This essay was originally published on an on-line blog in conjunction with the two months I spent in the fall 2010 at Naropa University as a Frederick P. Lenz Foundation Residential Fellow for Buddhist Studies and American Culture and Values.
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This morning I sat in on Robert Spellman's Contemplative Artist class at Naropa University--twelve students, some artists, some not--but all engaged, focused, attentive, interested.
The class began with "bowing in"--which is how many classes at Naropa begin. Everyone stands in a circle, and at the leader's indication, everyone bows toward the center of the circle. According to Naropa's website, the bow is "a way of acknowledging and honoring the qualities of warriorship that each of us has... By warriorship in this sense we do not mean warfare or aggression—but actually the opposite. The warrior whom we honor when we bow is someone who is brave enough to be a truly gentle person. Therefore, the emphasis is on bravery, not on warfare, because the warrior understands that aggression is actually the result of cowardice. So, in bowing to each other, we honor the inherent bravery, gentleness and wakeful intelligence that each of us can experience personally. We also honor Naropa as a place where the deepest purpose of our education is to cultivate these qualities and bring them to fuller expression in whatever field of learning we may choose."
Think about that as a pedagogical philosophy--or an administrative philosophy!
After "bowing in", we sat in a circle of red zabutans and zafus (meditation cushions) and meditated for the first 20 minutes of class. I don't think I have ever meditated with a class of students before, and it was a powerful experience for me. I can't help but dream about how wonderful it would be to bring some of these qualities of contemplative education to Ringling College of Art + Design, where I teach, but I fear it would be resisted--it would be seen as a religious practice, perhaps, instead of a teaching and learning practice. It's a shame, really, because in our current multi-tasking, high-speed form of education, I think we miss out on the value of slower, deeper, and more holistic education and living, for that matter.
Again according to Naropa's website, "contemplative education is learning infused with the experience of awareness, insight and compassion for oneself and others, honed through the practice of sitting meditation and other contemplative disciplines. The rigor of these disciplined practices prepares the mind to process information in new and perhaps unexpected ways. Contemplative practice unlocks the power of deep inward observation, enabling the learner to tap into a wellspring of knowledge about the nature of mind, self and other that has been largely overlooked by traditional, Western-oriented liberal education."
That makes a lot of sense to me.
Robert Spellman is an engaging man, the kind of person you enjoy listening to. He has a sense of humor -- about himself, about the class. He has a generosity with the students that is supportive and encouraging.
After we meditated together, Robert talked a little about the students' essays he had been reading--essays about their experiences with meditation and the course assignments, which are all geared toward deepening contemplative awareness in studio art practice (one of the main subjects of my book, and the reason this class was of particular interest to me).
Several points Robert related in his opening talk stood out for me:
--in their essays, the students said that the meditation practice was helping them be friends with their own minds. The tendency toward self-judgement, toward being mentally at war with oneself, was subsiding, and they were able to look at their thoughts and feelings with more compassion and curiosity. In other words, they were learning how to have a different relationship with their minds.
--the students also mentioned that they were becoming more aware of their environment during meditation, and Robert suggested that one can not go deeper into meditation practice without this awareness of one's environment.
--Robert suggested that the students try to locate their apparent sense of "I". Who is "I"? Where is this "I-ness" located? "It is strange to contemplate", he said, laughing, "but it is interesting to try".
--Robert then talked about the exploration of perspective--Western and Eastern--that the class had been discussing. Robert described Western perspective as "intolerant" and limiting--not a bad thing--but somewhat fascist. He uses much of what David Hockey has explored in his studio work and writing concerning how we perceive space (this was reassuring, since we plan to use one of Hockney's books for the new freshman year curriculum at Ringling for the same reasons).
--Robert talked about his current argument with fellow Naropa faculty member Peter Grossenbacher. Robert believes that our perception of perspectival space is due to the bending of light in the lens of the eye. Peter disagrees, and says that we see perspectival space because objects subtend--they take up a smaller percentage of of field of vision the further away they are from us. One sharp student suggested they were both correct. ("Peter Grossenbacher teaches psychological courses on perception, cognition, statistics and research from a contemplative scientific perspective. In his decades of work in psychological science, he has taught at the University of Oregon, England's University of Cambridge and American University in Washington, DC. ...Peter collaborates with students conducting empirical research on meditation and contemplative spirituality in Naropa’s Consciousness Laboratory. Peter is an international speaker on meditation and the brain, whose research has been covered in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine and Discover Magazine." from the naropa website )
--The conversation then moved to how much our habit of "naming" things effects our ability to perceive things clearly. Once we understand a door as a "door", do we really see the complete nature of a door anymore? Robert said there is a Sanskrit word for this---nama rupa--which translates as name-form, and means "a habitual form of confusion". In other words, naming forms causes us to be in confusion--because we do not see them anymore. This makes me think of the title of the autobiography of Robert Irwin by Lawrence Weschler, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees.
Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.
It is this quality of moving back and forth between different structures for knowing and understanding that seems so unique to Naropa. Western, Eastern---a variety of perspectives for thinking critically about the world. It's a total turn-on for me because it is so in line with what I believe education should be, could be.
A student in the class related that she had a severe brain injury (from a car accident) that at first made it difficult for her to see normally. The horizon would move or change position, things would sway, come in and out of focus--and she would have to remind herself that what she was seeing was not what was really happening. Another student in the class asked what would have happened if she had determined that, instead, what she was seeing was more real. She said, "Well, we would have to lie down. Buildings would fall apart. The earth would crumble."
What is the relationship between perception and reality?
I lead the class in a drawing assignment, based on Roland Cohen's talk at Shambala on the previous Monday night, "Doing One Thing Completely". I related to them the passage Roland read to us from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki: "when you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, so there is no trace of yourself." I encouraged them to focus, to lose themselves to the degree that they disappeared or burned up completely. I asked them to find an already existing "drawing" in the classroom (perhaps the marks on the floor, for example), something they could not name or label, to draw. And they used materials that were not comfortable to them, untraditional materials like coffee, beets, ink drawn with a string.
It was a challenge to get to the point of burning, but several of the students had moments of the self disappearing.
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I found an audio interview with video artist Bill Viola by ABC radio's "The Spirit of Things" the night after my visit to Spellman's class---a very nice karmic twist. I am not fond of the introduction, but what he discusses is very much related to the discussion we had in the Contemplative Artist class I attended, as well as what I plan to discuss in my book: about the self and the ego, perception, meditation, Buddhism, contemplation, academia and the art market--and the losing of oneself that is necessary to make great art.
It is long, but it worth listening to. Go to this link and click on "Listen Now" or "Download Audio". http://www.abc.net.au/rn/spiritofthings/stories/2010/3042396.htm
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