Dharma, Drawing And Everyday Life

There are two modes of being: practice and manifestation.

As an artist, I’m going to start with drawing, as this illustrates the analogy.

There are two reasons to draw; one is to do an accurate, finished drawing, and the other is to prepare with a block-in – putting in the big, accurate light and shadow shapes with no details – ready for working in oil paint, where any accurate drawing will be obliterated and redrawn in paint. For the painting manifestation, an accurate, detailed drawing is unnecessary, although it’s good for practice. Of course, one could fill in a detailed drawing with colour and it would be accurate, but it may lack freshness.

There are two Dharmas. The first is when we learn all the terminologies and rituals; that is the academic and religious way of theories, although this practice isn’t practical in daily life. The other is practical, psychological understanding through experiencing the nature of mind, with all the ego’s quirks resulting in genuine empathetic compassion in our manifestations and interactions with others.

Similarly, there are also two views of everyday life. One is where we play the cultural game, pretending to be polite people and never actually being honest, while the other is constantly seeing, understanding and redrawing a situation to achieve a fresh, spontaneous approach.