Photography by John Holliger
  • Home
  • Commercial
  • Nature Photography Store
  • Events
  • Bio and Contact
  • Blog

I Sat at the Edge of the Center of the World

7/21/2014

 
Picture
  Sliding the rice paper panels aside revealed the Zen Garden, the center of that Buddhist temple.

Here I sat at the edge of the world, the garden of the four great directions.

A labyrinthine path brought me here, Kyoto, and this place of my first solitude.

The elusive heron in her meditative stillness stood with me. 

Making my way to this edge, I turned a corner and there was a white heron painted on silk

A heron in flight in the black ink of calligraphy.

Invitations to sit and gaze on the garden as it is, here

Where I am,

And here

The garden as it is within me.

The rain was singing the leaves awake to their own song.

The bamboo ladle collected all the falling gifts she could hold until

“Clunk,”

The sound of the ladle falling forward on the fulcrum

Spilling her treasure into a hidden hollowed rock,

Much like the immovable temple bell was invited to speak her muted song, unexpectedly

A compassionate “Awaken to all there is, as it is.”



Picture
Always a mystery

The time of the heron’s stillness transformed as the heron opens her wings with deliberate cadence.

The heron knew and I was to practice from this moment forward,

Stillness and movement

Arriving and leaving all the future centers of my world, when

I would see something more of this world as it is,

Something more of whom I have hidden from myself

Something more of whom I was born to be.
                        copyright John Holliger 2014

Written at dawn on July 12, 2014 as I heard light rain falling.  I remembered the beauty of that little Zen monastery in Kyoto (1969), and my room whose rice paper doors opened to the lavish greens of the garden in the center of the Guest House, and that ladle, hidden, falling forward of its fulcrum, singing a song of Suchness, a ladle who spoke more or less, twice every minute for hundreds of years in this center of the world.  John Holliger

The White Paper and the Blank Canvas

7/3/2014

 
Picture
Beauty at the edge of a country road
A few thoughts about creating...

The White Page and the Blank Canvas

Before the pen begins to write, the brush to stroke, the potter’s wheel to spin, there is a time of gestation.  This time before creating  begins might be marked by frustration, fear, jumping in prematurely.  The emerging work born out of willfulness or fear could resemble that angry letter we write and should have put into the desk drawer to be forgotten, but we mailed it.

For others so many ideas are competing in our heads we are unable to have the interior clarity to begin a new creation.   When one friend sees my turmoil and not a focused intent, they gently suggest that perhaps I need to put the project down for a while, and let it season.  And when the time is right to begin this new creation, I will know.  Just lay it down for a while to season, which implies that later I will know when to pick it up and begin creating in earnest, with a focused, clear mind and imagination.

What happens within a creative person in this time of seasoning, is often inexplicable, a mystery, beyond anything that words could adequately describe.  We just don’t know.  But something like our interior tectonic plates move and we begin.

Have you had this experience?  What was it like? 

As the white page fills with words, the blank canvas with paint, the round ball of clay changes shape, Some loose all sense of self, disappear into what they and the clay or canvas are creating together.  There is no such thing as time.  We begin.  We create, until something inside us says, stop.  If you continue you will ruin the beauty you have created.  One painter has said a painting has several stopping places.  The creator may have to ponder, to gaze upon what they have created for some time.  And maybe their gaze never ends and the work is finished, as if by default.  Other times after a time of attentiveness, the artist picks up the work and continues, until the next stopping place.

Can you identify with this?  How do you know when to stop, or when you have reached a stopping place, for now?

When you place your work alone and apart from distractions, and you gaze on this new creation which  never existed until you gave birth, what feelings come forth from your heart?

Are there occasions when you have been changed as you felt turmoil, laid your idea down to season, picked it up with a clear mind and focused attention, and created and gave birth?

John Holliger July 2014

    Categories

    All
    Photography Ideas
    Trees

      sign up here for "A Thought and a Photograph"  blog

    Subscribe to Newsletter

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    April 2022
    December 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    August 2020
    June 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    July 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    July 2012

    Notes from the Field
Phone: 740-360-0741                                                           Site Map
Email: [email protected]

Member of the Ohio Moss and Lichen Association