* NOTE: this content was originally written and shared between January 29th and March 4th, 2016 during the active days of this contemplative drawing project.
a contemplative drawing project
40 DAYS began as a project for a graduate class in Contemplative Teacher Practice with Professor Jack Miller at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (2016).
The assignment was to maintain a daily meditation practice in a format of our choosing for a period of about 6 weeks, and to document this experience through writing. Initially, I had thought that the drawing itself would be the meditation, but when I started to read about and practice Tonglen early on in this process, the art-making evolved into something that was part visualization and part contemplative reflection on what I was feeling and experiencing during the sitting meditation. Each one of these 3.5"/round, mixed media images was created on a 6"x6" piece of watercolour paper and took between 2 and 4 hours to complete (on average).
I completed one drawing each day for 40 consecutive days.
Tonglen, or "exchanging oneself for others" is a Buddhist practice for activating loving kindness and compassion. In Tibetan, the word tonglen literally means “sending and taking.” It refers to being willing to take in the pain and suffering of ourselves and others and to send out happiness to us all.” (Pema Chödrön, 2005)
If you are interested in reading a bit more about the process + context for each drawing, please scroll down to the notes that I have shared just below each series of 5 images in this blog post. These excerpts represent an abbreviated version of my meditation journal from that time.
January 25 - January 29
01 - 25 - 16
This first image evolved out noticing how preoccupied I was as a result of worrying about doing this project well enough, or "right". I was riding home on my bicycle towards Trinity Bellwoods
when I noticed the park laid out in front of me. All of my favourite colours were playing amongst the trees and I almost didn't pay attention. I stopped at the coffee shop across the road from this view and started drawing.
01 - 26 - 16
I hate swimming but it is relatively good for the broken bits of my body, so I have been trying to do it more often. On this day I began a practice of intentional body-mindfulness while in the change room and in the water. Swimming felt better - safe(r) - just by continuously returning to the breath.
01 - 27 - 16
I spent extra time remembering queer family who are no longer with this world during meditation today, as well as those who I rarely see due to distances but are still very much a part of me. In Metta practice, this adds a whole other quality to my relationship with "love".
01 - 28 - 16
There has been a lot of deeply personal o u t going energy in my life over the past few days, and no form of breathing or other meditation was helping me to feel better about leaving the house. I made a bubble of art and radio podcasts around my body in coffee shops, and remembered to remind myself that this is actually excellent self-care.
01 - 29 - 16
Slow-walking with a cane instead of cycling today... Practicing mindfulness, attention to breathing, and the way that pain changed in my body with the different ways that I moved began to feel more like a gift than a nuisance... By the time I got home, I was grateful.
January 30 - February 3
01 - 30 - 16
There was a lot of physical pain in my body today but I could not stay still, so I went for a long, slow and careful walk... As I walked I began practicing Metta, during which I remembered a teaching that I had received about the difference between suffering and pain. As I worked through what the pain feels like in my body, I breathed to remove self-blame.
01 - 31 - 16
I have been thinking about how much easier it was to do the self-love part of Metta with my students sitting all around me: a constant reminder of how practicing loving-kindness for oneself is directly connected to building the capacity to love others as big and deep as they deserve...When I was a kid, I loved rabbits and so drawing the process in this way made it easier to engage with today.
02 - 01 - 16
Every time that I meditate, just like every time that I acknowledge the connection of my brain to my body through drawing, I am choosing into an experience that directly opposes what my nervous system tells me is "survival". I like to draw after meditating because the act of making marks on paper that can then transform the things I feel but cannot say back into some sort of “conversation” feels important... Like I have figured out something as essential to survival as disassociating, but the opposite.
02 - 02 - 16
A rare occasion of achieving a body-based awareness for "where" all of my extremities were at the same time during breath-awareness meditation.
02 - 03 - 16
I have the word "grace" tattooed on my left forearm. g r a c e is an important concept to me for many reasons and although the stories I have that attach to this idea are not very easy to tell or hear, someone asked for and accepted them today with thanks as opposed to judgement. I feel extremely grateful for this experience and I meditated on the word "grace" tonight as both a word and an idea/image in recognition + thanks for all of this.
