Act 3, scene 1–Bedminster Cemetary, the Bardo of hungry ghosts. Demeter emerges from the woods at the base of a rocky hill to challenge Drumph.
Dem: Who dares violate the dark Goddess’s sanctum?
Drumph: This place has tremendous potential. Only the best people will come to my Ultimate Death theme park.
Chorus: All will come to the awesomely, spectacular, incredible Death.
Drumph: Malignia’s friend, Winston, can do the decor. Real class.
Chorus: Doom golden doom awaits the discriminting dead.
A dream: I am building a stretcher (wood frame to stretch canvas over for painting) for my February art show. After I nail it together, I see that I’ve used 2×4’s which are too heavy and ungainly for the size of the painting. The center brace is too short and part of it is made of ground contact, pressure treated wood, a toxic and inappropriate material for a stretcher.
Now this is where it gets interesting. A dream about my upcoming art show. This project is continuous with the practice I undertook to memorize dreams in order to gain a broader perspective on the work. This is a view informed by the heart as well as mind. A kind of feedback loop is created: The intention to bring the dream to the waking world coincides with an awareness of waking life (art show) within the dream state. This opens a dialogue between the flow of unconscious imagery and conscious intent. It gives valuable clues on how to proceed.
I’m not sure what the symbols of treated 2×4’s and toxic ground contact, pressure treated wood tells me. But I have an intuition that it relates to right proportion, appropriate measure-ways and means.
I’ve long intuited that lucid dreaming abides by the golden mean proportion. It is not just control of dreams, but a way to avoid getting lost in allurements, terrors and distractions; mesmerized by the phantasms that present themselves as real. It depends on the right proportion between waking and dream. These contraries are held in a dynamic tension and generate a third element-a state which transcends contradiction. The point of all this is to gain clear awareness of profound emptiness. This is the truth of the most fundamental Buddhist koan:
Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. – Heart Sutra
I began sculpting memory stations with plaster to use as a basis for drawings- studies for a series of large paintings.
This one has taken a vaguely angelic form.
The challenge is to paint these ethereal beings without sappy cliché.
Without contraries there is no Progression. -William Blake
A few years ago I was engaged in the Buddhist practice of Amitabha visualization. Amitabha is the western Buddha of infinite light. It is taught that if we practice his mantra and visualize Amitabha’s Pureland as made up of insubstantial, jewels of luminous light, we can visit his peaceful Pureland in our dreams. This is of immense benefit for readying us for a peaceful death and helps us navigate the dangerous pathways of the bardo.
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It is also said that, ultimately, this very samsaric realm we inhabit is no different from the blessed Pureland.
Once, as I slept in my studio on a Spring night, I dreamed I flew over a desert landscape chanting the Tibetan version of Amitabha’s mantra: Om ami dewa hri. I flew over a bombed out village and saw scenes of bloody violence and suffering. I thought: Strange, the mantra doesn’t seem to be working. This is no blessed pure land but a vision of pure hell. I chanted the mantra with more intensity: Om ami dewa hri, om ami dewa hri. But all I saw was hellish torment and fighting. All I heard was the sound of screams, gunfire and explosions. Finally, the dream faded and I woke in my studio where all was peaceful and quiet. The only sound was the singing of birds. I lifted myself to see, outside the window, the cherry tree sending forth radiant blossoms in a lovely vision of luminous, rainbow colored jewels of light.
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