Get Ready to Explore

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Plato’s shadows are forms cast on the wall of a cave. In The Republic he uses these shadows as an allegory of how easily we can be trapped in ignorance by our failure to recognize the difference between reality and appearances. We might call that trap one dimensional thinking or imagining that what we see, even three dimensionally, is the limit of our vision, the limit of what is real. So when we look at an impossible form, like the one in this painting, we’re inclined to see an illusion, a trompe l’oeil, that tricks us into thinking that what we see cannot be real, even though it exists mathematically.  

A dolmen (loc.cit.) is a megalithic structure consisting of two or more upright stones supporting a large, flat capstone. Dating from the late neolithic period, four to three thousand years before the present, dolmen are sometimes called “portals” thought to be associated with burials. But who knows? Their structure is mysterious in both function and construction. If “portal” is an appropriate attribution, for whom? to where? and how? Who knows? And yet there they are wrapt by our perception in the profound repose of the cave.

“So it goes,” in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, is what the Tralfamadorians say about the moment one becomes unstuck in time, that is, death. Death is but one of the many moments in life framed from birth by time. Tralfamadorians know that time is non linear, so each of life’s moments is eternal — eternally now, whole, complete, and inextricably bound with every other moment experienced. So, using Tralfamadorian wisdom, no matter how dead one may sometimes seem to be, the focus, the emphasis, instead is on any & every moment that is nice. Recognize it. Call it so. It is forever. What’s nice is beautiful, not hurtful. Be there.

This is what Billy Pilgrim, the anti-hero of Slaughterhouse Five, has learned and what he wants the world to know. Vonnegut characterizes him as a Cinderella. Cinderella is stuck in time knowing that her dream of a beautiful world, however real, is bound by the clock. Billy, unstuck in time knows its conventions and ignores them. This means that he is often looking and behaving like a clown as he endeavors to free from time its deeper truths.

This painting employs the colors, applied sparingly in Vonnegut’s darkly humorous novel. Are they to convey cynicism? or hope? In contrast with the grim and gray ravages of war and destruction, Billy is a sacred fool. Adorned with an azure cape, a fur collar, and shod with silver boots, the smell of life is mustard gas and roses in forms on either side of the entrance to the slaughterhouse. On the door are the words Vonnegut says "would make a good epitaph for Billy--and for me, too." Above the door are human forms of smoke.

Does Billy's cape of blue wrap him with the vastness of sky or space tormented by the savages of war? or does it awaken peace, tranquility and knowledge as yet unrealized? And then there are those silver boots…plodding through the mud and muck of war never losing their luster. They never betray the life they bear.   At the end, amidst the senseless insanity and quiet after the fire bombing, Billy dozes in a horse drawn wagon warmed by the sun, awaking to a bird tee-tweeting about it all: the scenery of human folly…and truth.  Poo-tee-weet?

At the center of the tree form are nine hearts.

In cartomancy the nine of hearts is the card of joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment in life often associated with love and one’s relational connections both immediate and writ large. In numerology, a “Life Path 9” individual is considered compassionate, creative and disciplined, driven by high ideals with a thirst for knowledge and experience. They are known for their empathy, charisma, and spiritual depth but are challenged by their emotional sensitivity, self-sacrifice, and at times the need to let go. 

This is pretty intriguing, but I was thinking of none of it doing this painting. So is it there? I know nothing about either cartomancy or numerology or for that matter any of the esoteric arts. The only thing esoteric here is the artwork. To be both frank and accurate, I learn from my painting. I have often said that for me, art is part of my spiritual practice. There is no hidden meaning that a viewer is supposed to puzzle out and “get.” Above all things, this painting is an illustration of nothing other than what it is in the eye of the beholder.

How does the sacred enter life? Is it an awareness or a wakening of a particular depth of meaning? Is it derived from experience? or is it something that is imposed by culture through convention or learning? In other words, does it arise from within or enter from without? 

In Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, an architectural structure called a torii is an entrance to a Shinto shrine. It marks a place where kami pass through and are welcomed. The torii is thus a liminal structure through which one moves from the mundane, the everyday presence of ordinary life, into a spiritual realm.

However the torii is not simply the doorway to a temple dividing the sacred from the profane. Torii are erected almost anywhere from a bustling business district to a remote natural vista. Passing through a torii or simply gazing through it like a window what one sees on one side is no different from what one sees on the other. And yet. . . the torii is a gateway. For what? For something we cannot understand and often fail to recognize.

In his introduction to The Gateless Gate, Paul Reps says, "If you like sweets and easy living, skip this."

Joshu's Dog is the first case in this classic book of Zen koans -- a tool that the old Chinese teachers used to stop their students' "word-drunkenness and mind wandering."  Here's the koan for the dog:

A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: "Has a dog  Buddha-nature or not?"

Joshu answered, "Mu." [Mu is the negative character in Chinese, meaning "No thing."] 

The commentary on this koan says:

Has a dog Buddha-nature?

This is the most serious question of all.

If you say yes or no,

You lose your own Buddha-nature.

The character I have added to my chop (upper right) translates, "big dog."

Perhaps this brushwork is not properly a painting, but after I dry mounted one like this on canvas, I kept getting requests for another. Go figure! So I did several more and they sold quickly.  Hmmm....

This little mantra was something I often heard from my Zen teacher and I suspect that it is not my artfulness that was either the motivation or the attraction.  Why does it remind me of this Zen koan: A clearly enlightened person falls in the well. How is this so?  I haven't resolved  that one yet.