Well, Buddha is not only abiding but also immanent! In that the 14th annual art show is just around the corner. So, get your gorgeous works down to Art From Scrap Sunday the 22nd! Thomas Tarleton and Bill O'Malley will be there to receive you. I myself, am still living in Paris, awed by art everyday. Just today wandering around Les Marche aux Puces (Flea Market) was inspiring with many buddhas from around the world, painted, bronzed, happy, fierce, odd...
Also, I am including here a story I wrote about a month ago that includes a Buddhist perspective I think you'll appreciate:
Paris Stories 7 Mai
Saint Malo & The End of
Days
I was surprised when my
sculptor friend, Veronique, invited me to visit her at her flat near parc
Monceau, a chic neighborhood in the 8th Arrondissement. Happily I
took the metro to another unknown part of Paris.
She kept apologizing for the
apartment being so full of stuff. But of course I loved it because the stuff
was mostly art! Including these great hanging lamps she’d made with just
chicken wire and skinny wooden tongue depressors. We babbled away about art and
Buddhism while sipping Japanese tea. We even did a little yoga on the confetti
rug in the sunshine.
Suddenly she leapt up and
exclaimed, “I have to show you something!”
We walked across the street
to the musee Cernuchi, where Veronique ran us to an upstairs gallery and said,
“Close your eyes.” Taking my hand she led me into a space, then around
something. I was beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable when she said, “Now, open
your eyes”.
Looming before me on a
twenty-foot pedestal was this glorious 18th century, fifteen-foot
shiny black statue of Amithaba Buddha. Tears of wonder and gratitude percolated
up and I stood there in a kind of shock. What I learned so long ago, during the
ten years that I focused so thoroughly on the study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism,
continues to support me through every twist and turn of my life today. To be shown this great sculpture by my new
sculptor friend, to experience the power of an artist’s creation, somehow also assured
me that my annual art exposition, Buddha Abides, would take place this year.
And hopefully, it too would provide the kind of experience for others that I
was just blessed with.
Afterwards, we went for a
walk in the park. As we strolled beneath lush trees and beside lawns filled
with cavorting children, I told her that I didn’t know if I’d be able to extend
my three-month tourist visa, so was doing my best to be a good Buddhist and enjoy
every moment to the fullest and not get too attached to my desire to live in
Paris for a year.
“However,” I confessed, “there
is one dream I must fulfill before leaving: to go to Le Mont Saint Michel off
the coast of Brittany.”
She said, “I just happen to
be going to Saint Malo this weekend. That’s the town very close to it. I have a
car full of friends. But maybe you could take the train out and stay with me at
my house?” Wow! At Findhorn we used to call this kind of revelation, ‘Instant
manifestation’.
The next morning, Katie, a friend
of a friend from The States, who’d said she wanted to get together for coffee
weeks and weeks ago called, and said, “Let’s get together next week, when I get
back from Saint Malo.” Hmmm…
That afternoon, I got another
call. Danielle, whom I’d written off as
never hearing from was apologizing for not getting back to me for so long, and
invited me for coffee. We met at the oldest church in Paris, Notre Dame de Pre,
and then sat outside at Café Bonaparte sipping coffee and buttered toast (‘un
tartine’), chattering away. I said, “Before I leave Paris, I must go to Le Mont
Saint Michel. Strangely enough, two people I know are going to Saint Malo this
weekend, which is supposedly right near by.”
Danielle said, “ I’m taking
the train to Saint Malo on Wednesday. You could come with me and stay in my
guest room in my apartment on the seaside.” Ya’ think???
OK, ‘Divine-Plan-Mobile’, I
get it! Sheesh! Knock me on the head already. I’m going!
We left the café, walked to
her flat where she ordered our train tickets then and there. Done.
A couple days later, we met
at the Montparnasse train station where I hustled along behind her, barely
keeping up, as she marched us surprisingly fast in those three-inch boots, to
our ‘voiture’ and found our seats.
After a three-hour ride
through unremarkable countryside we arrived in an old, windy town, filled with rugged
stone houses with lacy turrets.
After being greeted by her
yellow lab, a love-hound named Stella with a wiggly butt and an old slipper in
her mouth, we went out on the terrace. There before us was an absolutely
enormous stretch of beach, lumpy little islands way off in the distance, and a
vast, darkening sky. A sliver of silvery light illuminated the horizon to the
west. On this stretch of coast, we were facing north, toward Great Britain.
In the morning, Danielle and
I hoofed it, AGAIN in those boots, into town where she could go to Mass and the
market, and I could catch the bus to Le Mont Saint Michel.
As the Jabba-the-hut-like bus
driver regaled us with facts and stories, we rumbled along for an hour through
the verdant countryside. Then he said, “Regarde, a gauche, a gauche [Look, to
the left to the left]!” There she was, a tiny shadowy pyramid on the horizon.
