I haven’t posted pictures lately in the Meditating Wind series. So I dug out a pair from the archives of my mac and put them in my flickr account. These were taken in Ueno Park just outside the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ueno is full of museums and so it’s one of my favorite neighborhoods. But you don’t even need to enter a museum to be among art. There’s public art everywhere. Even the police substation in the center of the park is an interesting architectural curiosity, with Darth Vaderish Bauhaus elements. And don’t miss the excellent Rodin collection that’s just outside the entrance of the National Museum of Western Art.
These two pictures seem to represent different kinds of meditative experiences. They both play with perspective and illusion. But in the one above, the self is prominent and separate from experience. In the one below, the self is an insignificant speck completely absorbed in experience, not self-conscious at all, but still present.
During meditation, I tend to go back and forth between these two states, eventually settling into one. I can’t say one is better than the other. In the detached, self-conscious state, I get more insight. In the absorbed, self-less state, I feel closer to pure experience and enlightenment. Or maybe I just feel more sleepy. I like how the silver ball melts into the sky, and the emptiness of the hole seems to be the most solid element in the composition.
The Quilting Sword 