Jyoti Art Ashram

PATTERNS AND MEANING

2011-10-29T00:42:00.000-07:00

Patterns are not simply decorative, though they do appeal to our sense of order. There is a symmetry underlying every pattern.

Writing emerged out of patterns. The discursive flowing quality of pattern making has been related to the way the mind flows from one thought to the next, and language is also a flow of sounds.

PATTERNS of THOUGHT

2011-10-29T00:35:00.000-07:00

We think through images. That is the importance of the imagination for human consciousness. Even words are dependent on embedded images which we call metaphors. These metaphors draw on profound symbols that are archetypal, and can be seen to underly all cultures, and all languages.

SEEING A STORY

2011-10-28T22:18:00.000-07:00

Traditionally stories are part of a "Darshana", that is a way of seeing. Learning how to read goes along with learning how to see, or visualize. Story telling is an imaginative process, which involves all the creative skills of an individual. This is seen in the work of children, where the act of story telling is integral with a whole process of seeing and understanding the world in which we live.

GROWING A STORY

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In the Sita School story telling has been an important part of learning. Stories are not only written: they are also visualized. Image and word come together.

SEED of the COSMOS

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The image of Christ in the Tree of Life, which is also the Tree of the Cross, gives us a new insight into the relation of the Cross to the whole Cosmos, and a Creation Theology that affirms the fundamental connection between the Spirit and the creation of a new Heaven and a new Earth.

Mandala as Narrating a story.

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The visual structure of the Mandala helps in narrating a story or parable. Like a frame it constitutes a series of images that describe a movement in time, which itself is understood as cyclical. The cycle of the year, with its various festivals, tells the story of Creation. The journey of the hero in quest of the mystery of life, follows a pattern that reflects the cycle of the seasons. The image of the Tree is fundamental to this journey, that begins with the seed, growing into a plant with many branches, and finally coming to the blossom which again forms a seed. The tree lies hidden in the seed, and the seed contains the promise of the tree.

Presenting the Cross in relation to the Mandala.

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Published PPP on the Mandala and the Cross.

No. 1

No. 2

No. 3

No.4

No. 5

The Morning Star rising in the heart.

2011-07-20T22:22:00.000-07:00

It is as though a new day is dawning. In India there is a daily ritual of greeting the Morning Sun (Surya Namashkar). The Sun is rising over the dream city. This light of the Sun is like the revelation of a new World, a new Heaven and a new Earth.

Jesus is revealed in the depths of our hearts. ^You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter.1.19) And so this Wonderful City is in fact the city of the heart, in which Jesus is being revealed to every culture, and to every generation. One Indian theologian has said that the Gospel of Jesus has to be baptized in the Holy River of India, if it is to become meaningful for this culture, and this people. We have to imagine Jesus in the cultural frames of our own past, if He is to enter into our hearts.

Baptism and the Dream City.

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Finally, there is the Baptism of Christ. This again is something that happened in the past, but continues to happen today, in the hearts and lives of every believer. Jesus is baptized in the waters of a Holy River. The image of the Holy River is closely associated with our dream of the city. Great cities like the city of Benares in India, are situated on the banks of a holy river (the Ganges). And so Jesus is revealed at the moment when the Holy Spirit descends on Him, and John witnesses that he indeed is the Holy One who is to come and deliver his people.

In this context we may also reflect on the Presence of the Spirit in every religious tradition, and not only in the Christian or Biblical revelation. The Spirit gives light and Wisdom to all people who are searching for the Truth, throughout the history of humanity, and in every culture.

A Marriage Feast at Cana

2011-07-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

The Epiphany is celebrated in the Liturgy, as the time when Jesus was “manifested”. In the ideal world of the liturgical year, Jesus is born at the end of time, and then at the beginning of a new Year, which is the New Liturgical Year, we celebrate the events when Jesus became known to the world, and became recognized as the Lord of History, in the hearts of his disciples. The readings for the feast of the Epiphany deal with the important events when Jesus becomes known. Three scenes are associated with this idea of Epiphany. There is the coming of the Wise Men from the East, bringing gifts as a recognition that the Messiah has come to announce a new Kingdom of God. Then there is also the Marriage Feast of Cana, when Jesus is asked by his Mother to change water into wine, that is reveal his Divine Ministry through a miracle at a wedding. The theme of the Wedding Feast in the Bible, represents the coming of a New Kingdom. It is an Eschatological feast, that takes place at the “end of time”. So the historical event of a particular wedding that took place in Cana, a particular town in the Holy Land, becomes something that points to a Universal happening. It is about the Marriage Feast that is taking place in our hearts.

EPIPHANY IN THE NEW JERUSALEM.

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The image of the “New Jerusalem” in the Bible is a dream city. This city is not a “historical city” but belongs more to the world of the imagination. It is a city in which the idea of a city which we have in our imagination, is fulfilled. In India we may imagine a city which has features like the city as it has evolved in the Indian context. We also have “Holy Cities”, which represent what citizens long for as a symbol of the location where a whole community and culture finds a living place. Every civilization creates what it believes to be the “ideal city”. It is this ideal, or dream city in which we begin to imagine important events taking place, which are part of the narrative of our sacred scriptures.

There has been the question: The life of Christ was historical, and Jesus was never in India !!. Jesus lived and died in a particular culture and time which happened twenty centuries back in the past. We do not know what that culture was like, or at least cannot imagine it. When we imagine the life of Jesus, as we read the events described in the Gospels, we think of Jesus as being present in our hearts. Jesus is not just living in a distant land, which we have never visited. Jesus is here and now, in our imagination, in the desires of our hearts. So the dream world is the place that lies in our hearts, in our longings, and in our imagination.

ART RETREATS RELATED TO THE PROPHETIC IMAGINATION

2011-07-09T08:44:00.001-07:00

ART
RETREATS RELATED TO THE PROPHETIC IMAGINATION.

When in 1984 the Art Ashram was initiated, the idea emerged that the Ashram could offer
‘Art retreats’ based on the prophetic imagination as we find it articulated in Holy Scripture. The Bible as a textual document of the Word of God, as received by Prophets and visionaries,
is full of many images. Often the Prophet is asked to write down what he or she received from the mouth of God, so that others can read about what the Prophet has heard and seen. It is important to remember that the Divine Word is not only something “heard”, but has also been “seen”. The Word is instruction, but also action—it is the embodiment of a Divine Will that
communicates with human thought processes. We are familiar with thought as communicated through utterance—that is, through the spoken word. But the image is also ‘thought made
visible’. In a way the image goes beyond sound, speaking to the mind through silence. The image is non-verbal thought, and could be understood as lying closer to action. It is in that sense that we speak of the image as a ‘work’ of the imagination. It carries the sense of being an oracle, for an image-symbol is a word that becomes visible in deed. The image points towards a future, through a process of becoming, whereas the written text encapsulates the experience of a past, through a process of assimilation, and documentation.

The symbol is strictly speaking thought that has become visible, because it is embodied in a sign that has been made tangible through the human power of the imagination. The visible symbol can be felt, or touched by the individual conscious person.The symbol speaks not only to the mind, but also to the whole embodied being including the psyche, and even very physical feelings. The visible image connects us with the psychic domain of what we call the memory—something re-membered, in the sense that it is also embodied. The Word is ‘pneuma’ or spirit. But the visible symbol is part of a phenomenal world that the physical senses can experience. Of course even in the act of hearing, the Word is already being embodied into sound waves, and the rhythm of speech. The listener receives the Word into his heart, making the Word part of
his or her own life. It is in this way that the Word goes beyond thewritten text, becoming part of a lived reality in the present. Through meditating on the Word, we try to embody the message of the Word into our daily lives.

The Holy Book itself takes on the significance of an Image, which we can touch and read in a respectful way. The Book is not only composed of letters, for it has been decorated or ‘illuminated’ with pictures. These pictures that accompany the text, help us to absorb the spoken Word into our hearts. We might tend to forget that the Bible is a visible, tangible book, which is also a visible symbol, because we often become unaware of the way that even human language has arisen out of a mytho-poetic world of the imagination. When we read the Bible or any Sacred
Scripture, images are evoked in our minds and hearts. Without these images, the words would not be intelligible to us. Often we might think of the written word as more spiritual than visible and tangible images. The Spiritual Word seems to contain pure meaning, whereas images that we see are sometimes hard to understand in a deeper more metaphorical way. Word and image, however, always need to accompany each other, for there is no word that exists alone, without an image linked to it. This image may be a mental image, but even then the
idea is always taking shape in our consciousness in a manner that corresponds to the way the imagination follows a process of giving to an idea a visible realizeable form. The Word needs to be born, incarnated into our physical world.

There is an inherent danger in the written text that it often tends to become too ‘wordy’, and too fixed in a literary tradition that limits its meaning to the way it has been understood in the past. In that way the Divine Word can loose its creative force, and just becomes a meaningless formula without application to our present concerns and needs. The Word should be something that we contemplate in stillness, and in that process relate to our present, and also to our hopes for the future. It is this contemplative dimension of the Word of God that the imagination wants to explore. This is only possible if we give time to reflecting on the Word in silence, and allowing the word to evoke new images in our hearts and minds. The Word needs to become part of our reverie, our capacity to dream imaginatively. It is in this spirit of reverie that the contemplative souls in every generation have received the Divine Word into their hearts. This contemplative and spiritual approach to the Divine Word is called ‘Lectio Divina’.

The Art Retreat is a form of Lectio Divina, which not only contemplates the inner meaning of the Word, but also expresses the Word through visible signs and symbols whose meaning helps us to explore the inner significance of what Sacred Scripture is trying to reveal to us.

‘Lectio Divina’ lies at the heart of what we might term a Biblical Spirituality. It is listening to the
Word of God in such a way that it is interiorized. The disciples who were accompanied by the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus said “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Sriptures?” (Luke 24.32) It is this burning heart which not only opens the scriptures, but also the eyes of the disciples when they recognized the Lord in the “Breaking of Bread”. It is this sense of the ‘burning heart’ that leads the attentive listener to the Divine Word from symbol to silence, from the outer phenomena perceived by the senses, to the inner spirit as apprehended by the enlightened mind. ‘Lectio Divina’ could be understood as a way of seeing. While reading Sacred Scripture, we begin to look at the world in which we
live in a different light. As the psalm puts it metaphorically: ‘Let your Word be a lamp for my path’. The Word reveals reality, it illumines what we daily see, but never think consciously about, never ponder its deeper significance.

In the Art Retreat, participants are invited to experience the Word of God as embodied in the heart of the disciple. What we are looking for is not skill in representation. Participants are not required to be professional artists, in the sense of being trained and equipped to render their feelings and ideas through cleverly constructed images. What is important is not what is produced, but rather the contemplative process that uses images, and the feelings that they evoke, as a way of understanding the Sacred Scripture. This approach to art forms could be termed “demonstrative”, in that it shows what is being recalled, both as a memory, and also as a reflection on what could be projected into the future. Lectio Divina in this context is like a pilgrimage, a walking with the Lord while listening to the words of Holy Scripture in the silence of the heart. Images make this process of thought into a visible and tangible reality. Reverie, in the sense of reflective and imaginative thought, becomes a dream which has the transforming power of a sacrament. Remembering is not just a turning to what is past, but a recreating of a new vision. Imags give a form to the feelings that the Divine Word evokes in the heart of the pilgrim. Words themselves make present the Lord who is also sacramentaly embodied in the community of those who journey together on the same spiritual way, but also in the hospitality of that life
sustaining food that gives physical strength to those who walk together and work towards creating a new future.

The art retreat is thus a dialogue that takes place through the shared presence that brings together pilgrims on the spiritual path, and makes present the Lord who embodies the Word
in the world as we experience it today. I feel it is important to understand art as a dialogue, not only between people who have a common spiritual search, but also a dialogue with this sense of the Presence of God, manifest in Sacred Scripture. In Sacred Scripture, the Word of God speaks to us personally, and the process of ‘Lectio Divina’ includes an inner conversation that we have with God through the text that we read. Reading becomes a way of carrying on a dialogue with God in the depths of one’s heart.

In this sense, I would also suggest that there can be a dialogue which reaches beyond one particular religious tradition, to build bridges between people of different Faiths. What links followers of different spiritual paths, is a common belief that the Word of God is accessible to people of all religious traditions. What divides believers is not a respect for different Sacred Scriptures, but rather the way that these scriptures are interpreted. Hindus, Muslims or Buddhists can read the Gospels and find in the Bible words that speak to their own hearts, addressing each individual’s search for the Truth. In the same way a Christian can also find spiritual food in Sacred Scriptures outside the Biblical tradition. It is this dialogue in the presence of the Word of God as revealed to all human beings, which can give a new significance to art works that draw their inspiration from the imaginative riches that are found in Sacred Scriptures. I have often found that one of the best ways to dialogue with someone of another Faith, is through sharing Sacred Scripture. Together we can listen to the Word of God as revealed to us in each other’s scriptures.

The Bible is a rich storehouse of images, in which we can find a rich feast to sustain our world of the imagination. It is the purpose of the art retreat to explore this image or symbol world of the Bible by creatively working together with the prophetic signs that help us to interpret the world in which we live, and find hope for the future. Written scriptures become for us the embodiment
of the “Angel of History”, revealing both old things and new. The spirit of ‘Lectio Divina’ guides us to discover the meaning of Holy Scripture for our daily lives, so that the Divine Word is not just something that we read, or hear about, but informs our reality, in the historical, cultural and geographic conditions that give shape to our lives.

As an Indian artist working in close collaboration with the National Biblical, Catechetical and Liturgical Centre (N.B.C.L.C.) since 1970, I would like to develop this idea of art as informed by a Biblical Spirituality. This reflective approach to Sacred Scripture, as embodying the Presence of the Divine Word, reaches out to share insights to be found in all Sacred Scriptures, that express spiritual Truth. I do believe that the Divine Word crosses all cultural and religious boundaries, revealed in the wisdom that we find in many different spiritual traditions. In fact, the Bible itself draws images and insights from the different Wisdom traditions of surrounding cultures and nations. One can read the Bible as providing the bridge that helps in our understanding of many diverse spiritualities, for the Divine Word has been present for all peoples who search for Truth, and in the whole of Creation. When reflecting about what we might understand to be Christian Art in the Indian context, it has been important to recognize that many artists who are not professing Christians, have drawn inspiration from Biblicall images. In fact it is often very helpful to see the Bible as a Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim might understand it imaginatively. A Hindu by the name of P.C.Mazoomdar wrote a book in the 19^th Cent. Entitled “The Oriental Christ”. In this work he presents the Word incarnate as he encountered Him in the Gospels—a Christ who spoke to the heart of a Hindu.

I hope that with the cooperation of the N.B.C.L.C and also the Biblical Secretariat of the C.C.B.I, it will be possible to extend this understanding of the Biblical Apostolate and spirituality to give a new impetus to what has been called the process of ‘inculturation.’. The concept of ‘Art as
Dialogue helps’ to focus on the pilgrim nature of art processes. Prophetic art is concerned not so much with the static cultural traditions embedded in national and regional identities, but rather draws inspiration from the Word of God present in different cultures of the world. We are trying to understand what the Spirit is saying to us today, in our multi cultural and religiously diverse
historical situation. It is this prophetic voice of Holy Scripture that needs to be interpreted in the light of present human concerns. For example, the search for Peace, and a just future on this planet earth, is enshrined in the signs and symbols that are to be found in all Holy Scriptures. Art forms have a function to speak as modern oracles, to all peoples who are concerned about the future, and are searching for a more just and equitable distribution of the riches of the earth’s resources. A prophetic art stands in judgement against what has been narrow, and unjust in the religious traditions that have wrongly interpreted the word of God in different Scriptures. Holy Scriptures have often been abused by those who have used the Word of God to further limited, sectarian and divisive aims.

Art is prophetic in so far as it unfolds a Divine intention, present in all forms of creative expression that manifests a spirit working through each one of us, to bring about a new Heaven and a new Earth.

Come to my Country

2011-07-09T08:43:00.001-07:00

“Come to my Country !”

Meditating on artas a rite of passage.

The idea of a voyage resonates deeply with a spiritual quest. Every culture encapsulates the ‘rites of passage’. Cultures are never static, but rather like migrant birds, cross over geographic boundaries. W.B.Yeats, in his poem “Sailing to Byzantium” says “Monuments of unageing intellect……..gather me,into the artifice of eternity.” ^¹

What the poet is searching for is a place where “…images that yet, Fresh images beget.(‘Byzantium’). Here is a land of the imagination, where “birds on the trees….set upon a golden bough to sing….of what is past, or passing, or to come”. (‘Sailing to Byzantium’). The artifice has a timeless quality, which is beyond the “common bird or petal, And all complexities of mire or blood.” (‘Byzantium’)^²

The mystical poet Kabir of the 15^th century, says:

"The arrow of the song has pierced me !

Come to my country."

But what is this country of which Kabir repeatedly reminds us ?

