CD#03 Meditation, inspiration and virtual reality
In this issue : Christian Raymond on his interactive 360º film app ‘MEDITATION TREK’ … and more
September 2020
Welcome back! And if you’re new to this newsletter – a very warm welcome!
In this month’s Creative Dharma, a newsletter, Christian Raymond writes about his interactive 360º film app ‘MEDITATION TREK’, and Patricia Sanders sets out how her experience of meditation has changed in the two years she’s been engaged with Pine Street Sangha.
Artist Barbara Parmet revisits a favourite book, Buddha mind in contemporary art, and Ramsey Margolis and Brad Parks set out the case for bringing creativity into our meditation practice in ‘Everything we’ve tried to avoid or consciously deny is waiting for us when we meditate’.
And we welcome Ronn Smith to the team that produces this newsletter. Ronn is an independent consultant (with a focus on strategic planning and fundraising), writer, and stage director (current project: Mara: A Chamber Opera, music by Sherry Woods, libretto by Stephen Batchelor). He is an ardent student of the dharma, which he has been practising for 20+ years.
If you find these articles stimulating, we encourage you to engage with us by sending an email or commenting on the newsletter’s website –
https://creativedharma.substack.com. ⁂
FINDING YOUR CENTER ON A MEDITATION TREK
Adventures in creativity and interactive VR filmmaking
By Christian Raymond, Austin TX, USA • www.transmediatesseract.net
For years, I’ve been astonished by the parallels, intersections, and new horizons which have opened up due to the convergence of my own contemplative and creative practices. The concept of the ‘dramatic center’ speaks to this integration for me, and is accessible to anyone interested in using a process of self-discovery to craft authentic stories, in any medium.
First articulated by Dona Cooper (in her book, Writing Great Screenplays for Film & TV), the dramatic center is a story development tool that captures ‘a unique combination of creative inspiration and physical feeling’ reverberating in the body. It’s that spontaneous spasm of excitement that automatically triggers when something resonates in your subconscious. For me, the approach mirrors aspects of my own dharma and meditation experiments, such as the unusual clarity of dwelling in uncertainty with wonder and discoveries made while rooted in and exploring the senses.
The dramatic center is the exact epicenter of your emotional excitement about an idea, which can be used as a creative tool. Sure, most people have probably had an ‘Aha!’ moment or visceral moments of insight like this. Articulating and harnessing the power of a dramatic center is another thing! Some artists feel this ‘visceral click’ in their gut, the back of their spine, or as a rush of adrenaline. Finding a song, a photo, or holding a mental picture of a scene in your mind can be ways to again connect with this sensation, which moves beyond the intellectual. Once discovered and sustained, this alleviates arbitrary aspects to storytelling, because it can be used as guiding compass for any consideration or artistic question, from character to scene development, by simply asking: ‘is this true to my dramatic center?’
Cooper gives an example of the academy award winning film, Amadeus (1984). Most writers probably would have written a straightforward account of Mozart’s genius or life. Instead, Paul Shaffer mined deeper into his own fascination with the nature of being mediocre. This uniquely personal insight and point of view is the dramatic center that permeates the film to help create emotional resonance. How is this different than a theme of a work? It’s the impassioned emotional way the writer actually feels about the theme, which can express one’s personal values.
Discovery of a story’s dramatic center, like any insight, often can make one thrilled to share this excitement with others. This sort of ‘centering’ insight is also akin for me to moments in life of turning back reactivity and acting in more caring and creative ways, and the excitement this can create. Fundamentally, like a meaningful contemplative practice, discovery and application of the dramatic center is a fluid process and a middle way of sorts, about finding one’s own authentic voice through creative awareness.
Here’s an example using a recent project of my own. ‘MEDITATION TREK’ is an interactive 360º film app experienced with a virtual reality headset (in most basic form, a Google Cardboard Viewer you place your phone into). Framed as a meditation app you can download, participants can select from various short sitting or hiking meditations and are immersed in various wilderness settings, while actually taking part in an experimental, interactive psychological-thriller film experience.
