Far Too Long

Far too long since I have written, I am getting back into now. I have just been so busy doing that there has not been time to think, at least not about things that don't relate to work. But last night I was reading another book about Zen and I can across this passage:

To model yourself after the way of the Buddhas is to model yourself after yourself. To model yourself after yourself is to forget yourself. To forget yourself is to be authenticated by all things. To be authenticated by all things is to effect the molting of body-mind, both yours and others'. The distinguishing marks of enlightenment dissolve and causes the dissolving distinguishing marks of enlightenment to emerge continuously

At first, when you seek the truth, you have distanced yourself from its domain. Finally, when truth is correctly transmitted to you, you are immediately the primordial person.

There is a lot going on in here ad what I think I like most is the finding in past experience illustrations of what is being said. I suppose not writing for a while has lead me to have experiences so that I can come here today and write about events that correspond with intellectual pursuits. I won't go on and on, but here is one.

I have been studying Wing Chun Chuan recently. One of the exercises that our coach has us go through is a push and pull duel with another student. The students take a stance similar to that of sprinter's stretch and slowly play in and out of one another, looking for places that the other is falling off balance. Then taking advantage of that off balance feeling. After several minutes of the exercise one start not to feel like there is a person, just flowing of energy and one becomes in tune with the push and pull. This may sound kind of flakey, but I cannot think of another way to describe it. It's a rocking, a flowing, not looking for opening but feeling an opening.

I have read Zen and Tao texts for many years now and while I have understood intellectually the points, physically experiencing the points is a whole different way. I have similar experience riding a motorcycle, or swimming and surfing. Tomorrow I will hit the slopes for the first time in two years. I'll let you know how it goes.

Art on the Go

". . . because biennial curating , trust me, is not a big deal.  It's a skill set.  Like art criticism, it's a support system in the service of contemporary art, which is not that big a deal, either.  Contemporary art is a goody bag of  what's fashionable tonight, local 'cultural production' auditioning to become history.  You can argue for it but you cannot argue from it, since contemporary art lacks the sustained track record that invests art with historical authority." - Dave Hickey from July/August's Art in America

I read this article today, early, and it reconfirmed some things for me.  However, I think so many things that today's belief that is reconfirmed will be tomorrow debunked.  Doesn't matter though, today I will live by this principle and it will guide my actions, and today looks like an art making day, so the quote will serve me well.

I am an art teacher, and as of next semester, a philosophy teacher as well.  I am taking the summer not to make extra money, but to think and relax and paint and study and get a little preparation work done for next semester.  I go into my art classroom two or three times a week to get a handle on the printmaking materials.  I studied printmaking at a local small museum last week and let my normal themes of light and smoke and clouds to guide my imagery for the experimental print.  Today I will go in and print it.  Since we have textile ink I thought I would pick up a cheap t shirt and have a go at printing my image on a t shirt as well.  It is part experiment but given the above quote and my belief that contemporary post modern art should transcend boundaries of the painting plane and gallery, printing on a t shirt is also a way of forcing contemporary art to exist in the real world.  Jenny Holzer did this with her t shirt that I reproduced above.  I have a good friend who is a tattoo artist and he makes a similar comment about tattoos.  They are personal art, art for the person who has them and no one else.  A tattoo cannot be bought or sold, it is forever with the wearer as a decoration for others to enjoy and as a piece of art the wearer can enjoy whenever the mood strikes him or her.  A tattoo is a work of art that cannot possible be present in the gallery (well it can and I had an idea for this once), a tattoo embodies a principle of post modern art.  I noticed that even tattoo magazines are calling people who are series about having tattoos collectors.

Since contemporary art is striving to become history, but it cannot because history is long and the contemporary period is short, let us not worry about the art we make.  Just make it and put it in as many places as you can, let history decide if its worth remembering.  It won't really matter to us by the time history has decided, at the very least we'll be too old to care.

