REVIEW - Bridget Riley - Kettles Yard

Bridget Riley's early Op Art became one of the visual touchstone of the swinging 60's. Her visual experiments have continued since then with the introduction of vibrant bands of colour. The result, though carefully structured and prepared for, is never sterile, it has warmth. Riley seems not at all concerned with putting her heart or the psychological mess of her mind on the canvas. No shock values or the messiness of self-expression here. What her paintings possess is an abundant sense of enjoyment with what she is doing with colour, shape, pattern and form. That said, her paintings do communicate something of her personality, a certain steadiness and balance, an unfussy unpretentious clarity.

Looked at closely, her paintings are never super pristine. The edges are not ultra sharp, the surfaces she paints on are rough watercolour paper or coarse linen, which mitigates against perfectly clean execution. This paint surface, however, does benefit by bringing greater depth and a richer softness to the colour quality. That said, Riley's paintings shimmer, and resist the eye settling on any particular area. Your gaze is kept constantly moving, engaging with being visually scintillated. Reproductions can never quite capture the immediate effect of her painting upon your perception. Her work is ripped off constantly, she's always been accessible and her ideas are readily adopted by popular commercial media, via wrapping papers, cards or wallpaper designs. They have to tame her though, by toning down the colour contrasts and oscillating quality that she revels in.

Other painters like Freud or Bacon might grab the headlines, for what they tell us about the grisly end of the human condition. However,Riley creates huge masterly work that celebrates another aspect of being human, our capacity to express and enjoy our exuberance. This is joyful painting, one that is optically experimental, but also uplifting and affirmative. It also possesses a truth and universality that can be undervalued in the pursuit of, and wallowing in, the oppressive shadows.

ARTICLE ~ I Let Go - No 4

FINDERS KEEPERS

My teenage years were largely agnostic. Followed by a decade or so of rather indecisive atheism that lasted well into my late twenties. Once I passed thirty I seemed to overcome any residual hostility and began looking seriously into what 'a spiritual life' might actually be like, for me. Reading mostly about Taoism, I knew little or nothing about Buddhism as yet. So, when I bought Nirvana Tao* from a bookshop in Camden Town, I was more attracted by the 'Tao' than the 'Nirvana'. As a book I wasn't particularly taken with it. It was structured in two halves; one half looked at the Taoist approach to The Way; the second half the Buddhist approach to Nirvana. Its title implied a philosophical alignment between these two religious strands by placing them in comparative proximity. Yet it made no attempt to forge links at all. It just outlined the beliefs or practices of these two non-theistic traditions. Both traditions, as they were portrayed in this book, appeared to deliberately obscure what a spiritual life in practice might be. Mostly behind an esoteric veneer of inscrutability or circumspection.

Taoism had kick started my spiritual investigations in the late.1980's. Within a short space of time I was very familiar with its basic philosophy and outlook. Even though I remained intrigued, I was also incredibly frustrated and perplexed by it. For all its evident insights into the sources of human dissatisfaction,Taoism seemed deliberately vague about the details. What would you actually do as a consequence of these insights? Where were the Taoist practices? Indeed where were the Taoist practitioners, who could instruct you in the rediscovery of that natural union with the Way? Nada ! 'Nirvana Tao', despite trumpeting about containing the secret meditation techniques of the Taoist Masters, told me no such thing.

The approach to Nirvana, I now recognise was pure Vajrayana Buddhism, Tibetan style. Retrospectively cobbling the Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana strands of Buddhism into one seamless progressive path of practice leading to Nirvana. It described the various stages of higher consciousness in such precise detail, that they became quite dense and incomprehensible. I remember finding this an off putting presentation of what the Buddhist path was all about. If this was anything to go by, it didn't seem to be about real human experience at all, but something more akin to an intricately wrought flight of fancy.

Yet smuggled into the pages of these baffling expositions I did find a gem - some short verses about letting go,turning aside and putting down. At the time, I copied them out by hand and kept them pinned above my desk. Where they no doubt stayed until something else grabbed the focus of my spiritual enthusiasm. Whenever I've read them since, what I find in them seems superficially the same, but also subtly different. The relevance they had for me in my early thirties, is not like today's. At the time there was an obvious immediacy that impacted upon me. I recognised the emotional and mental preoccupations the verses covered. Inexperienced spiritually, I knew nothing yet about meditation or even what everyday spiritual practice might be, nor how they might help. I connected with these verses because I thought, somewhat naively, I might be able to do what they said. I was to remain clueless for quite sometime.

