Miksang Life

Letting Go In Miksang

2010-07-21T21:43:00.021-06:00

"Hi Julie,

I noticed that very few people seem to be asking questions related to practice on your blog. I am not sure why this is so, as I know you are more than willing to share your thoughts on a variety of topics. But regardless, I thought I would ask you about an experience that seems to occur in my practice somewhat often.

I am on vacation in Pittsburgh right now, and went on a shoot this morning after a peaceful meditation session earlier on. As I walked out into the city, I felt as though the peace and calm I had been experiencing should continue into my Miksang practice. However, the speed and bustle of the streets were very distracting and I found it very difficult to maintain that sense of clarity and relaxation. My mind seemed to jump from one place to the next, and I found it really hard to relax. Then I remembered what Michael said about walking slowly, but not too mindfully. That helped for a little moment of clarity, and I was able to see more clearly. I seem to really struggle with this question of how to rest my mind. How do I rest without becoming stagnant? How do I keep momentum without rushing past my perceptions but instead, allow them to emerge and exist on their own?

Maybe you could share some thoughts on this anxiety that seems to be such a problem at times.

(Two Weeks later)

Julie, in the time since I sent you this message things seem to be going better for me. I find that I can be more relaxed and present sometimes when I am not trying too hard. It helps to remember that there is no "Miksang Police" that are watching around the corner to make sure I am being genuine or authentic. No one cares if I captured that last perception that I thought was so important and is weighing on me. In fact, letting that one go and opening again to what's next can be the best part of the practice.

Peace, Cody"

******

Hi Cody. I know it’s been long enough since your first email that you have come to some good insights on your own. You brought up letting go of some of your projections about your experience, and I thought it might be helpful to talk about letting go as the way to work with whatever comes up for us when we are out shooting or even whenever we feel a sense of struggle with what we want and what is happening. We can hold on to our thoughts about what we wish or want, or we can let them go. We can be conflicted about our experience or let go of our point of view. This is always our choice. When we do let go, we enter into an open situation, full of possibility. This is where fresh, unfiltered visual perception arises.

The Miksang Journey as a whole could be described by saying that in each step of the way we are developing the ability to let go of whatever is coming between us and our ability to perceive in an open, direct way.

Gradually as we work with our Miksang discipline, our understanding and awareness of what comes up in our minds as we attempt to stay still and steady becomes more refined and precise. This is the result of our assignments and discussion in classes, as we look at our process of discernment and where we stray or stay in the continuity of the original flash of perception. As we become able to be still long enough to actually notice when the labeling is happening or the thoughts crank up, we can recognize and let go of them in that moment of recognition. This is the pith of the Miksang practice, letting go of our habitual patterns and tendencies as we make our way through each stage of the journey.

This letting go is the active intention, the active principle, which allows us to open out and to be still so that we can perceive more deeply. Without letting go we can’t be still, because even if we want to stand there and look at our perception, our minds are still producing thoughts, still perceiving, still thinking about what has been perceived, still deciding whether it is good bad, ugly, whatever. Through our intention to see, we turn our awareness outwards, we make ourselves available. Then our intention to let go of what stands between us and seeing is activated. We let the thoughts come and go without disturbing our equanimity. The intention to let go is the basis of the effort in this practice. It keeps us rooted in an open, fully present state of mind. We let go into right now.

Letting go is the doorway to perception. It strengthens our sense of stillness and stability. We let go, we open, and then we receive. This is how the whole thing works. It is the ground, the path, and the fruition of this practice. This is what we are always developing throughout our Miksang Journey.

******

Lately I have been watching some really great letting go happening by students in various courses. In Opening the Good Eye, I have seen them letting go of their ideas of what they are looking at, their impulse to want to improve upon what they are seeing, their attachment to the product of their labors. This is a lot of letting go— it’s the first big bite of the Miksang pie. First we notice what we are doing to distract us from our perception, and then, as we develop the ability to notice more, we become more still and able to see more of our world. It takes effort and motivation every day of our Miksang practice to continually come back to these first lessons so that our practice doesn’t become a new way to hold onto what we have accomplished, a subtle expression of a new database of acceptable Miksang perceptions. Those of you who have been doing this practice for a long time know what I mean. What we learn in this first Level is the basis of everything that we work on in subsequent courses. As we go along, it is always helpful to hit the refresh button in our practice by coming back to the basic orientation presented in our first Miksang course.

It takes the wisdom of experience and some humor about ourselves to realize that the fundamental genuineness of direct visual perception that we have worked so hard to fully manifest and express in our practice and images was fully presented to us at the beginning of our journey, in our first introduction to Miksang practice. The first course is presented simply, and yet it is not something to get through as quickly as possible to move onto more “advanced” courses. This is why Michael and I feel that the first Miksang course is so crucial, so profound, and why we want our Miksang Level One instructors to have a good deal of experience practicing Miksang and incorporating the discipline of direct perception into their beings before they teach. To manifest the importance of letting go of their own habitual tendencies and ideas and preferences about what they see, they must demonstrate a deep allegiance to freshness in their shooting. To transmit the importance of having a still mind, they need to manifest the qualities of a still mind. They must have gentleness, openness, and confidence.

