INSPIRATION
As you may or may not know, I am an avid quote collector. I have a VERY long file of quotes I have collected through the years. About a year ago, I came across a poem by Rumi (full poem here) that deeply moved me. And the particular lines above started me thinking about the possibility of illustrating some of these quotes. This past week I decided it was finally time to start this project.
My original thought was that I would dig out an old book of mine called "Beautiful Moths," illustrated by Frantisek Prochazka and written by Josef Moucha. I purchased this book because it has the most incredible, soft illustrations of moths I have ever seen. I always knew someday I wanted to try to do something in this same style. I fully intended to draw or paint a "normal" moth, but the universe conspired otherwise. Below are some illustrations that inspired me from the book.
As fate would have it, during this time I also happened to be listening to a series of lectures by Nishanth Selvalingam. I had recently seen him interviewed on my favorite podcast "Buddha at the Gaspump." Nishanth (Nish the Fish) is a practitioner of Shaiva Tantra and offers YouTube lectures on all things Tantra and Non-Duality. I started listening to his lectures on the Hindu goddess Kali and was deeply impressed and inspired. He has several lectures where he goes into great detail about this goddess's features. He describes why Kali has long, black hair, dark skin, pearly white teeth, red eyes, and talks about her famous red tongue. He poetically tells why she carries a bowl of blood and wears both a garland of skulls and a belt of human hands around her waist. She is really quite terrifying and, to be honest, I have always been a bit scared of Kali. But looking back through my life, I feel like I have a connection to her. (Alas, that story will have to wait for its own blog post.)
Also, while pondering my moth drawing, another book called, "Shakti," kept catching my eye. Shakti is a term commonly used in Hinduism to refer to divine feminine energy. Her male consort is Shiva who represents the divine masculine energy. They are complimentary energies and their relationship could be described as a longing for unity. Shakti is also considered the goddess responsible for all creation, the Divine Mother, or Cosmic "Ma". She is the universal power that underlies, pervades, and sustains all existence. She has numerous manifestations, one of whom is the goddess Kali. I got this book a couple years ago for Christmas and have read about half of it. I keep it in the family room in case I have time to read a short chapter here and there. I guess the combination of seeing those bold eyes everyday, hearing Nish's lectures, and seeing the beautiful eyes on the moth wings, gave me the idea to draw a Kali "Ma"th.
When I look at all of these influences there is one common element...longing. Rumi has always been one of my favorite poets because he writes so eloquently of this sentiment that we all feel as humans. When I read the lines, "You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets of mothwings, so you could burn them away, one set a night," they were so achingly beautiful to me. The idea that one would repeatedly want to subject oneself to the pain of perishing in the flames of love, so poetically describes a longing in all of us to be deeply known and intimate with each other. We risk everything and subject ourselves to suffering over and over again, just for the sake of knowing the beloved. We are inexorably pulled towards those radiant flames. It is exquisitely painful and, at the same time, the ultimate goal...to know love...and to know ourselves as love.
Kali is known as a fearsome, dark goddess whose red tongue is stretched out showing her instense, passionate nature while she dances among the flames of divine fire. And that fire is meant to transform us. It burns away all that is false in us so that we may know our true selves. Through this fire we are able to see our shadows...and our beauty. Those flames illuminate the path to the luminous void at our core that is both empty and full at the same time. This dance between emptiness and fullness, action and stillness, light and dark is the reason we are here. We find ourselves on one side, always aching for the other. This longing can be agonizing, thrilling, maddening...terrifying. Yesterday I was listening to another "Nish" lecture and he asked, "Why is Kali both terrible and alluring?" He answered using a perfect, cosmic metaphor. Imagine the Earth, Moon, and Sun are aligned in a solar eclipse, with the Moon between the Earth and the Sun. From an Earthly perspective, the experience is terrifying because everything is dark. But from the Moon's higher perspective, all is bright, magnificent light. Our paths can be viewed as terrifying or magnificent depending on our perspective.