Letting go,turning aside and putting down is not concerned with secret teachings on higher levels of consciousness, about which I'd had no experience, and of whose existence I remained unconvinced. Nor is it theoretical or fantastical. It points directly to a multiplicity of attachments that are at the root of suffering, including my own. This was a reality I lived in every day. My life then, had very prominent veins of frustration and discontent sticking out and ruining its health and vitality. I was a deeply dissatisfied person at heart, frequently subject to prolonged bouts of melancholic sadness. Letting go,turning aside and putting down offered some kind of hope.

Traditionally, these verses were meant to be learnt, recited and inwardly reflected upon, but most of all practised. They present the full spectrum of our expectations, aspirations and experiences of life. The implication is that the ideals we hold about our lives, about how they should be, can become a form of prison or tyranny. Expectation and desire is indeed what engages us with our lives. It motivates us to carry on, to not accept defeat at the hands of misfortune. However,this very persistence can also turn on us and become our tormentor. Frequently, what we think we want is not what we really want at all. Our determination can become a substitute for self-belief. By loosening our insistent emotional grip upon these ideals, paradoxically, we could release more energy and a deeper sense of liberty. To be content or at peace with ourselves in the world, but primarily, to be able to just be. To just be, being more than enough.

Now, after a few decades of Buddhist practice, I'm in my fifties. From this time and perspective I can compare myself now with then, and recognise things have moved on. The emphasis I place upon my needs, perceptions and experience have undergone a slow but substantial transformation. Buddhist practice has been a great self-healer. I've a better grasp on the views and conditionings that maintain my unhelpful mental tendencies and emotional attachments. Though I'm still learning how you cultivate better ones. Today these verses on letting go,turning aside and putting down are stimulating a desire to gently put to rest some of the residual ghosts of past pain. Plus the thoughts and behaviours that accompany and ride in its wake. To let the fading spectre of youthful ambitions go. Relieve myself of the regret and the grief for them, that still lingers on in those easy to overlook corners of my present life.

This is the primary reason why I'm returning to these verses now. It's not just out of a fondness or idle curiosity. I've reached a particularly dry and intransigent phase on my spiritual path. Things I used to value highly are presently lacking the import they once had. Perhaps these verses are striking a deeper more resonant chord, because they're pointing towards something that's long overdue. Now is the right time for letting go.

We all tend to carry excess baggage, things we bear, or put up with, however burdensome and weighty they are. Old ideas and desires, the dreams we know we should have said farewell to years ago. We sentimentally regard these treasured past ideals, however moribund. They take up not just psychic space, but also act as a drag on our growth spiritually. Even though we've stopped actively pursuing them, we may still be holding out a slim chance they might happen one day. Lost ideals might yet be found, so we must remain the keeper of their flame.

They might appear innocuous or innocent on the surface, and not something to really worry about. However, I'm finding their background interference induces from time to time a heavy heartedness. One that quietly dampens my fully embracing whatever is currently in the foreground of my everyday life. It's like listening to a pop song on the radio that you really love, but each time it appears on the play-list somewhere in the background Radio Moscow keeps blaring in, hampering the depth and pleasure in your enjoyment. Until I really let go of these remnants of past times, turn aside from them, or simply put them down as underlying motivators, my instinct is telling me this current situation may not only persist, but worsen.

With what remains of my life an unknown quantity, though obviously daily diminishing. These are my final days, weeks, years or decades, so the quality, as well as quantity, of my life is becoming ever more precious. Something within me is asking me to change. The ground I'm currently occupying and working from, is putting in a request for a thorough make-over. I'm taking these verses on letting go,turning aside and putting down to be a sort of guiding guru, that I can learn from line by line. I intend to probe into and investigate them. To see what they evoke or conjure up, in terms of past, present or future perceptions, of dreams and aspirations, random connections or tenuous associations. What will be unearthed, or erupt from my imaginarium, as bit by bit I dig deeper into the emotional sediment they're buried in? We shall see.

FEATURE 94 - The Best of Arisa

Arisa, so far as I know, is an organisation that runs gay club events in Israel. To publicise them they produce these fun videos, mostly featuring Uriel Yekutiel ( the one in drag) and Eliad Cohen (The Hairy Hunk). All the videos are set to somewhast traditional sounding songs, but the visuals are far from it. Here's a small selection of the best of Arisa.