"I’m a bird from another country, my friend

I don’t belong to this country…"

Like a migrant bird, or “Hamsa”, the soul is forever restless for another land. Of this ‘Hamsa’, or swan, Kabir speaks:

Tell me, O Swan, your ancient tale.

From what land do you come, O Swan ? to what shore will you fly ?

Where would you take your rest, O Swan, and what do you seek ?….

There is a land where no doubt nor sorrow have rule; where the terror of death
is no more.

There the woods of spring are a-bloom and the fragrant scent ‘He is I’
is borne on the wind;

There the bee of the heart is deeply immersed, and desires no other joy.

(Poems of Kabir, translated by Rabindranath Tagore, XII)

The poet, or artist, longs to discover the land of the imagination. Here the forms that embody dreams, are not temporal like the “complexities of mire or blood”. And yet, this inner landscape of the spiritual quest, has its own alchemy, of

…sages standing in God’s holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall…

(‘Sailing to Byzantium’)

Flames that no fagot feeds, nor steel has lit,

Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flames..

(‘Byzantium’)

Wrought in this inner furnace of the heart, base metal is transformed into deathless gold. The elemental is given a new meaning in the icon; and sacred architecture, built from the natural substances of clay, rock or timber, reach upward to a spiritual world, transforming the physical reality of the world in,which we live and die. The voyage is itself a passage into another subtle world of symbol, and the “sign within the sign” (Kabir.)

The Spirit of the Place.

There is a close connection between the imagination and what some artists have called the “spirit of a place”. This link goes back to the primal roots of culture, when wandering peoples felt that certain places were inhabited by a Presence. It is this Presence in a place which speaks to the
imagination. I have often played with the idea that a Site, that is a geographic place having very specific features, also has a kind of Sight. We speak of ‘sight-seeing’. The traveler goes in search of a site. But it is not only we who see the site, the place also sees us. Mircea Eliade speaks of places having a hierophany. That means that a place is also the location for a vision—an epiphany. Through entering a place, and deeply engaging with that geographic site, we realize a new kind of vision.

Culture has arisen out of this engagement between a particular community and a place. The early emergence of the concept of ‘nation-hood’, was from a deep seated feeling of belonging to a particular place, so that blood and mire, as W.B.Yeats puts it in his poem about Byzantium, get inter-mingled. Blood, symbolizing the forces of life that run through the body of an individual, become part of the earth where the individual lives and dies. The redness of the earth, what the poet William Blake understood as “Beulah”, the red clay from which the Creator fashioned the body of the human being, is linked symbolically to the colour of human flesh. In fact the body itself is a “place”.

The poet Kabir often uses the metaphor of an earthen vessel to describe the body. “Come to my land” is an invitation to experience what his body senses—to see the world as his body sees it. “Come to my land” is thus a passage into the physical world of those who inhabit the land, for whom the land is their way of seeing, listening, tasting and touching. It is a communion with the other, by sharing not only the home of the other, but also eating the same food that nourishes the physical body of the other. This is the essence of that human culture of hospitality. And yet, as Yeats reminds us in his two poems on Byzantium, a country, or its culture, is not just something material, or tangible. It is also a vision, which reaches out to a shore that is a step “into the artifice of eternity”

Once out of nature I
shall never take

My bodily form from any
natural thing,

But such a form as
Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold, and
gold enamelling.

(“Sailing to Byzantium”)

“Byzantium” is not just a place on the Bosphorus, a place that represented a vibrant culture for more than a thousand years. Byzantium is for Yeats, a city of the mind, a memory that is also a way into his own inner world of imagining. This city becomes for him a heavenly city, an image of a place which lies beyond this world, and its mundane geography.

People nowadays tend to speak of a “global culture” and this seems to imply an art which has no local roots, being rather like some modern airport, or shopping mall, a place that is like every other place. But we all know that such places have no culture, they are really nowhere, and no-thing. Culture, like a living tree, always has its roots in a particular place, with its own very unique geographic setting. The uniqueness, and creativity of a particular vision, emerges out of this “sense of place”, be it the place where we live, or visit as a place of pilgrimage; or that inner place, of the heart. It is through our body that we experience the world around us. Again as Kabir says:

Where did you come from ?

Where are you going ?

Get the news from your body !!

That is why it is important that no matter where we travel, we must always listen to what our own body is telling us. We experience the outer world through the body, and so it is the body that mediates to world to our consciousness.

The Message of the Voyage.

Henry Corbin has written an essay on “the theme of the Voyage and the Messenger”.^³ It was Corbin who coined the term “the imaginal”. He discusses “The Story of the Bird” as it appears in
Iranian mystical Sufi literature.

“In an ecstatic ascension of the mind, it crosses the valleys and ranges of the cosmic mountain of Qaf. It was this story of Avicenna’s which Fariduddin ‘Attar orchestrated so magnificently into the mystical epic entitled ‘The Language of the Birds’” (p.145).

The Modern playwright and director, Peter Brook, developed this ‘Conference of the Birds’ (as
it is also sometimes called) into an understanding of story-telling and dramatic action. For Peter Brook the ‘space’ in which the actors play their parts, is the cosmic space, the ‘empty space’ which is also like the prayer carpet that the devout Muslim carries with him.^⁴ It is like a portable mosque, something that can be rolled up and transported by a migrant people. But it is a place that can be rolled out anywhere, at any time. As Shakespeare was to say, the stage is at once a specific site, but also a microcosm, a universe of its own.

More and more modern individuals are becoming nomadic like their primal ancestors. The period of settlements, more or less permanent, which defined the individual, is disappearing. An urbanized, shifting population, is no longer rooted to an agricultural plot of land. We become birds of passage, but this does not mean that we no longer communicate with the land. The four
elements of earth, water, light energy and air, continue to be the medium through which we are able to listen to the voice that speaks to us through our bodies.

There is a deep link between bio diversity, and cultural diversity. A culture emerges out of the contact between a human community and the landscape that enfolds a settlement. Culture and nature are not opposed to each other, rather culture is the response that human beings make to nature. The fact that natural environments differ from one geographic context to another, means that cultures as they have emerged historically have also assumed very different forms. But still these cultural differences do constitute a challenge to human unity, and dialogue. Where human communities are on the move, the cultural forms that they evolve in their historical journey from place to place, give rise to tensions and misunderstandings. Cultures are, as we have already
remarked, never static. Constantly people are meeting and interacting in new ways—and this changing pattern of relationships constitutes the vitality and adaptability of cultures. But in the
process of exchange, there is always the resistance brought about by the very need to evolve new forms of culture. Cultural growth, or evolution, is itself a process of parturition, of having to come out of the past, in order to embrace the future. That is why culture is intimately connected to rites of passage. This is an essential way of understanding the life journey of the individual, whose path through the various stages beginning with birth, and concluding with death, mirrors in a way the life cycles that we find in nature. Every living form passes through stages of inception, germination and growth, followed by decline, and concluding in disintegration and dissolution back into the common humus from which life emerges, and to which all living beings return. Thus a philosopher like Aristotle related all forms of conscious evolution to biological rhythms that we find in nature. Civilizations rise and fall in the same way that natural processes develop, only to finally disintegrate, and give rise to new life forms.^⁵

But whereas in nature these rhythms of life take place without the resistance brought about by the individual will to oppose change, in human cultures what we call a “tradition” is always in dialectical conflict with what is new, and questioning past solutions in the light of new conditions. Creativity is a perennial challenge to the structures of tradition. Tradition is often equated with what is dead and out-dated, whereas the vibrant and living aspects of a culture look towards the future, and value the necessity to change with the times.

Of course, change is not always good. There is a change that is for the worse, a change that is the
beginning of a decline. To be sick, is to change in a negative sense. Cultures degenerate, and there a radical approach to re-vitalizing a culture has to discriminate between what is living, and what is dying in a cultural tradition. Coomaraswamy once made the rather mis-understood comment “from primitive man to modern man—what a decline !!!” Gandhi was also accused of condemning modernity, and wanting to go back to the past. To be “modern” is not necessarily to be better, or more healthy. There is much in modern society that is clearly a loss of integrity, involving a loss of culture. Globalization, for example, involves radical and far reaching processes of change. But these are not necessarily for the better. But this is not because change in itself is bad. Change is necessary, as the world in which we live, indeed the very natural environment in which we are, is constantly in a process of change. The Buddha was to point out that nobody can enter the same river twice. The flow of life giving waters in a river, mean that what we might perceive as the same river, is in fact constantly changing. We need, however to understand change, in the context of life, rather than disease and death. What remains as a connecting thread, is the will to live; culture needs to be renewed, and in that process, to be transformed.

Pilgrimage as a process of change
and transformation.

From ancient times to go on a journey is itself a rite of passage. Thus the symbol of the boat, to
take one example, is an invitation to set out on a voyage. Civilization have their origins in the will to go on a quest, to reach out to further shores. “Mission” properly understood, is the call to cross over boundaries, to set out for a land that we do not know, to meet people that we have never encountered before. If we look carefully at the spirit underlying what is known as the “Acts of the Apostles”, we find that there is a call to go beyond what is known, to reach that which we do not know, and do not understand. It is a call to encounter, and dialogue with the “other”. There is an apocryphal saying of Jesus which has been inscribed over the gate that Akbar built at Fathepur-Sikri, near Agra, which reads : “Jesus, on whom be peace, said: The world is a bridge—cross over it, but do not build your house on it.” Life, as we understand it in this mortal state, is a transition. It is a time in-between two states of being. It is the Way, or ‘Marga’. It is not the goal. It is this understanding of the human journey that underlies the sacramental nature of taking to the road, on a pilgrimage.

The cultural hero, as in the Mahabharata, has to go into exile, visiting the wilderness of the forest, mountain or desert. The passage into the unknown is called a “Thirtha Yatra”, or pilgrimage to the sources (Thirtha) from which the life of a whole landscape comes. The Thirtha is a spring, and in Jainism the cultural hero is a “Thirthankara”; one who crosses over the source to find the further shore. But what the seeker is looking for is not just a living source of water, which evolves into a stream, and eventually flows like a great river to meet the ocean. What the seeker is journeying towards is not just a place in the landscape, that is a sacred ground, but rather the quest is for an inner place of meeting (sangha) where traditions flow together, creating a new entity. Many little streams contribute to the great river that we might link to a civilization, and this river itself finally merges with the ocean. Unity here is not a negation of diversity, but a discovery of diversity in unity.

Crossing over, as a way of
finding.

The mysterious principle underlying the quest, the call to visit another “country” from the place where one is born and bred, is that only by travelling far away to another land, can one find oneself. There are many stories like that which indicate that it is only possible to find the treasure that lies buried in the centre of one’s own home, by stepping out to look for it, in answer to a dream that calls the seeker to another land. In Indian art theory, to dance, is to “step over”
or to “trans-gress”. The Lord of the Dance, Shiva, is the one who steps over the demon of blindness (Andhaka) who lies beneath his foot, resting on the ground. The lifted leg of the dancer
is a sign of ‘Moksha’, or liberation. The dancer plays with what is firm, rooted in the particular place where the dancer stands, and the dancer’s will to step forward into the unknown. In the Islamic tradition, the whirling Dervish, is like the door, or ‘Darvaza’, which also is attached to the
vertical beam of the doorway. The door swings to and fro, allowing the seeker to pass from the outer to the inner, from the visible world to the invisible mystery.

Dance is the sacrament of movement; it is also the transforming liberation of the body. To dance, is to re-create the universe. It is a cosmic expression. The Creator is a dancer—and the dance is also the mystery of destruction. Creation and destruction come together in the dance—life and death. Dance is energy, action, but also stillness. To be a dancer is to know the secret of repose. In the same way that music revolves around the eternal Silence, dance hinges on the axis of stillness. It is in this image of the dance that all opposites come together:

Where blood-begotten spirits come

And all complexities of fury leave,

Dying into a dance,

An agony of trance,

An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

‘Byzantium’

The image of the ruin.

From the time of the Romantic poets in Europe, the ruin has evoked a sense of culture finally returning to nature. The romantic artist Carl Jasper Friederich made many pictures in which the ruined edifice of a Gothic Church, seems to crumble back into the primal forest from where many of its architectural forms derive their symbolic force. The Holy Ground, whether in Europe or in India, carries the significance of the primal sacred grove. The Temple, with its hall of a thousand pillars, reminds one of the garden of Cyrus, here turned to stone.^⁶ The image of the ‘Garden of Cyrus’ was developed by the philosopher and alchemist Sir Thomas Brown as a basis for his understanding of culture as a way of cultivating nature, of discovering in nature the underlying structures of the whole universe. The gardener, like Adam, is the archetypal ruler, or
Prophetic King, whose task is to maintain the order that underlies the whole universe, of which the enclosed garden or Paradise, is a microcosm.

In the Koranic story (18: 61-83, known as ‘The Cave’) we hear the legend of Moses and Khidr. Moses goes on a spiritual quest with his disciple to find the mysterious Khidr, who is a teacher of the prophets.^⁷ (In Arabic the honorific title ‘al-Khidr’ means ‘The Green One’) Moses finds Khidr where two oceans meet, and Khidr agrees to take Moses on a spiritual quest, as long as he refrains from asking questions. They have various adventures together, and repeatedly Moses is shocked by the strange actions of Khidr, and cannot help challenging him by asking him the meaning of what he does. Finally they arrive at a small village, where none of the inhabitants are willing to welcome them. Khidr discovers a ruined wall, which he proceeds to repair. Moses cannot help remonstrate with Khidr “If you had wanted, you could have demanded wages for doing this !” Khidr finally loses his patience with Moses, saying “This is where you and I part ways, but I will now give you the explanation of the things to which you could not forbear objecting”

Khidr now reveals that under the ruined wall there lies a treasure. This treasure has been buried
there by a devout man, whose two sons are now orphans. Khidr is repairing the ruined wall, so that when the boys come of age, they can come to this place, and dig up the treasure which has been buried for them there. The story of Khidr is itself a parable relating to the spiritual quest. Often this strange spirit of the Green seems to be linked to that which is destroyed. He probably represents the spirit of regeneration in every cultural tradition. Under the ruin lies hidden and buried the seed-treasure of the future. Khidr is the guardian of that which has yet to be revealed, but which remains hidden in the unconscious. In the Sufi traditions of Islam he is linked to water, and also to Jesus, who according to one account, had the power to walk on the waters, and to save those who were drowning. The strange, incomprehensible acts of Khidr are related to the genius of the unconscious. Finally he tells Moses, the law-giver, who is shocked by the apparent irrationality of Khidr’s symbolic acts: “I certainly did not do this of my own accord”. He, like the spirit on Nature, acts in accordance with the hidden purposes of the Divine Creator, whose compassion we cannot understand.

The ruin seems to be the end of all that human industry has laboured to erect. In harmony with the cycles of time, what humans achieve, has finally to crumble and return to the soil from which these edifices arose. Nature moves in, and takes over the proud constructs that human beings have made. Nature teaches us humility. In fact, according to one tradition, the reason why the great prophet Moses was sent by God to find Khidr, arose from his own assertion that he, Moses, was the wisest man of all. God shows to Moses that there is someone wiser than him, who can be found at the “confluence of the oceans”. Here he discovers aprimal vision, which is far older than prophecy, but which holds the mysterious key to the meaning of life.

Today we live in what appear to beapocalyptic times. Kabir, the mystic, speaks of a mystery that lies beyond the human constructions of Temple or Mosque. Kabir cries:

It’s just as well, my pitcher shattered-

I’m free of all that hauling water !

The burden on my head is gone……..

A single well, Kabira—

And water-bearers many!

Pots of every shape and size

But the water always One.

(‘Bhala Hua Meri Gagri Phooti’ by Kabir)

Here the artist becomes the iconoclast. Beyond the created form, lies a mystery that no words can contain. The image has to be destroyed, to discover the formless that lies beyond all form. There is an elemental beauty in these images, which reminds us that all forms of Culture have to return to the sources of Nature, which are like the primal golden egg—what the Islamic tradition referred to as ‘Sifr”, the ‘Nought’ from which all number derives. This is the Sypher that art points to—what the poet Yates calls “the artifice of eternity’ (in ‘Sailing to Byzantium’)

Jyoti Sahi Dec. 2008

1
‘Sailing to Byzantium’ from The Tower.(1928) by W.B.Yeats, Selected Poetry

2
‘Byzantium’ from The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933) by W.B Yeats. Selected Poetry

3
‘The Voyage and the Messenger: Iran and Philosophy’ by Henry Corbin translated by Joseph Rowe, 1998

Chapter: ‘The Theme of the Voyage and the Messenger’ pp. 135-163

4
Cf ‘Conference of the Birds: The Story of Peter Brook in Africa’ by John Heilpern. Routledge 1999

5
Cf “The Preference for the Primitive” by E.H.Gombrich. 2002. Section on ‘Aristotle on Growth and Decay’ pp. 15-16

6
Cf “The Garden of Cyrus, or Net-work plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, Mystically Considered” by Sir Thomas Brown (1658)

7
The following notes are derived from ‘Khidr: The History of the Ubiquitous Master’ by Shawkat M. Toorana.

The Elemental Place

2011-07-09T08:39:00.001-07:00

The Elemental Place

Some reflections of an Indian
artist traveling between continents.

