Now/Here and Auspicious Coincidence
This past weekend I co-taught a Shambhala Art Part 3 program in Chicago. Shambhala Art is a program based on the dharma art teachings of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Each part takes the student through opening to the world, seeing things as they are and creating from the open space of meditative mind. In Part 3, we move into the actual creative process, starting from space, working with form and from the joining of the two, energy or a spark occurs. You can talk about this in the Taoist terminology of heaven, earth and human or now, here and action, or even, vision, current reality and choices.
To get the feel of these principles, I sent the group out to experience space, be it visual, temporal or kinesthetic. (most of the time we are oblivious to space and focus on forms). Here are a few of the images I took of my experience of space.
Notice how space is only apparent when touched by the contrast of form.After returning from engaging with space we moved into form with object arranging. At the most basic level, all creations are about placing forms in space. Here is an example of one collaborative arrangement working with everyday objects.
In each instance the creative process involves decisions made from the felt sense of the objects’ inherent properties rather than any preconceived or conceptual expression.
On the second day, we 
worked with calligraphy, with the first stroke expressing Now, the second grounding the first with a sense of Here and the third as a response to the energy sparked by joining the first two. This is an example of one such collaboration with each stroke made by a different person.
Recognizing that space is most often not empty, for the next exercise we were given pieces of newspaper to paint on. I had shared the day before John Cage’s opening quote in my book, Be, Awake, Create, when we were talking about space. “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.”
Now I was handed these folded sheets of newspaper randomly out of the stack. And who should I see smiling back at me, but John Cage! Known for his chance operations in his own creations, this seemed only fitting! Even the article title seemed to be a lighthearted message to me.
But the synchrony doesn’t end there for the date on the paper was April 4, 2019, the anniversary of Chogyam Trungpa’s death and Martin Luther King’s murder, two compassionate creators with a huge impact. The article was about the largest archive of Cage’s correspondence and writings. Under my strokes was shown a letter he wrote with Merce Cunningham (his partner) to Yoko Ono the day after John Lennon was killed and another letter to a student about Cage’s composition, 4’33”, whose origin story is the first story I tell in my book. I felt like the lineage was giving me their blessing for passing on their wisdom. And with a chance operation no less! How auspicious and appropriate!
I should have my book in my hands in a couple weeks, nearly three years after the first inquiry. How exciting! Needless to say, though I often toss my calligraphies out after teaching, these two are keepers to be framed.
