Alternative Realities - devotional art

We sentient beings possess the wonderful ability to choose what reality to believe in. Proof of this can be seen within even a casual examination of any or all governmental elections.
If we apply this ability to the ‘seeing’ of Buddhist devotional art we furnish ourselves with a precious window into the realm of Enlightened beings. This is a vision into a world that can not be directly touched from within the confusion of ‘Samsara’. It can only be eluded to via emblematic archetypes, figurative symbolism, allegorical paradigms and ideographic metaphors; in an other word: art.

The Tibetan hierarchical frame work of artistic expression is as follows:
1. Creation of life itself; this expression is accomplished through the system of incarnation and it’s associated mechanism of karma.
2. Literature; expressing the ‘enlightened word’ through the medium of sound. This is accomplished by exposing ourselves to the voices of sacred instruments and chants, thereby opening the mind to vistas of great realization.
3. Sanctified architecture; provides a four dimensional diagram which models phenomenon and it’s connections to transcendent understanding. Here we dwell within enlightenment sensibilities.
4. Consecrated sculpture; is the conveyance of the enlightened emanation body, treasured energizing visualizations and a vessel of Buddha activity.
5. Sacred Paintings; which opens portals of understanding into the enlightened dimensions.

Next time you view a;
thangka, along your mine to follow it’s lines and colors into the teaching embedded within; or
as you face a sculpture of Buddha, allow the Bodhi presence to awaken within you; or
as you stand before a Stupa, see the chakra energy which connects it to the heavens and own it as your own; or
while resonating a Himalayan bowl find that bit of you which echoes within illuminated truth; and finally
as you pass through this lifetime look upon others and yourself as divine expressions, interconnected and precious.

- Richard Rudis

Every Breath a Prayer

In our everyday lives of mortgage payments, taxes and traffic jams we rarely glimpse or experience the deeply real. It is easy to lose touch with the inherent wholeness which lurks beneath the stereotypes of other people and other places.
How many miles can be traversed as onlookers but never as witnesses? To pilgrimage, weather it is to the roof of the world or into the back yard, is an attitude, an enthusiasm which elevates the journey into the realm of spirit-renewing sanctity.
With keen preparation, attention, focus and respect the pilgrim discovers gurus, saints, buddhas and gods. Their relics are exposed; movement changes from mindless to mindful and in turn awakens the divine that is innate within each of us.
There is an energizing moment of actually being somewhere you had previously only dreamed or read about but know that pilgrimage is so much more. To make your next step mindfully, no-matter where it takes you, is to unleash the natural state of internal bliss which resides within and to seed a gift. That gift evokes awe and wonder that unfolds into our own. It is poetry, art, music, sound; it is the source that replenishes; it is the astonishment of possibilities that utterly transforms us.
Kabir, mystic philosopher and poet, wrote, “If you have not experienced something, then for you it is not real.”
My challenge to you this month is to move through space consciously, step into the sacred of your own making and make each breath a prayer.

Richard Rudis