When on occasion I contemplate how the practice of Miksang has affected my life, the first thing that comes to my mind is the many opportunities it affords to experience and express the totally cool things that are happening around me—the quality of the light, the breeze, the time of day, the endless coming together of color, light, and line. I can be worrying or distracted by all the details of my life that never seem to end, or I can be transported out of that suddenly as I am penetrated by an unexpected perception which dawns in my mind out of the blue. Noticing my world constantly disrupts my mental absorption with the linear stream of events that is my everyday life. I am reminded that beneath my preoccupation I am vibrantly alive and that nothing in my world is fixed and unchanging. I feel a tremendous sense of richness. I am completely without want for anything at all.
It is a sign of my passion for shooting images that I go out with my camera with the expectation that I will notice something that is surprising and often whimsical. I expect to be touched and reminded of the larger world beyond my own sense of limitation. When this happens I feel fully met, fulfilled in my relationship between my visual sense and my visual world. When a perception stops my mind I feel disoriented, ambient sounds recede, and the perceived appears brilliant, sharp and vivid. I feel joyful. What does this remind you of? Falling in love? Melting in a moment of love for your child? Feeling appreciation for your best friend in the world? Yes. In these moments I feel fully met. My partner in perception, whatever I am seeing, is not holding back, and I have no sense of shortcoming on either of our parts. I am fully engaged because I have no forethought and no second thought about how this should be or whether or not it is good enough. In this moment, the present moment, all is complete.
I am feeling pretty good altogether that I can have a relationship like this anytime I practice Miksang. It’s like an ongoing celebration, a party on a small scale, since nobody has to get dressed up. There aren’t any bad hangovers the day after or the sense that something could have gone wrong. Relationships like this make us feel very wholesome and genuine. They spill over into our human relationships. We notice more and appreciate more. We can let go of what doesn’t work and any struggle we are having and accept more easily the things that don’t conform to what we think would be better. Just as there is no such thing as half a flash, there is no question of having half a relationship. We have to be involved 100%. We are either in it or we are not.
In Miksang we learn to stay open and not project our ideas and preferences onto what we are seeing. This is the essence of non-aggression, acceptance of what we experience without always judging it and determining whether it agrees with our own point of view. If we can bring this mind of equanimity to bear on situations that arise in our relationships, wouldn’t the world be a more harmonious place?
© Julie DuBose 2009
Julie, could you say more about the problem with labeling things? Sometimes a Miksang picture is clearly something identifiable, sometimes it's not. How do we know what's Miksang and what isn't?
ReplyDeleteAgree--when I go out with my camera and a Miksang frame of mind I feel so free because I become involved in just being aware of what is immediate. I leave all the "monkey mind" stuff behind for that period and it is refreshing and joyous. Recently I had several times when I decided to take my camera with me after work and enjoy the late summer. Usually this period of the day is full of getting home and mentally closing up after my work. Instead I felt like I opened up mentally and was smiling and mentally whistling before I got more than a few blocks from my office.
ReplyDeleteYour posts have really had me reflecting on that transformation. Thank you.
Judith Noble
Hi Joyce.
ReplyDeleteThese are both really good questions. First the problem with the labeling of things. It isn't possible to have direct perceptions if our concepts and preferences are editing and solidifying our point of view about our experience of what we are seeing. The Miksang discipline gives us a means to train ourselves to be able to look and see our visual world in an open, unfiltered way. This way we can begin to see things as they actually are without our habitual overlays. I would be happy if you or anyone else has anything to add on this subject, as there is a lot one could say about it.
The second question,” how do we know what's Miksang and what isn't” is at the heart of the Miksang journey. You have said that sometimes you know that an image is a Miksang picture. How do you know that when you see it? You can re-read "What is Miksang Really", my first blog entry, post the result of your contemplations on this subject as a comment, and hopefully we can take it from there with others upcoming Level Two students contributing their understanding as well.
If you search back to your memory of Level One and what you heard and experienced when you were doing the assignments and shooting at that point, then try asking yourself these questions: How did you know then if you were shooting a flash? Or how do you know when you are looking at someone else’s image if it is based on a flash? When you talk about Miksang images, you are talking about shooting a flash of perception. What is that?
This is an excellent preparatory review for the upcoming Level Two course. I would be delighted if everybody else in this group would offer their understanding of these questions and we could have a discussion. That will get everybody primed for what lies ahead.
Warm Regards,
Julie
I've thought a lot about this question of what's Miksang and I still don't know the answer. Sometimes I recognize that I've been stopped but other times it's like I stop and then by stopping, I find a new perception.
ReplyDeleteAs for other people's work, I have no idea if they had a flash but sometimes I look at an image and recognize that I'm having a flash about their perception. Something about it is so fresh that I realize that I would never have seen it or seen it in that way. Sometimes my own pictures affect me the same way ... I almost don't have the flash until I revisit the image on my computer... and then have a Wow! moment. It's a very interesting process.
Looking forward to the next level.