February 4 - February 8
02 - 04 - 16
The city is full of these little brown birds that keep themselves safe by blending into their surroundings. There is a flock of them that nest in the foliage covering the outer walls of Hart House on the U of T campus. I stopped next to their roost to adjust my backpack today and suddenly, all of what had seemed to be dead leaves on vines flew up around me. This image came back to me in meditation tonight, and as I began a body scan, I thought about the way that “noticing” functions in both physical and cognitive awareness… the way that we do not get to choose the pieces that our ‘self’ wants to see. I thought about the way that pain – once it’s noticed – quite readily draws maps to more pain. Thinking about those little birds again and their multiple shades and hues of brown ---> the intricate pattern of vines against the stone wall ---> the way that light plays through translucent leaves and bird wings ---> . . . I was reminded that these same basic aftereffects of noticing also work with beauty-full things.
02 – 05 – 16
I have been reading Pema Chodron’s book, The Places That Scare You, and today I read a passage that relates quite directly to some of the struggles I have had with meditation practices that challenge me to connect inwards with my physical body and to believe that it is actually a good idea to identify and acknowledge and stay with pain (both physical and otherwise); “Finding the basic goodness of the bodhichitta is like that - tapping into a spring of living water that has been temporarily encased in solid rock. When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to the pain of disapproval or betrayal and let it soften us, these are the times that we connect to the bodhichitta. Tapping into that shaky and tender place has a transformative effect.”(9)
02 – 06 – 16
I was reminded today of a teaching that I received where it was explained that the original Sanskrit meaning of the Tibetan word that translates (in English) to “meditation” is akin to the verb “familiarize”… That the purpose of meditation is to familiarize oneself with one’s immediate experiences, so as to get closer to understanding the concept of anatman and then in this nonself, to recognize one-ness and familiarity with all beings. I let myself feel so much more of the nuances of this familiarity when I draw/create.
02 – 07 – 16
The Pablo Neruda quote that became a part of my contemplative practice today is a combination of words/ideas that I find both centring and encouraging. They remind me that the thing that I want more than anything in my life is uninhibited reconnection to the depth and beauty of ALL feelings; grief and joy, fear and excitement, and even anger as it can be moved through and let go of in order to make full-out passionate living an actual possibility. Silence, water and hope are easy things for me to know and connect to in my adult life, but I am also aware that as a young child, my nature also embraced struggle, iron and (especially) volcanoes… That vague memory encouraged my consciousness to merge back into my physical body today.
02 – 08 – 16
When I imagine my voice as one that speaks out and is heard, it is this bright cerulean blue. It is my favourite colour and has a deep calming and peace-making effect between conflicted aspects of my own BE-ing. The deep reds of the heart are two-fold. I connected them to a heart symbol in order to convey the rawness and feeling of hyper-visibility that I was struggling with in my core, but they are also about uncertainty in finding safe(r) places to stand and be seen/heard.
February 9 - February 13
02 – 09 – 16
Some days after working directly with groups of students about gender/identity and transitions, I feel exhausted in a way that I can't explain. It is even harder to verbalize when the work being done is actually really beautiful and warm and inspiring, because that goodness is the only thing that I want to feel (and similarly... it often seems like that is the only thing that others want me to talk about). As a small concession to a level of self-care I still struggle with on a daily basis, I decided today that I would draw a unicorn just because I like unicorns and they feel celebratory and powerful to me. That is all.
02 – 10 – 16
Something that I have been learning from this combined practice of meditation and art process is that if I let myself form some of my thoughts and feelings into an image at the beginning of my mediation, it helps to calm the swirling contents of my brain enough to connect deeper into my body for the remainder of that time. I now seem to trust subconsciously that I will get that dedicated art time after the meditation to bring these images into more concrete BE-ing, and this is especially useful because it makes me feel less anxious about letting the details go when I am trying to relax into breath.
02 – 11 – 16
During my undergraduate Fine Arts degree, I had a sculpture professor Barb Hunt whose ongoing project was to knit all 150+ makes and models of land mines that existed in the world (to that date) with pink wool/in perfect detail. She explained that she felt compelled to do this because the fact of living in a world where human beings could design and produce devices for the express purpose of blowing one another up felt physically painful for her to try and understand. I think about this project and Barb often in my own life / work, and today during my Metta practice this image of the pink snake came to me. I have been struggling with how to stay in a place of compassion for myself when other peoples' processes for understanding how they feel about queer and trans people are upsetting to me... It is often easier for me to feel compassion for them - especially if they are really trying to understand more about the things they have taken for granted as "real" for what it means to be a "boy" or a "girl" - than I do for myself... I feel badly that I still experience fear and hurt in these situations. Today I let the image of this snake sit on my chest during the meditation... sitting with the paradox of an image that can represent potential violence and transformation simultaneously... Wrapping it in tones of pink did not solve my dilemma, but it did help me to breathe a bit easier through the process.