******

And Cody, how do we have a still mind when we are distracted, restless, and ill at ease? Give the whole thing some room to aerate, to breathe. Feel your basic being, standing there, feeling the ground, the sky above, the air around your body. Relax, let your mind open out into the space around you. Gently work with yourself to let go, to expand your awareness into your environment. Remind yourself why you are out shooting with your camera.

Why are we willing to let go, to be so bold, and to explore beyond our zone of comfort? As you realized for yourself, it is because we have found that our strategies are only good so far. At some point along the way, as we are trying to do what we think is being asked of us, what we feel we must do, we realize that the struggle is not actually going to solve the underlying situation. It’s not going to solve the fundamental issue of not fully participating in our world. It is just not going to do it. At some point it’s choice-less. We just let go. In that moment of our journey on this path, the Miksang practice of seeing and connecting, letting go, is where the opening occurs, where real perception and real meeting takes place.

This is where we experience the sense of poignancy about our lives, that we try so hard, we all try so hard, we all try so hard to be good, and we all try so hard not to experience more suffering. We always try to make ourselves feel better. At some point, maybe it is the moment we die, who knows, or maybe it’s the moment we realize that all of our strategies are really not accomplishing what we want them to fundamentally— we give up, we surrender and we let go. And when we do, there is something else there. There is tenderness, an open-heart quality. Just a sense of - “I’m here. I’m just here. I’m here. Someone, some thing, will you play with me? Will you come be with my tender heart? Will you love me?”

That is the longing, the basic longing that we all experience, and that has all come about because we actually let go. It doesn’t matter what we let go of, we could talk about it, we could write books, what are we letting go of? Letting go is a primal situation. It’s really where we cross the border between what we want, and how we’ve lived, and who we are. We cross the border into another unknown and undefined region where anything is possible and we don’t know. And this is where our actual wisdom starts to shine. It shines through and reaffirms our fundamental sense of well-being. It is good to be a human, here on this earth, right now in this moment. That’s how it happens, over and over.

Beyond the Obstacle of Continuous Distraction

2010-03-27T16:31:00.004-06:00

In the first level of Miksang Training we talk about the two primary obstacles to seeing. The first of these is not being available to see and connect with our world. The most extreme example of this is when we daydream and are completely absorbed in our own internally produced movies. We are completely distracted and perceptually blind. We don’t see anything outside of ourselves. To varying degrees, this is how we live our lives day to day. Through working with this obstacle in a simple way, we begin to shift our orientation so that our awareness, our attention, is facing outwards rather than inwards. The second obstacle is our habitual ways of superimposing our labels and preferences upon what we see. In order to work with this we begin to train ourselves to pay attention to the visual experience we have before our labeling mind kicks in.

The process we work with and the path we take as Miksang practitioners is to deepen our connection to the unconditional experience of direct perception. We consciously choose to cultivate the ability to recognize moments of direct seeing and to maintain our connection with them for as long as we are able. With practice, diligence, discipline and delight, we begin to find that we are able to play in the world of direct seeing for increasingly longer periods of time without reverting to habitual patterns of relating with our world and our relationship with it. This is the promise, practice, and fruition of Miksang.

Why would we want to undertake this practice in the first place? I have no doubt that for most of us it is because we have had a glimpse of it. We have experienced a piercing, penetrating moment of visual connection or we wouldn’t have taken the time out of our busy lives to come to a Miksang course. We want to be able to connect with our world and express our experience. We have a hunger to slow down and experience simple being.

I would like to talk about an additional obstacle to this journey that is atmospheric, cultural, and pervasive. We have various degrees of involvement with it, and for some of us that is dependent upon the kind of work that we do. It amplifies and propagates the very influences which undermine our ability to have a still and peaceful mind, to be fully in the present moment for any duration. I am calling it the Obstacle of Continuous Distraction. This is not the same as the distraction of being inwardly absorbed. It is more about what happens to us as we engage with the world. It is helpful to acknowledge this obstacle and clarify our relationship with it, for without this clarity, Continuous Distraction will undermine any attempts we make to live a deeply satisfying life. This obstacle is called continuous because between the constant texts, phone calls, Twitter texts, Facebook comments, new products, emails, and the sense that all this must be kept up with, we are always having to accept or reject attempts to capture our attention for long enough to get a message across to us.

Because of the unrelenting quality of continuous distraction, it is a challenge to relax and settle our minds. We can often feel off-balance, overwhelmed, with a sense that something needs to be done or happen. This vague sense of dissatisfaction plays upon the restlessness of mind and amplifies it. With an itch and scratch approach, we relate with stimuli with only a fraction of our available attention and don’t really relate with what anything actually is. Because we are distracted we haphazardly label what we see and sometimes completely mistake what is really there. We don’t experience fully, and we are never satisfied. When you contrast this to a sense of peace, contentment, and joy, it is clear that this modern technological age can bring about enormous suffering arising from a basic sense of dissatisfaction. By participating in the consensual view that the distraction is a necessary part of living today, we can lose our sense of our own experience and what really matters to us in our lives. Continuous Distraction can become by default a lifestyle choice. On the other hand, working with Continuous Distraction may be the greatest challenge of our age and what defines how we emerge from it as human beings. It is worth the effort.

