In the past few months, I have been wondering where he’d gone because he is usually very active on the net. I was a little bit afraid that the darkness would consume him as I feel that it was in there from our exchange of thoughts, but because I never knew him at personal level, I never asked the question. He left me a message before saying he will respond to my latest comment, but never did.

Weeks passed, and today I received a DM from his twitter account – @VinaMist notified me that Chris (lethe’s real name) had passed away a month ago. I was just at Taste Of Melbourne, in rapture after savouring the myriad of beautiful food and wine in that place. To receive news of death at such a joyous occasion is a new experience to me.

To be honest I feel for him, not many people connects to others with that amount of sincerity. He connects to people through his work – I feel that had he not died, he would have contributed greatly to the world of literature. He invited me once to converse over Skype, I wished I had taken that opportunity while it was still knocking on my door. But such is life, I guess.

I don’t think that the news ruined the experience. I accept that this is the nature of things, that for every beginning there is an end. At the back of my mind I wanted to know, how did he passed away? But for me who is on the other side of the world, this would be a no-question. This would be like asking whether the Dailai Lama owned  a pair of jeans or not.

For those who have no means to find out, it is a no-question. I will never know. And so I let go of the question and appreciate what little is left.

Lethe, this will be my final poetry for you. May you rest in peace, my friend.

The Day Turned

With eyes open I stepped outside;
on the pond was the moon,
reflected.

Darkness falls, the day is gone
and the sun’s warmth in my heart,
remembered.

On art & reframing of context

I agree with you – art is not the invention of an object. Art is the expression that captures the perception of the artist towards that object at that moment. In doing so, the work is imbued with the artist’s life state. Such work leaves us in awe because the better the expression, the clearer/easier it is for us to EXPERIENCE that imbued life state.

In doing so, great work of art inspires.

Reflecting on the narrative of Basquat

My immediate emotion after watching the film was sadness.
How is it that a certain narrative comes to define a person’s life?

This is the nature of all phenomena: From thought comes intent. From intent, action. From action, interaction. From interaction, causes are made. From causes, effect/impact on the world.

Simply, our life is our ultimate work of art. That Basquiat’s life inspires sadness is proof that his mind works in that plane. It is very sad indeed because it is unnecessarily so.

Success, Fame and the price you pay.

“Success breeds disappointment, because success and failure are two sides of the same coin” – I disagree with this. I think we are not disappointed by our failure, but rather by our expectation to succeed being unfulfilled.

Basquiat aspires to be famous. He works his ass off to be famous. I imagine that he expect that if he does so, fame will follow. And if fame arrives, happiness will, too. But what if success didn’t come as he wish it to be? What if he is not famous? Well, in this case, he does, but at what cost?

People who base their happiness and “success” on how many of these expectation will materialize will live very unhappy life. Because we don’t control every single event that happens around us. It is such a dangerous and subtle trap. it is like having a hole in your attic. From this hole came one mouse to steal your food. And from where one came, many will follow.

This is why you say from Fame comes Isolation, Impact on one’s character, beliefs and mindset and the terrible fate that awaits the successful artist who can not handle the weight of his own glory.

But the weight and devastation comes not from the fame. It comes from the subtle trap.

So here is a little bit of my buddhism dump. Hope you like it

Cause and Effect

Those who yearn for fame and success,
believing it will bring them happiness
is like an unlit candle who yearn to be
the warmth and illumination in a cold dark room.

Warmth and illumination
are simply by-products of FIRE.
When the fire is alight,
warmth and illumination will follow.

This is the law of cause and effect.
It is very simply, plain common sense.
So focus on the cause, not on the effect.
and light the fire within.

In this way, come what may,
success or no success,
fame or no fame,
acceptance or rejection,

The artist will retain his beauty.
the work will retain his originality.
and his life, his ultimate work of art,
will be sublime.

Oh, and click play here:

Wept the Autumn Wind
and all, hundred-thousand
cherry blossom petals,
rains upon the ground.

In awe and admiration,
I observe this change of season.
Oh, heavenly orchestration!
How did you become?

My own self dies
as I realize
the “I”
that was never there

Beautiful is
the heart that appreciates,
the eye that sees
the world as is.

-

written in response to one by Lethe Bashar called ‘The theatre is self-contained‘. Note: tree image is found through google, I didn’t take this picture.

In the most joyous occasion
He is to be seen.

Like a fisherman,
who is found amongst
a school of fish in the sea

He walks
among those who are blind,
enticed by joy and beauty.

O seeker of eternal happiness -

Do not waste your life walking
the round road of pain and suffering!

Steam rose,
impurities evaporates;
I leave it be.