Centuries ago, thousands of
people made pilgrimages, walking for years to reach the mount. It was
Jerusalem. It was terrifyingly far out
in the ocean then, too. Many had never seen the likes of a tumultuous, rushing
sea. Once the waters receded, they had to run like maniacs across the vast
stretch of sand before the tidal bore came roaring back in like “galloping
horses”, pushing even the river back upon itself. They prayed desperately as
they ran, hoping beyond hope not to get pulled down by the ‘quick-sands of
Satan’ that lay hidden all across the way. You can imagine their elation upon
reaching their goal. They’d made it. They
were in Jerusalem. They were certainly ‘saved’!
Today there’s a shuttle
bus.
Not unlike the Shinto and Buddhist
shrines in Japan, the stone stairway up to the cathedral was filled with
souvenir and food vendors. But once past all the ‘money-lenders’ it was
marvelous to look up at the massive stone monument with its soaring gothic
arches. As I climbed up around and around the labyrinthian stairways I occasionally
got stuck when they became too narrow and had to double back and try another.
After exploring layer upon layer of dark, columned Catholic caverns, it was
refreshing to come upon the luscious green cloistered garden filled with purple
iris, where I lingered for a long time.
Then I walked out the vast
windy terrace, where I looked out on the lunar landscape of sweeping sand as
far as the eye could see.
Ok, so much for the
scenery. You get the picture. Now I have
to talk about the spiritual aspect of this experience. Here’s why: I have what Danielle, the almost-a-Catholic-nun
calls, “Questionable theology.” Now, not only is she devote, she is also a
relentless scholar, a tremendously respected writer and a very educated woman.
So, she’s probably right. BUT I’m a Buddhist! And one of the things I know to
be true from my non-theistic point of view is that nothing has inherent
meaning. We bring, create, and impose meaning to everything. For example, I’m sure
she would not well up upon seeing the Buddha statue at the Cernuchi museum. But
because of the mindboggling sweetness and wisdom and power of Buddhist
teachings and practices that I’ve experienced I brought a whole different
paradigm-view to the event.
She, on the other hand, is
devoted to the New Testament and all the meaning that book brings to her, especially,
the part about The End of Days. She waxes rhapsodic about the coming of the
End, and how important it is that I am wearing the medallion from the Cathedral
down the block from her where a nun had some apocalyptic vision. (I bought it at the Ventura flew market for
ten dollars.) She was so excited that I wanted to go to Le Mont Saint Michel
for the same reason, because he is the leader of all the angles against Satan
at The End, which, she is certain, is just around the bend.
Now, I have experienced
people worried and excited about The End of Days for decades. And when I read
historical fiction (yes, I’m not a scholar) there is always mention of End of
Days terrors in people all across Europe, it seems for centuries, dare I say,
two thousands years?
What do I glean from all
this? Well, one thing is that Christianity is and has always been a very apocalyptic
religion. And the orgasmic fervor with which they go on about it is sometimes
more frightening than the possibility. My friend David Spangler expresses it
perfectly. He calls it “Apocalypse Porn”.
Such a great distraction
from the fact that the way our husband brushes his teeth annoys us no end.
So when I was on the
terrace and I looked up to see the Neogothic spire with the gilded statue of
Saint Michael in full armor, I was really annoyed. What’s with the armor?
Aren’t angels immortal? He doesn’t need to wear armor. He’s invincible.
Yes, Duh, I know, it’s
metaphor for going into battle and all. But for me, the Buddhist, one of the truly
life changing experiences, dare I say epiphanies that I’ve had was a
realization that I, I as in the vast-spacious-joyous-everywhere-connected-to-everyone-and-everything
I, which isn’t an ‘I’ or a ‘who’ really (All those decades where I was asking
the wrong question: Who Am I?) but more of a state of being or ‘true nature’ as
they say in Buddhism, (here I am the very embodiment of babble about that which
is indefinable) is inviolable.
AND, one the most important
Buddhist things that I am dedicated to doing everywhere and always and with everyone
is: to dispel fear. Vanquish with disarmament. Ghandi did it. The Dalai Lama
does it. I think those guys are pretty damn good role models.
I think Saint Michael’s
role is to fill you with so much light and glittering perspective that the
darkness of misery, doubt, anger, aggression and division disappears. No
battle. No killing of dragons. Just pure, clear illuminating light. The Tibetan
word for this is Rigpa.
The truth is, The End of
Days is near for all of us all the time, because we are all gunna die
eventually. Right? So what can we do? We certainly cannot change that fact. We
might be able to delay it by not being an alcoholic, drug addict or Marine. All
we can really do in this moment, this present moment, no matter where we are, is
look around, take a breath and appreciate the beauty around us and knowing that
life is short, from the depths of our beings say, “Thank you, Thank you, Thank
you."
To quote Walt Whitman’s The
Open Road
“…From this hour I ordain myself
loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master
total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering
well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving,
contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will,
divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and
the north and the south are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much
goodness.
All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women:
You have done such good to me I
would do the same to you…”
The End.
Bisoux,
Lark