⬆︎ A 2D panoramic image and ‘disruption’ from the interactive 360º film, ‘Meditation Trek’
Mysterious interruptions to the voiced guided meditations create openings for participant choices or ‘story branching’ and various types of potential contemplative directions and endings, depending on one’s own experience.
Early on, as I was wrestling with clarity of concept and experimenting with screenplay development, I contemplated the dramatic center. At that point, I knew wanted it to be reflective of the actual meditation experience and to challenge the notion of ‘genre apps’ along with ‘on-demand gratification culture’.
As I dug deeper, I realised my unconventional story spoke to ideas around growth/insight not occurring via paint-by-numbers dogma of any kind, but through more mysterious, uncertain and creative ways as we traverse our own ‘treks’. I kicked around how these notions were connected to early Buddhist teachings (I give a grateful nod here to Stephen Batchelor’s body of work).
So, this line of thinking led me to use the simple ‘bubble brainstorm’ technique, making a circle in the middle of a page, then digging into my senses for any association related to the concept, which I scribbled down in connected bubbles. Of course, this is just one of many techniques I could have used to ‘jump start’ the dramatic center. Much of what I wrote felt too random or not useful, but several scene ideas, sound effects, and meditation designs bubbled up.
One mad scribbling literally shook my body to the core, as it hit me viscerally in the gut and ‘clicked’. The idea was that this drama resonated with an archetypal, ancient story. My scribble simply said: ‘Gotama/Mara’. I reflected on the iconic struggle, consisting of the living Gotama constantly fighting off Mara’s disruptive attempts at influence throughout his life, as he strived to be in an awakened state. This resonated deeply with me on how challenging meditation (as well as life) can be at times, and how we constantly have to fight off our own inner demons, made manifest through the mysterious disturbances and figure in the film.
My dramatic center for MEDITATION TREK became a visual of Gotama facing the shadow of Mara 2,500 years ago in relentless ongoing confrontations that made him stronger and more authentically human, just like the mysterious, bewildering nature of trying to integrate our own shadows today.
Gotama and Mara weren’t even in my story (sometimes the case for a dramatic center), as it wasn’t literally about them, but more about us.
Yet, the inspirational visual focused the story experience. Once determined, this dramatic center freed my creativity, informing character, plot and visual effects, helping make non-arbitrary decisions across the material true to the emotional core.
⬆︎ Face the shadow or take a different path? You choose.
The dramatic center is a tool that can be applied, I imagine, to any subject matter (meditation just happened to be the topic here!) and creative work, from short stories to song writing. ⁂
EXERCISE
To go through a short exercise by Christian Raymond that helps you create an authentic story which is true to your own voice, take a look at our website here.
– Christian Raymond is a creative and media professor whose adventures range from writing screenplays at Disney to developing community media programs in the USA and Romania.
The work of sitting quietly doing nothing, waiting for our deepest experience to show up, is one of the most truly creative actions we can take.
– Katherine Thanas (1927–2012), former abbot, Santa Cruz Zen Centre (hat tip to Christian Solorzano • beginnersmind.substack.com)
ON HAVING A DAILY PRACTICE
Each time I sit it’s different, and that’s fine
by Patricia Sanders, Portland OR, USA • pinestreetsangha.org
I’ve been a member of the Pine Street Sangha Friday meditation group for a little over two years and have attended the Zoom meditation group daily since late March. This has really changed how I think of, and experience, meditation.
I used to think of meditation as something that was supposed to be consistent. I should sit for a certain length of time and follow my breath, for example. If my mind drifted off, as it always did, I should return to my breath. This practice was called insight meditation, but the only insight I seemed to have was that I was incapable of meditation. So, after many efforts with many sanghas, I gave up.
Then I tried the reflective meditation process. At first, it did not seem like meditation at all but, at least, I did not feel frustrated or constrained as I sat still for 40 minutes. And, surprisingly, I did frequently have valuable insights. I don’t strain for insights, I just let them happen if they want to come.
My experience with the reflective meditation practice is that each time it’s different. Sometimes my thoughts are mundane ones – I might just go through to-do lists. Other times I’m deeply drawn into visual images or deeper thoughts. What I’ve learned is that whatever form it takes, by watching those thoughts, I get more focused and usually reach a very calm state. Now I look forward to my varied meditation, and I think greater attentiveness is gradually creeping into my daily life, making me more aware of my reactions.
