'Kundzop' is Stroked & Glazed
Acrylic and oil (Impasto and alizarin glaze) on reinforced glass. June2001
Approx. actual size. Invisible!
[This title may be better understood by knowing that the Tibetan word
'Kundzop' captures relative truth (covered concealed) that is the 'dressed
up' -costumed and brilliant coloured' 'ness of the phenomenal world. 'This
hides 'sunyata' (absolute truth) and our discerning of the distinction is
helping to our understanding the nature of Buddha's teaching and here my
brush stroke's lighted-speed and coloured-complexity chases that
understanding amid.. ;-)]
13the June 2001
Dear Learners,
Somewhere I think, I quoted Goethe as saying that, -- the light of the sun
called forth from the tissue that is man and woman the organ necessary to
receive it.' This we call the eye. The eye is called forth that sun may be
(called) a sun at all. Somewhere else, in the last few days, I read
someone writing that the word to "know" and the word to "see" have
converged to mean the same thing, I "see" means I "know". Varela with
others reflects that, "- in reflection we find ourselves in a circle: we
are in a world that seems to be there before our reflection begins; but
that world is not separate from us." (The Embodied Mind)
Maurice Merleau-Ponty recognised this circle, according to Varela. The
recognition of this circle, 'opened up a space' according to Varela
between, ' self and world'. Between inner and outer. (Dostoevsky wrote
that, 'What is inside is outside and what is outside is inside;-)' Now
Varela says that this space thus opened is not a gulf or a divide, it
embraces the distinction between self and world (Inside - outside) and yet
provided the continuity between them. (I reflect that this continuity be
(lighted space;-) a play on words by which I mean time;-) There, my soul
contribution to quantum mechanics;-) as I see it.
Ponty wrote as Varela and others quoted him, " When I begin to reflect, my
reflection bears upon an unreflective experience, moreover my reflection
cannot be unaware of itself as an event, and so it appears to itself in
the light of a truly creative act, of a changed structure of
consciousness, and yet.... Perception is not a science of the world, it is
not even an act, a deliberate taking up of a position; it is the
background from which al acts stand out, and is presupposed by them: The
world is not an object that I have in my possessions the law of its
making; it is the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and
all my explicit perceptions."
Now I have written the above because the words reflect strongly into my
images as they've discovered ;-) me these past few weeks and each one has
been painted as if it were a mixing ground for colours and forms, on
glass, my palette of many colours and according to taste.
I hope none of you, my friends, has been fooled by this fool? I have as
yet only embraced the middle ground of what is still enfolded, implicate.
I have offered 'possibility spaces' so far as I can. The rule has been 'no
rules' just as Varela quotes to illuminate near the end of what was the
beginning of Embodied Minds..."
"Just as the grammarian makes one study grammar,
A Buddha teaches according to the tolerance of his students;
Some he urges to refrain from sins, others to do good,
Some to rely on dualism, others on non-dualism;
And some he teaches the profound,
The terrifying, the practice of enlightenment,
Whose essence is emptiness that is compassion."
Compassionate action is also called skilful means. Looking and listening
are these.
My images are myself looking listening, they are not as Varela says it,
'parachuted into from out of', and they were implicate in the world and
are like sons and daughters. One of you asked me not to take in so much,
not to be so moved by suffering. How so, how so, how so.
Plant good seeds, plant good seeds, and plant good seeds.
A master gardener has left, at that moment, a new bloom in my garden, our
garden.
A warm and fragrant man.
There maybe he sits between flower head and the fragrance.
Impossible, impossible, impossible.
'Open ended learning.'
Gandhi's son was very upset when his father renounced all property and
wealth out of wisdom's way. So that 'father' apologised to his 'son' and
his 'wife' and he told them 'become gardeners and always keep your
implements clean and orderly.'
Embrace<>Seven
" - to the point where we no longer need and desire foundations and so can
take up further tasks of building and dwelling in worlds without ground."
(Closing lines of Varela's 'Embodied Mind')
...
Post script 26th November 2001
"-The man looked at her with infinite compassion before he turned from the
fresh sown grass toward the naked black crosses where twenty three
thousand bodies lay. 'Come with me,' he said, 'and I will show you where
your son lies.' (Though 'he' was (k)not her son;-). When she left the
Cemetery she turned for a last look. In the distance she saw the man
bending over his young plants; and she went away, supposing him to be the
gardener."
John: 20:15
'Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou? She,
supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne
him hence, tell me where thou hast buried him..
(From Kipling's, The Gardener. Kipling's only son died in the Great War)
Love,
Andrew Campbell
North Moreton
Oxon
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