As time goes on,
love, experience, and live
enters the pot.

I let it simmer.

Finally it boils down,
and the essence
is left behind:

A single drop of reflection
upon the world
that is.

Didn’t someone say…
“life is what happens when you are busy making plans”

In a blink, your life will be over.
Old age, sickness and Death, will soon be upon you.

When that moment come,
a question will enter your mind.

Have I lived a life worth living?

You will know the answer,
not from the amount of wealth you have created
nor from the conquest you have achieved,

But from the sum
of all the moments that you have lived
and the ones that you have missed.

Bodhidharma said:

When mortals are alive, they worry about death.
When they’re full, they worry about hunger.
Theirs is the Great Uncertainty.

But sages don’t consider the past.
And they don’t worry about the future.
Nor do they cling to the present.
And from moment to moment they follow the Way.

I am no photographer, and these photos are by no means artistics – these are merely tiny glimpse of the things I see and encounter throughout the years from my Mobile handset. But looking back, these photos provides anchor points of the events that happened to me throughout the year.

The photos are organized chronologically, from January to December. I hope you enjoy these pictures

Sate Ayam

The Photoshoot

Hat

Autumn Walk

Give Me A Coffee and Hurry Up!

Just another alley

Pinnacle of the square

The dark side of the cube

Surface

Lan Lye

Drink Triple, See double, Act Single

Sunset sky

Space Shuttle in Disguise

The back of favorite restaurant in Melbourne

For  about 22 years, I was happy and content with the everyday tea you find in supermarket, oblivious to the exquisite world of Chinese Tea. My favourite casual tea was English Breakfast from Twinnings – with sugar, no milk

My first encounter with good quality Chinese tea was a first-grade Long Chu, which my great aunt brings over from Taiwan.

At first, I didn’t knew that this tea was of first-grade quality – I just found its effect to be very calming, and its aroma exquisite. Not to mention the shape – when these balls are infused in hot water, the pearls would slowly open up, and in my aunt’s glass tea kettle, watching the pearls open up is quite a sight to behold. The taste is also very, very exquisite. I remember drinking it and thinking: “I didn’t knew that tea could be this good”.

When T2 start to open up their shops around Melbourne, I wasn’t that interested in Chinese tea then. I mean, I like to drink it, but I haven’t cultivated the passion to know about it further – I also didn’t knew of the english name for the teas that my great aunt gave me.

Then one year later, curiosity and necessity got the best of me – I have almost finished the tea pearls that my great-aunt gave me, and I have grown to like it (very much), but have no idea where to find it.

So there I was in T2, shifting from one tea to another until I found one that looked exactly like the ones I had at home – the english name is quite funky: Buddha’s Tears (which I later found is also known as Dragon Pearl)

I have since purchased several bags of teas from T2 and other tea shops from around Melbourne, I even tried to buy some in my home city, Jakarta – I was actually surprised to find that the tea that my great-aunt gave me was superior from all the ones that I can find. And she gave me not only one kind, she gave me three : Buddha’s Tears (Long Chu), Iron Goddess (Kwan Yin), and a kind of Oolong which I have yet to identify. All three are of first-grade quality.

Unfortunately, in my ignorance,  I have finished the Buddha’s Tears that she gave me. The little that is left of the Iron Goddess and the mysterious  Oolong tea – they are now a part of my treasured tea reserve.

Every time I visited my great aunt, we would have long conversation about tea. She would cook an awesome dinner and afterwards, we would talk about tea, over tea. We exchanged information, for even though she is very knowledgeable in the art of tea, she doesn’t have the internet on her fingertips.

I for one, have my e71, ready to query whatever info that she was uncertain of, and thus we both learn a lot from this conversation.

Thus began my love and passion for Chinese Tea.

when I met her, in January.

We laugh and loved, we fight and frown

And thus so ended, our little story.

I now stand proudly on my own

a hint of regret, the tiniest of worry.

For I want to see her wear that gown

smiling proudly, celebrating victory.

But perhaps it is Pride in my crown

that stopped me from saying that I am sorry.

So maybe one day I’ll move again  into town

to be a fool once more, and start another story!

On Genius, Blog of Innocence

Bashar’s post is very well written and thought-provoking. I would urge you to first read the post, because what I write here is merely a response to this amazing insight that Bashar have glimpsed on, and expressed (very well) through his post.

He laments on the art critic’s presentation of genius and talent. Here is the text from the post that interest me the most:

We read, “No one writing in English today produces anything quite like them.” And then, a passage that illustrates the reviewer’s claim.The passage is beautiful; I was certainly moved by it.

