When Perception is Stronger Than Mindfulness

When perception is stronger than mindfulness, we recognize various appearances and create concepts such as "body," "cat", "house," or "person". . .
On some clear night, go outside, look up at the sky, and see if you can find the Big Dipper. For most people that is a familiar constellation, easy to pick out from all the other stars. But is there really a Big Dipper up there in the sky? There is no Big Dipper up there. "Big Dipper" is a concept. Humans looked, saw a certain pattern, and then created a concept in our collective mind to describe it. That concept is useful because it helps us recognize the constellation. But it also has another, less useful effect. By creating the concept "Big Dipper" we separate out those stars from all the rest, and then, if we become attached to the idea of that separation, we lose the sense of the night sky's wholeness, its oneness. Does the separation actually exist in the sky? No. We created it through the use of a concept. Does anything change in the sky when we understand that there is no Big Dipper? No.

--Joseph Goldstein, Insight Meditation

Marc Mulders' Coping with the 'hip, empty world' / Marc Mulders' verweer tegen de 'hippe, lege wereld'

Today while browsing through a lot of Dutch art sites I found the site of Dutch artist Marc Mulders which philosophy of life inspires me. Here is a fragment from an article by Wilma Suto about his work and vision. Click for further reading on the title of this posting to go to Marc Mulders' website. There you will find the whole article under the section Articles. It's the first one on top.

The painterly tradition is an important source of inspiration to an artist who wants to cope with the ‘hip, empty world’ around him. Mulders has often reacted sharply in interviews, particularly when he noticed that his religion-buttressed morality was regarded as regressive. His strong aversion to social ‘banalization’, including an art which subsidies rendered ‘unmercifully artificial’, has earned him the reputation of a crusader blinded by dogmas. That hurts. ‘Because I do believe in the freedom of art’, he says, ‘for formulating a counterbalance.’ Because: ‘Religion and art both have a Weltanschauung. For example, a detached reflection on innovation for its own sake which, while we are on the subject of dogmas, characterizes postmodernism. I compare that sparseness with the wealth of religion, tradition and trade, to which I relate as heir and apprentice. This necessitates a training in humility on my part. Not a popular concept, I know, but nonetheless one of my magic words. It’s how I exorcise disorder: in a disciplined fashion, with the aid of a hierarchy’.

Vandaag trof ik tijdens het surfen over een groot aantal Nederlandse kunst websites de website van Marc Mulders aan, wiens kijk op het leven ik inspirerend vind. Hier volgt een fragment uit een artikel van Wilma Suto over zijn werk en visie. Om het hele artikel te lezen, klik je op de titel van dit stukje, om naar Marc Mulders' website te gaan. Onder het kopje Artikelen staat dit artikel helemaal bovenaan.

De schilderkunstige traditie is een belangrijke inspiratiebron voor de kunstenaar, die zich teweerstelt tegen de ‘hippe, lege wereld’ rondom. Mulders heeft zich daar in interviews vaak scherp over uitgelaten, temeer wanneer hij merkte dat zijn door de religie geschraagde moraliteit als regressief werd opgevat. Zijn uitgesproken weerzin tegen de maatschappelijke banalisering, inclusief de door subsidies ‘ongenadig artificieel’ geworden kunst, kwam hem te staan op de kritiek dat hij een kruistocht voerde, verblind door dogma’s. Dat steekt. ‘Omdat ik de vrije ruimte van de kunst juist huldig’, zegt hij, ‘voor het formuleren van een tegenwicht.’ Want: ‘Religiositeit en artisticiteit houden beide een kritische wereldbeschouwelijkheid in. Een afstandelijke reflectie op de vernieuwing om de vernieuwing bijvoorbeeld, die, over dogma’s gesproken, het postmodernisme tekent. Tegenover die schraalheid stel ik de rijkdom van religie, traditie en ambacht, waar ik me toe verhoud als erfgenaam en leerling. Dat vraagt van mij een training in nederigheid. Geen populair begrip, ik weet het, maar het is wel een van mijn toverwoorden. Zo bezweer ik de wanorde: gedisciplineerd, met behulp van een hiërarchie.’

The History about His Master's Voice

Trip to Oostende ended with Left Foot in Plaster

The trip to Oostende ended in a fall in which I bruised my left ankle a week ago. Luckily we had already seen all the nice things in Oostende, especially the house of James Ensor. This was a three storey high old house full of old furniture, interesting wallpaper and lots of reproductons of his paintings. Lots of masks, shells and fossiles too.
Oostende is a nice town right on the seaside with a beautiful boulevard, a big fishing harbour and pleasant shopping area. What remains a mystery is why the town is called Oostende (East End in English) as it is situated on the west coast of Belgium. I have found the explanation of this mystery on Wikipedia. Oostende used to be on an island in front of the Belgian coast, situated on the east, there was also a Westende.
Anyway, for me it was definately the end of my trip to Belgium. So tell me, what's in a name?

Click here to read the Wikipedia article

James Ensor

I am going to James Ensor House in Oostende, Belgium next week.

Marc Chagall, another joy of mine

Looking at his work always gives me so much joy...