FEATURE 93 - Young Proffessionals

I doubt this needs much explanation or extolling the virtues of

FEATURE 92 - Wim Mertens - Whisper Me

In the 1980's I saw at the ICA, and later at the Albert Hall, a performance piece by Jan Fabre. It was very controversial, but groundbreaking at the time. As it was the first time a performance work began to become noticed as part of mainstream culture. The piece by Fabre was called The Power of Theatrical Madness. The final part consisted of a man standing upstage and a woman lying downstage. The man rushes downstage and picks the women up and places her upstage by him. She then gets up and trips lightly, dancing downstage back exactly to where she was before. This goes on for twenty minutes or more, the man getting ever more tired sometimes the woman slipping from his grasp because of his exhaustion.

This music - Whisper Me by Wim Mertens accompanied this strongly poignant expression of the unresolvable nature of human relations. How the two desires of male and female struggle to meet on equal terms, but fall into roles that keep them stuck using differing means to exert their independence and power. It had, and still does exert, a great influence on my imagination. As soon as I hear this music I see the show vividly in my minds eye.

DIARY 148 - Controlling things from beyond the grave

It's taken me years even to get to this point. Years of reluctance, over an apprehension that writing a Will might presage, or advance the date of my death. As most people die intestate, I assume this superstition is not uncommon as a reason for delay. It's not even a complicated Will to administer. I haven't huge amounts of money,property or investments, my executors will have a relatively straightforward task, disposing of my possessions and sorting out my meagre finances. There has been no substantial reason for my procrastination, other than procrastination itself.

I bought a 'Write Your Own Will' pack a couple of years ago, which then gathered dust on a shelf in a plastic square cut folder. On my solitary in May, I finally made the time to draft it. In the end it didn't take that long. The thing I pondered over most was not who would get what, that was actually the straightforward bit, but the content of my funeral service.

Whilst working in Cambridge Crematorium, I'd witnessed some highly impersonal services, rushed and perfunctory, often glaringly inappropriate. I know that the style of service, the choice of readings and music lies very much in the hands, if not the tastes, of your nearest and dearest e.g. an 88 year old Grandma's coffin can indeed enter the chapel to the raucous metal screech of Iron Maiden! I guess this has informed my intentions with regard to my own funeral service - to not leave nothing to chance and state exactly what I want.

Once I'd written out my Will, decided on music and readings, then I found myself feeling profoundly sad. Here was something, however much I might envisage it in my minds eye, plan or organise it to the minutest degree, I would never see or experience. I'd never hear what people said about me or the service. It was like I was devising this one last theatrical spectacular like some sort of parting gift, to evoke or say something about me, about who I thought I was, what I thought my life was about,expressing, or is it imposing my tastes, refinements or sensibilities on the world. This one concluding show is to sum it all up, and be performed without rehearsal. I can let go enough of it now, to accept that even these best laid plans may indeed very much go astray.

What people say about you at your funeral is out of your control. You hope they'll focus on the good bits, if there are good bits, and gloss over the darker stains on your carpet. Those eulogies are the final testament of the effect you've had on the people who'll survive you. Though even that effect will be brief, lasting only the lifetimes of your close friends, relatives and colleagues. Soon, who you were, what you were like, or what you did with your life, the sense of you as an individual will forever be fading towards complete forgetfulness. Nothing will survive of you for long. Your self possession, and your effect upon the world, becomes revealed as a collective collusion, if not delusion of grandeur.

What moved me most about planning my funeral service was my absence. It would be the one event concerning my life I would not be there to witness, one thing I was bound to miss. So, why was I so concerned about what happened after my death? Was I trying to ensure that in some way my life was not all in vain? For I have witnessed funeral services for people where no one turned up. Where no one alive cared enough to say goodbye, bar the funeral director, a vicar for hire, and if you were lucky a care home assistant who'd nursed you till your crumpled into death. Whilst it's ignoble and humbling, and what no one wants, it does happen. All we can hope is that we'll be too gaga to notice or care that much before we die. Through trying to control things beyond the grave, my ego is trying to fight off the idea that in the bigger picture my life was merely a blip and mattered for nought.