It was quite a culture shock. I had flown directly from Bangalore’s newly constructed
International Airport, to Berlin via Frankfurt. I had come to attend an artist’s “Pleine air “ to commemorate the 750^th anniversary of a Cistercian monastery at a place called Chorin, an hour’s drive from the city centre of Berlin, in the direction of the Polish border. This was a centre of the ancient principality of Brandenburg. Here the Ascasian Margraves of Brandenburg, had their burial place. Earlier, this area, known as the ‘Marches of Brandenburg’, had been settled by Slavonic tribes. When the Cistercian monks came to develop this part of the land, there had already existed an older Church and castle near to the small lake called Amts See. The new monastic foundation was established in 1258. The Monastery probably rose up on the earlier ruins created by tribal conflicts between Arcanians, Pomeranians, and Danes at the turn of the 12^th Century.

Passing through the villages and neighboring town of Eberswalde one has a sense that here was one of the frontiers of a Christian culture reaching towards the North, about a thousand years ago. Those were unsettled times when wandering tribes off the steppes of Russia were moving South towards Europe, and the warmer climes of the Mediterranean. The process was one of transformation of nature, being humanized by culture

Here, in the northern reaches of Europe, the landscape had changed as the ice melted. These gently undulating planes, with pockets of water left over from the ice age, form an inter linking pattern of inland lakes, around which were thick forests. A new energy of light and warmth was already in the process of changing nature into a biosphere fed by waters that now offered a hospitable environment for vegetation and animal habitation. The waters of the melting ice had over centuries broken down primordial rock formations, creating a rich loam of clay and water. Deposits of sand, gravel and lime also provided the basic natural ingredients for building new settlements, constructed in clearings made by nomadic tribes in the primeval forest. But for this to be possible, yet another elemental energy had also to be harnessed—the transforming power of fire

Fire is an ambivalent source of life, being both creative and also destructive. One third of the ancient hymns of the Vedas are dedicated to the Lord of Fire, the god known as Agni. It is with the help of fire that clearings in the forest could be made by early settlers. But not only did fire work to create a space for human habitation, it also gave the technology for transforming the earth. A Bronze Age gave place to an iron culture that now had the technological skills to smelt iron from the bedrock, and so forge implements that could be used both for agriculture, and war. Weapons could be manufactured which seemed to have an almost magical power, and it is this technology that feeds myths about heroes who were men at arms

It is this culture of conflict with the dark forces of the forest that gives rise to a rich symbolic world that the early monks built into the very structure of their new places of worship. We find images of the struggle against mysterious monsters of the primeval vegetation, in the form of dragons. Nature is not only seen as something to fight against, as indicated by the intricate patterns of leaf forms that are carefully observed, and brackets that support stem like pillars which remind us of the shape of a chalice, with knotted interlacing patterns that are thought to represent eternity

Myth and the landscape.

As an artist I have been interested in the way that myths have arisen out of a particular landscape. About 25 years ago, I began to make a particular study of folk and tribal myths in India. I found that these myths spoke to my imagination, and opened up a whole inner world of my own psyche.^¹ I have been particularly fascinated by the ideas of the psychologist Carl Jung, who suggested that myths, which form the basis for religious symbols across the world, are in fact profoundly human. In that sense myths are universal, or what he termed archetypal, because people all over the world use the imagination to understand reality. The way they make meaning out of their geographic and political reality follows patterns that are common to all human beings. So, even though myths express very local concerns, and memories, they also reach out to speak a universal language that can be meaningful in very different human conditions

The work I did on the tribal myths of Chotanagpur, for example, seemed to have a wider application than could be explained simply by understanding how these legends had arisen out of a particular community, rooted in a very specific locality. One of the reasons, I felt, for this was the way in which myths articulate the relationship between culture and nature, between human life styles, and the materials that are readily available in the local landscape. The elemental materials with which human cultures work, are local realities, but also universal in that they provide the basis for all cultures. This interplay between the local and the universal is an age-old question that applies to the diversity not only that we find in nature, but also in cultures.
Every culture is unique, and yet every culture interacts with other cultures, and is enriched by the cultures of people who live far away.

I was surprised to note the way that art forms, and the mythic world view that underlie all cultures in India, have aroused a deep interest among artists in Europe. Reversibly, Indian artists have also been inspired by western movements in art. I myself have, since the time when I studied art in London, been fascinated by the way that ‘expressionist’ artists in Europe used symbols and myths to explore the inner
world of the psyche. The very fact that I had traveled so far to participate in this workshop with artists in a distant part of Europe, showed that art can be a form of communication, of learning and also sharing what shapes the inner world of the imagination in every human being.

Ruins and the Landscape as Memory.

Out of the ruins of an earlier age, the monks were able to found a new synthesis of subconscious myth, and knowledge as to how nature could be transformed into a fruitful culture. The monastic garden contained healing herbs that the monks
gathered from the rich diversity of the local vegetation, representing these herbs in the decoration of the Church to symbolize the healing power of the Mother Mary to whom every Cistercian monastery is dedicated

The ready availability of a plentiful supply of wood, which was cut down to enable agriculture to be established, fueled fires in which not only metal was extracted fromthe stone. Furnaces also burnt the clay bricks, providing a building material that the local basalt rock could not provide, being difficult to shape. Cistercian architecture had developed in France, where sand-stones were readily available, allowing craftspeople to make the light traceries which could both soar to great heights, but also allow light into the interior space of the Church nave. But here in the northern part of Germany, the monks had to rely on another material---brick. And so a distinctive style of early Gothic architecture can be found here which is made from carefully molded, and cut brickwork.

The monastic impulse converts not only nature, but also the concept of the warlike hero into another type of brave conflict—now no longer directed against an outer enemy, but inwards as a form of asceticism. Human nature is molded and transformed, as much as the materials that are found outside in the landscape.

This process of internalizing a cultural process was also very important in India, where Kshatriya clans evolved the concept of the ‘renouncer’ or Sanyassi, who represented a new form of heroic ideal. Buddha, for example, came from the same fighter clans who used outer weapons to establish their political power. But in the figure of the sage or monk, an outer mission was now turned inwards, to achieve a new kind of consciousness through yogic meditation. The Cistercian understanding of the ancient monastic motto “Ora et Labora” (Work as Prayer) was understood as a commitment to manual labour in the fields combined with intellectual effort in the scriptorium where manuscripts were copied, and a new form of learning brought to the unlettered populace.

The Myth of theIron Smelters.

The ancient myth of the Iron Smelters, or Lohar Kahani, probably goes back to the Axial age, when Buddha wandered in the forests near to the Damodar river, where ancient tribes also practiced iron smelting. Some ancient sites where iron works have been found, seem to belong to around the fourth to second centuries before our common era. According to legend, the peoples who developed this form of technology, were also responsible for the mysterious steel column that we have near Kuthubh Minar in Delhi. Some even suggest that the chariot wheels and weapons used by warring tribes as described in the Indian Epic of the Mahabharatha, were fashioned by the same tribes of the Indo-Gangetic planes that become expert in iron technology. It is in this same region of what is now called “Jharkhand”, that the Tata Iron and Steel Company began large scale modern iron industries.

Exploring this mythic world of ancient “Adivasi” communities, I was very much struck by the symbols that I found in this myth, which I felt related to the role of the Iron Smith that we find in many cultures. This figure of the Smith is closely associated with a Shamanistic tradition, where the primal technology of obtaining metal from elemental rock, was seen as an alchemical process, that could be also understood in psychic terms. In the Arthurian legends we hear of magical weapons that are found by the hero embedded in rock, from which it is the task of the chosen knight to draw a magic sword. This act of releasing the steel weapon from its rock case, becomes a metaphor for an inner process of finding the psychic power to change natural
substance into a cultural tool.

In the series of paintings that I worked on in the late eighties I tried to interpret the pre-historic myth in the light of an emerging concern about what industry was doing to the natural environment, and how this could be interpreted today as referring to ecological issues. Of course when these myths about the iron age (kali-yuga in Indian mythic terminology) people did not know about ecology. But essentially what the myth addresses is the relation between human work and industry to the rhythms of nature. In many cultures all around the world, iron is considered to be a dangerous or in-auspicious metal. Those who work with iron, creating not only the tools that were to play a vital part in agriculture, but also the weapons that were used to fell trees, and fight wars, were both regarded with fear as magicians, and dismay as the harbingers of a new dark age.

Work: Technology and the Creative Arts.

One could perhaps trace back the link between this work of transforming natural resources to create a whole civilization, to the kind work that early monastic foundations accomplished in the late middle ages. Perhaps one could find a connection between what became an important stride in the founding of our modern world, and a spiritual or psychological search for the transformation of nature into culture. What has been called the Axial Age, was also the age in which the different Metacosmic belief systems crystallized, whether in Greece, the middle East, the Indian subcontinent, or China. One could, perhaps trace a cultural trajectory that at first saw nature and its primal forces as manifestations of a Divine Presence in the elemental world that we perceive with our senses, to a later belief that the Creator exists beyond creation.

When the monks settled in Chorin, they wanted to follow the new artistic and architectural principles that were proposed by their founder-monks in Citeaux—particularly the ideas formulated by Bernard of Clairvaux. The new cultural awakening in Europe, which was heralded by the mystical and practical vision of thinkers like St. Bernard, was able to bring together various spiritual impulses coming both from the East and the West. What were the monks trying to do? The spiritual vision behind the dictum “ora et labora” (human physical labour can be a form of prayer), was that manual work which has the capacity to transform the natural environment, can also inform a deep spiritual awakening. This was also an insight that Gandhi believed in: work is not just something degrading, being a purely physical activity, but is also a way of initiating a deep spiritual transformation. “Ora” understood as “prayer” could be related to the Indian concept of “Sadhana”. Work is a spiritual path, if it is undertaken not out of personal egotistical greed, or desire to conquer either human beings, or nature, but is a way of working with creatures, towards a common goal. This was the approach to “karma” or action that we find outlined as a Karma Yoga in the Bhagavad Gita. It is this approach to art as hand-work, and not only intellectual or conceptual imagining, that has been the basis for an Indian approach to the various crafts and performing arts, like dance, music or
drama.

In a way the making of an artifact is like a process of alchemy. In his book on “Sadhana”, Tagore describes a work that goes beyond human effort, and is in harmony with the cosmic work of creation. This was his way of seeing the artist as a Vishwa Karmi, or one who continues the work of the Divine Craftsperson, the architect of the whole universe.

The Cistercian monks who settled down at Chorin were faced with many practical tasks Bernard of Clairvaux had wanted his monks not to live on hilltops, but rather in valleys. They should be close to water, and should work with the energy that lies latent in flowing water. Here in this region, the rocks that are found scattered on the ground are lumps of granite, broken up by the receding ice cap that had come from the north across Sweden and Denmark. These rocks could be used for foundations, but were not suitable for the fine intricate structures that now characterized Gothic architecture. For this a ore malleable material had to be obtained. So the peculiar nature of this northern early Gothic building work is that it is made from fired bricks. The monks made the bricks themselves from the local clay that they formed in special
wooden moulds. Then, as wood was plentiful in this forested country, kilns were constructed in the fields to fire the bricks.

The construction of the bricks for building involved all four elements. Water mixed with the clay of earth would be dried in the open air, and then fired. Fire transforms the earth into a new compound, which is now water resistant—a vessel that can contain water and air. But ultimately the inner spiritual purpose of the building is to act as a vessel for light. The outer form embodies this inner light. This is the essential mystery that the vessel of the Church is meant to incorporate.

Work with clay and the process of forming a place in which light can be enshrined is the essential purpose of culture. The built form is not understood only in terms of walls, but rather in relation to the spaces that the walls contain.^² The Gothic form of architecture is characterized by its use of windows, but also niches that help to lighten the structure of the wall, and allow for openings where light can give life to matter. The niche is used as a place where a lamp can be placed, and is in this sense an extension of the lamp itself, offering a protective holder for the flame.^³ It has the character of a hearth, which is the oldest feature of the inhabited human dwelling place. At night a few of us went into the vast empty space of the uninhabited nave of the ruined Church. There we sat in the darkness and allowed the luminous stillness of the night sky to penetrate the dark interior of the empty nave, through the tall windows. Then a small candle was lit and placed in a niche. The shadows that this small flame cast in the rib-like cage of the dark flutedcolumns of the Gothic building, gave a new perspective to its massive form. We realized that the built structure was enlivened not only by the light, but by the shadows cast by its many surfaces.

The construction of such a work represents, I believe the creation of a social and individual sense of self-identity. What is being built is not just a place to live, and pray, but an experience of the Presence: individual, communal and also cosmic. The Self finds its being by embodying the Being of a Divine Presence in the natural environment. The building becomes a living form in which to be, and communicate with a spiritual reality incarnated and sacramentalized in this geo-political and historical context.

As an artist coming from the Indian context, and also involved in the creation of ceramic works, I was particularly interested to understand the significance of this brick constructed early Gothic style, in which ceramic work has played a defining role.

Creation myths and the elemental

All over the world we find myths that relate how the first human beings were made out of clay. Adam was created by God out of the red clay, and when Cain murdered Abel, it was the earth that received the body of the slain brother, and cried out for justice. In the tribal traditions of Chotanagpur, we also hear of the human couple formed out of clay and left to dry in the sun. But in this myth, we are told that to begin with the horse of the Creator, called Hamsraj Pankraj, trampled over the first clay creatures, destroying them with its hooves. The horse, or Aswa, has been related to the wild, and often fierce forces of the cosmos, Viswa. The taming of the horse,
and later the tradition of horse sacrifices, seems to relate at a psychic level, to the harnessing of these elemental energies, by human culture.

The work of art helps human beings to come to terms with those elemental forces that lie hidden in the psyche. We are very conscious of the destructive forms in nature. There are floods, storms, and earthquakes that destroy life. But these very manifestations of change in nature, also determine the way in which the landscape has been shaped by shifting structures of the earth’s body. Climatic changes are not only seasonal, but effect the way we are conscious of our environment, linking the individual to great cycles of time which have formed our landscape, like the ice age. It has been pointed out that these great forces of transformation that have changed the very chemistry of our planet earth, have also given us the raw materials on which culture depends. It is these cycles that have created deposits of fossil fuels, have brought about concentrations of metallic elements in the rocks, which have influenced our technologies. Movements on the earth’s surface have crushed together materials giving rise to the very clay, sand, and soil that is the basis for agriculture, providing also our building materials. Without these cosmic changes, culture could never have even begun.

Jyoti Sahi. Art Ashram, Dec. 2008

1
Cf: “The Child and the Serpent: Reflections on Popular Indian Symbols” by Jyoti Sahi. 198

2
Cf The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu:

Clay is molded to make a pot, but it is in the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the clay pot lies. Cut out doors and windows to make a room, but it is in the spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the room lies. (11 or 55)

3
Cf The Sura of Light in the Holy Koran:

God is the light of the heavens nd the earth. The likeness of His Light is a niche werein is a lamp. The lamp is in a glass. The glass is like a brilliant star lit from a blessed tree, an olive neither of the East nor of the West, whose oil would almost give light though no fire touched it. Light upon
Light.

TOWARDS A SUMMER SCHOOL OF SEEING

2011-07-09T08:33:00.001-07:00

TOWARDS A SUMMER SCHOOL OF SEEING.

I have been reflecting on an eastern aesthetics that relates art to spirituality and meditation. Art is a way of “Making Peace” with nature, and with the community as a whole. Art is not just about making works of art.

It is possible to find some important links between Indian approaches to art as Sadhana, and the Chinese way of approaching image making in relation to Tao, or the Way.

The whole style of approaching art criticism is very different in the East from the philosophy of art which we find in the West. Reflecting on the meaning of art is through poetic metaphors, and using intuition rather than rational, discursive thought.

Rabindranath Tagore visited China, and other countries of the Far East, and as a result a number of important artists and philosophers from China, Japan and Indonesia interacted with the Bengal School of Art as developed in Shantiniketan at the Kala Bhavan. We note that in the work of Ram Kinker, Binod Behari Mukherjee, and others of the Bengal school, there are ideas that can be found in Chinese aesthetics, combined with Indian concepts like Rasa and Dhvani. The Kala Bhavan, which was started in 1919, the same year as the Bauhaus in Weimar, brought together many strands of far eastern aesthetics. At this time art critics from the West like Laurence Binyon, E.B. Havel, Stella Kramrisch, and many others “discovered” the aesthetics of the East, and suggested its vital importance for the renewal of art as a spiritual force.

