Lamat

Of course it all began years before I met them. I guess you could say that it was a natural outgrowth of my Zen practice.

I could spend perhaps an hour mixing the color that I was going to paint with, to make it the perfect color. But it was slow meditative work, feeling with intensity the nuances of light, tone, and spirit; not just fussing and fidgeting, trying to make something right. And then, with just the right amount of medium mixed in, so that the paint was to the perfect body and depth, and carefully applied to just the right brush – not to little, nor too much – I would sit myself before the canvas and clear my mind of all thinking.

Sitting like this on the floor, I would remain as long as it was necessary. And, having already practiced meditation for almost 20 years by this time, I was quite accustomed to the process. Letting all verbal thinking, all conceptualizing, all a priori thoughts clear from my mind, my attention. I was crystallinely purely present.

Then, and only when there came, welled up from my pure being, the impetus to paint, would I release a stroke of the paintbrush upon the canvas. It flew like a samurai masters sword to the mark, effortlessly intentional, yet spontaneously determined. It was beautiful.

Only one thing bothered me. Clear my mind as I might, and it was very clear, always before I would release a stroke of the brush, there would come to my mind the hint of a thought. It was the thought of painting a stroke, or perhaps just of moving to make a stroke. It came suddenly, unpremeditated, and left with the activity of the stroke; the two were that infused. However, no matter how calm and composed I was, nor how clear my mind was, always just before the stroke, the merest shadow of an idea would come into my consciousness.

I became determined to paint completely spontaneously, without any concept in mind to influence my painter’s stroke. I began to probe for a way to get behind these impromptu thoughts. To get before the thought of creation, so that I could paint my paintings undeterminedly. Yet, always did these “thoughts” come to me. So I began to probe to where these thoughts were coming from, hoping to learn for to paint without them.