So, though I've written my Will out, in my neatest handwriting, I still have two things to do; confirm who my executors will be; and sign the dratted thing in front of two witnesses. That, I can see, might be worthy of some further procrastination, before I finally set the seal, and let go, of what I want to happen after I die.

ARTICLE ~ I Let Go - No 1

THE VERSES

Over the next few weeks, if not months I'll be posting short articles based on, or arising from, issues that the following verses raise. These verses so far as I know have their origins in Tibetan Buddhism, but I've no idea how old they are. In a way that's an entirely irrelevant consideration. The most important thing is how one responds to them, and whether they prove beneficial to furthering ones spiritual practice. So, here we goes

ON LETTING GO, 
TURNING ASIDE AND PUTTING DOWN

I let go,I turn aside,
I put downall agreeable or painful memories relating to what I have doneor would have wanted to do in the past relating to all the episodes of my past activity.

I let go,I turn aside,
I put downwhat I have been or would have wished to be in the past

I let goI turn asideI put down the impressions that I have felt,
I discharge and strip myself of them.

I let go,I turn aside
I put down all that preoccupies me now,
all that relates to my present activity 
and to that which would be able to touch me in the activity of other people;
my ambitions;my fears;everything that my interest carries me towards.

I let go,I turn aside, 
I put down all cares concerning the future,the projects of spiritual or material order;
desire for success;fear of failure;
whatever they may be;all certainties;all doubts;
as to what I will be or to what will happen to me tomorrow or in the distant future.

DIARY 147 - Death has its own cutting edge

In the Triratna Buddhist Community to which I belong, having a 'cutting edge' is a commonly used term. It's short hand for 'the cutting edge of your practice', and theoretically at least, one is always supposed to have one, know what it is, or at least know where you can locate it, if lost. It can be a way of keeping ones mind focused on what your practice actually is, instead of it remaining abstract, which can be another way of being vague about practical application.

Recently, Arthapriya raised an interesting query about having a 'cutting edge'. He wondered as a metaphor, whether it was appropriate for experienced middle aged practitioners to use. Having a 'cutting edge', has a more youthful, thrusting vitality to it. its certainly not how I feel or respond to my practice now. But if I still expect myself to have 'a cutting edge', I put unhelpful pressure on myself to find one, even if it in no way mirrors how I currently experience practice.

I've been trying to come up with an alternative term, and have so far failed to find one. I'm beginning to see what it is that has changed for me is my perception of the proximity of death. When I was younger death seemed almost in another world from mine. Other, older people than I died. It was as though I was looking through a telescope from the wrong end, and mortality's event horizon seemed a very long way off. When all your life seems still to be stretched out before you, the stream of your life can appear able to be self-directed, all your energy and purpose goes into rowing your own boat. The 'cutting edge' of one's practice there, is all about integration, and the forging your spiritual volition and vision on the anvil of the world.

At my age (fifty four), its not that I've become jaded or cynical about this youthful style of practice, but my perspective on it has changed. Physical and mental deterioration, is starting to impact on my ability to create anything new in the world. It's as though my telescope has turned around, and all I see is the same things over and over, as death looms ever larger in my vision. I'm finding fewer invigorating refreshing things. Practice now, seems more about consolidating or building on already established foundations, to find new levels and depths in them. The stream of my practice is less self-directed and more other-directed by circumstance, conditions and environment. My spiritual volition and vision is now being forged by the anvil of the world, not on it.

Whether youthful or mature, both viewpoints are false and exaggerated. The telescope miniaturises and pushes death further away than it may be, or magnifies it to bring it nearer than it may be. What telescopes and turns the perspective around is me. It's also me that is either apathetic or anxious about the perceived imperative for practice, before my death arrives. Such a heightened exaggerated perspective is a distorted one,and hence deluded.

Life or death happens right here, in this immediate moment. The illusion of time lengthening or shortening is just that, an illusion of perception. What there is to be striven for in my mature adulthood, in this moment, is equanimity, with myself, with what I have become and what I have done or not done with my life. Now you could see that as a 'cutting edge' if you want, but for me it is more a 'letting go' of some of my 'thought coverings'**

** a phrase from Edward Conze's translation of The Heart Sutra

DIARY 146 - Reports of my death have been exaggerated

In ways that are not without impact or significance, what makes me tick can often remain a puzzling mystery, even to myself. After years practicing mindfulness and self-awareness, I understand some aspects of my psyche better. The major patterns, trends and habits in my physical and mental behaviour, I can be more prepared for them, to avert, divert or simply bare with them, as all these things do pass.

