What’s left finished…?
A reflection on living and Buddhism and art practice
by Lee Ju-Lyn
Featuring artworks by: Agustina Mucci Duglio, Frances Alleblas, Skuja Braden, Catherine Eaton Skinner, and Mikhail Kalinnikov
“Anākulā ca kammantā Etam-maṅgalam-uttamaṁ.”
“…jobs that are not left unfinished: This is the highest blessing.”
Nirvana (2023)
by Agustina Mucci Duglio (Montevideo, Uruguay)
Digital Painting 6.1 x 6.1 cm
“This piece is inspired in the ending of samsara, the questions I asked myself found an answer during the process of creating this digital piece.”
So… I don't know how else to introduce the topic so I'm going to just go, so… earlier this year, I got a rare medical thing that's the stuff of a reddit thread named "medical gore". Apparently medicine don't exactly know why people have this problem, but established that there is a 50% chance of recurrence, and some high likelihood that it is pre-symptomatic or actually symptomatic to other serious medical conditions like cancer or auto-immune conditions… that I guess, may be on its way.
Of course there’s a crazy accompanying physical and emotional roller-coaster that ensued, and with these things I want to just think c’est la vie. Or just write, c’est la vie. But it's not as neat as that.
I suppose, it's good that I have been adjusting my perspective to become more Buddhist, so it was perhaps relatively less difficult (than if I were less Buddhist, I suspect) to accept that illness and death looms... So this matter-of-fact-ness and trying-to-be-lighthearted-ness is befitting.
I've heard them say that in Buddhism, there are a few kinds of diseases: those that would cure without medical intervention, those that can be cured by medical intervention, and those that cannot be cured by medical intervention.
There's no medical cure for my condition, so naturally the doctors and I asked myself if I had a healthy lifestyle? Am I stressed? Am I eating right? Do I exercise? Have I been taking good care of myself?
Recover (2017)
by Frances Alleblas (Singapore)
(Still capture from Video work)
As the main character is practising his rolls, he literally 'overthrows himself' and then has to 'recover himself'. Literally submerged in his surroundings, one could say there is no ego, he has transcended the difference between himself and his environment. A self inflicted 'falling' and 'getting up' again. A practise for life. Carried out in such precision, like a ritualistic dance with an intense focus.
In some sense, by being an Artist, and a Buddhist artist, I guess I thought I was already “better off” being less competitive and hung up about worldly pursuits. But my illness made me confront and admit, that compared to someone who might be more upfront capitalistic and materialistic and hedonistic and shallow and selfish, I really didn't and probably still don't take good care of myself, and my body.
Aren't you the same? Do you eat well? Sleep well? Read well? Meditate well? Wear nice clothes? Enjoy yourself well? Because I was like, eating fast- or processed instant food, lacking nutrition, sleeping late, not have enough time to meditate as long as I liked, or read as much as I wished, because of all the side hustles I tried to take on to assuage my financial anxiety to little avail, and often felt guilty for my life choices and little pleasures blah blah because I'm more informed and supposed to be more environmentally conscious, socially conscious, but forcibly budget conscious?
Aren't you the same? Do you put yourself through a physically grueling and demanding routine? Because I was like stretching my physically and mentally limits to span across the "day job" and the art practice, and see how little sleep I can get by before my mood crashes or how long I can stay in some awkward sedentary position to do a thing with my hands and attention and wondering or steeling myself for criticism on expressions of my deeply personal ideas and feelings from people who don't care to think twice?
While, yes, Buddhism advocate that life shouldn't be about the sensual pleasures, the Buddha also took and found success in the middle way, and hello, he got to meditate a lot, and said there are some pleasures and pursuits that are skillful (at least not unskillful) and that our minds and body need some pleasure… Probably not intoxicating pleasure from alcoholic fermented rice, but the pleasure of having consumed a sweetened milk rice from Sujata… just well, wellness.
Meditation (2020)
by Skuja Braden (Lielvarde, Latvia)
Stoneware and porcelain. 62x35x22 cm
Also known as Medusa's Laughter, fashion from a seated Buddha it is an attempt to show what can happen when the mind is made to sit still. The thoughts that arise bubble up from somewhere deep within. The mind is like a popcorn machine...
Self-caring and adulting isn't easy at all. To cook and eat well, and sleep early, and sit properly, and fold blankets and change bed-sheets, and go to the dentist, and exercise, and handle medical checkups and insurance and what, what, what? The learning curve is steep. Like, okay, Tracy Emin’s unmade bed made Tate, and it seems like nobody’s made bed made anything, but does it not make the bed nicer to rest in for oneself? And does it not take way more effort to make one’s bed every day? Such a solitary dedication, for an audience of oneself, or two, or few. Anyway, my point is, I can hardly manage to make my bed, okay?