When I reflect on my meditation, sometimes I can remember almost everything I thought about and how I felt. Other times I may only remember the striking bits, or just my final thoughts. I no longer struggle to remember and I don’t worry about not remembering. This attitude has come gradually as I have accepted the variability of my meditations.
Writing about my meditation, I can often see a pattern or meaning in what I felt was a random sequence of thoughts or feelings. Sometimes there’s a little dharma lesson too. It’s like my mind has a storehouse of wisdom I can tap into when I relax and attend. But sometimes it’s hard to relax and pay attention. Then, I just accept that I’m in an agitated state and know this will change.
I’m grateful to have come across a meditation practice that seems right for me, one that seems to help me understand myself a little better and that gradually helps me to live throughout the day with more attention to my reactions and states of mind. ⁂
I believe that art is a form of meditation for both maker and witness, and that art, like meditation, makes us attentive … produces quiet in the mind so that it can discard pre-existing ideas to see what is real.
– Milton Glaser (graphic designer, 1929–2020)
REVISITING A FAVOURITE BOOK
Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art
Ed. Jacquelyn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
By Barbara Parmet, Santa Barbara CA, USA • barbaraparmet.com
As a practitioner of art and daily meditation, this book helpfully illuminates the interplay of both meditation and art practices. This is rare since meditation and art are almost always kept in separate realms with boundaries not often breached. In her analysis of how the walls are broken through, art critic Kay Larson calls Buddha the first performance artist. She quotes Robert Thurman retelling the story of Buddha’s awakening and what happens afterward:
Say you are the buddha and you’re free of suffering and you feel totally great – as happy as a bee and at one with the universe – and then you see all of these miserable people. Yet what good would it do for you to go and give them a big grin and a hug or smother them with joyfulness? They’d just get freaked out and be paranoid and say, ‘What does this person want?’ so instead, a buddha has to develop some strategies – some art – to, first of all, open that person’s imagination to the fact that there is a world where they don’t have to be miserable all the time. And then he has to help them with a method of how to move from their paranoid corner of misery into the great ocean of bliss of the universe that you, as a buddha, perceive.
The art of this performance artist is a kind of secret treasure, that 2,500 years later, we can still ‘see’. His ‘art’ is now available to each of us willing to pierce the veils of our own selfishness and delusions. It is said the buddha had 84,000 methods to sever the ego of 84,000 kinds of practitioners. This creative act could foresee the artist in each of us, and as Larson points out, ‘it is Buddhism’s great contribution to a conversation about human creativity’. And because there was no physical art product that buddha could show anyone, this is a great way of showing how buddha’s creative performance then is still capable of transforming our habitual ways of thinking today.
In the 1960s, performance art became de rigeur. It defined a paradigm shift asserting the idea that made process a more important aspect of art than the product. You could say buddha was ahead of his time as a performance artist. Jump to the contemporary art world of our 21st century. I tell this story about meeting a woman in my zen sitting group in the aughts. When I noticed a new person who entered our zendo, I reached out to make sure she was comfortable and knew where to sit and such. I then checked in with her after the practice session hoping she would join us again.
⬆︎ Leap4 by Barbara Parmet
Marcia and I got to know one another bit by bit. I invited her to an art exhibition that I had spent a year putting together. After she visited the show, we had a great discussion about the art world and meditation. Marcia was one of the first people in my life to talk about art and meditation in the same sentence. Marcia suggested we start a book club. She invited mutual friends who were curators at all the local museums.
Slowly, I learned that Marcia was Marcia Tucker, a notorious museum director who started the New Museum in NYC after being fired from the Whitney Museum for exhibiting the work of Richard Tuttle, whose work was made from little more than string and wire. When a museum trustee visited the show, she was outraged that there was nothing there but shadows from the light shining on the string and wires. Fortunately for all of us, Marcia was fired. With no money of her own, she started the New Museum.