Being Deliberate Can Be A Life-Style Choice

Miksang is about being deliberate – deliberately being open and fully present, beyond like and dislike. We have a constant choice in our lives generally as humans and specifically as photographers. We can muddle through, constantly distracted and disengaged from our experience, or we can keep our eye and mind synchronized throughout our day. We can feel the texture of the moments of our lives. Bringing Miksang practice fully into our day-to-day experience is a potent and profound way to neutralize the perpetual distraction and restlessness that characterizes the modern techno-world in which we live. We do not have to talk on our cell phones as we walk down the street or as we stand in line to pick up our food. If we carry our camera with us it can remind us to notice our world. We can always choose to experience our experience instead of being continually distracted.

How the Practice of Miksang Disrupts Continuous Distraction

The ground from which direct perception arises is our open, undistracted mind. Without having a mind that is available, we cannot make the electric connection of mind, eye and the objects of perception. When we are reminded to notice our world, our Miksang training activates and we simply shift our attention to the present moment and its visual aspects. When we do this, our basic orientation catalyzes a sense of clarity about what we are doing. We become deliberate in how we approach the activity of looking, seeing, and photographing. As distractions occur, we stay on track and don’t allow our thoughts and emotions to become the focus of our attention. Our cell phones may ring, but we don’t have to answer. If we choose to answer we will lose our connection with our perception. Once we notice this interruption has taken place, we can bring ourselves back once again to being open and available in the present moment (and hey, why not turn off our cell phone while we practice?). It’s challenging enough to stay still and present without allowing Continuous Distraction to disrupt the stability of our Miksang discipline.

When we do experience a direct perception, we physically stop and look at what stopped us. We want to understand, to contemplate with a still mind. Without a still mind, we cannot maintain the continuity of our experience of the flash of freshness. It becomes lost in vagueness and indecision. This is because being distracted separates us from ourselves, from our experience, and we are unsure about what we saw and how we feel about it. We are not sure if it is good enough and our restless mind looks for solutions to the problem of distraction.

At this point, if we re-apply our intention to stay with the perception, to rest with it in stillness, this can pacify a distracted mind. We apply our intention to come back to the perception and our distracting thoughts evaporate. We can always come back, and when we do, if we cannot re-connect with our perception, we can just walk away and start fresh once again. Every moment is a new opportunity to start new.

When we sit down at our computers to review our images, once again we settle our minds so that we can see our images with fresh eyes. Without an open mind as we view our images, we may apply judgment and labels to them. We may have doubt and want to make them better. We may not be able to reconnect with our original flash of perception. That is why we always begin editing with a mind free of distraction and preoccupation.

If our mind was open and available when the perception first appeared, and remained still and stable during the understanding and photographing of it, the resulting image is a pure expression of our moment of perception. It is complete. It is not diminished by one hair’s breadth of distraction. This is the hallmark of an accomplished Miksang shooter. I encourage you all to pay particular attention to Michael’s images once again with this in mind. Each one demonstrates a complete experience and expression of one moment of perception.

There is no doubt that if we integrate Miksang practice fully into our lives that Continuous Distraction will lose its seemingly seamless, relentless quality of presence in our lives. We will inevitably develop the possibility, and really the promise, that our continually distracted state of mind will be abruptly interrupted and penetrated by moments of sudden, shocking, vivid, brilliant, absorbing visual perception. We can stop and appreciate our world. It can be truly inspiring for us to be reminded that there is such a thing as living beyond Continuous Distraction.

Allowing Ourselves the Space to Be Undistracted

For those of us who meditate, many of us find the time that we carve out each day to connect with our basic being and unwind our mental preoccupations to be “the pause that refreshes”. We create boundaries around our practice time within which we decide we will not answer the phone or send or look at text messages. We know that if we don’t consciously make decisions about what interruptions we will allow, we will end up sacrificing our practice time to the demands of others.

I encourage all of us to contemplate how we regard our Miksang practice. We can come to a workshop and go through the motions of doing the exercises and assignments. But as long as we believe that Miksang is a hobby and not a practice, we will never allow ourselves the space for Miksang to develop and deepen. If we are continuously distracted and interrupted as we work with this discipline, we cannot be still and experience our experience. We stay outside looking in. Because our mind is unsettled we cannot fully process the dimensions of our experience.

We can allow our Miksang practice the same boundaries and protection from external distraction that we allow for our meditation practice. If we honor our Miksang journey in this way, it becomes an integral part of how we experience our world, just as the boundary between our post-meditation experience and our meditation practice gradually becomes less apparent.

Essential Simplicity

2010-01-30T09:04:00.003-07:00

Hello Julie,

I was touched by your remark in your last blog: ‘The obstacle of familiarity and labeling is a root of not being able to shoot a product with freshness....’

