The Importance of Unanswerable Questions

Recently, I've been wondering what makes something contemplative. Having just finished the second book on Nalanda Miksang Contemplative Photography with my teacher, John McQuade, and having just finished a round of contemplative writing weekly courses, I am poised at a spot of post-immersion and contemplating what it means to contemplate.

I get this question a lot: What is the contemplative aspect of these practices? Is it that we only write about or photograph content that "seems contemplative"? That's too restrictive a definition, and if people are hoping to illustrate a feeling of contemplative-ness in either words or pictures, they quickly find out that is a misconception in these two forms. Does it mean calligraphy, flower-arranging, in terms of forms? No, we can even do contemplative, angry, Jackson Pollock-like painting, if it is does from direct experience and perception.

So there is one answer, from my tradition(s): contemplative practices slow us down enough to connect with what is actually happening, and create from that place. In Shambhala Art teachings we call it "Square One" - the open unknown before we create ideas or concepts. Returning to that in writing, photography, calligraphy - or dance, painting - even in conversation, is essential for maintaining the open-minded and -hearted quality of contemplative practice.

My co-author, John McQuade, expressed it this way in our upcoming book, The Heart of Photography (due out July 1):

This direct contact with visual reality and the experience of harmonization of eye and mind is the first contemplative connection: to be there, with the “there,” through the there. This sounds abstract, but it could not be more sensuous and direct. You actually experience what you experience as you experience it. 

In addition to this open state, or in complement to it, is the importance of unanswered - and unanswerable - questions. Often newer writing students think contemplative writing must be "philosophical" - e.g. ask a lot of questions, ponder big things. In some ways, that is off - you could be following your mind and writing down a lot of purported answers and opinions, and that would be very contemplative, in the first sense of the word described above in these traditions. But in other senses, that is right on. The key is being with not knowing. Being contemplative doesn't just mean asking, "Does God exist?" - it means being willing to not have an answer. Being contemplative doesn't just mean wondering about the meaning of life, it means knowing it is likely not fully knowable. It turns out the way in to these big questions is through little questions, at least as one of my teachers, John McQuade, and my co-author, also expressed:

(C)ontemplative practices are meant to help us find ways into these big questions. Contemplative practices are little ways, like rocks in the stream, crossing from one side to the other. Rock by rock, step by step, we cross over. These little ways do not provide direct answers to these questions, but they do provide a path for us to engage them...            Generally, contemplatives do not ask big questions such as “What is the meaning of life?” Instead, they investigate little inquiries, such as “What is color as color?” through felt experiences that explore questions like “How does color as color feel? How does it manifest? How is our experience of color? What difference does color make to a situation?” and so forth.

How is it that engaging the small leads to a felt understanding of the large? We cannot answer huge questions with our tiny minds - it turns out the color of things, the shape, the texture - whether expressed in words or images, movements or touch - actually is a drop from the larger, an excerpt with all the full meaning of the large questions:

This contemplative engagement is not religious or philosophical. It is working directly with your ordinary, everyday experience, to release you from stress and help you open to everyday appreciation. Bit by bit, on the rock path through the river, we cross over from claustrophobic habit to natural freshness, from stress to delight, from the thing world to the phenomenal world, from conventional world to ordinary magic, from confusion to insight and wisdom.

Keep an eye on our website for updates on how to pre-order/order your own copy of our new book, Heart of Photography. And in the meantime, you can find copies of our first book Looking and Seeing on Amazon, or, even better, buy direct from us on CreateSpace.

Keep asking questions you don't have answers for, by connecting with the daily details while keeping your heart and mind wide open to the unknown.

Looking Back (Week 3/3)

I am posting my own responses to looking back over the last year in this blog weekly for three weeks. These are unedited writings done in class, offered here for my students and readers. This is week three out of three. The door is closing soon on Return: Setting New Year's Intentions That Stick, so sign up now if you are interested!

Note the photo above showing the conversation between my dominant and non-dominant hand. This is an especially powerful way to have an exchange with yourself about tender or complex topics.


