THE CREATIVE BUDDHIST NEWSLETTER

Dear Subscriber First Name,

I’m on week three of a 10 week Miksang photography course. I mentioned it in a previous email. Miksang means ‘good eye’ in Tibetan and the couple leading the course are both disciples of the late Trungpa Rinpoche. He used to talk a lot about this idea of, ‘first thought, best thought’, looking for that moment of fresh perception, before concepts kick in. This course isn’t about learning to use a camera, or how to compose images, it’s about noticing that first moment of perception and seeing if you can capture it.

Rather than being let loose with a camera, we are starting with some tight assignments to train the eye/mind. The first was a colour assignment. Look out for impressions of colour and then capture them. The idea being that we send in 8 photos in which colour is the first and strongest perception. It was so much harder than it sounds! We all failed. There was too much else going on in our pictures, texture, pattern and thingness, all competing with colour as the first impression.

You can only have one first impression, just like you can only have one first thought. When other impressions and thoughts crowd in, you lose the clarity. I find the entire process thought-provoking, with no irony intended. It’s as if what we are doing with the camera could be a metaphor for other aspects of our practice. How do we keep things simple and fresh? Can we trust that simplicity and resist the urge to over complicate?

This week, I think we mostly nailed it with our repeat of the failed colour assignment.

The Dharma Bundle

Bringing Buddhism to life

How do we take the practice of Buddhism into the nitty gritty of our everyday lives?

This is the question we are asking in Dharma Bundle. And rather than answer it myself, I’m drawing on the wit and wisdom of the Dharma Bundle community. This Dharma Bundle is being made by them!

Join now and get some crowdsourced inspiration for taking the Dharma into your day-to-day life.

The Dharma Bundle is a ‘bundle’ of dharma resources, thoughtfully made and beautifully packaged. Short, illustrated Dharma videos and audio talks. Audio meditations and reflections. Creative assignments. Zoom meetups.

On my radar this week

‘Komorebi’, a theme from the film Perfect Days. It means sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees

Perfect days - film / article - Our current theme in the Dharma Bundle is ‘How do we make our everyday life a practice?’, and Wim Wenders answers that question in his film Perfect Days. I’m guessing that by now you’ve probably seen the film, but reading this article, Perfect Days: Where the Light Comes Through, made me want to see it again, and again. Wim Wenders explains, “All of my films are dealing with that question of how to live, even though for a long time I did not know that, because I was searching for answers too. Perfect Days is quite a precise answer . . . In many ways, Hirayama (the lead character) is a perfect example of how to live.”

Book: On creating things aesthetic - On creating things aesthetic is a new book from Leonard Koren, author of Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers. I’ve not got my copy yet, but just read this conversation with Koren in Sight Unseen: “You know, when I started working on the book, I threw it away six or seven times because it seemed false. At this stage of my life, do I really want to put more untruth out into the world? I want to be truthful to others, as a way of being truthful to myself. So it ended up having fewer pages than I intended, but that was the most truthful way of presenting it. It’s a book on creating “things aesthetic.” It’s about methodology. It’s in no way prescriptive, but it provides some insights as to what you can do at various stages of the creative process.”

Book: The Abundance of less - I’m loving The Abundance of Less. In it, Andy Couturier visits 10 people in Japan who’ve opted out of mainstream life and decided to live with less. Living with less in material terms means they have an abundance of time in which to pursue the things that mean most to them. Many are artisans, some are activists, all of them enjoy the simple tasks of day-to-day living. It’s inspiring me to think about the next phase of my life and whether I can live more radically. Looking for a book review to share, I found this summary from Mattsy Studio.

Film: Marcel the shell with shoes on - Recommended to me by friends in the Dharma Bundle I really enjoyed this mockumentary about a shell, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Curl up on the sofa for a real treat.

Holiday: Rest and Relax on a Greek Island - I’m a little sad that I’ve not had my full on dose of sunshine this year. I usually try to top my liver up with Vit D before the winter starts. But there’s still time for you! Vimalamani, a good friend of mine, is running a rest and relax retreat by the beach on the island of Zakynthos in late September. It’s a yoga retreat, but the emphasis is very much on the relaxation part, with lots of time to swim in the sea or laze around in the hammock. She’s got a couple of places left for you!

Diary extracts:

The morning dip

In Sweden, a dip is a dopp, so a morning dip is a morgondopp! A morning dip is like a religious rite here. Early in the morning we’ll walk down to the little jetty for our morgondopp. Usually there are a few people there, some are alone, some are together. But this is not a social event. Even those who’ve arrived with a friend are talking in hushed tones, if not completely silent. We undress Swedish style, in a relaxed way, people are less afraid of showing their bodies than we are in the UK, some are even skinny-dipping. Then down the ladder and into the cold water, me trying not to make a big fuss about how cold it feels and therefore give myself away as being not Swedish. Afterwards, we all sit quietly, watching the light on the water.

Talking to an artist friend of mine on the weekend, he tells me the Swedes couldn’t care less about art. Thinking about it now, I don’t suppose they are very religious either. But they are utterly devoted to ‘the great outdoors’, to the natural world. That’s their temple, their gallery.

Regrets, I have a few

I’ve found it difficult to acknowledge my regrets in life. It seems almost immature to have them, to believe that things could have been different from the way they are. Rather than allowing myself to feel the pain of regret, I’ll remind myself how much I learned through situations I put myself in, which turned out to be not the best of choices. But reading ‘The Abundance of Less’ I came across Atsuko Watanbe talking about her own regrets and it put them in a whole different light:

I have regrets because I’ve made progress since I was young, that is why I have regrets. People who have made no progress look back and say, I’m so satisfied with my life, it was wonderful. I can at the very least say that even if it isn’t much, I’ve made some progress. And that’s good. Because I have regrets, I have done well.

Life is a series of choices and if I had my life over again, I would make some different choices. But none of us ever have our lives over again. The most we can hope for is that we learn from our mistakes and don’t fall for the ‘sunk cost fallacy’.

noun: sunk-cost fallacy

1. the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial.

Creative tips:

Using my iPhone as a camera - Although the photography course I’m doing focuses more on the eye than the camera, it has motivated me to explore the capabilities of an iPhone camera. I got an entire list of tips and tricks from Scott Kelby’s video Using Your iPhone As Your Second Camera for Travel Photography, it’s made a real difference.

A quote I’m thinking about:

“Look. This is your world! You can’t not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited this world of colour. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don’t hesitate – look! Open your eyes. Don’t blink, and look, look – look further.”
Chogyam Trungpa