Wholeness and Fragmentation - David Bohm

Wholeness and fragmentation has been an interest and theme in my work since reading David Bohm almost 10 years ago.  He was a theoretical physicist and a pioneer in developing quantum theory.  While much of his work is beyond my ken, his writings are surprisingly understandable.  I’ll quote the passage from “Wholeness and the Implicate Order” that struck my fancy, sticks with me, and informs these works:

“...to some extent, it has always been both necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, and to separate them, so as to reduce his problems to manageable proportions...     ...The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion.”

While Bohm approaches this concept from quantum physics, Buddhist scholars have reached a similar standpoint, described among other places in the Heart Sutra, and, while complex, can be summarized in the key portion of that Sutra:  Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form. 

 Interested in more?

“Space is not empty. It is full, a plenum as opposed to a vacuum, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves. The universe is not separate from this cosmic sea of energy.” – David Bohm.

The holomovement is a key concept in David Bohm`s interpretation of quantum mechanics and for his overall worldview. It brings together the holistic principle of “undivided wholeness” with the idea that everything is in a state of process or becoming (or what he calls the “universal flux») For Bohm, wholeness is not a static oneness, but a dynamic wholeness-in-motion in which everything moves together in an interconnected process. The concept is presented most fully in Wholeness and the implicate order published in 1980.

 He maintains that space and time might actually be derived from an even deeper level of objective reality. This reality he calls the Implicate Order. Within the Implicate Order everything is connected; and, in theory, any individual element could reveal information about every other element in the universe.

Transformation of Materials

I am interested both personally and in my artwork in the transformation of materials.  It seems the entire universe as well as our local subpart, the earth, are in constant transformation of the form and substance of materials.  In my artwork I have focused largely on oxidation, the combining of oxygen with materials, either rapidly through fire, or slowly through rust and corrosion.  (With a relevant tangent into the transformation of clay to ceramics through heat.)

But recently, the practice of Sokushinbutsu has been in the news and it is so intriguing!  In short, it is the act of self mummification.  Transforming your own body as you slowly fast and add chemicals to your self-decimated body to mummify.  

http://www.ancient-origins.net/news/mummified-remains-monk-still-lotus-position-found-mongolia-002623

Here's the reward:  Apparently 100's of monks attempted the process.  If successful their mummified remains were worshiped. 28 were successful.  The others were given a "nice try" reward and their remains preserved. 

Here's the process:  

"The steps involved in mummifying one’s own body were extremely rigorous and painful. For the first 1,000 days, the monks ceased all food except nuts, seeds, fruits and berries and they engaged in extensive physical activity to strip themselves of all body fat. For the next 1,000 days, their diet was restricted to bark and roots. Near the end of this period, they would drink poisonous tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree, which caused vomiting and a rapid loss of body fluids. It also acted as a preservative and killed off maggots and bacteria that would cause the body to decay after death. 

In the final stage, after more than six years of torturous preparation, the monk would lock himself in a stone tomb barely larger than his body, where he would go into a state of meditation. He was seated in the lotus position, a position he would not move from until he died. A small air tube provided oxygen to the tomb. Each day, the monk rang a bell to let the outside world know he was still alive. When the bell stopped ringing, the tube was removed and the tomb sealed for the final thousand day period of the ritual. 

At the end of this period, the tomb would be opened to see if the monk was successful in mummifying himself.  If the body was found in a preserved state, the monk was raised to the status of Buddha, his body was removed from the tomb and he was placed in a temple where he was worshiped and revered. If the body had decomposed, the monk was resealed in his tomb and respected for his endurance, but not worshiped."

John Cage Watercolors

I had no idea John Cage did visual art. While in the Houston Museum of Fine Arts bookstore recently, I came across "The Sight of Silence: which documents workshops he did at the Mountain Lake Workshop in Appalachian Virginia in 1990 --and the work is fantastic!

Note the effect of the paper laid over 
burning straw 

I so resonated with his process!  He uses randomness, chance (actually using the I Ching to chose the sequence of colors), natural materials (stones for shapes, feathers for applying inks, burning straw to tint the paper, etc.) while refining the right to judge the aesthetics of the final product. 

                                           

                                                            Using natural materials -- stones selected 

                                                   for shape, feathers to apply the inks

He makes judicious use of the enzo which the book defines as:  "a spontaneously painted circular form that is particularly identified with the japans practice of Zen and is under soon as a sudden manifestation of the immediacy of enlighten self-insight"

The results are delicate, ethereal works of art that are so compelling! 

The Circle, the Spiral, the Enzo

One of the most common themes I use in my work is the circle, either complete as if it were a sphere depicted in two dimensions, or in its incomplete, but equally important form, the enzo.  

In Japan, an "enzo" is a brushed-ink painting of a Zen circle that monks make while meditating. The enzo is one of the deepest symbols in Japanese Zen: a symbolic representation of enlightenment, encompassing the universe in an endless, cyclical line. For the practitioner, the act of creating each single circle is a visual koan in which the state of that moment is revealed.

As you can see, I typically embed the image in a context of layers seemingly created by erosion, corrosion, or by sedimentation or layering of the effects of time.

There is Room for All of Us!

Terri Gross replayed an interview this week that she had originally done with Ken Kesey in 2001.  In her questioning she asked him about what he had done, i.e the acid, the social experimentation, etc,  but more importantly about what he had learned.  This answer resonated with me: "We suddenly realized that theres a lot more to this world than we previously thought. I think, you know, because I'm asked this question a lot. Its been 20 years or so and people are always coming back saying well, what you think? And I'm - the one of the things that I think came out it is this that there's room. We don't all have to be the same. We don't have to have Baptists, coast to coast. We can throw in some Buddhists and some Christians, and people who are just thinking its these strange thoughts about the Irish leprechauns, that there is room, spiritually, for everybody in this universe."  (painting is 'Sky Light" by Mark Bowles)