August 2011

'This is your world, it is your feast'

A new selection of photos from the past 6 months

In this period it was everyday life such a buying groceries, cooking, cleaning, living in my current hometown Zandvoort that provided the ground for this work. Instead of being a newcomer I am slowly turning into a resident, commuting between here, Haarlem and Amsterdam. In the Netherlands and Germany I organized Miksang workshops and I was part of the faculty of the creative team at the ALIA Institute Europe Seminar in Elspeet, Netherlands. It was great being able to organize Miksang Practice Days in my hometown, and I as able to participate in entrepreneur networking events in Haarlem and Amsterdam. Also a sudden break-up with accompanying turbulence was part of my life in this period, and visiting family and friends. It is daily life, my daily life.

This was a time where I continued refining and deepening my process of seeing clearly and expressing this with my camera. How does seeing clearly work? How can one express this genuinely with the medium of photography?

The best condition for this is to actually do it.

Here, doing means; having the intention to work with visual perception and being available for perceptions and practicing this process with the camera. I can notice this process with the growing group of Miksang students, and their resulting photos. By actually doing it one becomes familiar with one's own process of perception and knows of what and when to take a picture.

Nowadays I always carry a camera, which gives me the opportunity to capture 'fresh' moments whenever they appear, and whenever I can. More and more.

'Fresh' is  an expression which is used a lot within Miksang, and it points to the moment of perceiving before the engine of our thinking has started up, the moment where we are briefly but simply without judgement, free of association, free of interpretation.

From my own experience I can say full-heartedly that no matter what is going on inside of me or outside, including all ups and downs in daily life, there are always intimate moments with the world, which seem to come out of nowhere. These are the moments that simply stop me, which allows me to take in the situation and be present with whatever appears. There is just now, this experience of seeing.

It brings joy, buoyancy, appreciation for everyday things and space.

Moments of visual poetry -  all thoughts, all internal conversations we have with ourselves simply dissolve.

Look! This is your world! You can't not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited this world of color. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don't hesitate - look! Don't blink, and look, look - look further.

From 'Shambhala - The Sacred Path of the Warrior', C. Trungpa.

Click here for the photo album

Click here for a slideshow

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                                                                                                                                                     July 2011 

Dzongsar Kyentse Rinpoche visits the Miksang Institute in Boulder (USA)

For ten days in July 2011, the Miksang Institute for Contemplative Photography in Boulder, Colorado hosted Bhutanese Lama and filmmaker Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche (also known as Khyentse Norbu), and Emily Avery Crow for a Miksang Training intensive with Michael Wood and Julie DuBose. 

By Julie DuBose

Each day different aspects of the path of direct seeing were presented. Following the usual progression of the Miksang Training curriculum, we began with discussions about how this is accomplished, supported by visual exercises and assignments. As the days unfolded, we gradually applied the orientation of direct seeing mixed with the 'practice of deep noticing' to larger visual contexts, from the immediate environment of our home and familiar world to various “outer” realms of perception such as water, sidewalks, people, visual space, as well as an exploration of the moments when we deeply resonate and connect to what we see—the heart of perception.

Our process included discussion, presentation of examples, visual exercises, and field-trips to downtown Boulder, followed by further discussion and sharing of images. Although Rinpoche was not in need of any instruction on the nature of direct perception whatsoever, we were able to provide him with guidance on how to understand and express his visual perceptions through the medium of photography.

It was a great pleasure to play in the fields of perception with Rinpoche and Emily, and at some point soon we hope to be able to publish some of their excellent images on this site.

We have put some images of our time together HERE

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche Biography

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche is a highly esteemed lama, born in Bhutan in 1961. His dharma lineage - Khyentse (meaning "love & compassion") - is non sectarian (Rimé). He has received teachings from masters of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism, and also Western education at London's School of Oriental and African Studies. He is the author of What Makes You Not a Buddhist (Shambhala, 2007).

Under his family name, Khyentse Norbu, Rinpoche is also known as a filmmaker. He has directed The Cup (1999), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and Travellers and Magicians (2003), the first feature film shot in Bhutan. He studied filmmaking with Bernardo Bertolucci, serving as consultant on the Italian director’s 1993 film, Little Buddha.

Working tirelessly for the preservation of the Buddhist teachings, he has created centers of learning in Bhutan, India, the Far East as well as in Europe, Australia and North America, all while supervising his traditional seat, Dzongsar Monastery, in China (eastern Tibet). He is responsible for the welfare of more than 1,600 monks there and in India.

Rinpoche has created several global non-profit organizations:

Khyentse Foundation
Lotus Outreach
84,000 (to translate and preserve the teachings of Buddha)
Siddhartha's Intent

In India, he founded the non-sectarian Deer Park Institute in Bir; and in Bhutan, he is one of the leaders of the Gross National Happiness movement, with a model project underway, the Samdrup Jongkhar Initiative.

Rinpoche is beloved by his students, for his warmth, compassion, clarity and incredible sense of humor.

Source: The Miksang Institute for Contemplative Photography

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                                                                                                                                               March 2011

New Book!

The Practice of Contemplative Photography - Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes

Authors: Andy Karr & Michael Wood

This book teaches photographers how to fully connect with the visual richness present in their ordinary, daily experiences. According to the authors, photography is not purely a mechanical process. You need to know how to look, as well as where to point the camera, and when to press the button. Then as you develop your ability to see, your appreciation and inspiration from the world around you become enhanced.