02 – 12 – 16
I have been reading about Tonglen, which Pema Chodron describes as, "a bodhichitta practice for activating loving kindness and compassion." I began today with what I currently understand about the first stage of this practice; breathing in with a curiosity about experiencing shunyata
(emptiness/openness) on an emotional level. Pema Chodron also writes that, "fundamentally, experiencing openness is having trust in the living quality of basic energy. We develop the confidence to allow it to arise, to linger, and then to pass on. This energy is dynamic, ungraspable, always in a state of flux.”... (56) It is this description of the always-shifting/un-definable quality of the energy which composes every person, thing and action that attracted me most to this practice because, as a person who feels most at home in non-binary spaces, such an exploration sounded both comforting and possible… Tonight I incorporated these ideas into my practice and I experienced a sense of bodily calm for a short period of time. As I breathed, I imagined the way that a tree interacts with its environment to both receive and create life... the full circular experience of taking in through the soil and then giving oxygen back out into the air to sustain other beings who will then - inevitably - contribute back into the nutrient content of the soil… to the tree. I visualized myself standing in front of this tree and breathing in a circular way with it.
02 – 13 – 16
On this second day of my Tonglen exploration, I worked more specifically on breathing in what I would generally experience as painful and "unwanted" aspects of the world/energy. Instead of getting stuck in a story that goes along with those painful feelings and ideas, I tried, as Pema Chodron suggests - to "drop the storyline" and stay with the energy underlying the pain... This is definitely not a simple thing to do, but I am finding that visualization is actually very helpful because in my mind I can begin with a visual story that is very concrete and then also use my mind to intentionally deconstruct that image. This did indeed seem like it left a different sort of spaciousness to feel the unique qualities of pain in that specific pain-story.
February 14 - February 18
02 – 14 – 16
It is suggested in what I have read about Tonglen so far that the third stage (after a more general "breathing in claustrophobia... breathing out spaciousness”) (56) should be to do this practice with a specific person in mind. I did this for someone intentionally tonight and then before I moved on to the drawing, I tried what is recommended as the fourth/final stage, which is to extend this same sense of compassion to everyone else in a similar predicament.
02 – 15 – 16
In continuing with the practice of Tonglen today, I struggled with what it means at a functional/ systemic level to breathe in the pain and hurt of the world with the intention of breathing out spaciousness and love… I feel like it is important for me to understand, if only on a metaphoric level of my own making, what happens inside of the individual who in engaged in this practice between the breathing in and the breathing out… what happens to all of the toxic, claustrophobic energy that has been invited in and where do these particles of experience go and/or remain?... I think that it is possible for this process to happen in a way that does not cause additional harm to individuals and/or the world because I have felt it happen. This body memory is where my faith resides, but I also know that faith is difficult to maintain on an every-moment-of-every-day basis, and I find it helpful to form visual explanations for myself of what is happening and how –if only for the momentary purpose of seeing them… connecting… and then letting them go. My drawing today incorporates a symbolic representation of my own (many) internal demons, which I find useful to work with because of its extreme simplicity and two-dimensionality (which is so opposite to the actual feeling of these things that absurdity makes contemplation more manageable).
02 – 16 – 16
The image I drew today is basically a different manifestation of yesterday's question… What to do differently with these thoughts, feelings, manifestations of memories and trauma this time?... Just prior to my meditation practice today, I recalled a story that someone wise told me several years ago. It was about a monk who, living alone in a cave, was visited and tormented by his monsters every night for years. One night, he looked one right in the eyes, stuck his head inside of its mouth and said; “I am so glad that you have come….thank you. Please come in.”… I had no idea what to do with this story at the time that it was given to me, but I have always remembered it. Around that same time, I also had a Rae Spoon album on repeat and the feeling of all these ideas are still tied together in my mind along with the "real" and present things I was going through that made this imagery so immediate and significant;
i can’t keep feeding the monsters,
they’re never satisfied.
they’ll take every piece
of me
in their mouths
into the night.
from: MONSTERS by Rae Spoon
02 – 17 – 16
Today’s meditation process and visual results were very much an extension of yesterday’s experience; both a conscious decision to stay with the idea of inviting “monsters” into an active process of Tonglen meditation, and a recognition of the fact that I am still asking questions… still sceptical… and still staying. When I am meditating, there are often visual metaphors that rise out of my experience and help me to focus better on the flow of energy so as to stay more present in general. During the internal transformation stage of Tonglen that occurs between the in-breath and the out-breath however, I have not found that useful images come up easily or at all. This is the space that I have been focusing on in my drawings over the past few days because sitting with a drawing – especially a small and detailed one like these – is also a form of meditation for me and it gives me an opportunity to explore the way that feelings and meanings can weave together in ways which provide me with solace even if I cannot figure out how to communicate that other than by line, shape and colour.