Although Marcia died of cancer a few years after I met her, she lives on in all the lives of the artists who loved her for recognising creativity in their humble acts of art making. In Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, Marcia tells some of her own stories about artists who, ‘resonate with the Buddhist concept of self as an illusion : fluid, inconsistent, amorphous, ephemeral, ultimately unlocatable’. At the end of her essay, ‘No Title’, Tucker asks us if Buddhism could teach us to relate to art with its offerings of ‘openness, acceptance, generosity and joy’. If the life of Marcia Tucker is any indication, the answer is yes.
Another famous performance artist, Laurie Anderson, writes about her favourite exhibition made by Marina Abramovic in 2002. And though it sounds banal to describe Abramovic living on a shelf in a gallery for twelve days, naked and going about her normal daily activities not talking, taking showers, not writing, fasting etc., Anderson tells us, ‘It was electrifying and fascinating’. Anderson spent hours at the gallery where she wrote, ‘Time had stopped’. I also remember watching the same performance for hours on my computer, completely mesmerised by the ceremonial actions.
This is a triple whammy meditation: an artist contemplating the contemplation of another artist contemplating another artist’s contemplation. Art and meditation indeed.
⬆︎ Clouds by Barbara Parmet
In the essay ‘Seeing the Light’, Stephen Batchelor points out how the practice of photography is similar to ‘the practice of paying mindful attention to whatever is occurring in the moment’. And for all the artists and curators in this collection, this is a good description of how the contemplative frame of mind characterises the touchpoint between art and meditation.
The most unusual thing about Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art is the fact that before its publication all the writers/artists participated together in the two-year program Awake: Art, Buddhism, and the Dimensions of Consciousness. From April 2001 to February 2003 this consortium effort brought together art professionals, artists and others to investigate the relationship between the meditative, creative and perceiving mind. Coming together they found that art and being awake are not two separate realms.
And the fact that more than 50 exhibitions, performances and public programs came to fruition because of their contemplative practices together, is proof of the power unleashed when the cauldron of mindful communal creativity is given time to come to a full boil. ⁂
– For thirty years, Barbara Parmet has studied with teachers from various Buddhist traditions. She says her daily practices of meditation and art are inextricably linked. Trained as a photojournalist and later as an artist, she states, ‘I look into the faces of people I photograph as a way to find the face of the Buddha’.
CREATIVITY, IMAGINATION AND MAGIC
an online meeting with Stephen Batchelor
Sunday 6 September 2020
10:30-12:00 US Eastern Standard Time
– a Community Meditation Center (New York) event
Zoom meeting ID 848 3735 6684 • password 224736 or:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84837356684?pwd=ZlpubndKSFlMMCtjc3N5MEx4dlBDQT09
PRACTISING CREATIVITY
Everything we’ve tried to avoid or consciously deny is waiting for us when we meditate
By Ramsey Margolis • Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand • www.tuwhiri.nz and
Brad Parks • Santa Barbara, California, USA • satisangha.org
Despite our best intentions it’s not uncommon for mindfulness methods and meditation techniques – guided or otherwise – to mask what we’re reluctant to see, and what we don’t want to discover about ourselves.
As we repeatedly enforce a focus on ‘the breath’, we can sometimes cut ourselves off from the full spectrum of our humanity, from inner sources of authentic inspiration. Our awareness narrows, and is diminished.
On the other hand, we could choose to take an opportunity to practice meditation with a creative, non-formulaic, open awareness. Sitting quietly, relaxed and still, we offer our thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns the ability to appear in their own form, without any need to avoid or embrace them.
We may give ourselves permission to drift off into the shadowy and bewildering corners of the mind or to – heaven forbid … fall asleep, perchance to dream.
When we use the minutes immediately after a meditation session to reflect on – and perhaps journal about – what we’ve experienced, our own understanding is our guide.
We notice themes, textures, and other qualities of mind and heart when they’re allowed an opportunity to express themselves, and there’s no reason to add to or subtract from what appears.
When we sit with open awareness, our attention is not intentionally focussed on the breath, or body sensations, or any of the senses. Instead, we meet ourselves with gentleness and curiosity, grounding our practice in a direct and mature honesty. The language we use, the images we see, the sensations we feel: each has an integrity of its own.