George Rowley in his Principles of Chinese Painting, and Lin Yutang in her translations from the original writings of Chinese practitioners, and thinkers about aesthetics, have contributed to an understanding of
the relevance of Eastern forms of art as an aspect of spiritual practice. In this way we can also see the link between Taoist and Zen Buddhist forms of meditation, and inner processes that Tantra-Yoga in
India tried to understand, and describe.

In trying to outline a way of Seeing, and responding to the natural, environment, through art as a spiritual practice, I have been studying some of the writings that are available on Eastern aesthetics. Already Ananda Coomaraswamy tried to articulate what he felt was a very different approach to art, which was practiced in the East, but which has become of increasing interest also in the West
through a growing awareness of Buddhist and Hindu metaphysics. In the same way that classical Greek philosophy profoundly influenced the development of European art, perhaps now Eastern forms of
philosophical thought, and also aesthetics, could play an important part in shaping an art of the future, which embraces all cultures.

Aesthetics and inter-religious understanding.

Making peace with nature has also brought together people of different faiths. It has been noted that faith systems like Taoism, Confucianism, Vedantic Hinduism, and Buddhism, are all characterized by a different understanding of the relation of the human community to its natural environment, from the attitude that we find in the Judeo-Christian family of religions. There, going back to the Old Testament and Prophetic writers we find a radical form of metacosmic spirituality. According to this worldview, human beings have to go beyond nature to find a God who is distinct from Creation. Nature is often viewed as a hindrance, or at least a reality that needs to be overcome and transcended if we are to reach out to a God who cannot be apprehended in the way that we observe natural phenomena.

In fact one of the criticisms levelled by such a monotheistc and transcendent belief system, against more cosmic spiritualities that we find in folk and tribal religions, but also in the mystical insights of Taoism, Buddhism and the Vedanta, is that here nature is often confused with the Creator, and phenomena which we experience with our physical senses are seen as ways to discovering the Divinity
immanent in the whole of Creation. This viewpoint is often characterized as pantheistic, and part of an illusion which instead of revealing the Divine, tends to obscure a true understanding of the Godhead.

Art can help in bridging the gap between different faith systems by affirming the truth which lies in the imagination, and a more affective approach to spirituality. Images rely on metaphors, and are thus closer to a more intuitive approach to reality. The metacosmic worldview has often been too narrowly rational, and has tended to separate the human community, and cultural forms from the life springs of nature. There are those who blame our present ecological crisis on the way that metacosmic faith systems have turned aside from the natural, and created environment, and placed human beings
above their environment, even proposing that the whole of Creation is only for the use and advancement of human communities. This has led to a kind of injustice, where not only nature is denied its rights,
but also those who live close to nature, are seen as inferior human beings. The problem of human poverty is related to the way that natural resources have been used, and appropriated by the powerful, who have often legitimised their position as the prerogative of those who have been called to a higher position above natural necessities.

In this way we can observe that making peace with nature is a necessary step towards making peace with those who live close to nature, and depend on its resources for their livelihood. The process of “making” which is the creative task of cultures, is about Making Peace through art forms. Here aesthetics can be seen to have a vital import on ethical issues. Seeing nature is also about seeing the reality of the world in which we live.

MAKING ART FOR PEACE STUDIES (MAPS)

Recently we have been thinking about the role of art in Peace Studies. In the Sita School, which Jane started in 1975, art has played a very important part in the education of the students. Here “art”
is not thought of in a limited sense, as just one particular form of art, but rather in a broad way as the use of the imagination. This includes working with puppets, dancing, story telling, painting and
working with materials like clay, paper, wood and so forth. The imagination has a very practical, and physical application in what might be called play. We learn about our environment, and also our
own bodies, through playing with materials. There is a wisdom which we derive from a physical contact with materials, using our hands, as much as our intellectual faculties.

It has been suggested that violence increases in society in relation to the split between mind and body, our intellectual lives, and the way we feel, and sense the reality of the world around us with our
bodies. Too often modern culture is characterised by a very intellectual, rational approach to learning, which leaves out the wisdom of the heart and the hands.

Art may provide a way in which we can have a more integrated approach to the world in which we live. This is characterised by an attitude which we call “empathy”. This includes an approach to others, and nature as a whole, which feels at one with the experience of those who are outside our own personal world. We can have empathy for living creatures, including trees, flowers, and even non-living aspects of our environment like rocks, and rivers. We can feel an empathy for animals, and also strangers, who are outside our own familiar cultural world. It is through such an empathy, that is a power of the imagination, that we can find bridges between our own world, and the reality of those who are not part of our cultural and historical community. Empathy is essential if there is to be peace between cultures and people, and also between human communities and the natural environment.

Through a summer school of seeing, we hope to explore these issues of peace and cultural diversity, along with an awareness of the natural world in which we live. The purpose of such a school is not just to learn how to do a particular form of art, but rather how to use the imagination for mapping out relationships that lead to a more peaceful interaction between persons and things. The imagination has
an important role to play not only in the way we learn, but also in the way we relate to others. The summer school of seeing will thus attempt to create ways of communicating with others, and creating
maps for peace.

Story of the Workers with Fire

2011-07-09T08:26:00.001-07:00

Storyof the Workers with Fire (AGNIHAR),

also known as the Story (kahani) of the Iron Smelters (Lohar)

In the beginning there was a Green God called "Haram". (The word Hara means Green in Indian languages. But whether the name Haram is derived from this or some other root, is not clear, as there are different opinions. Some call him Dharam, or Dharmes, which is related to the Indo-European Firma, or that is fixed, permanent)

He made everything.

Haram made all the animals, and gave them work to do.

Only onem family Haram forgot. These were the "Asuras". (Surya means the sun, so some suggest these are people who live in the dark. But Ahura in the Iranian tradition meant the wise people, as in Ahura Mazda. Again some difference of opinion)

The Asuras asked Haram "What can we do? What work have you got for us to do ? Give us work!!" (The word "work" in Indian languages is Karam. This can also mean fate)

Haram said: "All right ! you can work with fire !"

The Asuras were happy. They made fires. They burnt the dark forest. They made black charcoal from the burnt trees. With charcoal they cooked the earth in great ovens. From stones they made iron. From iron they made sharp weapons. They cut down trees They killed animals. They made war. They became rich and strong. Everyone was afraid of them !

The animals came running to Haram in terror. Haram's white horse 'Hamsraj Pankraj', the Swan Horse (Hamsa means Swan, Panka means wings) had his nose filled with smoke. He lost his appetite. He could not ear. He became sick. "Help us ! The animals cried to Haram. "The Asuras are destroying the whole earth !!!

Haram sent his white birds. They flew to the Asuras who worked in the dark caves of the earth. "Stop these fires!" the birds pleaded. "Stop this work!" the birds shouted.

The Asuras laughed at the birds. They threw coal dust on their white wings. They caught the feathers of the birds with their iron tongs. The birds became covered with coal dust and their feathers were spoilt. "Our God is Work (Karam)" the Asuras boasted. "Now we worship Karam not Haram (or Dharam). We will not stop working. We will burn up everything !"

The birds returned to Haram. Their feathers were spoilt, with the polluting smoke of the fires. One bird was now the Crow. Another was the Stork. The last is called the "Scissor bird" (Kenchi Chiriya, or Drongo), because its tail is divided where the Asuras caught it with their tongs used in smelting iron. "Our feathers are ruined ! the birds lamented, "We are no longer beautiful. The fires have covered us with ash !"

Haram's wife is Sita (the Furrow in the earth, also the tip of the plough with which the earth is cultivated. She is born from the earth) She is the gentle womb of the earth.

"Be careful!!" she warned Haram. "These Asuras are proud and hard-hearted. Do not go to them directly. Take a round-about path. Be clever !!" (The myth is also sometimes referred to as the
indirect path)

Haram came to the Asuras in the disguiye of a small child. He looked weak, his skin covered with ugly patches. He appeared to be sick, his body wounded. He came to the Asuras like a beggar. "Help me !" Haram begged the Asuras. "Please give me some work that I can do ! I am without Mother or Father. I am ready to work for you !"

The Asuras laughed at Haram. "What work can you do ? You are sick. You have no strength. Go to the Old Woman. She makes charcoal in the forest, which we use in our fires. Maybe she can give you a job that you can do."

The boy Haram went to the Old Woman. "Can I help you with some job ?" he asked. She felt sorry for him. "What can you do?" she enquired. "Maybe you can look after my grain. It has to be dried in the sun, but the birds come and eat it ! Can you keep an eye on my grain ? That is an easy job for you to do. Are you hungry ?" she asked. "You can give me an egg--that is all I need," the boy replied.

Haram took the egg when the woman had gone to the forest. He went to play with the children of the Asuras. They played a game rolling iron balls so that they fell into a hole in the ground. "Can I play with you?" the child Haram asked. "But you have no ball to play with!" the Asura children replied. "I have this egg!"Haram showed them. "Your egg will get broken in the game, if it is hit by an iron ball!" the children mocked. But Haram played their game, using his egg. He beat the Asura children at their game. "This boy has some kind of magic!" the Asura children concluded. They ran to tell their Fathers.

Meanwhile the Asuras were finding that they were getting less and less iron out of the ground. They were worried. They wondered if some magic that the strange child was using, was working against them. They decided to find out from the child Haram how they could get iron out of the
ground once more. "What should we do, so as to get iron from the earth ?" the Asuras now asked Haram. "We cannot get iron from rocks as we did before ! Tell us the magic formula. We know that you can use magic. How can our fires change stones into balls of iron ? What is the secret ?"

At first Haram refused to answer them. Then at last he said: "Yes, I know the Secret. You have to make a Sacrifice!. Only then will fire change the earth into precious metal"

"What is this Sacrifice ?" the Asuras enquired. "How should we make a Sacrifice ? What should we do ?" (Karam can also mean a ritual sacrifice)

"Perhaps you can sacrifice a white hen" Haram suggested. The Asuras got some more iron from the earth when they made this sacrifice. But it was very little. They asked Haram again to help.

"May be you could sacrifice a goat--that is bigger!!" Haram proposed.

The Asuras sacrificed a goat. That was more effective, but still not good enough. Again they approached Haram. Once again he suggested an even bigger animal, this time a Buffalo. That is more expensive. But even that did not satisfy the needs of the Asuras.

In the end the child Haram revealed the secret lying behind the need to sacrifice: "Actually, you must sacrifice a human being !"

But where to find a victim ? " I have no Father or Mother. I am weak, my body is sick and covered with wounds. You can sacrifice me !" Haram told the Asuras. Now they were really happy.

"How can we sacrifice you ?" they wanted to know. "Put me into your fire ! Close me up in the oven in which you burn your stones. Let me be in the flames for three days and three nights. Then open up the oven, and let me out!"

The Asuras did as Haram suggested. When they opened the oven Haram stepped out, golden like the rising sun. He came out riding on his white swan-horse Hamsraj Pankraj.

"So far we only got black iron out of the earth using fire. Where did this wonderful gold come from ?" The Asuras asked in amazement.

"This can happen if you offer Sacrifice !" Haram revealed.

Then all the Asuras rushed into their fire. "Let us also get this precious gold!" they cried. "Close us up in the burning oven!" they instructed their wives. "Cook us for 3 days and 3 nights !" they commanded their women folk.

The first day the women heard their men shouting. "Why are they shouting?" the women asked Haram. "Perhaps they are fighting over the gold; you know how greedy they are!" Haram suggested.

Then there was silence.

When the women opened the oven, they found only dry bones and ashes.

"You have cheated us!!!" they now accused Haram.

"Cheated you ?" Haram asked "Do not talk to me about cheating ! I gave you a work to do. You burnt my earth. You killed my animals. You never listened to my bird messengers. I came myself to ask for your charity. You mocked at me. So now do not talk about cheating!!!"

"But I can still help you again" Haram added. "You can work again--but not like you did before. You must not work all the time. The earth must have time to rest. You should dance. You must respect other creatures. You must offer Sacrifice. You must not be greedy. You must not only work to become rich. You must work for all creatures, so that all might become beautiful. Your fires must be used to transform the whole earth. You must be wise. Do for others what you would like others to do for you. Give generously, and then you will receive !"

This is the new covenant that Haram gave to all creatures.

Ps. In the original myth, as told by the Pahan (shaman), the widowed wives of the Asuras clung to his horse as he was returning back to the skies. Then one woman fell into the forest, another into a river, another onto a mountain, another onto a rock. They became the Spirits of Nature, and can still be found in the land. They are angry spirits, and so can bring sickness, suffering. They need to be appeased.

Haram told his creatures: "I do not need to eat. What you sacrifice is no use to me !! But these Spirits who are Angry, they need to be offered your sacrifices. Give your Sacrifices to them ! Then they will not hurt you. Then you can Prosper.!"

According to many the myth of the Iron Smelters is recited at the time of the Sacrifice. The Sacrifice protects the living from the angry spirits of the dead, who feel that they have been cheated. These spirits are associated with the feminine beings of the Underworld. They are the spirits of nature. The living are afraid of these spirits.

Should human beings be afraid of the spirits of nature ? Science and Technology have been developed to free people from this fear. But in the process, nature itself has been destroyed. At a deeper level, the Sacrifice that human beings have to make, is to Nature. Unless nature is propitiated, it will eventually destroy us. It is nature that brings us many blessings, but also suffering and disease, if we do not respect the spirits of nature, and take care of them.

DIALOGUE AND THE IMAGINATION

2011-06-04T04:50:00.001-07:00

DIALOGUE AND THE IMAGINATION.

Over the last forty years I have been involved in a process of imagining the Christian Faith in relation to Indian Cultural forms. This process has taken place at different levels. There has been the process of translation. Culture here has been understood as providing a language of images, and in order to make the Biblical narrative intelligible to people who belong to a culture that is very different from the cultural context in which the Biblical texts were originally written, it is important to find ‘imaginal’* forms that might embody the spirit of the Bible in familiar images. But then, at another level of exchange, the Biblical Text is seen not only as something given, but as requiring to be re-enacted. This entails what is called liturgy, or celebration, and brings us into the domain of performance. Here what is being addressed is not only image as memory, or tradition, but a much wider power of the imagination as evocative, creating a new world of thought and action. Finally, this process of enacting the narrative, is re-telling the story in a new way, requiring an embodiment of the world of the imagination in spatial terms, and elemental materials derived from the local landscape, which can be understood in terms of a vernacular architecture. Here we shift from the idiomatic, to the concrete realization of an ‘imaginal’ world which is a total theatre, involving not only what is spoken, or seen, but also what is constructed in special and tangible terms. In other words what has been called “inculturation”* functions on these three levels:

The trans-literal metaphorical world of the imagination which creates translations of sacred texts into local languages
The liturgical, or performed dimension of re-enactment in the lives of those who have internalized the images and words, and are now acting this symbolic world in their day to day lives
Finally at the level of built forms, where such performances can be “staged”, so to say in the context of local landscapes, and ecological constraints.

Translation

It has been suggested that the efforts of various Christian missionary organizations, notably the Bible Society and Christian Literature Society (CLS) to translate the Bible into many languages, and thus make the Bible available to people in different lands, helped in the process of relating the Biblical narrative to other cultures*. Languages are not just ways of communicating ideas in the form of propositional statements. Language is also a vehicle for culture, that is it embodies symbols, or metaphors, that are culturally rooted. Every word carries with it certain resonances, which are beyond the so-called literal meaning of what is said. This has been an important understanding of language as the basis for an aesthetic experience. In India this notion of resonance, or implied meaning is called ‘Dhvani’’*. The concept of ‘Dhvani’’ emerged out of an earlier understanding of ‘Rasa’, or essential or experiential significance underlying what one might term the poetic power of the word, and also the image.* The word, together with the image, point to a meaning which lies beyond the immediate literal or rational sense, or empirical semantic meaning of what is being expressed. The implied, experiential meaning is like the nexus of memories, or lived experiences that underlie every visual or verbal statement. It is this implied significance that is culturally conditioned, and gives poetic life to what otherwise would only be documentary evidence.

What might be termed a hermeneutical principle, is that every statement whether in a text, an oral tradition, or in a visual form of expression, has several layers of meaning. This is what the early biblical interpreters who were linked to the school of Philo, or the Jewish-Greek scholars of Alexandria, stressed as the several meanings behind every Biblical text*. There was the obvious meaning, taken in the semantic sense, which is the literal meaning of the Bible. But underlying this surface meaning, there are other layers of signification, which are contextual symbolic, metaphysical, or mystical. These meanings are not easy to translate. The literal meaning can be conveyed into another language, using a dictionary. But the inner poetic meaning is often lost in translation, because this inner experience of the word belongs to its implied meaning. What is lost in translation lies implicit in the context from which the word or image has arisen, bearing the memories, myths, metaphors which are the underlying source from which every language has emerged. Every text, like the oral tradition from which it derives, is addressed to a particular audience. The written text transcends that original audience, now bringing the word as document to new readers, unfamiliar with the original cultural context from which the text has sprung. Already translation implies transformation, in the minds and hearts of a new audience, so that any living translation is by necessity a re-telling, and re-interpreting of the original narrative.