That’s exactly the point I’ve been wrestling with for the last month.
I was feeling so much resistence (hate..hate!) against ‘already seen’ Miksang images.
Even if I had a real ’yes’ flash while editing, I couldn’t be glad about it any more.
At a matter of fact I couldn’t see any more bicycles, glasses, mannequins (sorry Michael!!), cups of coffee, half legs, mac mouses and after Michaels ‘sink in the kitchen’ also my kitchen became a forbidden area!!

On the other hand I came back to myself in the images of other miksang photographers,
That made me feel less bad.

Then I asked if it is my my fear of losing myself, losing my authenticity?
And then a little bit later I asked myself.
Does real authenticity exist ?
Does pure authenticity in perception exist??

I know, we are not only individualist, but also social beings. We are influenced our whole lives by where we come from and what we have learned and experienced
conciously or unconciously.
So, perhaps it’s my ‘big ego’ that wants to be authentic.

And I decided, I cant’t release myself if I keep on fighting!
As long as I feel resistence and keep my eyes closed ,my heart and mind are closed too.
I’m fighting against myself.
So I try to say to myself...
Let it be as it is, don’t walk away, be quiet , stay where you are..
Perhaps that’s a way to go BEYOND.....

So there’s the rest of your sentence, Julie
‘As usual we need to get beyond this limiting view’
Is it that also what you meant to say?

Yours
Margriet

Hello Margriet.

Thank you so much for your very thoughtful question.

Authenticity is not so much about expressing an experience that has no reference points to any other experience, but it is more that we express our experience without drawing upon reference points to interpret it. These reference points are our labels, our point of view. They are identical to what happens after you are tapped on the shoulder, you open your eyes wide, and just see. Then a split second later the labeling process kicks in. So while your attempts to know and be certain that you are not emulating the expressions of others or drawing upon perceptual clichés are based upon all good intentions of doing this practice whole heartedly, they involve the imposition of an external arbitrator whose job is to determine if our perception is an imitation or derivative from anything else. The observer is no other than our conceptual mind.

The obstacle of familiarly doesn’t mean that we don’t want to shoot what is familiar to us, it means that we don’t really look at our everyday world because we assume that it is not worthy of looking at due to it’s familiarity. Our habitual pattern is to believe that we have to go somewhere new and unfamiliar in order to have interesting perceptions. In your case, your observer is rejecting the familiar as subject matter because you think you are drawing upon a database of familiar subjects and images you have seen all of us shoot. This is reverse discrimination, but it is still discrimination. The problem is not that you are seeing things that have been shot before, many times, but that you are not seeing those things through fresh eyes. The issue is never with what is being perceived, but with the state of mind that is perceiving. Your reference point is kicking in really fast, almost as quickly as the perception is arising in your mind, and that can be truly annoying. You are experiencing the obstacle of ‘second thought’ and then many more thoughts about the second thought. The result is frustration.

You have been wrestling with this conundrum with the determination of a dedicated student. As with all contemplative arts, the process or path is the point, not your final realization about all of this. Because once you think you have realized something about your process, you solidify that and now you have a new guideline or reference point about whether you are doing a good job at this. This is still not an open mind.

Fortunately for all of us, the end result of this struggle is its abandonment. It is just too much mental work to figure out whether we’re having a perception that is new to us. We would all like to get back to the basic enjoyment of our world. There is a simpler way in to this, an approach not based upon the watcher judging what we do. The watcher splits us off from the moment and our experience, and is actually counter productive.

Go with how a perception makes you feel. Stick with the qualities of the flash. I would memorize them. You can say to yourself, ”am I shocked, disoriented, did the perception come out of the blue, is the experience buoyant and joyful?” Just go back and forth between the words, what they mean, and then check in with how you are feeling. In time when you recognize the familiarity of a perception, your appreciation of it will be there as well. And because you are confident and relaxed, you can let go on the spot of the back and forth, the self doubt, the second thought. But if you are unable to simply let go of all of it, this could be an excellent time to turn away from the perception, close your eyes, turn back, and then look again in a fresh way. This is just like ‘hitting the refresh button”. If when doing the refresh you can connect with the perception once again, then you may want to continue. At some point in your process you may decide to abandon the relationship, that you don’t feel motivated to actually seal the experience. Or you may photograph it. In the end, what does it matter?

Are you fooling yourself? How do you know? When the experience is flat and you are working hard at it, not feeling confident, then you are not seeing, you are looking too hard. That is a sign that you are busy observing and editing your version of your experience. Whether or not we are having a fresh perception is not a problem that we have to solve with our conceptual minds. It’s only a matter of being fully present. Coming back fully to the present moment, clearing our minds, is the antidote for the conceptual knot of second thoughts. All of the thoughts about our experience of our perception do not exist. They are just our thoughts. Let them go. Dissolve the layer of judgment and observer in your mind. Be patient, take your time, relax and enjoy.

The discipline of Miksang Training is quite simple. It is always simple. In the advanced courses it is even more simple. You do not have to be really smart to do it. You actually have to abandon your strategies of success.