02 – 18 – 16
The image that I drew today evolved directly out of a long meditation I attempted to have while inside an MRI machine (having my leg scanned for fractures). About half way through I found that I needed a break from reminding myself with every breath exactly where I was in order to relieve the panic (because this is not always useful and in this case was becoming exhausting). At that point, I began to visualize a starry sky as a variation on the dim light of the room that I was in, and a beautiful celestial light show to outshine the laser-like pulses of the machine. This, combined with continued breath awareness got me through the majority of the experience in better form than I believe I would have been otherwise.
February 19 - February 23
02 – 19 – 16
As a part of my starry sky visualization + art reflection yesterday, the image of this little bear entered into my experience of things. He continued to be part of my meditation time today, and therefore also found his way into today’s drawing reflection. The context of this particular image for me is that it is a variation of a bear figure I have been drawing off and on for 10+ years. It started with a tiny, hand-carved porcelain figurine that I received as a gift and used to draw over and over again as a sort of visual mantra when I was feeling particularly disconnected and/or anxious. One of those drawings then became the sketch for my first tattoo, and it is still a presence that comes easily to mind when I am feeling unsafe. I did a lot of breath awareness meditation at home today and I was comforted to realize that this bear acts like an anchor to a calm, safe, still place inside of myself that I can almost always access amidst the other chatter.
02 – 20 – 16
Transitioning genders, coming out as pansexual and identifying as non-binary in terms of gender identity have all been things that have helped me to connect to a sense of balance and whole-ness in the most fundamental aspects of my physical and social existence. I gradually came to an understanding for myself that the binary ideas of “identity” which western society imposes on humans feel so deeply wrong in me that I cannot process them as “livable” and that allowing myself to reject those prescriptions is the main thing I can credit for why/how I am still here at all. Returning to more Tonglen meditation today, I found myself reflecting on how the cyclical nature of this process is another manifestation of that natural, universal balance which we are rarely taught to trust, understand, value, or even believe in… breathing in what is painful and unwanted with the sincere wish that we and others can be free of suffering -------> dropping the storyline that goes along with the pain, and feeling the underlying energy -------> completely opening our hearts and minds to whatever arises -------> exhaling in order to send out relief from the pain with the intention that we and others can be happy -------> During my art reflection, I was thinking about this sense of balance in relation to the way that we naturally experience all emotions... JOY:GRIEF . EXCITEMENT:FEAR . PASSION: ANGER ... versus the way that we are often taught to value "positive" emotions like "joy" so much that to feel despair for any period of time is considered an illness." both are true is my first attempt to draw some of my thoughts and feelings about that connection.
02 – 21 – 16
I am a very visual person and as such, every noteworthy thing that I see, feel and remember converts itself into images or pieces of a visual metaphor that then runs through the various levels of my consciousness incessantly and indefinitely. This can feel overwhelming, is often distracting, and has made it especially difficult for me to change my relationship to painful and traumatic memories. An important thing that I think may be starting to happen with this daily practice of breath meditation + tonglen + contemplative reflection in the form of visual art is that instead of trying to judge which images are “good” for me and then pushing back down those ones that I deem negative or unhelpful, I am much more willing and able to just let these things come… spend a couple of hours with them in a drawing that makes that one moment into something less nebulous… and then move on. If a similar image comes up the next day or a few days/weeks later, it now feels more like a gift – regardless of its content – and less like a defect or intrusion.
02 - 22 - 16
Today I was able to spend a lovely couple of hours with a friend who I value deeply for many reasons, including the fact that I can talk to them about the aspects of my work and research that I feel to be simultaneously imperative, enriching and exhausting... To have someone really “get” why and how all of these things can be true at the same time. They understand why, “is it really worth it?” is an irrelevant question and they can listen, feel and discuss the “how” without getting caught up in or confused by my take on the “what”. During my meditation today, I did Tonglen for all people who live with these sorts of daily considerations for a variety of reasons and the overwhelming feeling that I was left with was one of gratitude for experiences of connection and community and the people who help me to remember that these things can/do exist.
02 - 23 - 16
Today I did Tonglen specifically for someone who is very tired and overwhelmed and told me recently that they know they have to “just keep swimming”. While I know that this is essentially true, I also know that it can be scary to be in that situation and to worry about what will happen when you finally are able to stop.