There have been some attempts in India to use the concept of ‘Dhvani’ as a tool to re-interpreting the Bible from an Indian point of view.* What images has the translated Bible evoked in the minds of new readers of the text ? How have these texts been related to the lives of those who are now a new audience, situated in a different culture, and historical time, and trying to make sense of the relevance of the text within another living context ? In recent times a number of important modern Indian artists have represented Biblical themes in their art. These artists have not necessarily been Christian believers, in the sense of belonging to any particular Church. Many have understood their Faith as Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim. And yet, the Biblical text has spoken to their imagination. It has evoked resonances with their own cultural and historical situation. For example, the theme of suffering, and sacrifice has appealed to nationalist inspired artists who saw in the Biblical story a spiritual call to liberation. It was in this context that the artist Jamini Roy painted Jesus as a Santali tribal, whose cultural aspirations seem to relate to the message of Jesus. Scenes like the conversation between Jesus and the Woman at the Well, or Jesus as a Guru and Healer, whose feet were washed and wiped by Mary of Magdala, have appealed to Indian artists, who have found in these events interesting parallels with Buddhist or later Bhakti images representing the relation of disciple to teacher. Or again the story of the Risen Christ walking with his troubled disciples on the road to Emmaus, has also been treated by Indian artists. In images such as these an “Oriental Christ” is being portrayed, in a way which is very different from the Christian art that developed in Europe.

Thus there was an issue of BibleBhasyam (An Indian Biblical Quarterly) devoted to a ‘Dhvani’ interpretation of the Bible” (Dec. 1979) .

I myself responding to this initiative among Indian Biblical scholars wrote an article for the Visvabharati Quarterly (Founded by Rabindranath Tagore, Volume 47, May-Oct 1981) entitled “Indian Christian Art and Rasa Dhvani of the Gospel”.

As noted earlier, the fact that the Biblical texts were being read in local Indian languages, gave rise to images which now themselves re-interpreted the text. Image takes on the part of giving a new significance to the word. If Jesus was represented in translation, as speaking to his disciples in a local Indian language, those reading the Gospel narrative in their own mother tongue, naturally imagined Jesus in their own local landscape, dressed in the clothes, and living in the homes that they were familiar with. Jesus was now represented looking like an Indian among disciples who were Indian. The language led to an Indian image of Jesus, incarnated in a new way, into an Indian cultural world. This one might say, becomes the literal implication of the translated text. The question arises however, that this way of imagining the Jesus of history, seems to deny the historical and geographical rootedness of the Gospel narrative in a land and culture which is quite alien to the people who are now reading the Biblical text in their own native language. Jesus, the ‘literal’ school of critics now complain, was not an Indian, any more than he was Chinese, or African—or European for that matter!. He was Jewish. The problem is that the imagination does not function in a rational, or historical way. The imagination is always based on a lived experience. We visualize a reality in terms of a world which we are familiar with. There is no way in which a person born in another culture, another time, another place, can imagine what the Jesus of history looked like. Even the gospels are singularly unhelpful. Nowhere do we find a description of what Jesus or his disciples looked like in the sacred text.

The very metaphors used in translation, now convey more than was originally intended in the Biblical text. For example, in one Indian translation of the words “Behold the lamb of God, he who takes away the sins of the world” the word “sin” is translated into the Indian term “Karma”. This is because there is no comparable word for “sin” as understood in the Biblical sense, in Indian languages. The word “Karma”, seems to come closest to that idea of a burden of cosmic blindness to the Truth of Revelation, which is implied by the concept of “Sin” in the Bible. But “Karma” is also an important term in Indian schools of philosophic thought. Every profound word, in that sense, has itself a history, and many layers of meaning. By using this word, the other Indian spiritual implications of this philosophical concept, now enter into the Biblical meaning of the text. The same might be said of even Biblical words, when the Gospel was rendered in Greek. For example even the term Logos, applied to the Primal and Creative Word of God, has many meanings coming from Greek philosophy.

Sadhu Sundar Singh* is reported to have said: “ I want to drink the waters of Eternal Life in an Indian vessel”. But can the vessel so easily be distinguished from what is poured into it ? The Indian disposable clay cup which was used in the old days for holding tea, gave its flavour to the tea. Form and content in any culture, are intimately linked.

And yet, as John of Damascus was to argue at the Second Council of Nicea, in his famous “Defence of Holy Images”,* the image is a vital witness to the Incarnation. The God who became a human being, was not only reaching out to the particular group of disciples who lived in that short period of historical time when Jesus was alive on earth, but his incarnation has a universal reach and scope. Jesus is incarnated for all peoples, and for all time. And so, it is vital to imagine the Divine present in the human. In the parable of Matthew 25 31-45, Jesus speaks of the last Judgement, when the Son of Man will say:

“Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see the hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee ? And when did we wee thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’”

This passage, which has played a very important role in the way the whole Gospel has been understood in an Asian context, clearly relates the figure of Jesus, the ‘Son of Man’, to all those who are in some way marginalized and suffering in society, wherever they may come from, and whichever culture the might belong to. This concept of the ‘imago dei’ in every human being, who is Christ-like in the sense of carrying the image of the Son of Man in the historical conditions of their humanity, is at the very heart of the apostolic council to ‘imitate Christ’. Jesus, the New Adam, is the image of a redeemed humanity to which all are called, and this is the ultimate meaning of the Incarnation.

Liturgy; the life of Christ lived in the community.

Here we come to the second principle that underlies the relation of Gospel to culture. It is not just a matter of translation, but of finding in the story of Jesus, and by extension the whole narrative tradition of the Bible, a paradigm for community life, which is seen as the ‘coming of the Kingdom’. Here we go deeper into the text or image as document, to find its implication for life experience which in India has been termed ‘Rasa’, or ‘Dhvani’. Indian aesthetics is fundamentally oriented to performance; that is the way the world of the imagination transforms our life experience. The image or text is not just something external, an objective world that is viewed as something to be seen or read, without being involved, or participating in what is expressed through art forms. Every art form involves those who ‘witness’ to the truth of the image or word. ‘Bhakti’, or devotion, is participatory in that sense; it draws the actor and audience into a total experience which is an aesthetic re-living of what is being ‘represented’. Here the principle underlying the experience is a new way of seeing and being, which is transforming. In other words, it is not the incarnation, or the embodiment of the divine in the human that is the guiding principle, so much as the way in which the human is divinized, and taken up into a world which transcends the normal world which we apprehend with our senses. Perhaps what one could find here as the basis for art is transfiguration and resurrection. A new form of life is signified, and the literal meaning has to be interiorized, and made into the basis of life experience. The world of the imagination is not just a spoken word that we listen to passively, or a visual image that we observe with our physical eyes, or touch with our hands. We ourselves are transformed by what we hear and see, our very lives are changed by this experience which comes to us through the senses.

Liturgy as enactment of the mysteries represents a deeper level at which we encounter the vision which informs the Bible. In what way is this Gospel now related to the cultural world of different communities? Certainly not in the sense of a mere external adaptation, which is what is implied by the concept of ‘translation’. Culture itself has to be distinguished from a tradition, something given, and pre-disposed. The imagination now expresses a way of seeing by new forms which cannot be determined by anything that belongs to the past. This means that art goes beyond the set forms that have grown up out of history, and the social context of communities, to demand a change, a new way of perceiving the world in which we live.

Liturgy draws on various ritual practices. These embody the sacramental life of the community. What in Christian tradition has been termed the “Divine Liturgy”, referring specifically to the Eucharist, is one aspect of the Liturgical tradition. However central the Eucharist might be to a total understanding of the liturgical life of the Christian community, the fact that its institution is closely bound to the cultural context of Jesus’ own life and times, means that it cannot easily be adapted to forms of expression in other cultures. The Eucharist does have a universal significance, in that it relates to the basic significance of food, and the shared imagery of the body. But there is also something unique, and distinctive about the Eucharistic meal, that lies central to the Christian tradition. Still, there are other dimensions of the liturgy which relate to various forms of Blessing, and what in the wider world of ritual practices are called ‘rites of passage’. Liturgical arts encompass all these aspects of Faith in practice.

At the local level, there are often many folk rites that are incorporated into the main body of liturgical life. In South India, for example, pilgrimage, rites of healing and transformation, play a very important role in all expressions of spirituality. It is a common practice, taking one example of popular religiosity, to shave all the hair off a person’s head as a symbol of a spiritual vow taken before going to a shrine on a special occasion. Another common practice is to decorate a symbolic chariot or ‘Theru’ which is either pulled along on wheels, or carried on the shoulders of pious believers, enshrining the image of a saint, or Christ (such as for example the figure of the Sacred Heart) and taken on procession through the streets of a village, or urban neighbourhood. Such gestures of devotion are understood by everyone, and similar acts of ritual worship can be found in the practice of people belonging to different Faiths. We find among Muslims similar expressions of Faith at the time of Moharam, to take another example.

Festivals are an important aspect of the liturgical life of the community. These, again, can be shared occasions, when people of different Faiths feel happy to join in, and experience the celebration of one particular faith community. Christian Feasts such as Christmas, or Easter, can be understood and enjoyed by people who are in the community, but are not themselves Christian. Here again we find a largely unconscious world of shared ritual practices. Among Christians in South India, to take another example, we sometimes find that pots with newly sprouted grain are used to decorate the Christmas crib. This is a practice which is also prevalent among popular Hindu worshippers, during new year celebrations, symbolizing new life, and the blessing, and prayers for a full harvest in the year to come.

A ritual in India which has been incorporated by some into Christian practice is the widely respected rite of ‘Arathi’. This ritual observance, which again crosses over the boundaries of different Faith communities, entails the waving of lighted lamps, along with other auspicious signs of offering, such as flowers, incense, fruits of the earth and so forth. This waving of a tray filled with ritual gifts, before persons or places, symbolizing the act of greeting, through the gift of auspicious signs of life, has also a cosmic meaning. The whole of Creation is being consecrated by the act of a ritual movement, which is even the basis for dance. The waving of lights and other offerings, is done in a circular, clockwise gesture, which reminds one of the circular movement of sun, moon, and other lights of the heavens. Here the movement of the body is seen to participate in a universal movement that activates the changing seasons, the ever flowing motion of all creatures, from birth to final dissolution. Time and all created forms are forever caught up in the cycle of change, that is the eternal path followed by all temporal forms.

There are other gestures, which relate to dance. Circumambulation of a sacred place, again going clockwise and the act of prostration, or greeting with joined hands as a symbol of obeisance; the giving of the whole body as a sign of humility and wonder, is a very natural way of expressing a deep faith. These gestures, like language, are culturally understood. But they are also universal, in the sense that at heart everybody can understand their significance, and feel their ardour, from whatever culture they might spring.

Dance as a rite of spiritual experience goes back to the very origins of human body expression. We find dance playing a central and vital role in tribal and also folk cultures. Forms of music, and the power of primal sounds to stir the heart, like the beating of drums, or the blowing of wind instruments, are also consecrated to the act of worship in all cultures, but have a particular significance in the symbolic world of each specific culture. The local and the universal here intertwine, and though each expression of joy, sorrow, wonder, or humility, might be culturally specific, there is an aspect of these elemental signs that can be understood and internalized by every person being essentially human, and therefore common to all.

This might lead us to reflect on the place of universal and elemental symbols such as the tree, flowing and life-giving water, the form of particular numinous rocks, the very earth itself, and the inner meaning of flowers, fragrant scents, sweet tasting fruits, that can be used to express the part played by the physical senses, in divining the Presence of the Creator, in the whole of Creation. It is these elemental signs that link the act of worship, and the life of the community, to the natural environment. Food plays a very important part in all festive occasions. To eat together is the ultimate sign of fellowship. It is also a communion with the dead. Often at the time of the passing away of a member of the community, people come together to share a meal, and in that way express a solidarity with the ancestors.

Holy Ground

Word, Image, and ritual life finally bring us to the most fundamental of all imaginal forms: the concept of space itself. Space here is understood as the ‘total theatre’ of human and cosmic action—what in Buddhist Mahayana philosophy is sometimes termed “Alaya”. It is what the Greeks called the ‘Oekos’, the whole inhabited world of Creation. In Hindu Tantric thought, this dynamic concept of space might be thought of in terms of ‘Akasha’, the fifth “element” which is fundamental to all other elements. This “space” can be also understood as “empty” (‘Sunya’: the Void) into which Creation is manifested as a kind of radiance, or glory (‘prakash’) which manifests the playful energy of the Divine. All spiritual philosophies have tried to understand the meaning behind this primal space, which is the stage, so to say, on which all acts of the creative imagination are performed, and which is experienced in the ever changing patterns of both planet and cosmos.

It is this conceptual space that is conceived of as the plan underlying all that we understand as sacred space. It is universal, but also the basis for understand the local, or microcosm. The geographically localized becomes the threshold for a reality which transcends both time and space. The “temple” or “shrine”, is a doorway through which we perceive a boundless spiritual dimension through the immediate, and embodied reality that is apparent to the physical senses.

The relation of a spiritual vision to a cultural matrix, relates to the way in which we experience the landscape, and the geographic differences created not only by our planet’s physical terrain, but also by the climatic conditions that prevail in a specific place. All that lives and grows on this planet depends for its diversity on both the variety of earth forms, and climate determined by the interaction of elemental forces of earth, water, air and heat. Art celebrates the elemental, and it is in this sense that it also expresses the “spirit of a place”. The creative impulse is never dis-embodied, abstract in the sense of not engaged with the reality of objects as things; responding to phenomena through the experience of texture, movement, colour and living vibrancy. This, I would suggest, is the meaning of the Sanskrit term ‘ranga’, which connotes both local colour, and the cosmic stage. In the understanding of sacred space as Holy Ground, the particular and the universal intersect. The horizontal of the earth-plan or map, is comprehended in terms of what is erected on it, as a built structure which has elevation, pointing upwards to the outer space of the empyrean.

“Inculturation”, I would propose, is not just about tradition, about human institutions, or even language, but about this basic relationship between the earth and the heavens. It is about embodiment which is always in the process of change, and transformation. Culture is never static, but it does always relate back to the elemental reality of the here and now. Culture is finally speaking, finite. It comes out of a particular landscape, responding to materials that are locally available, and to the cycle of the seasons that determine patterns of growth and diversity in the local habitat. Any given culture has its boundaries, its horizon. But creative imagination always goes beyond culture, in that its very scope seeks to cross over boundaries, and to reach for higher levels which are like a super-structure, above the foundational conditions at the level of the ground. It is a principle of edification, of lifting the eyes above the earth to the spiritual heavens which can never be contained by local, or physical constraints.

Art and spirituality

Spiritual art is in this sense prophetic. It works with local cultures, traditions, in the same way that it is concerned with local materials. But the purpose of art is to step beyond boundaries. It is in that sense that the imagination creates what might be called ‘other worlds’, or a sub-creation, which is related to God’s Creation, but is also an inner landscape of the heart. It has been called a ‘heterotopia’ *, in the sense that it is not just an “ideal” world, or utopia, but another virtual world, a world of the imagination, that acts as a threshold to our understanding of this world of physically verifiable phenomena. The imagination engages with this world, but it also confronts, and questions the cultural forms that have limited and encaged human understanding, preventing people from thinking beyond the mould of tradition. Art may respect a tradition, but it is also a challenge to tradition.

It is in this sense of a spirituality of the imagination, that human cultures can transcend their specific boundaries, but also religious structures can be broken down to make room for the excluded “other”. Walls may be constructed to contain, but they also function as barriers, as ways of excluding those who are not within these bounds. The creative spirit reaches out to what lies beyond the limits drawn by geographic and cultural domains.

The creative work of a Faith, understood in this way, is not just about incarnation, or embodiment, but is directed towards human transformation, change, and Resurrection. Faith in that sense, is the imagination; it is a way of seeing another reality, and working towards its realization. Jesus spoke of not putting new wine into old wineskins. The new wine of vision, cannot be accommodated in the old skins of tradition. The imagination is transformative, in that it is always seeking to see reality in a new way. The imaginative power of Faith looks for new sources of inspiration. As the Upanishads put it : let good thoughts come to me from every side. Faith should never be blind; Faith is re-visioning, what in Indian thought is called ‘darshana’ or seeing. The spirit, we are told, cannot be contained. It blows where it pleases, and no one can define where it comes from, and where it is going. The tendency in any religious institution, or traditional way of living, to prevent the challenges of spiritual exchange, or inspired dialogue, is always an insult to the free spirit of the imagination.

A spiritual art is concerned with dialogue. This dialogue is not only with other persons, it is also with the very elemental world of creation with which we are constantly having to engage. The artist dialogues with his materials. We are dialoguing with the very landscape in which we are living, with the climatic changes that are affecting our lives, and threatening our livelihoods. We are in dialogue with the cosmos.