Truth is LIghtweight

Knowledge is light, or is like light, it helps you to see things more clearly. I have been reading the TOK materials in preparation for my course that I am teaching this fall and have decided that to begin with I will write a little bit for myself in order to get my thoughts together.
I was thinking about simplicity and how in some circumstances I would need to simplify things so that sixteen year olds would be able to understand it. However, I question whether or not this would be a corruption of the original. The author didn’t intend for people to understand in simple terms, they wrote so that they would be best understood in their terms.
I like this question, it entertains me because it is a subject that I try to live. Simple is good. Be direct, be understood, make it efficient and get the point across so that many can understand what is being said. My painting is like that, it takes a form, it simplifies it, it abstracts it because in the abstraction we can see a truer form, we no longer question the idea of what it is, we appreciate the object for its color and lines and shapes and we lose the attachment to it being sunlight or leaves or the moon or what have you.
Recently I was visiting my parents in the USA and I was struck with the amount of stuff they had lying about their homes. My mother was more akin to the useful situation, the stuff littering the table tops and shelves were functional; a can for cat treats and dog treats for example. Even the walls, over-filled with photographs, are functional because her husband is photographer. Nonetheless there are thousands of things everywhere. My father’s house was even more intense albeit slightly different. His house contains even more bric-a-brac but it is largely decorative. Things for looking at and filling up shelves. A teddy bear that has different costumes which him and his wife change with the seasons. Photos, posters, sculptures all designed for entertainment of one form or another. Both of them are intense gardeners and their small plot of land requires constant attention. Good thing both of them work part time, it allow for the daily necessities of taking care of the land and house. Just now while reflecting on it I am wondering who keeps up with the dusting. The end result is a fine view, especially in regards to their lawn and flower beds, it blooms from late February to November.
But for some reason I am put off by all of this. When I first met my wife I was similar to my parents and being profoundly interested in art history and stories and culture and what not, my apartment was equally as cluttered as my parents’ houses. China was a dream come true for me with its dirt markets and antiques: Really the antiques are all fake but who cares, I am not collecting for value I am collecting for pleasure and entertainment. And I picked up loads of things of all shapes and sizes. When my girlfriend (now my wife) moved in she was very anti-clutter though she said little, until we decided upon moving from my apartment to one we shared, and then the hatchet came down cutting away loads of great stuff I had collected. I resisted and fought and whined and cried but over time I cam to see something very valuable about anti-stuff. It’s clean, it’s easy and the true essence of a room is revealed, kind of. I could never be in a totally sterile anti-stuff sort of place. I place out one things or two and the lack of other things calls attention to those that are out. A small tableau of a Guan Yin statue and two Tara figures (female Buddhas to put it simply). I still have a minor collection of things but it rotates around the house. I find this preferable because when everything is out, then you notice nothing (unless you’ve been smoking marijuana) but when things change and there is only a thing or two about, then you appreciate those things while they are in your presence , knowing that they won’t be there forever and it may be a full year before I look upon them again. I was studying Japanese Tea Houses and I came upon a story of a tea master that cut down all the flowers from all the trees and shrubs around the tea house so that the visitor would notice the lone flower in a vase on the table.
This is what I am thinking about when it comes to presenting material for the Theory of Knowledge course. How can I cut away the flowers so that my students are seeing the one lone flower in the vase and appreciating it for what it is. From teaching English I have had this problem, there is so much that needs to be understood in a given article that the casual English learner will miss the point due to the effort it takes to understand the article. There is a point of view exercise that is not entirely formulated in my head but I can make work. In a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal there is an article about the recent unrest in western China along with an Op-Ed piece from the leader of one of the organizations. I need now to find a Chinese point of view article to complete the circle. Then break the students into groups each reading one aspect of the piece and reporting to the class what is going on. The students can see the difference and also realize it is a point of view question. The real question is how to do this simply.
Knowledge is like this, philosophers are either vague or very thick. “The one comes from the void and the two comes from the one” we understand yet we cannot pinpoint what it means. Or “We may and must, therefore, consider all the trials heretofore made as not having taken place for establishing metaphysics dogmatically - for what in one or other in them is analytical, namely mere autonomy of conceptions which dwell in our reason a priori, is not at all an end but simply a preliminary . . . “ and so on which we understand while we read it but are pains to explain it five minutes later. Both of these methods don’t create a knowledge of literature, they create a knowledge of understanding. We know because at some point it was exposed to us and the idea stays deeply embedded in our thinking and influences our decision making, though we may not be able to locate where the thinking came from.
How do we make this simple and clear and direct and understandable at the same time? I believe this is what my life has been about really, why I am so quiet, and rarely go on and on about philosophical issues, even though I love to. I limit myself to certain subjects. Also I am tired of talking about the same old shit and my quietness may be interpreted as shyness or ignorance or social ineptness, which it all probably is. I walk the life, not talk the life. But that is no longer acceptable because now it is my job to teach it, to embody it and get my students to understand in a few words and inspire them to write many. When I sort it out, I will let you know.

