What triggers the experience of magic I care not. For me it is immersion in Nature. Wild flowers, trees, caterpillars, hills, seashore, clouds. I had a guru who advised focusing on the breath as a way to enlightenment. It was boring, and though I did it for years and years, I can’t see what good it did. I know breath is always available as an object of meditation, even for the blind, deaf and incarcerated: a “one size fits all” mantra for the lazy guru. But I would have preferred if he had pointed to the ever-changing sky and told me to focus on the cloud-formations. No, on further reflection, that would spoil it. Part of what makes it so sweet to look at the sky is that no one told me to do it.
This evening after all the heavy rain, there was a procession of flat-bottomed clouds. How magnificent! Others might prefer fat-bottomed girls, as celebrated in Brian May’s famous song of that name, written for Queen. Or the drinking of hard liquor. Or praying before a statue of the Holy Virgin. Or a pilgrimage to a holy place. Or fasting. Or even focusing on the breath, though you won’t catch me doing that now. It was supposed to be a way to get out of your mind, to stop the procession of thoughts and attachments. “Then what is the point of being alive,” I used to wonder, “if we are to let go of all this beauty, just because it might hurt us too?” I did not quite have the confidence to go my own way. Could all the saints and sages be wrong? Wasn’t this Buddhistic obsession with the avoidance of suffering a bit like the Health and Safety regulations which ban anything which might conceivably cause an accident?
To be introduced to your own breath by a third party is a monstrous thing. It works just fine without our conscious mind trying to focus on it. But that guru was right to praise “joy without reason” and identify its source as within me and not in the world. I don’t care what he says any more. I’ve worked out for myself that it’s the solitary contemplation of natural beauty which best brings me to where I want to be.
My recently taken-up hobby of painting in pastels – which would take so many years of dedication to produce something good – is partly to do something intricate with my hands and mostly to pay homage to Nature. When I look at the sky I want to be able to mirror some part of its beauty. Not with photography, which is flat & mechanical, but with my soul’s response to the clouds.
PS, 24th August:
On my way to buy a newspaper I pass a terrace of late-Victorian houses, built close to the road with dilapidated hedges and litter-strewn paving. They breathe a sense of poignancy, which harmonises with today’s overcast, drizzling sky. An old man, unshaven and noticeably unwashed, holds forth like an oracle to the born-again Muslim at the till, who glows with a special charisma. (I used to know that trick, when I had a cult-induced light of virtue in my eye, ready to share it and do my bit to save the world.)
Suddenly I felt the poignancy and pathos of life, as if today was my last on earth, and I were reviewing the content of my days: their beauty, imperfection and yearning. Now, the yearning is over. I have it all, everything that matters. Joy is in the air I breathe, the common air.
Have I, like like Diogenes, renounced all to gain all? No, it’s not that, the yearning fell away. I saw that everything is here: earth, sky, love. Suddenly I think of The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul, where Dirk Gently asks a tramp,
“Have you lost something?”
“Have I lost something?” he said in querulous astonishment.
“Have I lost something? . . . The sky? . . . The ground?”
Certainly the sky is mine. I lay claim to it. The clouds are mine. On earth are suffering and joy, then we die. In the sky above we see glory and call it heaven.
a wayfarer’s notes 
I like both the breath thing and nature. To me they're inward and outward turning versions of the same thing.
With the meditation, I'd almost given up on it – like you say, it seemed like a bore and waste of time, and this after maybe seven or eight months of it. But just when I was about to give it up, things started happening.
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From one artist to another, Vincent, it has nothing to do with how accomplished you are, if you get into the act, into the meditation of the 'looking' and the 'translating' and the hands' response with the chalk or crayon or brush, that is the thing, the meditation of it.The product, can even be discarded, should not carry so much weight that it becomes the thing, the doing should be the value, like you are saying, the seeing of nature, her forms, her ways, and speaking of them with your hand and fingers, the response, the love.There is nothing better, that is an immense pleasure, relax and enjoy it as often as you can, as long, each time, as you can, and as you indicate, value the experience as a great pleasure that never overfills.Your post about this is terrific, right on and speaks directly to me as an artist to an artist, thanks Vincent
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The breath thing, I did meditations a long time ago, with breath timings, that is dangerous and can produce some very strange and phenomenal results, perhaps mostly psychological, I think so. The odd thing was, the I that I am, never went away, never disappeared, in out of body experiences, in the releases by breath control, I was always the one who went out, I was always the one knowing the experience what ever it was, just produced experiences that were not 'normal' things, didn't change me at all.
In doing meditations like painting, basket weaving, lol, and the like, I am lost, there is true relief from the normal state without the oddity of an extreme.
Just my take on the subject.
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I did the breath meditation for thirty years so it does take a few years to recover from that! I'm not saying that nothing happened. Indeed I may owe a lot to it. But I'm glad I stopped. So it would be foolish of me, Darius, to advise anyone else against it. You may have the benefit of better guidance than I had.
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Jim, I am very moved by your unceasing warmth and generous encouragement, after I have bombarded you with ideological and political opposition, pulling no punches, on your various blogs. It's a very practical lesson in the human condition.
As for art, yes, each type of subject is its own challenge. Being a deep-dyed introvert, I was first drawn to trees and landscapes, wanting to capture the essence of a tree, instead of the human face or the nude human body. Maybe that will come. Lucian Freud would be an inspiration, just as Van Gogh is my inspiration in landscape (inspiration but not role model for imitation!)
I felt that my crayon-strokes must follow the way a tree or plant grows, so that eventually I could paint it the way it tried to be rather than the accidental way I saw it. With clouds, it's the same. I've spent hours on my back on the grass (this was when disabled) watching the clouds overhead, swirling, swelling, evaporating, changing colour as the sun's rays hit them differently. Now I also study photographs of them, not just looking at their shape but the processes which shape them. It's hard to reproduce their structure and appearance but the process of trying brings about something in me.
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I appreciate your artistic talents Vincent, glad you enjoy and get something from them. Clouds have always been an interest of mine. The idea of your actions following those of the growth processes, that is a very good idea, much to be found in that.Enjoy it and stay healthy and keep doing the photos too, that pic on this post is exceptional, I love the clouds in it, and the contrast in it also. Well done.No problem with the other stuff.
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Further comments on PS 24th August
Kathy: A Zen Story
THE MOON CANNOT BE STOLEN
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. “You may have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.”
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow, ” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”
Rama: Thanks for this great reflection!
Bob: Painting is good!
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