But let me challenge you to another point of view, a point of view which is provisional and openly philosophical . . .What we think of as a writer’s unique and individual gifts, those sparkling sentences that critics extol–in my present understanding–are really the effervescence of language itself.

What I mean to say by that is, art in poetry or prose is language in its purest, most accessible, most fluid form, nearly on a separate wavelength. It’s on a wavelength most of us can hear, just not all of the time. When we hear it, our hearts swoon, our minds expand.

…
I believe the magical passage, the stunning work of art, is not the watermark of individual genius, but instead the reflection of a higher state of mind. The artwork is evidence of some journey. Art criticism flattens the journey, however, by making it into a vacation. Now it’s as if the artist went on a vacation and brought us back a souvenir. We grab for the souvenir at our first chance because it really is magnificent to have such a beautiful thing in our hands. Blinded by the act of possession, having stamped our names across the material object, we see no further–

In this mode of appreciating art, the furthest I can see is not far enough. Fixated on the individual and her gifts, I lose sight of the deeper meaning or beauty in the work of art. By reducing art to the individual, and setting a spotlight on the hand that wrought perfection, I mistakenly short-circuit the whole enterprise of art.

Read full post here

Enter Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk

When I read through Bashar’s post, I can’t help but to revisit and re-think about my understanding of ‘genius artworks’ and immediately this video, a TED talk from Elizabeth Gilbert (the author of Eat, Pray, Love) on Nurturing Creativity that I watched several months ago floats in my mind.

A quick google on ‘TED genius creativity individual’ lands me on the right video: Elizabeth Gilbert on Nurturing Creativity. I would encourage you to watch this video, as it is very beautiful and inspirational:

Elizabeth landed on a similar insight (through a different process) that Genius is a divine insight, and it should not be individualized. The fact that we’ve individualized and attributes it to an individual puts tremendous pressure on the individual (the artists) and leads to an unhealthy artistic culture.

The relevance of the video to Bashar’s post is just too much to of a coincidence. It’s like the two is made to complement one another, and to me, it’s two pieces of the same puzzle.

The Genius Puzzle

So I posted a comment reply to Bashar’s post and in it I wrote my vague opinion on this topic. But shortly after that, as I was about to work again on my theory on model for distributed system , two Buddhism concept pops in my head:

The first is The Ten Realms of Awareness (or The Ten Wo which haven’t wrote down in any online form, but a very simple version can be found here), and the second is Finger Pointing Away To The Moon.

Which is very interesting because the two are seemingly unrelated, and yet at that moment I can see the connection as clear as day. I wanted to reply to Bashar but I thought that since it will be one very long reply and the concept might not appeal to him or the reader of his blog, perhaps I should capture it here instead, in my own blog. Afterall, it is the perfect medium to voice my opinions on things.

So here is my attempt at putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

The Ten Realms of Awareness

So what does The 10 Realms have anything to do with great works of art? Firstly, let’s try to understand what it is:

The 10 Realms describes a model of varying level of awareness / state of mind. In its most simplistic description, it partitions the varying state of awareness into 10 level. The order from the lowest to the highest is as follow: (lowest) Hell, Hunger, Beastiality, Anger, Tranquility, Rapture, Learning, Realization, Boddhisatva, Buddha (highest). More information can be found by googling it – a brief summary can be found in this link or in this wikipedia page,

The realms are not static, meaning that one doesn’t reside in a given state of awareness / world and stuck in it for the rest of your life. In fact, we constantly jump from one world to another as our mind changes. However, across all 10 level of awareness, one will be dominant – and that is the level where you spend the most time at.

Side Note: The teaching encourage us at first to understand the concept, thus giving us the capability to analyse our own life state. And secondly, now knowing where we are, we can consciously work on various aspect in our life to make it better.

Great works of art through the lens of Buddhism

The Ten Realm of Awareness is applicable to each aspect in our live, and it’s very, very dynamic. Someone could be in permanent Realization in their professional work, but constantly fall into Anger or Beastiality in their relationship (or vice versa). So when looking at the artistic work of many creative geniuses in the past through the lens of Buddhism, we need to be very specific about what aspect are we looking at.

So here I will try to dissect the puzzle using The Ten Realm of Awareness on the aspect of artistic and literary appreciation, which is really the one aspect we want to look at right now.

I sat down and think about this, and I came to the conclusion that in this particular aspect of life (artistic and literary appreciation) artists would linger in the world of Learning and Realization. They are constantly pushing the borderline of realization, practising, learning, and perfecting their art.