Warm regards,

Julie

Miksang in Commercial Photography

2009-12-20T10:50:00.022-07:00

I received the following question recently from an old Miksang friend. I hope you find my response helpful:

“I have a question that I'm struggling with and I would like to have your opinion. I'm doing commercial photography where images are extensibly manipulated to basically give what the client wants. How does one remain true to Miksang when doing commercial work? Do I put on my commercial photographer hat when I'm working on my business and switch to my Miksang hat for my personal work? Your insight is appreciated. Best, Henry”

Hi Henry.

It’s good to hear from you. The answer to your question is simple, so I’m happy to put an end to the struggle you are having with it. If you are hired to give the client a very slick “professional” photograph of their product (which you do very well) such as an office building or a dishwasher, then it is unlikely that the result will be based on fresh perception. It will be based on your idea of what the client expects as well as your idea of the subject matter. The question of being “true to Miksang” is an interesting one, as it suggests that there is the fresh-perception approach as well as the conceptual-based photography approach which you believe to be necessary to be a successful commercial photographer, and you are unsure if the two can ever come together for you.

Whether or not this can happen for you depends upon your level of confidence in your ability to express more than standard product photos. When you begin to put that confidence out there, the opportunity in your commercial work to see more and express more and still accomplish the desired result for the client will begin to manifest. You don’t have to call yourself a “Miksang photographer”. It’s more of an inner way of regarding yourself. If you think of yourself as a standard commercial photographer then that could limit the kinds of assignments that come your way. If we go into a situation expecting that we have to shoot a certain kind of image, then that’s what we will shoot. The obstacle here is that our sense of what’s expected becomes our expectation, thereby limiting what we can accomplish.

Product photography without the ‘Good Eye’ produces a dead, lifeless, portrayal of the products from the outside that doesn’t express anything fresh or perception-based. For clients who haven’t seen or don’t know what a really stunning photo can do to enhance their advertising bang for their buck, that may be all they expect. Still, if you can, why not give them more?
You can do it and they may find that they love your work, that you are special. Or they may not get it - but find it is adequate. There are clients out there who are looking for more. And they cannot find you if you are not putting all of yourself out there in the world of commercial photography. Clients who want their advertising to communicate the qualities of their product could be your market.
So far, I have explored this subject from what we think about what is expected, and how that limits us in our work. Let’s go further below the surface and explore the inner aspect of this. The fundamental issue concerns the degree of freedom you feel you have to shoot your perception within the confines of the particular situation. Isn’t that how it always is? Doesn’t every situation or environment have its boundaries and challenges? If our minds are open and our awareness is fully present, we can have fresh perceptions anywhere, anytime. When we allow ourselves to connect with the subject or object of our perception, whatever that is, the confines or boundaries cease to be relevant to our experience and its expression.

Even if we are working within a highly structured situation and within a narrow framework, we can take the time we need to look and see the subject, to notice the line, texture, light, color, and when we feel we have fully appreciated its visual expression, then we are ready to photograph it. The more accomplished we are as a Miksang shooters, the more stabilized our discipline, the more quickly and effortlessly this can happen. All visual phenomena have these qualities, and it is up to us to connect and express our experience of the subject or object.
Then the image will be startling, attract attention, expressing the essence of the subject/object. Just because the client doesn’t know that this is possible, we don’t have to hold back. It’s like giving a child fresh milk for the first time after years of drinking powdered milk. Who wouldn’t want the real thing? All this can happen within the confines of a specific arrangement and subject matter. If we think, “it’s just a boring microwave”, how is this different from “my wife, she’s just my wife. There’s really nothing worth looking at particularly. I have seen her for so many years.” The obstacle of familiarity and labeling is at the root of not being able to shoot a product with freshness, and as usual we need to get beyond these limiting views.
Let’s compare this situation with portraiture. In this case, the end product is an image of the person we are taking a portrait of. In Miksang Training we do one-on-one shooting and stay still with each other until our projections fall away and we can connect directly with the subject. When this happens we begin to see and feel, with sharpness and clarity, the subtle aspects of the manifestation of our subject - the line, the light, the texture, the totality they are presenting to us. Here are a couple of examples of my portrait work:

How is this different from product photography?

There are people out there photographing their commercial assignments in this way. There are numerous examples. Check out the Apple advertisements for their new mouse, or their computers. They understand that their clients appreciate the beauty of line, the simple elegance of style, and the total integration of form and function. The photography expresses those qualities. For example – the Mighty Mouse:

Michael told me about an episode of “American Chopper” in which they hired a commercial photographer to come in to photograph their motorcycles for a magazine. You probably know that their bikes are well known for their unique design which expresses something essential about the person or organization who has commissioned the motorcycle. Their bikes are works of industrial art. The photographer took a long time looking at the bikes before he began because it was important that the images express the essence of the bikes. He took his time taking in the detail of each bike, deeply noticing all of the elements and how they were coming together to form the whole. They chose the photographer no doubt for his ability to photograph in this way.

