1
1) The reality that can be
described is not the truest Reality. (1)
2) It is our nature to name
and to categorize things. Yet, the description of a thing remains only
a description; it is not the thing that it describes. Therefore, truest
reality remains nameless, uncategorized, descriptionless. Though nameless,
all things named arise and take their being from this nameless state.
3) In order to experience
this truest reality one must forsake name. Only when one has forgotten
name can one experience this nameless state. As individuals we have desires
there is no denying it! But in our desiring we are lost in the delusion
of description and category. We forget our true being, our nameless nature.
The real lives within the dreamer, the dreamer within the real. (2) Realize
this simple truth and you will have the key to understanding.
4) Our individual self, our
named person arises from our nameless being. [3]
|
 footnotes
1) "The starting point for my work is from the inexplicable,
from the divine."
Jean Arp, quoted in Michael Seuphor,
The World of Abstract Art (New York: Wittenborn, 1957)
“I can well imagine a religion in which there are no doctrines,
so that nothing is spoken. Clearly, then, the essence of religion can have
nothing to do with what is sayable.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2) The Sutra says, “To behold the Buddha nature you must
wait for the right moment and the right conditions. When the time comes,
you are awakened as from a dream. You realize that what you have found
is your own and doesn’t come from anywhere outside.” An ancient patriarch
said, “After enlightenment you are still as you were before. There is no
mind and no truth,” You are simply free from unreality and delusion. The
ordinary person’s mind is the same as the sage’s, because Original Mind
is perfect and complete in itself. When you have arrived at this recognition,
please hold on to it.
Pai-Chang (720-814)
3) “What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides
itself behind so-called reality. I am seeking for the bridge which leads
from the visible to the invisible, like the famous cabalist who once said:
“If you wish to get hold of the invisible you must penetrate as deeply
as possible into the visible." My aim is always to get hold of the magic
of reality and to transfer this reality into painting-- to make the invisible
through reality. It may sound paradoxical, but it is, in fact, reality
which forms the mystery of our existence... In my opinion all important
things in art... have always originated from the deepest feeling about
the mystery of being. Self-realization is the urge of all objective spirits.
It is the self for which I am searching in my life and in my art... As
we still do not know what this self really is, this self in which you and
I in our various ways are expressed, we must peer deeper and deeper into
this discovery. For the self is the great veiled mystery of the world...
I believe in it and in its eternal, immutable form. Its path is, in some
strange and peculiar manner, our path. And for this reason I am immersed
in the phenomenon of the Individual, the so-called whole Individual, and
I try in every way to explain and present it. What are you? What am I?
Those are the questions that constantly persecute and torment me and perhaps
also play some part in my art.”
Max Beckmann, "On My Painting," 1938
|