Revealing the Vision: Art & Dharma
Spring 2002 Vol. 18 #2
Spring 2002 Vol. 18 #2
Introduction
Is the artistic impulse identical with the religious impulse? Are all expressions of pure mind art? Is all good art in essence “Buddhist”? . . . At a time when we are all so aware of violence, this issue explores ways to “unmake” the world and be liberated by art.
Features
Zen priest and poet Norman Fischer suggests that we grow tired of the “madeness” of the world and that “art-making is an anti-making.”
Tibetan Buddhist scholar and raconteur Robert Thurman sees art, in a Buddhist context, as simply another word for upaya, or skillful means. “All Buddhist art,” he says, “is liberative art.”
Alex Grey describes his paintings as “visionary riffs on Buddhist practice.”
Taking us on a tour through her recent readings, novelist and short story writer Kate Wheeler muses on what might be labeled “Buddhist fiction,” and whether there even is such a thing.
Ellen Webb finds that practice—whether Zen, dance or improvisation—opens up great possibilities.
For the late composer John Cage, music was meditation, where he tried to “get rid of” his ego’s preferences and open to the flow of experience.
Interview with Buddhist Film Society Founders Gaetano Maida and Steven Goodman: Projecting a New Reality
By the Editors of Inquiring Mind
Gaetano Maida and Steven Goodman describe the early days of the International Buddhist Film Festival, and the potential for film—including commercial, secular productions—to be a “dharma door.”
Responding to terrorism and antiterrorism, Alan Senauke, former Buddhist Peace Fellowship director, probes the nature of “the tangle,” both inner and outer.
Barbara Gates ponders the concept of “ownership”—of ideas, places, pets . . .
Spiritual practice and artistic process are entwined in the work of Bette Alexander, Robert Spellman and Ma Deva Padma.
Reviews
Is There No Other Way? The Search for a Nonviolent Future, by Michael Nagler
Reviewed By Judith Stronach
(336 pp., Berkeley Hills Books, 2001)
(227 pp., Riverhead Books, 2001)
A Mindreader’s Briefing
Reviewed By Peter Dale Scott, Dennis Crean, Guy Armstrong, Ronna Kabatznick, Wes Nisker
Short reviews of The Buddhist Path to Simplicity, by Christina Feldman • Zig Zag Zen, edited by Allan Hunt Badiner & Alex Grey • Shoes Outside the Door, by Michael Downing • Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience, by Donald W. Mitchell • The Issue at Hand, by Gil Fronsdal • Good Life, Good Death, by Rimpoche Nawang Gehlek • How to Practice, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Practice
Interview with Joseph Goldstein: One Dharma, The Emerging Western Buddhism
By the Editors of Inquiring Mind
Joseph Goldstein talks about how fortunate we are to have all different streams of Buddhadharma; the abundance of methods enables us to find a way that fits our temperament and propensities.
Sangha Speaks
A visit to the dentist provides fodder for Alan James Strachan‘s vipassana practice.
The Dharma & the Drama
Wes Nisker shows us that holy fools are often religious revolutionaries (and vice versa)—tricksters and jesters who flip the world upside down and backwards until everything becomes perfectly clear.