(dominant hand)
Each time I write this prompt I think it will be dead for me, having done it three times already. I've explored my word in retrospect, looking at my intention word for 2016: connect. I've discovered lightly neglected feelings, and looked at all the interlocking growth and happenings. So what could possibly be left?

(non-dominant hand)
All the tiny specifics details and the endless moments of inspiration and desperation are left.

Felt Sense/Thought Sense and Choosing What We Want

On our recent trip to Austin, Texas, my wife asked on a long drive to and from Dallas (long story) what I meant when I refer to "felt sense"*. She'd noted I use it a lot - when I am trying to process something I don't (yet) have words for, when talking about EMDR or TRE or other somatic modalities with therapists and coaches and the like. I even used it quite a bit in the most recent Level III Nalanda Miksang workshop I taught, though it is language more from the Shambhala Art teachings than Miksang.

So what does it mean, she said. Coming from anyone else it might sound airy-fairy, but I know from you it must mean something. What?

Indeed. 

The Power of Narrative

Earlier this week I taught a day-long contemplative arts compendium - presenting practices like haiku, Miksang and contemplative writing all in short hour or two-long snippets. In the micro haiku workshop, which went surprisingly easier than I thought, one woman came back from her perception walk with a few photos and a few short narratives in haiku form. Though I had encouraged the students to cut as close to direct perception as they could, viewing their thoughts as another set of sensory data, I had not explicitly said to avoid narrative. I find it better not to say "don't do this," especially in a short workshop.


And paired with the photos that the narratives explained/interpreted, her work really shone. One shot was an abstract, textural photo of part of a tree trunk, beautifully shot and totally simple, with a lot of space. Her haiku referred to an elephant that she saw there. By itself, the haiku would be too metaphorical, too abstract. By itself, the photo was really more of a texture shot. Together, they made something quite poetic - not haiku, other than in form, and not quite Miksang, other than in form. I told her so, as she apologized when she heard others' haiku and realized that she has a penchant for narrative. I said that her pairing was simply less haiku and more senryu (human-based experience, with more room for metaphor/narrative) and/or a haiga (an image and haiku matched together). In other words, forbidding narrative would have cut off this experience for her, which was rich and affirmative. Especially in a short workshop, where they are going out for a first pass to just see and smell what they experienced.

Juicy Anxiety

Collages by Cathy Riddle at Shambhala Art Part II, February 10, 2013

This last weekend I taught, for the very first time, the full curriculum of Shambhala Art Parts I+II. I was trained in LA over a year ago to teach this, and Part III. I attended a retreat this January, and that finally made me feel ready to teach a whole weekend. In the meantime, I had presented parts of it at a week-long Arts retreat with Lisa Stanley and done a talk and exercise in Paris in June of 2012.

I was, needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, nervous as fuck. Super anxious. I mean, really.
I teach full-time. I teach in all sorts of circumstances with strangers. And yet. Not having taught the material yet in public means, for me, that it isn't "mine" yet. A lot of the teachings in Shambhala Art overlap with Miksang and the way I teach Contemplative Writing (because the core text, True Perception, by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, is the same). But the terms are different, the exercises different. Those are what didn't feel mine yet.

My familiar ground quickly became my students' anxieties. Yes. Not just mine, but theirs.

I don't mean that in any kind of sadistic way ("Oh yay! They are suffering! That's good! I can work with that!") but rather that this particular sweet set of five really opened up quickly and let it be known that they, too, were nervous. Nervous about doing exercises they don't know. Nervous about their bodies and about speech, introducing themselves, moving spontaneously in front of one another. Drawing. Speaking spontaneous poetry. Trusting one another as, in pairs, a sighted person led a blindfolded person around. A combination of every leadership retreat meets art retreat - at least one exercise triggered or intimidated everyone, and most, including myself, found nearly every exercise challenging.

