A Fragment - Ms. Carter

 





A fragment

actualizes

with wisdom-eye

looks back


Who is the maker?


Hungry eyes swirling

with the wind of time

coalesce

compounding conditions

in form

reaching

Land of Painted Rice Cakes

Whole and sated

 

My friend Jean, a talented portrait artist, sent me a new piece she’s working on, using an interesting novel technique that begins with actualizing the completeness of a very complex particular, before unfolding or materializing into a whole face. And, yet the whole face can be seen by the seer inside the blank canvas, as though it is waiting patiently, possibly even eagerly or hungrily, for the painter to finish or complete him. His eye seems to stare imploringly for the creator to bring him to life in finished form, although he seems complete in and of himself through the incredibly detailed beauty of the fragment. It reminded me of Vimalakirti’s wisdom-eye with which “one sees only insofar as there is neither sight nor nonsight…the entrance into nonduality,” suggesting the subject – real and non-real – is looking back at the creator with the same intensity, a yearning for realization. This is a buddha field, the Land of Painted Rice Cakes. 

In this field of the creator and the created are the swirling notions of just what colors and hues of colors are necessary for the eye, which come together in the act of experimenting, correcting, recoloring, reimagining. Dogen says “rice cakes are painted in the same manner.” He used a similar comparison to that of Jean’s face fragment, “…as when mountains and waters are painted blue, green and red paints are used, strange rocks and wondrous stone are used, the four jewels and the seven treasures are used.” She brings herself, her whole self, the self of all painters, to the painting. Such impeccability in the beauty of the details. The Land of Painted Rice Cakes is revealed and confirmed through the coming into being by the wisdom eye of the maker; “it appears, and yet it does not appear.” It is part of a whole, but it is the whole of all faces looking back at us hungrily, all-inclusive in its particularity. 

 

Blogpost 3/27/21

Comments

  1. Ms. DiazMarch 30, 2021 at 6:57 PM

    I love this! It brings to the surface a sense of connection I have been suspicious of between painter and painted. Seeing the picture of the face looking back at me, the observer, somehow helps me consider more deeply that sometimes I think I'm not just the observer, but the painter as well. This idea didn't really take off in class discussion, perhaps because it is just plain wrong and not anything Dogen is getting at. But somehow I'm getting at it and chose to make tonight's blog post about it and then I come and see your post here. A bit serendipitous for me! Thank you for sharing this. ; )

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