The Dharma Studio practices examine how creativity and Buddhist practice are a point of intersection—Buddhist practice leads us to open awareness, and here we encounter our innate creativity. And conversely, creative practices can be a fertile place to understand the teachings in immediate and intimate ways. The creation of the Dharma Studio is an outcome of my experience as an artist, professor, and practitioner. When I began serious Buddhist study, I began to notice the deep relationships between creative work and awareness practices. Hence, I began to work with creativity as a means of Buddhist teaching. Dharma Studio practices are designed for anyone, and no artistic skill or background is necessary for any of our practices. However, my own background is as a practicing artist. I recently completed a body of work which bring Buddhist writings and painting together and would like to share some of it here.
As part of my Buddhist training, a few years ago I read The Avatamsaka Sutra, or Flower Ornament Scripture, a very long and influential Mahayana Buddhist sutra written about 2000 years ago. It took me about a year to read most of its 1600 pages. Subsequently, for about a year I worked on a series of twelve paintings that related, for me, with the Avatamsaka Sutra’s kaleidescopic, florid descriptions of interpenetrating, infinite realms, mutually containing each other. The paintings were recently on exhibit at Central Michigan University. But the university closed for COVID within days of installing the exhibit, so it had no audience. However, the Vice President and chief diversity officer of CMU decided to make a virtual exhibit of the show, and here he is, with the exhibitions director, reading the short fragments of the Avatamsaka Sutra that I paired with each painting. I wanted to share that here.
https://www.cmich.edu/library/exhibits/Pages/Default.aspx
