Most Intimate

The painting above is titled Reflecting on Squares, oil paint on canvas, h:40cm x w:30cm

I’m preparing for a journey. I’ve been invited to an artist residency at Arteles Creative Centre, in Finland. The Residency is called SILENCE. It takes place in a forest during the month of March. It’s an opportunity to meditate, be silent and make art. I ask myself, ‘how do I prepare for this journey?’ Its cold, relatively isolated and on the other side of our planet for me.

Throughout January, I’ve been meditating and studying koans. Koans in Zen Buddhism are little stories that have no answer. They don’t make sense. Zen Buddhists regard them as family stories, because you sit with them and make them your own. They work on you in surprising ways. I came across the following koan in The Book of Serenity and it really hooked me.

These are my drawings of the koan JIZO’S MOST INTIMATE, Case 20, The Book Of Serenity.

I love the thought of journeying to follow the wind and play with nature. Letting the wind lead me somewhere . . . or nowhere. There is so much freedom in not knowing. Choosing not knowing is a radical act because we can get lost. Pause and remember a small moment when your identity felt threatened or disrupted in some way. What happens in your body?

Yes, we can lose our sense of relationship. Reference points help to anchor us, locate us and form our identity.

Yet Hogen follows the wind and is not bothered by not knowing. How does he do that? He’s not grasping to go anywhere, or find a secure footing. He’s playing with the wind! I feel this critical, because Hogen is not complacent in wind play. If he were complacent in his ‘I don’t know”, he would feel his isolation and grasp for security. The experience of ‘I don’t know’ is FULL of engagement. 

Jizo names it so beautifully when he says ‘Not knowing is most intimate’. Openness, curiosity and intimacy with oneself, are needed to follow the wind on a journey. Not knowing creates a gap in the veneer of thought. Something truely unexpected can enter.

As I sit with this koan, I realise I’m a little like Hogen, and ‘Finland’ is in my dreams. I’m tracking ideas as they emerge, writing them down and holding them lightly. Perhaps they are a little like snow and may disappear. Layers and layers of ideas. I notice when grasping happens. A small part of me wants ‘to know’ and have a plan. So I wrestle to stay close to the experience for now. As I follow the energy of this project, I trust that the time will come ‘to know’, and the ideas will coalesce. 

How do I know that?

I feel the relationship between knowing and not knowing is like the Tai Chi or Supreme Ultimate symbol. The dark is Yin and the light is Yang. Within Yin, there is a little bit of Yang, and within Yang there is a little Yin. 

In not knowing, there is some part of me who knows. Similarly when knowing, its useful to stay close to the part that doesn’t know. Knowing and not knowing is the intimate relationship with myself as I dance with the wind and snow.

Thanks for reading and leave a comment if you are moved.

Please share with anyone you feel may be interested.

Warmly Lynn