I have never been a commercial photographer, so I asked Michael about your question. Michael has always said that you can’t do both conventional template photography and Miksang photography, that you can’t have one foot in each world. How can you walk with one foot? How can you turn off your awareness, your presence of mind and eye? It’s like putting ourselves on autopilot for our job rather than being full present while we are working. Why would we want to reserve the time we are fully present for when we are not working - just because of an idea we have about what we think somebody else’s idea is?

Michael said that in the end he just couldn’t wear both hats anymore and abandoned shooting any other way than Miksang. He had done a lot of commercial photography and portraiture, but found it difficult to incorporate Miksang principles and experience into these assignments, at least in the beginning. But he stuck with it, blending the two worlds, and was eventually hired on the basis of his Miksang photography portfolio as the Visual Arts Producer and Photographer for the Maritime Region of Parks Canada.
They asked him to photograph the national parks in the region and he did so based upon genuine fresh perceptions of the subject matter. His slide shows were very well received because they expressed some inner quality about the places. His images were also used as the background for the National Parks’ promotional campaigns in magazines and brochures. If you really do what you do completely and go deep with it so that your images express genuine direct experience of what is really there, who is not going to be able to connect to your images?

Michael was commissioned by the owner of a yoga studio in Halifax to produce images for her website and brochure. She wanted images that were visually stunning and expressed something about the inner quality of what she was presenting in her work. I came along as an observer.

We met her at her studio and she dressed in a very blue yoga outfit. She began going through a variety of different poses and we just watched her for a bit. There was a wall of windows along the front of the studio through which indirect sunlight illuminated her form. Michael didn’t instruct her, she just did what she did and he moved around while photographing her. The images were absolutely stunning, and there was no doubt they were flashes of perception arising from within that particular situation.
These types of assignments are quite perfect for the open, awake eye of a disciplined contemplative photographer.

If this kind of work is what you really want to do, then I suggest that you apply yourself to whatever the assignment is with all the awareness and fresh mind that you have, and that you deepen your ability to be in a receptive, open state of mind continuously so that you don’t have to struggle going back and forth. Then there is no question of doing it one way or another, changing hats and so on. These limitations will become transparent, and you become a person whose passion for perception, whose heat for what is seen, will be communicated in whatever you shoot.
© Julie DuBose 2009
Photographs © Julie DuBose and Michael Wood

On Vacation in an Exotic Location: Keeping Our Miksang Seat

2009-11-01T10:51:00.018-07:00

Michael and I recently returned from a trip to Europe. In Paris we spent each entire day walking around the city from morning until sunset, taking in everything we could, enjoying the Parisian environment and its unique qualities.

During the recharge period since we have returned home, we have been talking about our experience and today we really had a good review of our images. We realized that besides the specific re-occurring details of Parisian style, such as everyone wearing black, black sidewalks, lots of lovely architectural decorative sculpture to name a few, our images could have been taken anywhere. We were just doing what we always do, looking and seeing—color, texture, light, line, moments of tender heart, just as we have on the Boulder or Denver pedestrian malls, on the Halifax waterfront, walking around the block, in our back yard. You don’t have to have an exotic location to have stunningly vivid perceptions. As Michael always says in classes quoting Dr. Buckaroo Banzai – “No matter where you go – there you are!”.

Secondly, we appreciated how important the editing process is while on a trip somewhere you have never been and may never return to. After all the trips we have taken, I know that the last thing I want to be faced with upon returning home are mountains of images that I don’t care about and never should have taken in the first place. When you are someplace you consider really cool, (Paris, for example) it’s easy to get excited and lose the orientation to shoot flashes of perception. We speed up while trying to take it all in, and we shoot anything new and possibly culturally interesting or entertaining (e.g. ‘cute alert’). Our discernment process goes out the door. We want to take it all with us when we go home, every moment, every scene. Without some opportunity to review what we are shooting, a course correction is very difficult. A lot of energy can be wasted shooting images that we will just end up deleting. What’s the point?

To fully experience each day in a fresh way, I think it’s necessary at the end of it, no matter how exhausted we may feel (why do we have to push so hard each day - isn’t it a vacation, I ask myself?) to review and edit the images taken that day. This way we can realize any traps we may have fallen into, such as - we are not really having flashes, only ideas of somebody else’s concepts about what to shoot, the classic shot of this and that, what will make our friends and family envious of our trip, and so on. Then we can take corrective action. We can slow down and when we are stopped by a perception, we can fully stop and understand what stopped us, stay still in the moment, appreciate it, and then possibly or not, decide to commit to making an image of it. This process is the basis for the enjoyment of the experience itself. It keeps us fully grounded in the present moment, which is the only moment that exists. By shooting without discrimination we are trading the joy of direct experience in the here and now for the later process of reviewing our images at the end of our trip. It’s like running through a field of flowers and plucking them and placing them in a bag to enjoy later. Then when we arrive home the flowers are a pale expression of their original vitality. Because we didn’t enjoy the perceptions as we were having them and we didn’t take the time to translate our experience precisely into our image, the vividness and freshness is lost. Like dried flowers, they are only hollow representations of our memory. And that is sad.