Sometimes though, I have a strong emotional response to a situation, whose cause appears to go beyond immediate circumstance alone. These, are more existential in colour and tone, and hence not easily fathomed by personal or historical analysis. Because they come cloaked in emotion I don't at first recognise them, as some unusual feeling is masking its more familiar face. Then, suddenly it does become apparent, I see it -'Ah, its you again' Staying with this, uses up huge amounts of energy, not to mention a dogged perseverance.

When these moments occur, it's as if I'm precariously perched on a fence, quite often in danger of falling off backwards into my past, into sentiment, into a sense for things lost, to be grieved over, toppling into a deep melancholic stream of regret for what might have, or never now will be. I can metaphorically give up the ghost, and want to abandon, clear away and divest myself of everything old and worn.

Or I can topple forwards, into the future, with its ever shortening horizon, with its reminder of how close the expiry date on my mortal coil is. I become anxious, in a panic, to get a grip, get things done, achieved before time or capability run out. I'm like a devil driving a cart with no wheels, propelled not by a galvanised faith, but by the horror of an importunate death, that needs to have a resolved and fulfilled life preceding it.

These are the two ways I tend to react to the impermanence of my body and mind, of the death of this thing known as me. They both disguise this issue, behind either apathy or anxiety. I flip between - there's really nothing I can do about this - to - there's something I must urgently do about this. In Buddhism there is said to be always a Middle Way in any circumstance, though it can be difficult to discern when ones viewpoint is so entangled in the conditioned world. If all roads have a left and a right lane, the middle way isn't along the central reservation. It's probably not on the road your on at all. It's not some half arsed compromise or improbable balancing act either, nor is it achieved by stitching together something torn to make it wearable. It has a more radical twist to it, presenting a simple more balanced viewpoint, that is not necessarily predicated on the immediate circumstances. It has to go beyond being apathetic or anxious. Trying to work out what that middle way might be for me, is what I'm pondering on at present. As yet no answer has been forthcoming, but I'll keep you posted.

FEATURE 91 - Joan Halifax on Compassion

Joan socks it to them.

FEATURE 90 - Laura Marling/Mumford&Sons/DharoharProject

A brilliant fusion of folk music from across many oceans and mountains, based on Devils Spoke a Laura Marling song from her last album 'I speak because I can.' Energy by the bucketload

FEATURE 89 - What The Water Gave Me

The new single from Florence & the Machine, which opens with a chord change lifted straight from The Cure circa 'A Forest', then builds slowly into a stomping song repeatedly urging us all to put stones in our pockets and drown. Gosh, she's a cheery woman. Wasn't sure about it at first, but its grown on me to the point I'm humming it at work. Bodes well for the new album.

The video is an unadventurous blend of studio recording shots and outside miming, with Florence in her Mystic Meg lacy flounce. I have to say, she looks a little haggard here and on edge, if not out of it. She did seem to overwork and be in danger of overexposure last year, because she was literally everywhere after 'Lungs' struck gold. I hope she's not holding all of it together with the aid of chemicals.

POEM - Automobile

It feels as though
I've applied the brakes
and slowly brought the automobile
to a halt
and now I'm sat
in the car
looking out
at the freshly salted streets
and the people
and feel withdrawn from both them
and the exegesis of the Dharma.

The keys
are still in the ignition
I can start the car
anytime
anytime I want
but for now
all motion
has been stopped.

Should I get out
open the car door
and go for a walk
in those streets
and beckoning alleys
do something wildly adventurous
in a backstreet cafe
and gain that spurious sense
of liberty
movement brings?

And then do I get back into the car
and drive off?

VIDYAVAJRA

Written 24/04/2011

DIARY 145 - The Scores On The Doors

Well, just so you know, we finished converting eleven doors in our first community yesterday. Hurrah 1 Hurrah 2 Hurrah 3!!!! It took a total of 21 days spread over 5 weeks, and approximately 238 Man-hours. There was a lot of trial and error, where more time was given to working out what would or would not be the best way of doing stuff, than we'll be doing subsequently. I expect the next community to not take anything quite as long, because its got about a quarter less rooms, we know what we're doing now, and we are a three person team not a two. Well.....lets just see what transpires eh?