And yet, strangely compelling.
I say strangely because normally we don't go towards anxiety. It sucks. Why go there? The students, granted, 4/5 knew me as a teacher, but still - the students trusted me. They quickly trusted each other and even started to trust themselves. Immediately we could all see what that trust brought forth - moments of total clarity, pure inspiration, in the middle of complete and consuming anxiety or distraction.

Inter cut. Inter twined. Inter dependent. While it is so tempting to say, to think, to look for messages that reiterate that inspiration and anxiety are, and should be, completely separate states, they aren't.
No way.
Let's face it.
I know very few people for whom even their most practiced artistic endeavor does not cause them at least momentary panic attacks each time they approach it. Not to mention "regular life non-art endeavors," though Trungpa would categorize everything we do as art. It happens. Shit happens.

And it turns out, no matter how many times we hear it we can't seem to hear it enough, lotuses grow out of mud. Compost is rotted vegetable matter that brings out better blooms. Manure is fertilizer for hearty crops. Going into the anxiety, with acknowledgement, gentleness and even some playfulness, is the only way. No sidetracking, no distraction will access the juice just waiting to be squeezed out of resistance.

Though I have quite the internal dictator, or perhaps because I have quite the internal dictator, I find it very important to distinguish here - sometimes we do need a break. A real honest breather. Some space. A walk in the woods away from the overdue article. A crying festival with a friend to process what's underneath not wanting to pick up the pen. Playing with another media, one with less tension associated with it, until you can relax enough to rediscover inspiration. I am not implying that dogged pursual is the way, all the way, 100% of the time.

But when we take space to rediscover, access what Trungpa calls Square One, and First Thought, we need to be honest about whether we are trying to escape or getting some space. Because anxiety knows. It is clever. And if we run away, it will hunt us down. If we are simply getting space, we discover that even in the seemingly solid intensity of anxiety, there is breathing room. Anxiety, nervousness, intensity - all of these and more grow in the darkness, in being ignored or avoided. Not the kind of growth that inspires - the kind of growth that chokes.

Don't take my word for it. Please. Turn on your bullshit detector and go out and test out what I am saying. Next time, instead of doing the same thing you always do (and we all have deeply ingrained habits around anxiety, especially in "making art"), try something new. Engage in a dialogue with your anxiety. Write down what you are really feeling. Pick up a brush and paint an entire black page before returning to your delicate watercolor. Let juicy anxiety and inspirational intensity dance with each other. Find the soft spot of fear, sadness, anger underneath and let it show you what it has to say.

I guarantee it won't be what you expect. It will be fresh. Real. Honest.
The best inspiration we can ever ask for.

What I Really Really Want

"Hurt Pharmacy Open" Mar Vista, LA January 2013

Around Christmas, I had a series of wonderful conversations with my best friend about what we miss. We both find Christmas - the holidays in general - a lonely time. It's midwinter, dark, and people we love/chosen family, leave town to be with their families of origin. We'd say we miss our families of origin, but spending time with them is never what we hope? expect? it to be. We still feel lonely afterwards, no matter how wonderfully it goes, which sometimes, it actually does.

Compassion Confession

Ekphrastic photo of Squeak Carnworth's Perfect Studio, Chazen Museum, Madison, WI

I have a confession to make.
I have made it in oblique ways to some of you in the past, but I think it's time I say it directly.
A newer student this week said that she read the essays I send out before starting class (which started as blog posts here: Listening In, All the Ways We Apologize and Speaking Up, and have since all been published online elsewhere). After she was done, even before she was done, she realized she "didn't even need to read them." Not because she already knew all they said, but because even reading just parts told her what she needed to know:
I create safe spaces.
She will learn in the process what's in the essays.

So here it is:
I am not a writing teacher. I am not a photography teacher, a calligraphy teacher, a movement teacher.
I am a Buddhist teacher.
I am a Compassion teacher.

Missive from Eagle Rock

I have already written the dedication for my book on teaching writing:
"Dedicated to all my students and all my teachers.
If you are one, you are the other."
Natalie once told us to dedicate books to students, because you can't fail with that one.