This backlog of unedited images can leave us feeling burdened and fatigued. Because we have not taken the time to process our experience by viewing our images along the way, we can become constipated, both physically and mentally. Without exercising our ability to discriminate the nature of our perceptions (in the sense of visual discernment) and what we want to keep and what we want to let go of, we risk digestive overload. This makes it very difficult to relax and enjoy ourselves. Our experience can become a blur, lacking clarity.

If we can edit as we go, the end result is a pleasurable experience of image review when we return home. Sure, I may still have more images to delete. But looking at each image doesn’t make me wonder why I ever shot it or make me uncertain about whether I want to keep it. I know why I did and that there was a flash of perception that in the end I cared enough about to commit to. That makes me feel good because looking at the image takes me right back to that moment, to that perception. It is still as fresh as the moment I saw it, that time we were in Paris.

Text and Photos © Julie DuBose 2009

The Fully Met Life

2009-09-20T09:18:00.010-06:00

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.

As we connect fully with what is happening, our lives begin to change. Letting go of the fruition of the process of perception is the same as letting go of our hopes and fear about what is going to happen in the next moment, that evening, the next day, when we get old, when we are sick, whether or not our loved one will love, accept, and praise us. It’s all the same thing. We are letting go of our sense that we are not good enough. As we gain confidence in our ability to take genuine photographs, we also begin to feel confident about expressing ourselves in our relationships.

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?

I’m saying these things and spelling them out not because I want us all to feel good about working on ourselves so that we can be better people. Miksang is not another personal improvement project. I’m saying this because everything we do in every moment has an impact upon our ability to wake up. The more we sleep the more we are pulled into a dream state. The more we develop and rest in openness and synchronize our eye and mind, the more vivid and direct the experience of our lives will become. It’s as simple as that.

Editing as a Mirror of Our Discernment Process

2009-07-27T09:35:00.024-06:00

Most of us have had the experience in a class when Michael makes adjustments to our images during the image review. He quickly brings what is hidden into the light, adjusts blown out areas, and shows us how to bring our image to mirror what we have seen. He has a great sense of this from many years of looking.

Since we began using iPhoto and digital cameras, Michael has been working with me through the process of correcting the adjustments I have made. I have felt that this refined sense of detail is something that is far less developed in me and I have paid close attention to what adjustments he makes and why. How does one develop this ability to understand and remember these subtleties such as the details in a shadow and how dark it was, the exact hue of a color? I have realized that in order for me to be able to make accurate adjustments, I need to develop a depth of looking often absent in my discernment. I have become very aware that I actually often don’t have a clear memory of subtle aspects such as how dark the shadows were or the exact hue of a wall.

It’s not just that there is light and dark, color, but how much, what shade, exactly? How much detail is there in the shadows, how much contrast between light and dark?

I have been able to get by for quite a while without paying close attention to these subtle details. I guess I felt my excellent camera would take an accurate image and I didn’t need to take the time to notice. And even though adjustments do end up needing to be made, I can fix the image in IPhoto, or so I have thought. I have been able to guess so far based on my vague memory of how it looked. But because the detail has been lacking in my memory, the result is a blind spot in my editing process.

And since I don’t remember the details, what is the basis for how I make my adjustments? Michael will say, “It didn’t look like that. It was darker.”

Darker? I always want to lighten everything up. Always. It’s a true bias. Sometimes I want to make sharp what is soft, even if that’s not how it looked. It makes me feel more comfortable. Once I get to work using the midrange adjustments, I want to see the detail in the shadows or more richness in the color. I make a decision after glancing at the image what needs to be adjusted.

I am really making a conscious effort to look longer and commit to memory the color, tonal hue, contrast, and subtleties of my perception so that editing can be based entirely upon what the perception was. This seems important to me. “Winging it” will come out in the final image. Digital gadgetry can easily compensate for lack of refined awareness in the photographer, but it is used at the cost of the precision, fullness and vibrancy of the image.

Here are some questions I received from Paul Giguere recently regarding cropping and editing:

Hi Julie,

One topic that gets a lot of attention is the issue of cropping photos. Now I know that is usually discouraged (it is the flash of perception as you see it in the moment that is important, not what you want to see later in post production) however, I notice many people use zoom and telephoto lens when practicing Miksang and is this not cropping of a sort? I find it hard to believe that someone was stopped by something when the distance-to-subject is several hundred feet away. What are your thoughts on in-the-field cropping?

I have another follow-on question regarding post-production of our photos. Some who practice Miksang state that no post-production should be done (at all, no exceptions). The photos right off the card are the final versions of the photos. Period. I find this kind of severe. I know both you and Michael Wood do minor post production on photos (curves, levels, etc. . . at least in the workshop any way) in order to bring the photo more in line with what your perception was at the moment the photo was taken. The issue is further complicated when using JPEG (the camera applies many kinds of presets to "improve" the image) or RAW (which needs some tweaking as the image is usually not ready right out of the camera). Thoughts?