The Navaho Sandpaintings

Other drawings that are among my favorite are Navaho Sandpaintings, made by the Navaho Native Americans. I never saw one in reality, but some art books have pictures of them, and I always find myself looking at them in awe and admiration. The strange thing about them is that they are not made as art, but as a healing device, used in a ritual to heal someone. When the healing ritual is finished, people wipe the sandpainting away, leaving no trace of it. These images I found on http://www.snowwowl.com/naartsandp.html where I also stumbled upon an internet radio station which broadcasts native american music, but also jazz, blues and country 24 hours a day: http://www.gatheringofnations.com/gonradio/
I am sorry that I can't give you direct links to these sites here. The link function is not working properly right now. You can find the direct links however in the Links section on the right of this weblog, right beneath my profile.

The Mysterious Drawings of Robert Fludd

I came upon the amazing drawings of Robert Fludd again, when I was browsing through pages about alchemy and I want to show you a couple of them. They are among my favorite drawings, because they are mysterious, geometrical and mystical. There is something about them that takes my breath away.Robert Fludd was a Renaissance scholar who was a doctor with his own pharmacy, a physician, astrologer and philosopher all in one, and an artist as well when you look at his pictures.This combination of professions is regarded as weird nowadays, but in the Renaissance science and spirituality were not so far apart, and to be specialised in just one area wasn't the thing to do.

Starry, Starry Night...

It's night here in Holland and I am still at the computer at almost 3 in the morning. Was in Amsterdam today, attending a mini astrology congress for the Dutch astrologer Karen Hamaker-Zondag who had her 25 year jubilee as an astrologer and writer of astrology books.
Sounds a bit dry eh, and it was... a bit dry. There were three lectures, with tea, coffee and cookies in between, and a very fast cigarette. First two Australian astrologers who had moved to England, but still had that typical Australian accent which makes you think they were raised in the gutter, sorry to say. And the last lecturer was a German whose language made me revolt inside, I don't really know why. Luckily the light fell out of the projection thing, which wasn't my fault, so there was a 5 minute break in which I never returned.
Of course it was interesting as well. I didn't pay 69 euro for nothing. The Australian women were fast, concise and very eloquent, despite the horrible pronunciation. (I know it sounds very snobbish, but I can't help it. It makes my ears go strange.)

The first lecture was about the place astrology could now take among the latest Chaos Philosophy, with Strange Attractors and Hopf Bifurcations. Interesting words, don't you think? I will leave them unexplained, so you can make up your own meaning. If you want to know what they really mean, just turn to Google. There are lots of sites about Chaos Philosophy on the net, I know, because I just checked a couple of them.

In the words of physicist Paul Davies in his book The Cosmic Blueprint (1988):
There is no detailed blueprint, only a set of laws with an inbuilt facility for making interesting things happen. The universe is free to create itself as it goes along. The general pattern of development is "predestined", but the details are not. Thus, the existence of intelligent life at some stage is inevitable; it is, so to speak, written into the laws of nature. But man as such is far from preordained.
The second lecture was of more interest to me. She talked about Holding On and Letting Go and how our birth chart can tell us more about these important phenomena in our lives. The Moon is a very important planet in the Holding On sector. Not only the sign where the Moon is in, also its house placement, which planet rules the house where the Moon is in, and hard (stressful) aspects to other planets or the Sun.
She said something very useful about Disappointment and Failure. Ask questions such as - Why? Due to? For what reason? Because?- whenever you are confronted with a feeling of disappointment or failure. This rational questioning takes the heat out of the emotional frustration and gives you the opportunity to see things from a wider angle.She also gave a list of Small Things To Change, also in the form of questions.

(The Moon)
1. How did I feel in that situation?
2. What do I feel was the cause of that feeling?
3. What would I have preferred to have felt?

(Mars)
1. What action did I want to take?
2. What is a better action to take?

(Mercury)
1. Is there anything I regretted saying in that situation?
2. Could I have said it better?
3. What do I still want to say to that person?

And she gaves us even more questions about Handling Change:

-What is your perception of the event that is happening? (your Mercury)
-How do you feel about it? (your Moon)
-What fears come up, what control do you want? (your Saturn)
-What small action can you take that would start to let go? (your Mars)
-Can you see yourself in a new and positive way? (your Jupiter)
-If so, how does it feel? (your Moon)
-What messages are you telling yourself about what's happening? (your Mercury)

Lots of other things of course, but I will be brief and finish with the German speaker. He talked about the transformation process using terms and images from alchemy and tarot. The first image he used was The Hanged Man, which he thought of as THE symbol for us human beings, because we are the only creatures that know we are going to die. We can act against our nature and are responsible for it too. Depression also belongs to The Hanged Man.
According to the German writer Karl von Durckheim we have three main fears: 1. Fear of loneliness. 2. Fear of destruction/death. 3. Fear of the absurdity of life and not being able to rise above it.
In the Tarot transformation goes from The Hanged Man to The World and when you lay the cards together, The World above and The Hanged Man under it, you get the symbol of the Ankh.
Then I closed my eyes for a while and dozed off at the sound of German words that felt like a smooth but sticky river (Hermes Trismegistos, der Stein der Weisen, der Caduceus, das Yin Yang Symbol, die Chakra's) and woke up to hear that the projector had fallen out. Relieved I went to take a break and never returned.
The congres had been like a short day at a school I never liked going to, it was too much work and hardly no play. Why are lectures almost always so dry and hardly without any humor?