We learn that: ‘When feeling anxious, I know anxiety. When feeling hostility, I know hostility. When feeling sad, I know sadness. When feeling desire, I know desire. When feeling fear, I know fear.’ As Gotama put it: ‘I know you, Mara’.
The same goes for thought, that slippery and elusive companion. During a meditation session, we may find ourselves imagining a past or current interpersonal conflict. Allowing this imaginary encounter to present itself, we may recognise an impulse to demonstrate our superiority, to assert our authority, or to persuade the other of our views.
Through a non-intrusive attention to the conflict, we can observe our less obvious motives, habitual strategies, and desires – our ‘selfing’. Rather than attempt to crush or eliminate our sense of self, we can explore and learn from the ways in which we consciously, and unconsciously, build and maintain fixed views of who we are.
When we allow our inner world – with all of its connections to our outer world – to arise naturally, we become more honest about our mistaken perceptions and the actions we take on the basis of these perceptions.
We learn, sometimes painfully, to question the convictions we build on the shaky foundations of stories we’ve heard, and those we tell ourselves. While our imagination can serve us, it can also deceive us; in meditation we develop the capacity to discern the difference.
Paradoxically, by allowing emotions the space to be, we see beneath the visceral sense that they always provide us with a reliable understanding of ourselves and others. When we are absorbed or identified with any single feeling tone or emotion, we feel persuaded by that momentary point of view.
⬆︎ Alexey Kondakov – from Daily life of gods
Once the impulse or emotion shifts or fades, though, we may discover on reflection how comfortable we are with habitual, rigidly-patterned behaviours and reactions. We also learn to recognise those feelings which support our flourishing, and awareness grows to include the causes and the conditions of the choices we make.
Familiar reactions and perspectives have deep roots, some deeper than we will ever be able to know. In these moments of recognition, we learn to soften, to bring some gentleness and compassion to our sometimes turbulent and painful inner world.
Emotions, like the imagination, can embody both wisdom and delusion, as well as skilful and unskilful inclinations. In meditation, we develop the ability to be with the full spectrum and to orient ourselves wisely, dwelling confidently in each moment.
Once we start to see through the haze and mist of habitual reactivity – our greed, hatred and delusion – once we see it evaporate in the heat of honest self-awareness, everyday life can display richness and depth, a freshness we feel directly.
Each action and interaction becomes an opportunity for creative exploration and deep contemplation. This open space of awareness can touch every part of our lives.
This is the work we commit to when we sit each day in meditation. ⁂
Over three days, Martine Batchelor will look at the Buddhist teaching of the five mental factors and the body in its environment, relating this to emptiness and to ethical behaviour.
A training to refine our attention, investigating our practice we will recognise more clearly how we perceive objects in our interior and exterior worlds, create meaning, take action as a result of our perceptions and, with discernment, reduce suffering for ourselves and others.
Find more information and register on the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies website here.
After Buddhism: exploring a secular dharma
An online course led by Lorna Edwards from 9 September through 22 December 2020
Two Zoom meetings to go through each module will take place. These will be at times suitable for Europe/Africa/Asia/Australasia; and for Europe/Africa/the Americas
Find out more here.
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In front of the fireplace, a dreamer experiences a reverie which deepens. Dreaming before the fire or before water, one knows a sort of stable reverie. … In tranquil water how close the surface and the depths are! Depth and surface are reconciled. The deeper the water, the clearer the mirror. Light emerges from the abysses.
– from The poetics of reverie by Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962)
Okay, that’s it for this one. Write and let us know what you think of Creative Dharma, a newsletter, and what creative dharma (the notion) suggest to you.
Last month we asked: is there anything you’d like to write, or you’d like us to write about? What would you like to see in future newsletters?
The response was fantastic. If you weren’t one of those who wrote, however, don’t let this stop you – we’d still like to hear your thoughts on what we need to cover.
Send feedback to newsletter@creativedharma.org and do please share our content on social media (we really would appreciate it if you do). We look forward to being with you again in October. ⁂
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