My sickness made me wonder if I was headed towards a similar self-destructive direction of Rothko, Schiele… Although their works are beautiful and admirable, but really who wants to lead their kind of short-lived existence? Did I? Do I? Do you?
Picasso and Zhang Daqian, on the other hand, were super productive creatively and they seem well-fed and adjusted and self-indulgent? Where are the mistresses and housekeepers and cooks to take care of me? But it seems too late for me now to be like the self-indulgent type, my head simply wasn't screwed on in that direction... but if I could, would I? Would you?
I've been thinking it is more relevant to consider how Van Gogh got better in the hospital, and more productive during that time...
The question that I'd been plagued with becomes more urgent: to what should I prioritise with the possibly even less time I have left?
To what should I direct whatever effort and life that is left?
Buddhist practice? Artist practice?
Burmese Stupa (2014)
by Catherine Eaton Skinner (Santa Fe, NM and Seattle, WA - USA)
Triptych, side panels Burmese old Buddha writings, encaustic, oil on panel. 218x208x5 cm.
Honoring the Buddha, ancient Myanmar pagodas of Shwe InDein of Inle Lake are often restored and applied with gold leaf by patrons. Bamboo scaffolding must be built around the stupa, then fabric-covered, protecting the leaf from air movement while being attached. This artwork is a composite of Skinner’s multiple photographs on silk tissue. The encaustic wax and oil layers are then finished with gold leaf. The Marking Sacred series emerges from her journeys through cultures including Asia, Africa and the Americas. This series focuses on the human marking and designation of place honored by spiritual practice and metaphysical power.
My answer before I fell sick, was to try to be a Buddhist artist or Artistic Buddhist, and actually that is to try to be both. It's like I thought it was a two circle-Venn diagram and I just had to stay in the middle, but actually it ends up being about trying to manage everything in both circles.
To be Buddhist and keep up with the dana, bhavana, panna and regular chanting, reading, puja, dana, meditating routines, reflections, and to be artist and keep up with the technical practice, and the thinking and creating, the framing, the marketing the exhibiting, the curating, the writing, the reading, the side hustling!
Two circles! It is an ambitious aspiration because either and both practices require a high level of devotion and tenacity and persistence especially in this time and age… And then there's the demands of the "side hustle" job that actually brings in some money?
Something has got to give.
When I was very sick and maybe a bit delirious yet lucid from the steroids, I wondered for what should I live? If I should get a choice to live or die? I felt that it would be good if I could try to live a bit longer, and to become a bit more useful, and to become a bit more skillful in my practice so that I may carry over some positive imprints for my future lives.
So I have been trying to be useful, volunteering at the temple, donating my time and energy to Buddhism first, while trying to live and get better. And I want to create, but I don't really get to create, because I am so tired, and that makes me sad, and that makes me more tired. And I am finding it so difficult, having to go back to the basics... and I struggle.
Balance (2023)
by Mikhail Kalinnikov (Nizhny Novgorod, Russia)
Resin, acrylic painting, bark. 60*40.
One of the paintings and series dedicated to the birch tree. In this composition, the birch tree divides the canvas into two halves, vertically, and then with its branches divides it into two more. To position the branches, I used the rules of the golden ratio. Therefore, this picture is called balance because everything is well balanced here.
Maybe at some point, I might have to admit that I might have to choose, but I cannot bear to do so yet, so I struggle.
I wish I could end this on a more positive note, but still, i struggle.
I have to remind myself that one has to be alive to be a Buddhist. Or an artist. Either or both. But at least either.
And thus, my friends, this is mostly why this issue of BAM is so delayed.
I don't mean to have this as a long excuse letter, but as this is possibly the final issue in some time to come, I thought to well, give a kind of resolution.
Thank you for sharing your artwork.
I offer “myself” as a case for your reflections.
Here is an advice I recently received from a teacher-monk, Phra Ajahn Mahawinnoo.
He said, the Buddhist practice is about achieving healthy body (sila), healthy mind (bhavana), and healthy wisdom (panna) and that we should work on improving all these together, concurrently.
That's three more circles, or eight more… of the Noble Eightfold path.
Or infinite times more if we don’t get it right and stay stuck in samsara.
Well, indeed, I wish you healthy body, healthy mind, and healthy wisdom.
Please take care of yourselves.
May we all live well and better to practice whatever well and better.