Thanks much,
Paul

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your comment and question. We are not opposed to cropping as long as it is used to eliminate what is extraneous to the perception. Sometimes because of the lens we are using or because of where we are in relation to the perception we have to settle for extra in the viewfinder. It is our decision to make that there is too much extra to make sense. In that case we just walk away from it.
Likewise, if our perception is a different shape than the viewfinder, there is no reason the final image should not be cropped so that it expresses the dimensionality of the perception. After all, we don’t see in a certain aspect ratio. Sometimes our perception is long and narrow, or square.
Check out this image Michael took at the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado as an example of this:

Lenses are tools to shoot our perceptions. If we see something across the street and we shoot it with a 50mm lens, there will be so much in the image that is not part of our perception that it will be lost. Someone looking at the image won’t be able to tell what stopped us. Even if we cropped the image, the final result might be ridiculously small. This is too much work and the result weak. If we have a zoom lens that will express the perception accurately then we can use it. Otherwise, we might want to bring our attention in a bit so that what we see in the viewfinder is the perception with nothing extra included.
Cropping is not a tool to improve upon our original perception. It can be used, however, to eliminate anything extra and bring the image in line with the perception. This is always the prime directive, to bring the image to the state that expresses the perception, nothing more - nothing less. Whether we lighten, darken, sharpen, bring up mid-tones, whatever we do with our adjustments, it is only to accomplish this purpose.

Thanks Paul.

Julie
Please join in the discussion on the topic of editing!
© Julie DuBose 2009
Great National Sand Dunes Photograph © Michael Wood 2009

What is Miksang Really?

2009-06-23T09:46:00.006-06:00

Hello Fellow Contemplative Photographers.

As we all apply ourselves to the task we have set for ourselves, namely that of using the camera to connect to and express our world, many questions come up for all of us. We all share the experiences of uncertainty, doubt, deep pleasure, and inspiration as we bring our eye and mind to our visual world.

There are many people these days who feel a connection to this type of photography, and it can be confusing and difficult for the aspiring contemplative photographer to clarify the method, the motivation, and measure of what we see and do within this path.

Because of the popularity of the contemplative approach to photography there exists a tremendous pull to systematize, dogmatize, and basically take proprietary ownership of the inherent freshness within this approach. From this fundamentally uncreative urge, a new school no doubt will arise which easily identifies and judges according to standards that are enforced by teachers with checklists. This process has repeated itself endlessly within academic circles and wherever genuine insight has given way to conceptual understanding.

This is not what we hope for. The basis of Miksang is openness and absence of conceptual overlay. The tendency to use concept to describe openness is natural as long as we don’t lose the connection to the fundamental experience we are describing as we talk about Miksang.

I would like to invite you to become part of a conversation about Miksang and how we all make it a part of who we are and how we live.

It is my hope that through the process of conversation about the many things that come up in our day to day experience of seeing and living in this world that this blog can be a source of clarification and encouragement for all of us.

It is easy to lose the thread of genuineness and confidence in our ability to stay with our direct perceptions, and it is also easy to come right back.

Lately I have been looking through the various Miksang postings on the Internet, and there seems to be a lack of clarity about what Miksang is and how you can spot a really successful Miksang image. So I thought I would start out this blog by listing what I feel are the qualities of Miksang shooting and how to recognize the real deal.

True Miksang is not about the content particularly and it’s not about whether it looks like a Miksang shot. To me it is entirely about the ground of the perception and whether that is apparent in the execution of the photograph. This is very rare and in many cases absent from what is being posted on the Internet as 'Miksang'.

What is this ground? The ground of Miksang shooting is the open space of availability. The flash of perception arises out of this empty open space and without the presence of the flash in the image it is flat and lifeless, somebody’s idea.

What is Miksang Really?

Passion and Joy

Passion to connect and express.

Joyful experience of being alive.

Expressed with:

Genuineness

We can see the world without all our ideas and opinions and appreciate it as it is.

Confidence

We don’t have to worry that what we have seen isn’t good enough just as it is.

How Can We Recognize a Truly “Miksang” Image?

First, I would like to point out something that really needs to be said, as I have read various discussions about whether Michael Wood is true to the ‘Miksang style’. There is no Miksang style.

There is a Miksang “way”, which has been called in Japanese “Sha Shin Ki Do” - what the eye sees, the heart knows - the way to join the two.

This cannot be imitated because it is not based on a conceptual formula. It can be felt directly with the mind, the heart, and the eye.

Here are the essential aspects that must be present in a successful Miksang Image:

The Image expresses a Flash of Perception.

The Image is an expression of the Mind Quality of the Photographer.

Can you feel the heat of connection, the peace of no struggle, the absolute mind quality?

If your mind links up directly to the perception in the photograph and no thoughts arise, this is a good sign.

I hope this is helpful, and if you are shooting without starting with an open mind and eye and heart, it’s a good idea to re-establish your connection with the visual exercises we have given you before you go shooting.

I encourage you to write me back with your observations and comments.

Warm regards,

Julie