Karuna (Compassion)

36x48 inches. Mixed media oil painting on canvas. 

"The know-how of not-knowing"

"Deep waters flow quietly." Before the first acrylic base layers, this painting started with handwritten quotes from some of my favourite passages from the Zhuangzi, a consecrated text that I keep on my altar and consult often. Ambiguous, riddle-laden, playful, and mysterious, the Zhuangzi is satirical and makes folly of the differing primary philosophical systems of the Warring States period, Daoism and Confucianism. The gist of the text asks that you lose who you think you are to be who you actually are, and to trust the mysterious sustenance of the Dao. Between action and inaction, learning and unlearning, the advice is to not get too bent up worrying about acquiring wisdom, because you’re always on the way. By staying internal to the movements, we are our lives; we don’t have to choose radical freedom or make up the world, but rather become aware of what is already there, intrinsically virtuous and germane. These are tenets that I ‘try’ to emulate in the art practice itself, and having the words written on the canvas reinforce it. The title of this piece, Karuna, means compassion.

Compassion calls us back to what one of my teachers, Maria, called the ‘flow under the flow.’ We can bend when we need to bend, and we can stand straight when we need to stand straight. Naturally we aren’t meant to be upright and stand straight at all times, and compassion impels us to bend our ways, to the benefit of other people who rub us the wrong way, and to nurture ourselves. In practicing this, the roots become stronger as we learn how to become more pliable and open, so that when life moves, we move. We are dynamic. Flexibility becomes a form of self-governance. There is a saying that a crooked tree lives its own life, but a straight tree is turned into lumber. Branches that don’t bend, don’t last the storm. When we learn how to bend and move when life asks for it, paradoxically things bend and move for us in return.