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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