Filled with practical exercises and techniques inspired by mindfulness meditation, this book teaches photographers how to “see what’s in front of them.” It offers a system of training and exercises that draw upon Buddhist concepts, as well as on insights of great photographic masters such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. There is a series of visual exercises and assignments for working with texture, light, and color, as well as for developing mindfulness, as a way of bringing the principles of contemplative photography into ordinary experience.

About the Authors
Andy Karr is a writer, photographer, and longtime Buddhist meditator and teacher. He is also the author of Contemplating Reality.

Michael Wood studied photography in art school and worked as a commercial photographer in Toronto, Canada. After discovering Buddhist meditation, he began to work on synthesizing his meditation experience with a fresh way of looking and seeing in his professional photography. He teaches workshops to photography clubs and meditation groups.

Click HERE to browse inside

This is not your usual “how to be a better photographer” book. It takes you into deeper water. It requires investigation and commitment to areas new to you. Among other things, you will think about perception in new ways. If you read this book with care, and without skepticism, it will radically expand your thinking, seeing, and photography.

—Jay Maisel, photographer and author of Light on America

Contemplative photography is about seizing the present moment as one would delicately hold a poppy without shedding its petals. It is about nonattachment; one has nothing to lose and nothing to gain, but everything to offer to the eyes of the viewer.

—Matthieu Ricard, photographer and author of Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill

I'm impressed how this book teaches profound meditation techniques in a way that's so easy to understand and practice. The book transforms and uplifts our experience of how we perceive our life. I highly recommend it to photographers and non-photographers alike.

—Ari Goldfield, translator KTGR, teacher and author

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August 13 2009

How often do I not see?

Suddenly I ‘wake up’ and realize I have been going from point A to point B, on my bike or in the train, and in the meantime I haven’t seen anything. What is left is a vague resonance, and just from memories I know how it looks like.

Suddenly I have arrived but completely on automatic pilot. Other times I am on my way to the supermarket and I have gone through the whole shopping about 3 times and prepared an elaborate delicious or an easy meal already before the actual shopping. And I haven’t seen anything.

Always and out of nowhere there is the moment of waking up, with a sort of shock. And then something happens; perception starts to take place. I start noticing, becoming curious about what is in front and around me - what is it that I see? Form, texture, colors, movement.

Often I feel challenged to consciously step into the wakefulness of looking and seeing; so many other things to do and all kinds of reasons to really do it later. First this and ‘o yes I still have to do that, let’s do that now’. And before I know it another day has passed. And at the end of the day somehow it doesn’t feel so good. Interestingly enough this o so familiar resistance seems like a struggle which dissolves as soon as I do set my intention: really looking.

A curtain carried by a breeze, unexpectedly around the corner of the street a plastic chair against a glorious colorful background, a shape of light striking the wall or the ground. Suddenly I am stopped and experience an absolute knowing that this is a fresh perception.

Giving myself this one hour a day to purely and only occupy myself with the intention of perception: to simply stand still when a fresh moment of perception occurs, discerning what it is I see, and then taking my camera and shoot, feels everytime like a great gift.

As with every discipline it is a matter of doing it frequently, and for myself I see it as a necessity to train myself in looking and seeing. In this way clear seeing becomes part of the day, en perhaps eventually part of my being.

In Miksang Photography there are 2 main obstacles which prevent us from seeing things as they are:

The ground of Miksang is to be present, in the open space of availability.  From this open space flashes of perceptions occur - fresh moments of clear seeing. Flashes of perception have a doubtless quality. You literally stand still, like when unexpectedly a drop of dew falls on your face, or when you sneeze. Because of the shock and suddenness for a moment there is nothing, just empty space.

In the book Dharma Art – teachings by Chögyam Trungpa on meditation, perception and artistic expressions - Chögyam Trungpa talks about that we are usually restless with our perception. It is very interesting how our mind works, how perception conducts our life. But we really don’t give in to it, we don’t let go completely. We reject things that are slightly offensive to us, we don’t like it at all. If we do like something, if there is a slight suggestion of promise, we like it so much we get right into it. The result is that usually we don’t really look at anything at all.

In the workshop Opening the Good Eye throughout the three days we work in the morning with visual exercises and assignments. So we develop confidence in our ability to connect directly with what we see, to stay full present with the perception. The visual exercises bring us back to open space, and the assignments learn us to fully understand the qualities of fresh perceptions, so we can express our experience precisely with our cameras. In the group reviews in the afternoon we share our photos, experiences and delightful discussions.

If you feel drawn to experience this, please look under ‘Workshops’ when the next workshop is happening.

See you soon!

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                                                                                                                                         January 28 2009
The start

www.miksang.nl

Finally and hurray! Launching my website! With much gratitude to Michael Wood, the builder.  Although completed, at the same time it is the beginning and will be under construction and updated at any time, ever evolving.

Find out about the various possibilities that Miksang Photography offers. Enjoy looking at photos and learn about Miksang Contemplative Photography.
Learn about visual perception, about the process of looking and seeing, the teachers, when and where Miksang workshops are taking place and how you can reach me. In the column ‘One moment...’ I will write regularly about my Miksang experiences and thoughts. In this way anyone who wishes can stay in tune and join the amazement. And all news will be listed. An important point of departure was that the site would turn out to be a good reference for acquiring commissions and purchasing prints.

How to present all this in a magnetizing and simple way, which reflects the maximum benefit for all users?
This was and is a challenge, with many steps, changing and deleting, starting anew and furthering.  Has it worked out? I'd love to hear from you! Comments, information, invitations, appointments, purchasing or simply browsing, all are warmly welcome.

A fresh start, a fresh look.