New works on paper
It is a paradox that we encounter so much internal noise when we first try to sit in silence. It is a paradox that experiencing pain releases pain. It is a paradox that keeping still can lead us so fully into life and being.
Our minds do not like paradoxes. We want things to be clear, so we can maintain our illusions of safety.
Certainty breeds tremendous smugness. We each possess a deeper level of being, however, which loves paradox.
It knows that summer is already growing like a seed in the depth of winter. It knows that the moment we are born, we begin to die. It knows that all of life shimmers, in shades of becoming-that shadow and light are always together, the visible mingled with the invisible.
When we sit in stillness we are profoundly active. Keeping silent, we hear the roar of existence.
Through our willingness to be the one we are, we become one with everything.
Works on paper, mixed media on paper, 42x30 cm or 60x42 cm, 2022-2024
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Provence and Tuscany | new works on paper
Meditation is the emptying of the mind of all the things that the mind has put together. If you do that - perhaps you won't, but it doesn't matter, just listen to this - you will find that there is an extraordinary space in the mind, and that space is freedom. So you must demand freedom at the very beginning, and not just wait, hoping to have it at the end. You must seek out the significance of freedom in your work, in your relationships, in everything that you do. Then you will find that meditation is creation.
The origin is nameless; the origin is absolutely quiet, it is not whirring about making noise. Creation is something that is most holy, that is the most sacred thing in life, and if you have made a mess of your life, change it. Change it today, not tomorrow. If you are uncertain, find out why and be certain. If your thinking is not straight, think straight, unless all that is prepared, all that is settled, you cannot enter into this world, into the world of creation.
Only the mind that has emptied itself of the known is creative. That is creation. What it creates has nothing to do with it. Freedom from the known is the state of a mind that is in creation. Jiddu Krishnamurti
Works on paper created in serenity of sublime hills of Provence and Tuscany. Mixed media on paper, 42x29,5 cm, 2022
Silence..
The only silence we know is the silence when noise stops, the silence when thought stops - but that is not silence. Silence is something entirely different, like beauty, like love. And this silence is not the product of a quiet mind, it is not the product of the brain cells which have understood the whole structure and say, `For God's sake be quiet; then the brain cells themselves produce the silence and that is not silence. Nor is silence the outcome of attention in which the observer is the observed; then there is no friction, but that is not silence. You are waiting for me to describe what this silence is so that you can compare it, interpret it, carry it away and bury it. It cannot be described. What can be described is the known, and the freedom from the known can come into being only when there is a dying every day to the known, to the hurts, the flatteries, to all the images you have made, to all your experiences - dying every day so that the brain cells themselves become fresh, young, innocent. But that innocency, that freshness, that quality of tenderness and gentleness, does not produce love; it is not the quality of beauty or silence. That silence which is not the silence of the ending of noise is only a small beginning. It is like going through a small hole to an enormous, wide, expansive ocean, to an immeasurable, timeless state. But this you cannot understand verbally unless you have understood the whole structure of consciousness and the meaning of pleasure, sorrow and despair, and the brain cells themselves have become quiet. Then perhaps you may come upon that mystery which nobody can reveal to you and nothing can destroy. A living mind is a still mind, a living mind is a mind that has no centre and therefore no space and time. Such a mind is limitless and that is the only truth, that is the only reality.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