In the Old Testament this dialogue is understood as ultimately a dialogue with the Creator, with the Lord of History, and Space. The Prophet speaks with God. This is the I-Thou relationship which is the basis for a covenant between God and his people. We are all involved in that dialogue which interrogates the very nature of what we are, and how we understand our identity.

Dialogue is not just a process of talking to the Other, to a person who is of another culture, another Faith, another mind set, or world view. Dialogue ultimately means addressing oneself. Who am I ? What is the meaning of my own existence ? Dialogue leads to self-discovery.

It is in that sense that I feel the concept of emptiness, Sunya, is so important. We cannot dialogue unless we are willing to become empty. It is only the empty vessel that is able to receive something new. It is only when we realize that the total theatre in which the ritual of life and community liturgy is enacted, is an empty space, that we can be open ourselves to something happening that is not in the script, that has not been planned beforehand. The drama of the imagination is spontaneous, it is not pre-scripted. True celebration is always a moment of discovery, of the wonder of a new heaven and a new earth. It is a space for such an openness to experience that the art work tries to create a space for. The sub-creation of the imaginal, is a world of infinite possibilities. That is also what might be understood as the dimension which we call myth. Myths of creation are not just about what is given. The myth attempts to narrate how the eternal is continually breaking into the structures of time and the present.

As the poet Tagore might have put it : “To that world of freedom let my country, my Faith, awake !!!! Jyoti Sahi.

THE WOMAN AT THE WELL

2011-06-04T04:24:00.001-07:00

THE WOMAN AT THE WELL.

The theme of the Woman at the Well (John 4: 4-26) has been a subject that I have painted a number of times. In my recent work on the Way of Jesus I have seen it as representing an essential aspect of the Tao of Jesus, seen from an Indian perspective. The Well can be understood as pointing downwards into the underworld, where the waters of life could also be related to the sources of creativity that lie hidden in our unconscious. Over the well there is a structure, or scaffold, which is used to support the pulley over which the rope is hung, that carries the vessel that goes down into the dark depths of the water. This scaffold structure which looks like the traditional Greek letter Pai or II which is used in mathematics to represent the constant relation between the radius of a circle to its circumference, which cannot actually be measured, though it can be drawn geometrically. This form is also found in the structure of the doorway and traditional “load bearing stones” that are found in villages on which travellers can rest their heavy head loads. These elements: the circular well, the scaffold that looks like a door, and carries the pulley for drawing up the vessel, the rope and water pot, are all given symbolic meanings. The well rope is often associated in Indian thought with the serpent, and a parable of the Upanishads links the confusion which the mind may entertain between snake and rope represents the nature of Maya, or illusion. When the woman confronts Jesus with the fact that he has neither the rope to draw water with, or the vessel to hold the water, she can be understood as questioning the physical means that are necessary in a yogic understanding of lifting up the vital energies. The earthen pot represents the body, and in particular the chakras where energy is stored. The rope is the Kundalini, or vital force that lifts this energy from one Chakra to the next. Such might be an esoteric understanding of the woman’s query: “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water?” From a symbolic point of view this woman could even be related to the Anima, or feminine principle. She represents the wisdom that is concerned with the underworld, Later she adds “Our Fathers worshipped on this mountain”. The Mountain is here the opposite of the well. But it is then that Jesus says that the true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth.

In Feb. 1974 a meeting was held at the Christa Seva Prema Ashram in Pune on the theme of the Relevance of St. John’s Gospel for India today. I was invited to this gathering by Cecil Hargreaves, if I remember correctly. I presented on the occasion of this meeting some images from the Gospel of St John, which I had started to think about when decorating the All Saints Church in Srinagar, Kashmir, in 1968. In fact that is how Cecil Hargreaves got to know about my work. For the meeting at the C.P.S. Ashram I did a kind of meditation on the theme of the pot of water. I had been giving lectures at the Papal Seminary in Pune on primal Indian symbols, which later I put together in the form of a book called the Child and the Serpent, which was published by Routledge Kegan and Paul in London in 1980. I had noted that the symbol of the Full Vessel, or ‘purna Kumbham’ has been a basic symbol of lifein Indian folk culture. Vandana Mataji was also present at this meeting, and George Suaris. Later George Suaris worked with some other biblical scholars on what was called a “Dhvani interpretation of the Bible” which came out as an issue of BIBLEBHASHYAM (An Indian Biblical Quarterly) in Dec. 1979. In this issue Dr. Mathew Vellanickal, considered one of the most important biblical scholars at the time in India, presented a paper “Drink from the Source of the Living Waters—A Dhvani interpretation of the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman.”

The concept of ‘Dhvani’ which is a central idea in Indian Aesthetics, developed by the great Kashmiri Shaivite philosopher Ananda Vardhana in the seventh Cent. Has always fascinated me, and I have also written quite a lot about how this aesthetic idea which means “resonance” or “implied meaning” can be a form of Indian Biblical interpretation. Vandana Mataji brought out a book entitled Waters of Fire (CLS 1981), in which there is a chapter “Jeevan Dhara (Living Streams), “(Chapt. 4) which explores the significance of John 4:14. In fact my painting for the chapel of the Jeevan Dhara Ashram which Vandana Mataji established at Rishikesh is illustrated here at the beginning of this chapter. In this chapel the well with the water pot is the basis for the tabernacle setting. In my painting for this chapel I put two trees on either side of the well, one the Peepul tree (Ficus Religiosa: the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha sat in meditation) and on the other side the Neem Tree, which is a tree of healing.

I mention this because it will give you some idea as to how this particular dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman has played a very important part in Indian Hermeneutics on the Bible, especially the New Testament. I found around this time a small booklet brought out by a Hindu Ashram dedicated to St. Mira (an Indian woman mystic) which was entitled “The Face of the Buddha.” A blurb at the beginning of this booklet says “This book, “THE FACE OF THE BUDDHA”, has been published by the Mira Union in connection with the 78^th birthday of Sri T.L.Vaswani (25-11-57) and distributed at a public meeting which will be held in St. Mira’s Hall, Pune.” Sri Vaswani and the St. Mira Union which he founded in Pune is well known for its charitable work, and it is this spirituality of ‘seva’ that he stresses in his understanding of the Buddhist legend of Ananda and the outcaste woman at the well.

In this booklet, on page 20 we read:

The Buddha taught his disciples to see the One Life in all and to respect the least among the lowly and the lost.

Ananda, passing one day by a well and seeing an “untouchable” girl drawing water, asks her for water to drink. She humbly says:--“Oh thou of noble birth! I am an untouchable. How can I give thee water to drink?”

Ananda answers:--“Cast matters nothing to me. I ask for water”.

She gives him water to drink. He drinks it with joy. On learning that Ananda is a disciple of Gautama Buddha, she goes to the Blessed One and says to him –“Master! Teach me the Way of Dhamma”

And the Buddha says to her:--“Blessed art thou! I teach thee the Dhamma of compassion and service”

*****************************************************************

I am not sure where this incident comes from in the Buddhist tradition. That is not mentioned by Sri Vaswani. But it is clear that what Sri Vaswani wants to bring out here is the Dhamma of Compassion and Service, which was central to his work in the St. Mira Union.

However, this event is expanded by the poet Rabindranath Tagore in his little three act play entitled CHANDALIKA. (Rabindranath Tagore: A Tagore Reader Ed. By Amiya Charkavarty. Beacon Press Boston 1966) The play has been translated I believe by Marjorie Sykes, who sent me this play because of my interest in the link of this Buddhist story and the Gospel of St. John.

Well, I cannot give the whole play, but the following dialogue between the Chandala (outcaste) girl and her Mother gives something of the spirit of this little play.

Mother: (calling) Come here. I must talk with you. (To herself) At the well at this time of the day when the earth is burning like a furnace, and water for the day already brought from the well. (Prakriti enters) All the other girls of the village have gotten on with their work, and you sit and melt in the sun for no reason—unless you want to repeat Uma’s penance. Is that why you sit there ?

Prakriti: Yes, Mother.

Mother: Good Heavens! And for whom?

Prakriti: He who has called me.

Mother: Who has called you ?

Prakriti: His words are ringing in my mind: “Give me water”

Mother: “Give me water” God grant it was not some one outside our caste!

Prakriti: He said he was one of us.

Mother: Did you tell him you are a chandalika?

Prakriti: Yes, but he said, “Do not deceive yourself with names. If you call the black cloud a chandal, does it cease to be what it is? Does the water it carries lose its value for our earth? Do not degrade yourself, for self-degradation is a greater sin than suicide.” I can remember every word he spoke to me. He spoke so beautifully to me.

Mother: What nonsense are you saying? Or are you remembering a story from some former birth?

Prakriti: I am telling you the story of my new birth.

Mother: Your new birth ? You are no more my daughter, Prakriti? Tell me. When did this happen?

Prakriti: That noontime while I was washing the motherless calf at the well a yellow-robed monk came and stood before me and said, “Give me water”. I sprang up and did obeisance. When I found my voice I said, “I am a daughter of the Chandals and the water of this well is polluted by my family’s use” He said, “You and I are of the same family. All water that quenches thirst and relieves need is pure” I never heard such words before and with these chandal hands, which never before would have dared touch the dust of his feet, I poured water for him.

Mother: You silly girl, how could you dare such an act? Do you foget who you are and the destiny of your birth?

Prakriti: No, but the cup of water he took from my hands seemed to become an infinite ocean in which all the seven seas flowed together. They drowned my family, my caste and my birth.

Mother; How strange! How strange you are! Even your language is changed. It’s not your own. You are under some one’s spell. What are you saying? Do you understand your own words ?

Prakriti: Was there no water to be had anywhere else in this whole village? Why did he come to this particular well? Why did he come Mother, if not to bless me with a new life? Surely, he was seeking an occasion for such a deed. In a holy place he could not have found water that would give him the opportunity to further the mission of his life. He said : “So Seeta bathed in water such as this, which was fetched by a chandal Guhak, at the beginning of her exile in the forest.”

Mother; Child, listen to me. I do not like this. These monks have a way of changing other people’s minds by words. Today I can hardly understand you. Tomorrow your very face may seem foreign to me. I am frightened.

I think that will give you some kind of flavour of the direction that Tagore’s play takes. He sees the event as also having erotic overtones. The theme of Sringara, or erotic love, is essential to Indian drama. Of course even in the Bible the meeting at the well is also understood as a setting for a love scene, and marriage proposal as in the story of Rachel. Asking for water has all kinds of implications in Indian thought. In miniature paintings we see the young hero coming in the heat of the day to the well, and asking a girl to give him water. But this whole question of purity and pollution in relation to the water, is very typically an Indian concern. You get places in the city (at least in the old days) where there are three water pots, marked with signs showing that one is for Christians, the other for Muslims, and the third for Hindus. There are a number of songs of Kabir where he says that the water pots are different, but the water is the same. The earthen water pot symbolizes the body. Of course the whole incident is also seen as a critique of the caste system, at least in the Buddhist tradition. Ananda, who was meant to have been the beloved disciple of Buddha, rather like John was the beloved disciple of Jesus, was himself a convert from being an outlaw. That is another long story, but one which is important to the Buddhist tradition, where the outlaw bandit chases Buddha in order to kill him, but cannot catch up with the Buddha, who seems just to be walking, but cannot be reached. So the Bandit cries out Stop ! I cannot reach you! And the Buddha says to him: “The reason why you cannot reach me and touch me, is because you are running away from yourself” It is this bandit outlaw who then is converted, and becomes Ananda. So there are stories behind stories as is always the case in India.

Anyway, I thought you might be interested in the way this Buddhist story belonging to several centuries before Christ, is very similar to the Gospel account, though taking up perhaps different issues. There was a Jesuit priest called Fr. Ignatius Hirudayam in Madras, who started an Ashram called Aikya Alaya, or the house of Unity. He brought out a book entitle “In Spirit and In Truth” in 1985 just before he died, in which there are various essays by different people relating to the Ashram ideal. Of course these words “In Spirit and Truth” are also part of the dialogue between Jesus and the woman at the well.

In Sri Vaswani’s little booklet there is a small line drawing of the woman at the well with Ananda, which I believe comes from a set of paintings on the life of Buddha which is in the monastery at Sarnath, near Benares, where Buddha gave his first sermon. I find in this image two symbols given very prominent meaning. On the one hand there is the pot of the woman, from which the water is pouring out, and on the other hand there is the Buddhist monk receiving this water in his begging bowl. There is a whole meaning given in Buddhist tradition to the begging bowl of the monk, in particular to the begging bowl of the lord Buddha. There is a famous image in the caves at Ajanta, which shows the Lord Buddha in very much the same posture, with his begging bowl, and on the left side of the fresco we see his wife, carrying his child. The legend is that the Buddha returned to his home to beg for his child.

There is an important legend in South India about the begging bowl of Buddha which is discovered by an low caste dancing girl, who uses this bowl to feed the hungry. Ananda Coomaraswamy sees in this legend a parallel to the Holy Grail tradition in the West. Anyway, that is another aspect of this Waters of Eternal Life idea which we find all over the world, and which is certainly very important in India.

I hope that this information may be of some use to you. I have certainly enjoyed tracking down some of this material among my own notes, as the theme of the Woman at the Well has been an important one in Indian Christian art, probably because of the whole caste and Dalit issue. In fact I have noted that in Indian Christian art this story, and also the Journey to Emmaus, have been seen as important Gospel narratives which resonate with Indian spirituality.

Finally, going through the notes I have typed out here I would like to mention that in Tagore’s play the Chandal girl is called Prakriti. This word actually means nature. So in a way Tagore is also relating the woman at the well to Nature. Perhaps one could find in this approach also an ecological significance, in that the monk/Guru who represents the metacosmic spiritual dimension of Reality, comes to something very ordinary and earthly like a well, to ask for water to drink. In fact in his commentary on the “Dhvani interpretation of the Dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman” Fr. Mathew Vellanickal stresses :

The initiative is taken by God who meets us in ordinary circumstances of life and that in the midst of our existential problems. The human considerations and prejudices are often a hindrance to recognize God confronting us with a challenge to recognize Him in spite of appearances.

Only a recognition of our basic thirst for God and an awareness of our unrest resulting from going after one supposed satisfaction to another, will lead us to God, the authentic source of the living water that will quench our thirst for ever. Only passing through the painful process of self-discovery and self-exposure to the penetrating and purifying revelatory light and power of God we can reach the full recognition of God confronting us and be enriched by the living water that will quench for ever our thirst for life.

That, it seems to me, would be a very typical Indian interpretation of the story, both in the Gospel and the Buddhist tradition, that it is finally self knowledge, and an inner liberation from the illusion of names and forms that is the call of the Spiritual life. Could one say that in this dialogue at the well, we are presented with the outline of the “Yoga of Jesus” which is also the Way of Jesus. In one of the chapters in the collection of essays dedicated to Fr. Ignatius Hirudayam sj, founder of the Aikiya Alayam, which is entitled “In Spirit and in Truth” we find an exposition on the theme of Death and the New Life: A reading of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri by K.R.Srinivasa Iyengar (pp 67-81) Here Sri Aurobindo outlines in a poetic way, based on the legend of Savitri found in the Mahabharata, what he considers to be the Integral Yoga. Savitri goes down into the underworld to recover from Yama (who is also Dhamma) the soul that has died. It is this journey down into the very well of existence, that is the prelude to an ascent (symbolized by the mountain) which is also the discovery of that form of worship which is based on the Spirit and Truth.

In a way one could find in the story of the meeting by the Well, a Gospel version of the Song of Songs. The dialogue is about a relationship of covenant between heaven and earth. Jesus, of the house of David, is the new Solomon, who here encounters the feminine principle who is also Wisdom disguised in the person of one who has been despised and rejected by a male dominated culture. We are reminded of the story of Jacob who met Rachel by a well.

“As he looked he saw a well in the field, and lo, three flocks of sheep lying bside it; for out of that well the flocks were watered. .....

Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she kept them. Now when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother’s brother, Jacob went up and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother. Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and wept aloud. And Jacob told Rachel that he was her Father’s kinsman, and that he was Rebekah’s son; and she ran and told her father...”

Gen. 29

This becomes the basis of one of the most famous love stories in the Bible. And it is precisely at this well that Jesus meets the woman who challenges him: “Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle ?” John 4 12.

In Tagore’s understanding of the Buddhist story of Ananda meeting an outcaste woman at the well, the discussion is not just an abstract exchange on philosophic issues, but a real meeting of hearts, which is the beginning of her own journey in search of spiritual self understanding. In the Indian context we need to discover again this dimension of the deep bond between the male and the female which is also essential for the Integration Process in every human being. It is that relationship of covenant as love, which is stronger even than death, that the Song of Songs celebrates.

