LIFE AS MYTH
JOURNAL
JOURNAL 2013
A living myth
Seven year cycle
AUTUMN 2013
A living myth
The power of unanswered prayer
The deep uncanny mine of souls
LIFEWORKS
ATLAS
AUTUMN 2013
SITTING WITH THE BUDDHA
Picture Five: Taming the ox. Ten Oxherding Pictures. Attributed to Shubun (n.d.) Japan, Muromachi period. Handscroll, ink and light colors on paper. 9/8/2013
Head of Bodhisattva. Limestone. Northern Qi Dynasty. 550-77. Sackler Gallery. [Sanskrit bodhisattvah, one who has attained perfect knowledge or enlightenment, from bodhih, perfect knowledge + sattvam, essence, being].
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart . . . Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
C. G. Jung [1875-1961], Swiss psychiatristNew York is full of places that restore the spirit. For instance, the parks are quite beautiful here. Riverside and Central Parks are the best known and the most sprawling. But there are smaller parks throughout the city, beautiful green gems that break the city rhythm with the comfort of a park bench, the chatter of a fountain, the unexpected intrusion of grass and trees.
Nature is a great healer and she has many temples. But art is a great healer as well and in a city full of museum-temples, the Sackler Gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a personal favorite.
My first visit in October 2003 is not particularly vivid in my mind. The museum is so immense and its treasures so rich that only a few individual pieces secured a place in my memory. Perseus with the head of Medusa. A bronze Florentine mermaid. Shiva dancing in the ring of fire at the far end of a darkened gallery. But somewhere in my cluttered remembering there was also a place for one specific gallery, the Sackler Gallery, a vast open room with veils of white light and a massive weathered painting.
I have revisited that gallery a half dozen times, usually when I needed a place to clear a troubled mind or to reflect on an important choice. I've taken many photographs there but to date have never been able to duplicate what the experience is like.
Whether or not I am ever able to express my vision of this place through art, perhaps my repeated attempts through image and word will uncover the truth of this space instead.