February 25 - February 28
02 - 24 - 16
The words and images that I drew in my art reflection today sum up a lot of thought, meditation and processing from the past while about how to practice shunyata (openness / emptiness) at an emotional level in relation to someone who is aggressive and volatile… "Fundamentally, experiencing openness is having trust in the living quality of basic energy." writes Pema Chödrön (56), and I feel like if I continue to practice this with them in mind but without losing a sense of love and compassion for myself, there might be something important that happens in how I understand my own value in relationship with others... From this, I hope that the compassion I can offer outwards will also deepen and expand. Some of what I wrote/drew today is what I now understand a compassionate revolution NOT to be... while the words around the outside are some fledgling ideas for how we as a species might begin to treat one another (and ourselves) differently and better;
"making space for other people's sideways-shooting abusive bullshit is not revolution...
but neither is shooting back."
UNLEARN - RE-DEFINE - BUILD UP - BE GENTLE - TAKE BREAKS - LISTEN - IMAGINE - MAKE ART - MAKE LOVE - be LOVE.
02 - 25 to 02 - 27, 2016
Over the past 3 days, I have been doing a Tonglen practice for who I was as a child. These are the names that I have for the selves that exist in memories from various stages of my life. I have never drawn them before, but I carry these ideas of them everywhere and all-ways and that has helped me to weave an understanding for myself of why I am here and how/why I should stay.
02 - 28 - 16
The image that I drew today is of a small, burrowing animal because that is pretty much where my consciousness is at near the end of this weekend of too-many-people, lots-of-big-challenges and not-enough-alone-time... Having a daily meditation practice has been especially useful to me when it comes to recognizing and remembering that feelings, emotions and reactions are ALL-ways going to be changing - whether they currently feel pleasurable or unbearable. This has helped times of overwhelm start to feel more manageable, and means that often, I need less "recovery" time when I cannot control panic from rising. As such, I think that this burrowing creature is less desperate and more just tired than one I might have drawn a year or two ago.
February 29 - March 4
02 - 29 - 16
This odd and lovely thing has been happening internally lately, which then - not so internally - has been expressing itself in the form of a person who cries at commercials and facebook posts. It has been years since I have felt able to cry even when I needed and wanted to and as such, I feel drawn to explore ideas about sadness and grief in some of these last few drawings for the 40 DAYS series.
03 - 01 - 16
I am newly fascinated by that thing that happens when a person is not feeling especially happy or especially sad or particularly "one" of anything really, but then tears still come readily because a deep emotional energy is present... How different would the world be if we started to teach children that this is magic?
03 - 02 - 16
Thinking back to the images that I completed a few weeks back when I first began the practice of Tonglen, I was drawn in again today by the idea of a cyclical balance between "opposite"/ cross-connected emotions like joy and grief, excitement and fear, or passion and anger. I am beginning to understand each of these relationships more fully as things that are continuously and necessarily transient. As such... as both/and and everything in between... they have each felt more plausible and gradually, more familiar.
03 - 03 - 16
I first heard the words around the edge of this circle on a Tara Brach podcast sometime last summer. She talked specifically about how a simple addition of the word "please" before each reminder to ourselves to be present, mindful, and loving can make such a huge difference in the energy that we actually embody when we try to do these things... How can we possibly learn to look, listen, act and feel with greater gentleness in the world if we harshly command ourselves to do so?... When I remember to repeat these phrases to myself as a loving invitation rather than a command, they have the effect of slowing down the swirling mess of disconnected thoughts at the base of my skull and gently lifting out the bits of clarity that I most need to see and understand in that moment.
03 - 04 - 16
Every morning in my elementary school classrooms for the past several years, we spent the first 15 - 40 minutes on "check-in" (the time span varying depending on the day/the personal needs of all involved). There are innumerable benefits from such a practice, and they go far beyond what is explicitly spelled out in "the curriculum" (although many can be easily tied into such things if required). When I start to ask the kids (a few months into the year) to tell me why they think we do this every day, the most common response is always some variation of;
"because if you can know how someone is really feeling and maybe why they are feeling that way, than you can also know how to help them, or support them, or to celebrate good things with them....you can understand better the way that they are acting that day."
In other words; they are familiarizing themselves with all of the different and complicated ways that our very common and human need of wanting to love and wanting to be loved can look, sound and feel like… In a classroom setting, intentional, cooperative, community building looks a lot like familiarizing oneself with the needs, wants, hopes and fears of everyone involved in that community, including oneself...
It looks a lot like love.