Set me as a seal upon your hear ; as a seal upon your arm

For love is strong as death---many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.” Song of Songs 8:6,7

Jyoti Sahi. 25-06-2009

ART AS DIALOGUE

2011-06-04T03:16:00.000-07:00

An image which I find myself often returning to is the story of Jesus conversing with a Samaritan woman at the well. I feel that this dialogue between a Jewish Rabbi and a woman who was considered by orthodox Jews as an outcaste, is similar to the dialogue between Ananda, one of the main disciples of the Buddha, and a Dalit woman who he asked to give him some water to drink. Finally the issue was concerning the line between purity and pollution, between water which should be for all, and which is essential for life on this planet earth, and the ritual distinctions which are made between individuals and communities. Rabindranath Tagore wrote a drama about the meeting of Ananda and the outcast woman. The Indian theologian George Suaris, wondered whether this Buddhist story, which is also a parable, could have influenced the narrative which we find in the Gospel of John. The story is in that sense not only about the relation of Jesus or Ananda, with a particular woman, but about the basis for dialogue itself. I have felt that the story could be the beginning of a dialogue between the Christian tradition, and the essence of Indian spirituality. It is about a meeting which takes place beyond boundaries. I made a sketch of a mural which is in a Buddhist prayer hall, of Ananda the wandering pilgrim and ascetic monk, receiving water from the woman at the well. The same theme is also represented by a Buddhist monk artist in Sri Lanka who is here actually depicting not the Buddhist story, but his understanding, as a Buddhist, of the story of Jesus with the woman at the well. What struck me about this picture was that the woman is not alone, and it is not just a dialogue between the Guru and the disciple, but the woman is part of a whole community. In the Biblical story, the woman who comes to the well is alone with him, and it is only later that the disciples find Jesus talking to a woman, and that too a Samaritan, and feel shocked. And then it is later that this woman goes and tells her other Samaritan villagers about Jesus, and wonders if he is in fact a Prophet. In my own paintings on this theme, I suggested that the Woman was not only the human person, but was the water itself. Jesus in this dialogue is addressing, like Francis who talked to the birds, the whole of Creation.

COMMUNION: ART as SACRAMENT.

2011-06-04T02:51:00.000-07:00

Communion implies a process of communication. But the word is also about the sacramental in life. Communion reminds us of the importance of food, and how eating together was not just a matter of sustaining the body, but also of sustaining relationships, within the community, but also with the whole of nature. The Upanishads remind us that everything is in a sense food. At this time, when increasingly we are made aware of an ecological crisis which threatens to affect the very sources of food, and therefore of life, we see once more that eating is related to how we communicate not only with our own bodies, and those near to us, but also with the whole environment. One of the most important images of the future age in the Biblical tradition was the idea of the Feast, which is also a festival. Finally life is about celebration, of being filled, and fulfilled, and of sharing what we have with others. This then is also the most basic theme in art. Art should be a festival of life. It is a coming together in order to share life. That is why the last supper of Jesus has made such a powerful impression on the imagination of artists. In the Jewish, and also the whole Middle Eastern culture, eating is about sharing, about hospitality, and eating out of the same vessel. Jesus shared what he was eating literally with those who were at table with him. It was in a way a physical sharing, which crossed all boundaries; which made people of one body, and one heart. The figure of John leaning his head against the breast of Jesus during that last meal together, was the original symbol of the "Sacred Heart". Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, and that too is part of the shared meal, having a sacramental significance.

A COSMIC SIGN.

2011-06-04T01:45:00.000-07:00

In the book of Revelations, we are given various cosmic signs. The human being receives Divine Portents, which show not only the future, but what it is to be human here and now. The artist, it is said, makes visible the invisible. Kabir speaks of the 'sign within the sign'. An important figure of the Book of Revelations, is the sign of a Woman who is in the Wilderness, and who is about to give birth. What is being symbolized is the immanence of a new heaven and a new earth. The function of art, both visual and also written or spoken, is to remind us of a world which exists in the human imagination. This world is in a sense a "Dream", but the dream finally is as real as the phenomenological world that we witness through our physical senses. Without the dream we would not be human, we would not be searching for something beyond what we presently experience through our bodily senses. Without the dream, humanity would be simply blind, having no inner spiritual vision.

THE SPIRITUAL WOUND.

2011-06-04T00:49:00.000-07:00

The image of the Wound has played an important part in spiritual imagery. A liturgical Collect says "Grant, O Lord, that in your wounds we may find our safety." A hymn says "Hide me in your wounds". The artist Joseph Beuys used to say to his students: "Show me your wounds!" Here the wound is understood as a source of creativity, and a new vision of Reality. The mystic Kabir said that only those who are wounded by the Word, can understand the sufferings of others. One of the most moving images that many Christian artists have treated is that of the doubting Thomas who demanded to see the wounds of the Risen Christ, before he would believe. In my painting of this theme I have represented Thomas as a high caste believer looking at the wounds of a tribal or Adivasi Jesus. The image of the parable of the son who returns to his Father and Brother after repenting a dissolute life, has fascinated many artists. Rembrandt's last masterpiece which is now on view in Russia, shows the return of the son, embraced by his Father. It has been suggested that the youth who is returning is a self portrait, as also is the figure of the old Father who receives the son with love and compassion. In a strange way the figure of the son who comes back represents an essential element of the human condition, and is not just a sign of misery and defeat, but also of a transformation which reveals what is most precious in the heart of humanity, and what is most creative in human relationships.

A BURNING MADONNA.

2011-06-04T00:24:00.000-07:00

There has been a long tradition in Christian art of the "Black Madonna". All along the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela, we find shrines dedicated to the Black Madonna. There are many theories concerning why she is black. The Black Madonna of Czestochowa, Queen of Poland, is not only represented as dark, but also scarred. On her cheeks we can see the wounds created by three slashes, thought by some to have been inflicted later on this icon supposedly painted by St. Luke. This figure of the dark Madonna is evoked in times of suffering. She is the guardian of the pilgrim who has to face many difficulties on the way. The Indian artist Frank Wesley often represented Mary as a dark featured Dalit or Adivasi woman. She is somehow a primordial feminine figure from which human culture as we know it emerged. She is like the dark earth, out of which the seed of human consciousness is born. Through her suffering she can identify with the suffering of her son, but also the suffering of all human beings. In the Gospel of Luke, the Prophet Simeon says to Mary: "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed, so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed; and a sword will pierce your own heart too!"

TRANSFORMING FIRE

2011-06-04T00:03:00.000-07:00

Fire has played a very important part in all religious imagery. In India Agni, the god of Fire, is also described as the Priest of the Word, and a third of the hymns of the Rig Veda are dedicated to this deity. Perhaps the central mystical experience that lies at the very heart of the Abrahamic Faiths, concerns the vision of Moses as a young shepherd, seeing the Burning Bush in the desert. The Indian mystic and seer Sri Ramana Maharshi also speaks of this encounter of Moses with the ultimate meaning of the universe. He points out that what Moses discovers in the wilderness is a God whose name was "I AM who AM". Ultimately this God is beyond name and form, and yet it is a power (in Hebrew it is called the Shekinah, which psychologist Carl Jung also relates to the Indian concept of Shakti) which transforms without consuming or burning to ashes. Thus there is a vast literature of Biblical interpretation called Midrash, which concerns the inner significance of this burning bush, which according to the narrative, was just an ordinary thorn bush; something quite useless and fruitless in the desert, in which the Divine Presence was manifested to the prophet Moses. There is a saying of the artist Michaelangelo to the effect that underlying all forms are the fiery shapes of flames. In Christian iconography the Burning Bush is related to Mary, in whose womb the Word of God was conceived. But this flaming tree also challenges human war and hatred, symbolized by a road of sculls, and the figure of the Hero who is a fighter. There are many myths which assert that ultimately it is the flames of sacrifice which create the universe. These flames could be related to the Golden Egg, at whose centre there is a heat that incubates life.

REPRESENTING SUFFERING

2011-06-03T23:40:00.000-07:00

Traditionally Indian spiritual art has avoided representing suffering. Though the mood of suffering (Dukha or Shokha) has been a concern of all profound reflections on the human condition, the tendency of the Vedanta, and later Buddhist thought, has been to see this suffering as the result of ignorance, and reality as perceived through our condition within Maya, or the world of illusion. As art is supposed to aspire towards the Real beyond illusion, it has been thought improper to represent suffering, along with other forms of distortion or degradation. Ultimately art should point to that which lies beyond the passing and illusory. However, there has also been what we might term a counter-cultural stream in Indian iconography which has recognized that darkness, and the negative aspects of experience, do carry a significance that reveals a process of transformation. Kali, the dark and terrifying image of destruction, is an example of this other aspect of the Indian religious imagination. At the beginning of the Ramayana we are reminded that out of Sokha, or suffering, comes Slokha, or poetic utterance. The cry of the poet recognizing the finite, and passing aspect of existence; its transitoriness, and constant dependence on the processes of change, lead to a deeper recognition of how suffering is also an aspect of our passage through time. The Indian artist Frank Wesley, who very much influenced my art, often represented this dark image of suffering against the red background which we find in many Indian images. In the picture represented above of Cain slaying Abel, the red background shows both suffering but also an aspect of the Eternal which lies like a mystery behind the dark veil of human travail. Images of the body like the seed that falls to the ground, or the broken vessel of clay, are signs both of the human condition of suffering, but also a hope that lies beyond that suffering, pointing to a fire that also transforms.

ELEMENTAL SYMBOL OF LIFE

2011-06-03T09:29:00.001-07:00

Basic forms which we find in nature, like the form of the seed, or the leaf, or the egg, can become potent metaphors for life. These shapes that are organic, relate also to the forms that we see in the human body. So the branch of an olive tree can be also seen as an image of the Mother and child. The abstract letter like the Sanskrit figure of the sound AUM, can be seen as representing the shape of a bird in flight. All abstract patterns interlink to give rise to a symbolic language. Every visual sign can become meaningful, evoking a spiritual reality behind external forms in nature.

THE MOTHER AS VESSEL

2011-06-03T09:15:00.000-07:00

The vessel has been an elemental icon in many cultures. In India the pot containing water has been a folk symbol of the presence of life within the context of the home. The body itself is related to the vessel. The fruit like the pomegranate, which from ancient times was associated with fertility. The earthen vessel, or the fruit represent the womb from which all life flows.

CARING AS SHARING

2011-06-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

The structure of the enclosing form, as in the Indian concept of the Mandala or circle, represents opposing impulses. There is a relation of the triangle to the circle that symbolizes the dynamic opposition between the tendency to enclose, and the will to break open. Here we find a tension between the image of a protecting boundary, challenged by a movement that breaks out of a circumferencc representing both a form that holds, yet also prevents life from fulfilling its purpose. Such images symbolize the seed that embodies the future of life and growth. In the new year festival of Pongul in South India, the newly harvested crop of grain is cooked in a vessel which then overflows, symbolizing life's abundance. The child ventures out of the embracing care of the Mother, and this movement represents both a promise to the future, but also a suffering that accompanies the process of giving birth.

THE IMAGE OF CARING

2011-06-03T02:51:00.000-07:00

Caring implies enclosure, and the Mother figure is perhaps the oldest image of caring. The Mother also symbolizes the earth, and this idea of caring has a cosmic dimension. Caring is an important aspect of compassion, and leads to a sense of caring for nature. Ecological ideas can be expressed visually, by showing that underlying the forms of nature, is the structure of the enclosing space, like that of an egg. This is also the image of the home, which protects, and also nurtures.

RELATING ART TO COMPASSION.

2011-06-01T07:02:00.000-07:00

I would like to publish in this blog, and a number of other entries that I have now put onto my blog, my concern that art should be a healing process. Here I am not just thinking of painting, or of writing, but of life as a whole. Some years ago a French priest called Fr. Thiery came to visit me. He was interested in art and compassion. He showed me a number of paintings that he had collected from different countries where he has been active, that concerned compassion. What do we mean by "compassion"? Is it just another word for "pity", which would imply an attitude that often seems to make individuals dependent, and to lose a sense of self worth. Compassion, I would suggest is not the emotion of pity. Rather it is a liberating energy that values human beings for what they are. Yes there is the idea of service, of self sacrifice, of being available to others, and sharing in their suffering. But what we are calling compassion, should ultimately be something joyful and transforming. That is the idea of compassion that I have tried to explore through my own art. Compassion affirms life, and also has a profound sense of hope. It looks for the beautiful, and is linked to a whole attitude to creation and the elemental, which sees the spirit as being at one with the physical. I also believe that it is through compassion that we can dialogue with other people, and discover what is beautiful and meaningful in their own spiritual lives. This is how I would understand art as compassion, being also in the service of inter faith dialogue.

THE YOGA OF COMPASSION

2011-06-01T06:45:00.000-07:00

The word "Yoga" comes from the root "Yuj", to join. It is related to the Latin "Juga" as in "Conjugal". The coming together of opposites, to creat a new wholeness, is the purpose of Yoga. That is why Sri Aurobindo referred to what he called "Integral Yoga". I have thought about the relation of Yoga to art. Can we speak of a "Yoga of Art"? I would suggest that the "Yoga of Art" is linked to Compassion. In the gestures known as "Surya Namashkar" or the "Greeting to the morning sun" which are essentially Yogic postures, we find the movement of touching the earth, falling down and being one with the earth, but then lifting up again, like the serpent that lifts its body from the horizontal. This process of going down, and then again being lifted up is the process known to Kundalini Yoga, which pictures the energy of life lying at the base of the spinal column as being like a coiled serpent. This inner spiritual energy of life has to be "lifted up", becoming a sign of the mental awareness of the mind. In a mysterious dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus, which took place at night, Jesus told Nicodemus that the "son of man" will have to be "lifted up" like the Serpent who was lifted up by Moses in the desert, for the healing of people. The lifted serpent is also a sign of healing. As I have understood art as compassion, I have also thought of art as healing. What is lowest in the human being, most reptilian, most connected to the earth, and the underworld, has to be "lifted up", that is made conscious. That is the healing process, which is also the Yoga of Art. It is here that these disciplines of healing, compassion and art all come together as a praxis that relates the human to the body, and beyond the body to the whole of nature.

THE IMAGE OF WINGS.

2011-06-01T06:25:00.000-07:00

In the poetic vocabulary of mystics, wings have a special meaning. It is as though human beings have always wanted to fly. The pheonix is a bird who has been important in Iranian symbolism, in that this bird rises again from the ashes. It is a fire bird, and is associated with the heavens. But it is also a bird of transformation. In a series of paintings that I did recently for a Menonite community in North America, I took the idea of Food as transforming. The image of the Pelican is another important symbol to be found in iconography, because according to ancient beastiaries, the Pelican feeds its young on the blood of its own heart. This poetic image of the self-sacrificing creature which also represents the spirit of Creation, we can find the idea that sacrifice lies as the very basis of the creative process. The Divine Presence is also understood as Being who overshadows Creation with His wings. In the Biblical Psalms, the image of wings is often used to indicate that God is compassionate, and that creation is sheltered under the wings of the Divine. This is probably the reason why the Spiritual energies that guard creation and are called Angels, are also represented as having wings. Wings allow the soul to fly, and in that way cross over boundaries. In many poems of the devotional singers of India, the Divine is compared to the bee that hovers over the flower, which again is a symbol of Creation.

The Thirthankara. Crossing the waters of life.

2011-06-01T06:06:00.000-07:00

The image of crossing over the waters of life is an important metaphor in many religious traditions. We find in India that the Thirthankara of the Jaina spiritual tradition, is the one who shows the way across the Thirtha or source of life. In this gigantic, cosmic figure of Shravana Belgola in Karnataka, we see that at the feet of this Cosmic Person, are ant hills, and creepers that grow up his legs. It is as though the whole of creation is related to this Primal Person, who in the Hindu vedanta is called the 'Purusha', and in Greek culture was known as the 'Anthropos'. The mystic Sri Ramanuja Acharya who settled on the mountain of Melkote, not so far from Shravana Belgola, the whole earth is the body of God. He uses the metaphor of the spirit related to the body, to understand how the Divine is related to the phenomenological world as we experience it with our physical senses. This understanding of the earth as related to the Divine Spirit, imanent in Creation, is also found in the thought of Christian mystics like Teilhard de Chardin who tried to find a bridge between modern science and spiritual insights. Such an understanding helps us to give a spiritual basis to our present Ecological understanding, concerning the fudamental interconnectedness of all aspects of nature and the Cosmos. Some are calling this spiritual approach to the environment an Eco-theology. This would give us a sense that we are all responsible to respect the physical reality of the world in which we live, if we are to cross over the waters of life, to find what is often referred to as the "further shore" of liberation.

COMPASSIONATE TEACHER.

