left the studio, I wouldn’t quite return to my body, but floated through the city, dreamy, aloof and disconnected.
The mandala hung on my wall charged with energy but in my heart it was never complete. Somehow it seemed rather untouchable, unfinishable. It wasn’t until I had left the city and had been living in nature for several months that the mandala could be completed. Golden yellows and oranges of the lower charkas emerged grounding and completing it. The painting no longer shimmered and shook but my feet were firmly and happily planted. Then life spoke back to me about balance…
The eagles and the rock
Two eagles live on the hilltop beyond our house. They dwell in a dead tree that touches the sky; it is the highest point on the horizon this totem pole of the heavens. Sometimes the eagles circle the skies; sometimes they are perched in their tree, yet always they are close to the heavens.
The eagles: floating silent watchful guardians of the land.
One day there were three eagles, and they weren’t in their tree on the hilltop but in a tree by the house. The eagles had descended. Since it was my birthday, I took this personally.
Just recently I had a rather memorable dream, simple yet a profound experience. I had been working on the Moonstone Mandala for a while, every day painting a mandala on a rock with a phase of the moon. In my dream I dreamed that I was a rock, no thoughts, no emotions, only stillness and watchfulness. The only sense of ‘self’ that ‘I’ had was in relation to the sun slowly drawing moisture from ‘me’ and the moon returning moisture to ‘me.’
The rock: grounded silent watchful guardian of the land.
We could say the rock - solid, still and grounded was the embodiment of yin energy, whilst the eagles, composed of mostly air, in elevated motion were the embodiment of yang. The eagles descended from above, the rock down below was in communication with above. Heaven and earth united.
Somewhere between extremes
Beauty and ugliness have one origin.
Name beauty, and ugliness is.
Recognising virtue recognises evil.
— Tao De Jing
I live on the Tasman Peninsula, in Tasmania. There is intensity to the land here, a charged dynamism that seems to seep from the elements themselves. The history has at times been brutal and dark. When white man arrived, they either killed or relocated the local aboriginal people. There was also a convict settlement at Port Arthur, and more recently a massacre in the 1990’s where 35 victims were murdered. The darkness still seems to pervade the air, a somehow unfinished story. And yet, opposites seem to attract; the darkness here attracts light. Some peaceful earth-loving beings, environmentalists, spiritual practitioners and artists are drawn here, and a peace-fire set up by an aboriginal woman does its best to cleanse the land. Do we then say that an overall balance has been created? If extremes don’t neutralise or exhaust one-another, what then is balance? Perhaps the answer is, quite literally, at our fingertips.
In the Traditional Chinese Medical meridian system, there are acupuncture points at the tips of the fingers, where the opposing forces of yin and yang energy converge and merge. (One could make a comparison between a finger and a peninsular of land.) These are potently charged acupuncture points. Not only do they hold a space of polar opposites, they are a gateway between the outside and inside of the body and are able to both release qi as well as draw it into the body. Embodying and able to command two opposing forces, we could say that potential is stored in these points: potential for action should this choice be made. In a perfect state of harmony, there is no need for action as yin and yang keep each other in seamless check. There is, then, a sense of natural order, of things being in balance when left untampered with and unaltered.
In Chinese Medicine, a part of the body is a microcosmic representation of the entire being, just as we as humans are a microcosmic representation of the macrocosm. What lies at our fingertips is ultimately embodied in all phenomena in existence. There is therefore the potential for balance and natural order in everything: within humans, between humans, between humans and the natural world. Then peace on earth is a possible reality; a precarious and delicate reality, but a possible one. Yet humanity, it seems, chooses to swing the pendulum and dwell in the extremes. But what if we were to acknowledge both the dark and the light yet neither indulge in nor nullify either? Buddhism calls this acceptance and inaction emptiness; empty of duality.
Oh, if we could just be the Zen koan or the Taoist paradox, holding life’s dichotomies in graceful poise, not exploding into destruction or needing to sow the seeds of repair. Balance, it seems, lies somewhere within the extremes, where polar opposites converge and merge. Perhaps something unexpected would transpire from this state of dynamic equilibrium, where dualism meets with the absolute. If we were to embrace both extremes equally, what would emerge from this giving in, this return to the natural order of things?
Perhaps poet Ikkyu Sojun has the answer.
At a way station,
returning from Drizzly Road
to Always Dry Road:
if it should rain, it will rain:
if the wind should blow, it blows.
