Ugh. More lessons in emptiness (as the Buddhists call it), Non-being (as Taoists call it) and Ki (as Aikido masters' call it). Having studied Buddhist philosophy now for nearly a decade, I've read and heard countless teachings on the elusive concept of "emptiness." I try to think that I can understand this concept then something else reminds that I do not. I realize, with some pain, that I am VERY Western in my fixation on the object and the positive space; the concrete, tangible thing. I care about the Coca Cola in my cup, not that there is a space to hold my Coca Cola. That said...
Last night I was at an Aikido class. A 12 year old girl was in class. She was less than half the size of everyone in class, who were all large men. Feeling that her size was a disadvantage, she was somewhat discouraged to be paired with these men. She repeatedly applied techniques which were only modestly effective. After some discouragement, she exclaimed "I'm too small!" A master who was in the class stated, "Well, what do you expect, you took the adult class!" The teacher saw their exchange and focused on her. He lined up five men to attack her. She gasped in horror, but felt pressured to persevere. She followed through with her usual technique and barely caused a ripple in the 700 lbs of men pushing her. The teacher paused and drew an imaginary circle around the men, and the connection between their space and hers... He said: "Here's the Ki, it extends from your hands and fills this whole space. Do not focus on your arm movement or the weight of these men, push this empty space; blend with the Ki." Like some kind of defiance of physics, she did as he said, and with very little force she threw 700 lbs of men to the floor. I was shocked.
So today, I stop by the studio office to see my mentor to discuss the new direction she's been guiding me in (I discuss this in my post Black on white...). I shared with her the pieces in these pictures. She stated that she liked the direction I was going with surface technique, but that the pieces had no integrity-- that they were "lies." My cups are lies!!?? I was momentarily insulted, but I wanted to know where she was going with this line of thinking.
She proceeded to say that I was too focused on what I wanted the cup to look like, especially as it related to the shape. She asked me why I wanted throw on the "beastly wheel" when my better hand-building skills could serve me in what I wanted to accomplish aesthetically. I suddenly became emotional. I explained that I have no interest in what the clay of the cup looks like, but that I like to throw on the wheel. I like that it requires a kind of non-focus focus; that it's meditative and puts me in continuous reflection of my internal process. When I am not able to stay with the flow of clay and wheel, then everything goes wrong and I'm confronted with my psyche, my frustration (my own crap), and not with a cup. If I were in this hobby for aesthetic reasons, I would have stayed with photography, in which I have so much control and I wouldn't have changed careers to be a psychotherapist. This hobby, this life, is an inside job and so is creating.
After understanding me slightly better, she tried to explain what was going wrong (read: ill-weighted bottoms, inconsistency of wall thickness, poor trimming etc...) with the poor design of my cups (despite my basically good-enough skills at throwing). I was trying to understand, then she sharply told me: "You're not listening!!!" In some arrogance I think to myself, 'wait a minute, I'm a professional listener. I know how to do listening. So what the hell is she talking about?' Well, turns out she was right. I wasn't listening. Not because I wasn't trying, but I just couldn't HEAR or UNDERSTAND her -- as if she was speaking a foreign language. Finally she states clearly: you are not making a cup, you are creating an empty space, and it is the integrity of the empty space that is important, not the shape of the clay. She then quotes Lao Tzu... "from a lump of clay...It is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful." I couldn't authentically listen to that because it's so foreign to my gestalt of how-do-I-get-the-next-surface to put my colors onto. On a deeper level, I had forgotten that I'm making cups. If the cup itself makes no sense as a container of empty space, then the surface design will just look awkward.
In the classic saying: wherever you go, there you are... I find myself again. Years of teaching on emptiness, a direct observation of it last night when a 12 year old girl threw down 5 men and now with my cups. I'm trying to become friends with this concept again. No matter how many times you fill, empty and refill a cup, the empty space within the cup is used but not used up. It is always available.
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