2011-06-01T05:35:00.000-07:00

In 1980 I was commissioned to paint a large picture on Jesus the Teacher, which is now in the Ecumenical Centre in Whitefield, Bangalore. The idea of this painting was to show that the essential teaching of the Guru Jesus is about compassion. He represents the Burning Bush, which Moses saw in the desert, and which when he approached it, asked him to remove his shoes as the ground was holy. Then a voice from the fire said: "I am who am: YHWH. I have seen the suffering of my people!" This was the central revelation of the One who is beyond any name, as the name YHWH cannot be pronounced, as it has no vowels revealed to us. So the Jewish people referred to this Lord as Adonai, the Holy One of Israel. But still, this mysterious "I AM" whose word resounds in the Universe, is also an eye, that sees the suffering of human beings, and other creatures. This eye is also the Third Eye, and is an eye which sheds a tear, in which human beings are born. I painted this image soon after the notorious 'Bagalpur Blindings', which shocked the nation. At that time Dalits in Bihar were blinded, and this cruel act revealed a blindness in the whole social system that allowed such a thing to happen. The Compassionate Teacher is concerned about blindness, and the human need to be awakened, and see the reality. This theme of vision as opposed to blindness is I feel the basis for an art which emerges out of compassion.

The Liberating Dance.

2011-06-01T05:07:00.000-07:00

The image of the dance seems to be central to all cultures. The dancer in some way breaks free from the gravity that weighs the body down, and makes it inert. The dancer crosses over boundaries, and steps over obstacles. This movement reveals the working of Grace, that which liberates the creature from the inertia of the world and its cares. The image of the dance is closely related to an understanding of what 'liberation' is all about. It is a "pass over" to another world, a stepping across from darkness into light. The Biblical psalmist speaks of leaping forth in joy, of being delivered from the deeps of inner turmoil and suffering. Life emerges from the primal waters, like the lotus stem that comes up from the dark and muddy depths of a pool, to reach for light, and blossom above the waters. In the Christian tradition, the Risen Christ first descends into the underworld, in order to liberate all those who have died. This is called the 'Anastasis', and is represented in Christian iconography as a kind of dance. The Risen Lord steps over the waters of death, he passes over the encircling streams of life to reach the "further shore". These are all poetic images which describe a spiritual process of transformation. In the same way the 'Lord of the Dance' or 'Nataraja' in the Shaivite tradition, is the Creator who is both a giver of life, but also a destroyer of all that stops us from being set free. He carries the fire of destruction and transformation, while at the same time assuring his disciples that they should not fear, and beating the drum of the rhythms of the Cosmos. As he dances he steps across the demon of darkness and blindness, showing the way to a new life.

The Spiritual Power of the Elements.

2011-06-01T04:48:00.002-07:00

Fire, water and Earth are not just elements that we have to try and harness in order that human cultures can develop and gain control of our environment. Rather, these elements have a spiritual meaning. It is this spiritual energy within the elemental reality of our world that gives our art forms a link to what moves the whole of creation. The artist is concerned with the elemental. The potter, for example, works with clay, but this means also working with water that makes clay supple and pliant in the process of creating new forms. Air also helps in fashioning the clay object, filling the space within its hollowed out interior, and in that way helping in the process of drying, so that the clay does not crack and fall into pieces. Finally it is in the fire that the clay form is made permanent, uneffected by the power of water to disolve earthen bodies, reducing all living beings to the undifferentiated matter of mother earth. This process of creating a vessel or image out of clay, has been understood as symbolizing the transformation of nature by art. Only by understanding this process of transformation that is going on in the elemental world, can we begin to also realize an inner power that shapes our lives, giving meaning to all human cultures.

The Fiery Heart of the Cosmos.

2011-06-01T04:24:00.000-07:00

At the heart of the Cosmos there is a fire, and it is the discovery of this fire that helped human beings to create cultures. The image of the hearth, but also the furnace in which matter is transformed by fire, has been related to the energy that lies in the pulsating heart. Without this energy there could be no life. But how are we to understand this energy that drives the life stream of the Universe? I would relate this energy to Compassion, which is a concern for the suffering, but also the liberation, of all creatures. In the Buddhist Mahayana tradition, Salvation will only finally come about when the whole of Creation is liberated, right down to the last blade of grass. St. Paul speaks of the whole creation travailing, and groaning for the liberation of the human community. Human suffering is enmeshed with the suffering of the rest of nature. The process of enlightenment is not just an escape from nature, and the world as we know it, but rather a willingness to return to the earth, and work alongside all creatures in the search for a spiritual freedom. This, I feel is the true meaning of the Cosmic Dance. By participating in that rhythm that binds all creatures together in a cosmic movement of life, we begin to realize the meaning of the Word, which is the primordial Sound that underlies all forms of existence. This Word, or Shabda, is what all mystics intuitively recognize as the Unity of Being. It is like the breath that enlivens the body. It is like the bread that we all need in order to nourish the body.

THE ANGEL OF COMPASSION

2011-06-01T04:01:00.000-07:00

In primal cultures there was a belief in the angelic forces in nature. In the Judeo-Christian tradition these Angels were known as Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Azrael. They were the guardians of Creation. They represented the Divine Compassion active in Creation. The Angels would appear to human beings, often as they travelled on the way, and were in difficulties. An Angel appeared to the prophet Elijah when he was feeling defeated, and hopeless. The Angel gave him food and drink, and told him to set out on his journey which was a long way to the Holy Mountain. And so he had the strength to walk for forty days through the wilderness. There are many other stories of these Spirits of the Cosmos coming to help, and encourage human beings on their spiritual search. Recently we had a meeting of young people coming from the Western Ghats in South India. One of the participants painted a picture of an Adivasi couple in the forest, who are spoken to by the ancestral spirit of the tree. It is this Spirit of the Forest that challenges the way in which human development is destroying the natural environment. Can we imagine an Angel of Ecology, who reminds us of the profound inter connectedness between the human being as part of a community, that includes all creatures and binds the individual to the whole Cosmos? We are part of a vast fabric of beings. And it is this web of life, and inter dependence of all living beings on the Wholeness of Reality, that the spiritual energies of the Cosmos remind us of.

COMPASSION as the UNITY IN ALL

2011-06-01T03:25:00.000-07:00

Compassion, Karuna, is a wisdom that has an insight into the unity of all things. This wisdom enlightens those who are willing to see, or discover this unity. The gesture, or Mudra, of giving, is the hand that reaches down to touch the earth, and in return the earth itself acknowledges that this Wisdom unites all beings. We may discover this Wisdom in the vision of the Lord Buddha, or nearer our own times, in the poetic understanding of St. Francis of Assisi, who in his Canticle of All Creatures, sees that there is a love or bond between all natural elements; between fire and water, earth and air, sun and moon. Singing of this unity it is said that he picked up two sticks which he found in a small wood where he was living as a wandering friar. He did not possess a musical instrument, but with the two pieces of wood he pretended that he was playing an instrument by rubbing them together, as if to create a sound. Then suddenly as he was dancing and singing, he thought of the Cross, as a musical instrument, on whose vertical and horizontal beams the music of the Universe was played. Thinking of this he began to shed tears. Another mystic, Julian of Norwich, had a vision of the hand of God, in which there was a small hazel nut. She was told by a voice in her vision, that this small nut was in fact the whole world.

KARUNA: Cosmic Compassion

2011-06-01T00:08:00.000-07:00

In Indian thought, 'Karuna' or Compassion, transcends the individual, and even the human, and is seen as the energy that brings the whole of Creation to birth. It is this concept of Compassion, that also helps us to understand the deep connection between different religious traditions. All Faiths speak of Compassion, and the concern of the Divine within the human for those who suffer. This compassion is essentially creative, in that it releases that energy flowing in the hearts of all living and sensient or sensitive beings; caring for the Other, and cooperating in the eternal process of bringing all things to birth. It is in that sense that we would like to understand art as an expression of Compassion; and it is through this creative impulse that we call art, that there can be a dialogue between Faith traditions, and also a longing, and hope, for the future of our planet earth.

THE BODY AS A FIELD

2011-05-24T07:11:00.000-07:00

Kabir begins with an understanding of the body as a field. The task of being aware of our own reality is a recognition of the fact that we have to first of all recognize our bodies.

You didn’t take care

So the deer has eaten up your field.

I’m the owner of this field

Stay awake a thief will steal into your town

You won’t see him come or go

Inside you he will roam around.

Stay alert, the thief will come !

He won’t wreck any fort, raze any castle

He won’t show you any form.

Your wealth, and riches, goods, and treasures

Will be left behind

Says Kabir, this land is deserted.

No one here is yours

You came with your fist clenched

You go with your hands outstretched.

The idea of the relation between the human community to the land, lies at the very basis of a sense of identity. One can say that cultural geography sees that we find our cultural identity not just in the past, or a sense of memory, but also a feeling that we belong to a particular space, which gives us a living home. It is in this context that we can find in the poetic tradition of Kabir’s imagery is an ecological acceptance of the earth as the body of God.

THE BODY AS A VESSEL OF CLAY

2011-05-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

In this body, a vessel of clay

It will shatter, it will not resound.

In this body a string of pearls,

The thread snaps, the pearls scatter.

In this body a market bustles.

Strike a bargain with a good saint.

In this body, a garden of flowers.

In Kabir we find a rich complex of images related to the body. In fact, one could say that his understanding of reality is profoundly embodied. Perhaps one of the most primary images of the body sees it as a vessel made out of clay. Finally this clay body is destined to break, and crumble back into the earth again. Learning with Kabir involves a process of getting students to experience their own bodies, and realise in this way their own physical identity. Making images of the body helps a child, and also an adult, to see the link between the human and the rest of creation. We are all part of a greater body, which is a cosmic whole.

THE BODY AS A WOVEN GARMENT.

2011-05-24T06:56:00.000-07:00

This cloth—fine so fine!

Woven with the flavour of God’s Name,

Resplendent with three qualities,

This cloth—fine so fine !

I gave it to the washerman

He pounded it , and gave it to the dyer.

What a colour he gave it !

Steeped in red !

Wear this cloth, don’t be afraid

It’s yours for a brief two days.

Your servant Kabir wore it with care

He gave it back as he got it.

Kabir the weaver, never separated the spirit from the body. Unfortunately, what some call the “Cartesian classroom” which prevails in our present educational institutions, separates the mind from the body, so that learning is often only about the forming of the intellectual mind. The child, however, has a more holistic understanding of reality, which includes the mental awareness of an outer world, and an inner consciousness of how this outer world touches the body, through the emotions, and intuitive longings of the heart. What a process of “Learning with Kabir” should make the teacher sensitive to, is the link between the physical reality of the body, and the conscious functioning of the mind, which tries to discover the meaning of life.

THE BODY: IMAGE AND WORD

2011-05-24T06:53:00.000-07:00

How do images of the body fuse with the inner meaning of the song ? There song is a primordial expression of a poetic vision of reality, but this song moves into dance. The rhythms of the song, accompanied by the beating of the drum, the striking of the cymbals, and the clapping of hands, suddenly bursts into movement. This movement is the embodiment of song in life. It is the beginning of gesture, word made visible by the body.

During the workshop we reflected on the images of the body that are to be found in the poems of Kabir. This is a very rich source of the visual metaphor, embedded in the very sound and meaning of the words that Kabir uses.

Oh wise ones!

This body is a splendid Tambura.

Tighten the strings, twist the pegs,

And it sings the song of the Lord.

The strings snap, the pegs lie scattered

The sweetness has turned to dust.

Don’t cling in vain to this body.

Its swan has flown away.

THE BODY AND AN EXPERIENCE OF DEATH

2011-05-24T05:33:00.000-07:00

This feeling for the material also means a recognition that the physical does not last. No clothes last, no pot can go on being useful for ever, as it is bound to eventually break, because the body itself is impermanent. This leads the poet who has this “material imagination” to look at nature itself as impermanent; the leaf that falls from the tree, cannot again be found. Buds are plucked to make garlands by the gardener, and in that process they too are found to have a beauty that passes away. This sense of impermanence seems to be part of what Kabir is understanding as being struck, or wounded by the word. And this woundedness helps the poet to feel compassion for all other creatures that are embodied, and have to come to terms with the experience of death, or being limited and finite.

Kabir is very conscious of the fact of life being a process of dying.

Just one day, just one moment.

The blink of an eye

Not a single moment can you take for granted.

I fear that day Oh Lord!

Meditate on this moment, friend

You won’t get another chance.

THE POET AS WEAVER.

2011-05-24T04:43:00.000-07:00

Reflecting on the issue of Kabir being a Dalit, or coming from a marginalized background, two aspects of his vision strike me. First of all there is his use of body symbols, connected with his physical involvement with the world around him. This is what I would understand as the “material imagination” that Gaston Bachelard talks about. He responds to the world, not just with his mind, his rational intelligence, but with his whole body. And this means that his work, that is as a weaver, or his appreciation of the work of others who are actively and directly engaged with the material reality of things, such as the potter, the washer or dyer of clothes,(dhobi) the worker with leather, or skins (chamar) or the person who is looking after plants (mali) and so on, have a deep imaginative engagement with the world which the person who does not work with materials has lost

The Song becomes like a primal cry. There is a deep relation between art and compassion, and this means that the world of the poetic image seems to arise from an encounter with the physical reality of the world, which involves a kind of suffering. It is almost like the baby born into this world has to cry in order to begin the process of breathing. The song seems to come up from the heart like a cry which is both an expression of an existential suffering, but also an affirmation of life.

THE TRUE GURU AS A POET

2011-05-24T04:15:00.000-07:00

Learning with Kabir could be understood as reflecting on the role of the Teacher, or Guru. What do we mean by the ‘Sat Guru’ or True Guru ? What is the relationship of Teacher to Student, adult to child in the Indian cultural tradition? This question could lead to a deeper understanding of the “Sat Guru” in the poetic world of Kabir; and also in the thought of other mystics like Ramana Maharishi, or again Tagore or Gandhi. In this context we may reflect on how Kabir’s poetry might help in understanding the learning process rooted in an Indian educational ethos. Kabir said that the Guru gives us the roots of wisdom. In that sense the Guru is not just the external person who has the function or role of being a teacher. The True Guru is wisdom itself which lies in everyone’s heart. It is this inner Guru that is also what the child needs to discover. The external teacher only helps the student to find that inner Wisdom that lies embedded in the heart.

If nine hundred rivers flow in your body,

Can the seven seas be too deep?

The Guru’s pool is full in your body,

Why wander feeling thirsty ?

Here the Guru figure is also the poet. The song itself becomes a teacher, leading us to an inner experience of wisdom.

SONG AS AN OUTPOURING OF THE HEART

2011-05-24T04:03:00.000-07:00

A theme in the poetry of Kabir that has always meant a great deal to me, is the idea that we are wounded by the Word. Those who are “struck” by the word, can understand the suffering of others, according to Kabir. In that sense Kabir represents an ancient tradition of the poet as a wounded healer.

He’s dug his spear into the ground

It strikes me in my heart !

My Guru has wounded me !

My true Guru pierced through me,

He put his finger on my pulse

And waves surged in my veins.

My heart rocked......

My true Guru is a healing herb in the courtyard,

Let everyone take it.

IMAGE AND SONG AS INTER RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

2011-05-24T03:53:00.000-07:00

I have been very much thinking along the line that art forms can contribute to a dialogue between cultures, and faith commitments, which is more inclusive than discussions based on dogmatic beliefs. One can affirm and appreciated what is beautiful, and deeply spiritual in another Faith tradition, in a way that the fundamentalist purist who argues from a standpoint of dogmatic beliefs can’t do. Image and song touches an inner world of symbol, which can be shared by all. Here image and song speak to the heart, and arise from an experience of the Divine in the world.

Kabir and Nature.

2011-05-24T03:49:00.000-07:00

The Monsoon from the Unseen realm is rising,

The cloud of love has burst on me.

Frogs, peacocks and cuckoos are calling

The Koel is singing a song.

There are no clouds, no lightening here

And yet it is thundering;

In your navel-lotus is a deep pool

Rivers from the Unseen are flowing....

Kabir’s poetic vision links us to nature. Entering into his poetry, we begin to dream a world where the human and the rest of creation are at one. The outer reality flows into an inner landscape, and an inner eye gazes on the beauty of the world around us. As Kabir said:

There is a drop in the ocean, this everyone knows

There is an ocean in every drop; this is not known to all.

LEARNING WITH KABIR

2011-05-24T03:14:00.000-07:00

Learning with Kabir workshop between May 18-May 20 2011

There were about thirty teachers from different parts of India, mainly Delhi, Baroda, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai.

A group of folk singers from Rajasthan led by the well known singer Mahesha Ram, were also there to sing in the morning and the evening, in a small open pavilion beside a water garden situated in the centre where we were gathered.

During this workshop we explored ways in which the spirit of Kabir, as expressed in his legacy of song, could inspire the way children are taught.

The Universe as a Mandala

2010-12-03T23:34:00.001-08:00

As an artist I have been especially interested in the structure of the Mandala. The Mandala form is well known in Tantric art, and is used as a visual form for meditation. The Mandala can be a two dimensional image, which is like an Icon, helping the mind to find a centre for reflection. But the Mandala is also a three dimensional form, which revolves like objects in outer space. Basic geometric shapes like the square, triangle, and sphere, are what underlie the Mandala as a plastic and visible form.