My original thought was that I would dig out an old book of mine called "Beautiful Moths," illustrated by Frantisek Prochazka and written by Josef Moucha. I purchased this book because it has the most incredible, soft illustrations of moths I have ever seen. I always knew someday I wanted to try to do something in this same style. I fully intended to draw or paint a "normal" moth, but the universe conspired otherwise. Below are some illustrations that inspired me from the book.
 |
| Illustrations by Frantisek Prochazka in "Beautiful Moths" by Josef Moucha, Spring Books 1966 |
As fate would have it, during this time I also happened to be listening to a series of lectures by Nishanth Selvalingam. I had recently seen him interviewed on my favorite podcast "Buddha at the Gaspump." Nishanth (Nish the Fish) is a practitioner of Shaiva Tantra and offers YouTube lectures on all things Tantra and Non-Duality. I started listening to his lectures on the Hindu goddess Kali and was deeply impressed and inspired. He has several lectures where he goes into great detail about this goddess's features. He describes why Kali has long, black hair, dark skin, pearly white teeth, red eyes, and talks about her famous red tongue. He poetically tells why she carries a bowl of blood and wears both a garland of skulls and a belt of human hands around her waist. She is really quite terrifying and, to be honest, I have always been a bit scared of Kali. But looking back through my life, I feel like I have a connection to her. (Alas, that story will have to wait for its own blog post.)
Also, while pondering my moth drawing, another book called, "Shakti," kept catching my eye. Shakti is a term commonly used in Hinduism to refer to divine feminine energy. Her male consort is Shiva who represents the divine masculine energy. They are complimentary energies and their relationship could be described as a longing for unity. Shakti is also considered the goddess responsible for all creation, the Divine Mother, or Cosmic "Ma". She is the universal power that underlies, pervades, and sustains all existence. She has numerous manifestations, one of whom is the goddess Kali. I got this book a couple years ago for Christmas and have read about half of it. I keep it in the family room in case I have time to read a short chapter here and there. I guess the combination of seeing those bold eyes everyday, hearing Nish's lectures, and seeing the beautiful eyes on the moth wings, gave me the idea to draw a Kali "Ma"th.
When I look at all of these influences there is one common element...longing. Rumi has always been one of my favorite poets because he writes so eloquently of this sentiment that we all feel as humans. When I read the lines, "You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets of mothwings, so you could burn them away, one set a night," they were so achingly beautiful to me. The idea that one would repeatedly want to subject oneself to the pain of perishing in the flames of love, so poetically describes a longing in all of us to be deeply known and intimate with each other. We risk everything and subject ourselves to suffering over and over again, just for the sake of knowing the beloved. We are inexorably pulled towards those radiant flames. It is exquisitely painful and, at the same time, the ultimate goal...to know love...and to know ourselves as love.
Kali is known as a fearsome, dark goddess whose red tongue is stretched out showing her instense, passionate nature while she dances among the flames of divine fire. And that fire is meant to transform us. It burns away all that is false in us so that we may know our true selves. Through this fire we are able to see our shadows...and our beauty. Those flames illuminate the path to the luminous void at our core that is both empty and full at the same time. This dance between emptiness and fullness, action and stillness, light and dark is the reason we are here. We find ourselves on one side, always aching for the other. This longing can be agonizing, thrilling, maddening...terrifying. Yesterday I was listening to another "Nish" lecture and he asked, "Why is Kali both terrible and alluring?" He answered using a perfect, cosmic metaphor. Imagine the Earth, Moon, and Sun are aligned in a solar eclipse, with the Moon between the Earth and the Sun. From an Earthly perspective, the experience is terrifying because everything is dark. But from the Moon's higher perspective, all is bright, magnificent light. Our paths can be viewed as terrifying or magnificent depending on our perspective.
So how is any of this relevant to our current lives? In my own experience, I long to know the beauty and light of this world, but am quite fearful of the darkness. I was even afraid to write a post involving Kali at all! She is terrifying! But I have been attempting to see that even the greatest difficulties in life can offer transformation and a chance at knowing love intimately. This life offers us both light and dark...and we constantly walk between the two. To intimately know the light we also need to know the dark. We are here to experience both. When we are in the midst of a "solar eclipse" and everything appears dark, I am learning to surrender and change my perspective. My longing for the light when I am in the darkness is a call to turn my gaze...shift my perspective. Even in the darkness we can find great love... perhaps that is where we find the greatest love. So when I feel afraid, which has been a lot this week, I realize it is an opportunity to face my fear and go towards the flames... to turn my gaze towards the light and let this pair of wings be burned.
No comments:
Post a Comment