The less artistic ones (most of us) would probably jump around in the other realms: Hell (zero interest in art); Hunger (constantly in need of the next good stuff); Bestiality (using the art to satisfy an immediate desire without thinking of the consequences); Hunger (egoistic point of view of the art work, and complete ignorance); Tranquility (neutral and unbiased appreciation of the art work), or Rapture (extremely delighted by the work of art)

People in different level of awareness basically experience the world differently. Let’s take a simplistic example of experiencing Winter.

Have a look at this picture.

There are people like that around. For instance a lot of people who are migrants from tropical origin who usually only have 2 season: Rainy and Dry, can’t stand winter.

They’re not used to it, it’s cold, it’s bitter, it’s just very, very annoying. For these people, Winter are only there to make Spring awesome and they just want to go through it as fast as possible!

Trapped in this mindset, they dwell in the realms of Hell, Hunger, Bestiality, and Anger. They suffer the cold and gloom (Hell), they hunger for the warmth of Spring (Hunger), They bitch about Winter all the time with people around them to satisfy their desire to, well, bitch about it (Bestiality) and of course, as a result they are grumpier most of the time (Anger).

Indeed, for these poor souls there is little or nothing artistic about Winter at all.

Yet, another person looked at not only Winter, but also Spring, Summer, and Autumn and marvel at the majesty of the turning of the season, and sees the beauty in ALL of the season. In fact, this person wrote a whole concerto piece for it, aptly named The Four Season, and etched his name forever in the history of classical music: Antonio Vivaldi.

So here we have two individuals that experiences Winter very differently from one another, as they both dwell in a different mental realm.

Of course, what they think of Winter is of little importance in the bigger scheme of things. And yet, these insignificant opinion plays a key part in their decisions on what to be done about it: One decided to bitch about it. The other decided to write a music to capture the experience of the four seasons, including Winter. And what a difference it is.

Experts now marvel at how Vivaldi does it, there’s even computer projects now that analyses the musical score by Vivaldi and attempt to create music that are similar to it. Obviously Vivaldi have been called Classical music Genius millions times over.

So let us now divert our buddhism lens into this artistic process: Vivaldi’s attempt to capture Winter.

The Finger That Points Away To The Winter Moon

I think the concept of ‘finger pointing away to the moon’ is the best model to illustrate this. The finger points away to the moon, in the hope that whoever looked at the finger, can then look at the moon (whose beauty is not obvious to the uninformed) and perceive its ‘heavenly glory’.

Just as religion points to the experience of enlightenment and the transcending of humanity, so does Vivaldi’s Winter piece points to the experience of Winter in the context of the Four Season.

But of course, it is not enough to describe it. Just like it is not enough to describe what the Winter piece by Vivaldi is like, one must experience it to understand its significance. And so here it is, by the grace of You Tube. If you can, close your eye and picture the last winter you experienced. The cold, bitter wind, runny nose, and so on. Also if you can, listen to at least the first one minute of the track:

… What is so compelling about this musical piece ? What do you hear when you listen to this music? Did you hear the fast-paced pitch-change of the violin, are you taken in awe by the skill of the performer?

Or are you more taken by how vividly this piece describes the cold and bitter winter? If you can hear the emotional content within the piece, one can almost picture people dressed in black/dark clothing walking out in the cold in a fast pace, body bent down to keep the chest warm – when suddenly, a gust of cold, bitter wind swept through the street, literally numbing our face.

That is how I experienced this piece – and I know that I am not the only one who interpret it this way. A lot of people describes that bit between minute 0:43 – 1:08 as ‘the bitter, cold winter gust’.Can you hear it? 3 gust of wind, every last one colder than the one before.

Side Note: Funnily enough, as I am writing this post, I did a quick search on the interpretation of this piece and found this video, which is also very amazing. In that video, part of the piece is described with expression like ‘tiptoe-ing through the cold streets’, ‘gust of cold winter wind’, and ‘teeth clattering from the cold’.

Genius ?

In Vivaldi’s case -The winter is the moon, the music is the finger. Through his work, we experience Vivalid’s perception of the beauty of Winter. And I think this is precisely what Genius is all about:

The ability to let others experience an aspect of life as experienced by one’s elevated state of awareness.

But for one so uninformed, we can be very easily distracted by the finger. And indeed we have, bickering left right and center about our interpretations of the music – a very abstract and subjective thing! Bruce Lee said it himself:

… Don’t concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all that heavenly glory!

Indeed, one can not, and most not credit Vivaldi for the beauty of the Winter, as the Winter is a divine thing.

Rather, we should -and must- give credit to Vivaldi for wanting to capture this experience, for being able to express this emotional content through his state of mind, and for capturing it so vividly as a musical souvenir for musicians to play and for us mere mortals to behold and enjoy, as it has now become a treasure for humanity.