This book constitutes the philosophical foundation of Miksang, sometimes known as Contemplative Photography, as taught by Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader and one of the first lamas to teach westerners in English vernacular. His community proved to be long-lived and is known today principally as the center of a large Buddhist publishing concern, Shambala, and for a 4-year college, Naropa, the only accredited Buddhist institution of higher learning in the the United States.
This volume is not a treatise, but rather a collection of short texts, mostly transcribed talks on practice and aesthetics. The book is comprised of 28 chapters, most only a few pages long.
The editor’s introduction summarizes Trungpa’s life, motivation, and goals, providing context for the texts that follow. In essence, Trungpa was using a somewhat secularized version of Buddhist principles and practices to build an intentional community through which might emerge an enlightened society. He was concerned with more than meditation or even art, but with all aspects of social engagement and management.
If you are allergic to religion and religious talk, you may find this book tedious or even infuriating. Not so much because the philosophy Trungpa attempts to elucidate is based on Tibetan Buddhism, but because of Trungpa’s presentation. Much of the text is transcribed talks to intimate followers, people who already had a great deal of context and knowledge of Trungpa, his teaching style, and his teachings. To me he seems to often meander through his presentations, circling around and not saying very much. I have read quite a lot of Buddhism - I even have an advanced degree in the subject - and I tried to keep up by taking notes, producing 14 pages of A4, 12-point, single-spaced text, but even so I found much of this book puzzling and not terribly clear or informative.
Trungpa’s ideas, by the way, are not intended for a specific type of artist, though he does note that much of his remarks have to do with visual arts such as painting, calligraphy, and photography, all of which he practiced himself.
So what does he have to say?
Trungpa notes that dharma art (or Buddhist art) begins with the questions of dharma: What are we? Who are we? What are we doing? What is our reason or purpose? We don’t use art to discover dharma, but through the practice of dharma come to the practice of art. Trungpa is talking to people who are Buddhists first, artists second. The former informs the latter.
In Trungpa’s religious tradition, Buddhism is centered in meditation, the practice of exploring self in the phenomenal world, of training the mind to deal with unskillful thoughts and feelings. Meditation transforms a person’s understanding of the world and thereby how a person does art.
The most basic point underlying all his presentations is that art is not something separate from the rest of life, but rather an expression of how we live. “Art” can be practiced in the smallest, day-to-day activities, from folding clothes to arranging living space.
The dharma artist has no interest in fame or fortune but does art as a means of exploring the phenomenal world. In this sense the artist has no hope, no yearning for something other than clear comprehension. There is no grasping after goals, aesthetic or financial. As a result, there is no chance for the artist to fail. That is, if the artist is practicing to the best of ability, honest about objectives and not seeking to reproduce an ideal, then there is nothing against which to measure failure. With the right intention, every artistic expression is an honest expression.
No hope, no fear.
After writing this review, I sought out the published opinions of informed readers. Two that can add to what I have written here are to be found at Thinking from Here to There and Examiner. Reviews at Amazon have little to say on the actual content of the book.
If you are a photographer interested in a succinct treatment of Trungpa’s message, try McQuade and Hall’s Looking and Seeing, an exercise book for Miksang, the dharma practice of photography. Although designed as a teaching text for photographers, it contains a couple of chapters on the theory behind the practice that have been written for a general audience with no background in Tibetan Buddhism.
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