LIght on the Street

Several weeks ago I was walking to the subway from school, I was feeling pretty fine about things, even a little bit important for one reason or another (I forget now). I left my school a early and happened across the public secondary school just as classes were ending and students were milling about before going home to eat dinner and do homework. Crossing the bridge I spied four high school boys in their jogging suit uniforms eating ice cream and generally being high school boys and I knew they could see me because I could hear the disrespectful and annoying “halooo” that naturally comes out of about half of the Chinese population’s mouth every time they see a foreigner. I have lived in China for nearly six years now and I have gone through various phases of how to deal with this. I have inwardly gotten angry about it and taken it out on the general population by refusing to be polite, especially when buying something, I have ignored it, I have refused to associate with Chinese people. The easiest method, and the one I have gotten the most satisfaction from; is to say hello back. People are normally surprised because they are used to being ignored and either get sheepish or sometimes become friendly. Normally they can’t really speak English but I can speak Chinese and this reaction has even led to drinking rice wine and joy rides in police cars (with police officers of course). My farther-in-law, who is Chinese, almost got into a fight because someone said something like that when we were walking down the street. I have always had a negative side (that no one believes that I have) and this particular day I wasn’t in the mood for that kind of behavior. I was tired and busy and a couple of rude high school kids was not in my plan for making myself feel better. As I passed they said “halooo” a mocking and insidious sound to hear, and I ignored it. Another one said it and without reaction I flipped them the middle finger and didn’t break my stride as I walked away. They responded with laughter and a “fuck your mother”. At this point I felt like punching at least one of them in the teeth, I refrained, but for the rest of the walk down the street I was angry and then some. I thought of how I could tell them they were stupid, vendor’s children and they should continue to talk like that because it is appropriate for their future employment. I wanted to shame them by telling them that I had been here for six years, had helped to better the education system to give boys like them a better chance and that is how they treat people. For the rest of the evening really I was debating on the best way to handle it and it still just bothered me so much to be treated so disrespectfully. I have actually been trying to deal with my negative side properly since the new year and while I have been a Buddhist in certain practices I have wanted to take the next step and have been applying myself to mediation and study. Reciting the Buddha of Peace’s name, and questioning exactly who I am and thereby who it was that is offended. At the time of this occurrence nothing was doing me much good. Until I remembered a passage I read from a Korean monk who wrote about dealing with those that offend you. Kim Jae Woong instructs us to pray for those who offend. Ask that they become more intelligent so that they may serve the Buddha well. This will not only give one peace, it will also help develop a sense of compassion and actually help those who act in rude, help them to become intelligent enough not to be so rude. This is precisely what I did and honestly I had to do it about one hundred times before I truly felt that any good had become of it. I have been hoping to see those boys again. I have been hoping that the next time they can do it I can joke with them and tease them (in a friendly way) about their behavior. They have given me light and I wish one day to also give them some.

Photo credit: Claralastair's flickr

Newest Cartoon

LIght in the Temple

The above photo was taken during the Buddha's birthday in Seoul about six years ago. It was quite a big deal that day and I am fond of this photo because it seems to capture the actual moment. Often times a photo captures a moment but it is not characteristic of what was happening when the photo was taken, take Cindy Sherman's movie stills as an example. However, this photo does, I feel it captures the event, there simultaneously solemnity and festivity. The temple was overcrowded with people but it was not the normal gawkers that turn up for a high holiday, it was an accumulation of all the people who go to the temple as a matter of lifestyle arriving on the same day. At that point of my life I was going to the temple several times a week to meditate, and my life, despite being totally out of control, had a simultaneous sense of peace. That is why I like this photo so much perhaps, the day it was taken, what is happening in the photo, and what my life was then are all the same.

Several time I attempted to make a painting of this photo, and it only worked once, then I tried to add black to my spheres and ruined it. So from here on in I will leave it a photo.

I went to a Lama temple today, in part because it is nearest to my home. In Northern China there are not so many temples and in China I have been somewhat turned off by the Buddhists. It is far more supersticious and most people are praying for things, normally money. I find the most devote Buddhists are old people (like any religion) followed by business men and then recent college grads looking for jobs. But I am bitching here and I really shouldn't, it is not my point.

Part of my reason for going to the Lama temple is because in meditation I felt I needed to go. Also Since I am ever on a quest for light I thought I might find some light, or enlight if I was really lucky. Sad to say I brought my distaste for Chinese Buddhism with me and in the end I didn't find any light, but I did find what I had been missing many times out of the year, and that was a sense of peace. Going through the inscense burning and kowtows quarantined my mind from distractions. I didn't notice the BMW's or the tourists or the college kids, I only noticed peace, my thoughts were quieted and to paraphrase David Lynch, the pool of my mind was deepened. And for the rest of the day I have been in a fine mood.

Seing as my visual art has been about light and its effects, I had the idea to look through the Bible, The Quran and other sacred texts for the word light, cut them out, and then paste them onto a canvas. My trip to the Lama temple today was a ploy to gather material and more ideas. However, God/Buddha or whoever it is calling the shots had thought otherwise.

The Universerse in the City

I took it upon myself to carry a school camera around last week in my ever widening effort to look for the way light shines. Thus I walked home from work with this and other locations on my mind. This is The Place (in capital because that is its name) just north of the Silk Market in east central Beijing. There is this long video screen and for sometime I watched and snapped photos of it. When I returned how and was sorting through what I took, I came across this one and thought "How delicious, this city is so big that the universe itself will fit inside of it".