>> I think in painting, one is brought to see... to see in a different way.
Ordinarily, we're rather asleep to the world around us, and being forced to look and then to render-- paint on paper-- compels one to see both inward and outward; to learn a little more about oneself and about... as well as learning about the nature of things.
The painter's part is to reveal the potentiality of the everyday objects around one.
The seemingly familiar things, events, surroundings, and so on, they take on a different... different quality when the painter looks at them, and this different quality can be conveyed through the painting to the spectator.
And in a way, the artist is a revealer-- the revealer of a world which is ordinarily hidden from us.
Cézanne is able to show us, my God, there's an awful lot here.
Well, and there's an awful lot in everything around us.
I'm not ruling out anything, but by showing the potentiality in this small piece of fruit, the intelligent person would be able to... may be able to grasp the fact that there's a whole world all around us of beauty, of interest, complexity, and my God, I'm being fed by this... looking at that, and yet it's here before me every day.
I don't touch it, I don't see it, I don't...
I don't see its color.
In other words, it's a jumping off point for greater openness to the... to the wonderful world we live in.
Luminosity is a mysterious element which is a reflection of a higher world which sometimes enters your world and my world through a face, through a... through an.... through an apple, through a painting.
It's always here, this luminosity, but it's so densely hidden.
Luminosity is all around us in everything, but the painter with a certain quality in himself is able to evoke this on a... on a canvas.
One day in the studio...
I had a studio on 14th Street in New York and I would work over the weekend.
And I was a hard worker.
One day, I had been painting for two or three or four hours, and just painting, and then suddenly, as if the brush was painting by itself.
And I stepped back in surprise, I stopped, and there was a beautiful piece of painting within a bad, large painting.
And I suddenly said to myself, "My God, there is something here that goes beyond the painting... applying paint on a canvas," and it indicated to me that through continuing to paint, persisting, there will come a moment where there is an opening which can teach you what I cannot speak about or tell you.
As if you are suddenly... you suddenly know something.
It may not be much, but you know something that you didn't know before.
And at that moment, I said, "Well, I have to keep going."
Maybe I'm not so talented, but if I... if I keep looking and looking and trying to be here, working, applying and so on, one has a moment of a... of a breakthrough moment.
The great energy is here, and our responsibility is to open to it, an through painting, the painter is able to let this other force come through.
Forget everything except what's here now in front of you, because only by that... that being here are you able to tap the full resources of the organism.
Otherwise the... otherwise the distraction of thought eats up energies which could be used and applied to the work itself.
The demand to be here, to maintain attention for a sustained period of time kind of dispels the clouds which obscure the luminosity we're speaking of.
So from that point of view, I would like to see a whole-hearted application to the moment, to the job which is in front of me.
And that goes not only for painting-- for everything.
When you pick up something or you apply paint or you do anything or when I speak now, I would like to be here entirely despite the distractions of the mind.
And that's very much the secret of good work in anything.
( church bells chiming ) >> I look at myself sitting here.
I'm aware of the body that sits here.
There's a new relationship to be made-- a relationship with another reality.
I see the breathing; how the breath comes and goes.
I see the tension or the relaxation in different parts of my body.
I begin to be aware of this immense silence.
All my attention now is concentrated on the stillness.
There's a reality behind the silence which I try to understand.
My breathing anchors me here.
I begin to be more sensitive to this moment, this moment which comes to me pure.
I try to see the onset of a feeling, the intrusion of thought.
I see I need to be more still; more in touch with the indescribable energy.
Now the stillness begins to help me.
Breathing is quieter.
Body begins to relax, mind is freer.
If thoughts do come, I simply watch, and a new... a new level of letting go, of opening, of being here, listening, listening to this silence, this immense moment of silence.
I try to go deeper, but the trying is not a trying, it's a kind of surrendering to the moment.
Always... always I can return to the breathing and watch the intake of breath of air.
I see the end, the end of the breath.
Now in the stillness, I begin to be aware of a new relation with another reality.
"Who am I, who am I?"
becomes the question; true or real question.
I try to work now in silence in the stillness, a stillness which is helping.
( choir singing ) There seems to be... there seems to be an innate need for an innate call in each human being to search, to know who one is, what we're here for, what our destiny is.
Each one of us, we have a feeling that we are for something; we're part of a great scheme, a great drama, one might say, where each one contributes and is part of this drama.
The search begins with the realization that I really don't know myself.
Well, who is this creature that takes in... takes in foods and possessions and loves and relationships and is still not satisfied?
What does it... "who is he?"
and "who am I?"
becomes a really a burning question.
( birds chirping ) There are forces, I believe, around a place like Vézelay which remind one.
There's a stillness here; there's a silence.
( church bells chiming ) These wonderful places, these holy places, even the humblest church or temple has something holy about it.
They do provide the shock which in turn brings one to a stop and makes possible the opening to something quite different from the ordinary.
Over the hundreds of years, pilgrims, people, seekers, have come here with good intentions; with what we might call "good vibrations" in quotation marks.
These deposits are somehow or other felt just as one feels the atmosphere of a prison or of a place where crimes have been committed.
We feel... we feel the beneficent atmosphere.
Right now, the search begins when one is present to something-- sounds very vague, "something"-- something in one's self that's relatively changeless, that's always here.
We know that our minds change at each moment, our bodies are always changing, our desires, our wishes, our prejudices, but underneath there is the feeling of "I," a reality which is not subject to the change which ordinarily characterizes our lives.
( choir singing ) Vézelay is different from most places because it has the virtue of being isolated; closer to nature, closest to the sky, one might say, to the open heavens.
Here, things that have been man-created have been created with a certain reverence, a certain love, a certain attention, a certain respect.
Search is both solitary and shared, and when one comes to Vézelay, one feels the beginnings of an impulse towards sharing with others, but it's so difficult.
We cannot seem to shake the old habits of a me-- "me," "mine," selfishness, egoism-- but when we come to a Vézelay, or Vézelay, particularly, there's a beginning of an openness to this communal sharing, if you wish.
We're not so egocentric as we are in our ordinary environment.
The unseen but probably effective evidences of this are these stones, the structure of the building itself, the mass, the way the people are the stones of themselves of this place speak of a sharing.
( choir singing ) This in a way is very alien to our modern life where each of us goes our own way.
And perhaps here, we begin to re-realize the necessity for a sharing with each other of another kind of relationship.
( church bells chiming ) ( birds chirping ) ( choir singing ) Every moment is a ritual.
Every gesture can be a ritual.
If I have my morning coffee, it could be a ritual.
Walking, turning, breathing is a ritual-- so are giving and receiving.
( choir singing ) Every ritual can be a reminder-- and is a reminder-- but it's up to each one of us to make the ritual meaningful.
( choir singing ) The more one searches, the more one discovers, the more hungry.
It's like love-- love... love is... my wife says it multiplies.
The experience itself cannot be discounted.
When you have a taste of the fruit of search-- let's call it the inner peace, the freedom, the joy, the not being attached, all of these feelings of being... of shaking off the bondages of my ordinary, spoiled self-- and then I begin to see that there is something else in the equation of life, and that something else touches sensitive parts of myself and beckons me to a still further search to know still more.
God is everywhere, it's true.
Especially when one stops for a moment and listens.
Then something appears which illuminates and vilifies and changes, transforms.
One has to know how to search, and here we come to the necessity of being able to concentrate in the same way that if I wish to be a good baker, I have to concentrate on baking.
I think eventually one has to come to appreciate and to give more time to being quiet and to meditation... ...and search when one is faced with the necessity of concentrating one's entire intention on this small, weak-voiced element in one's self that's crying to be heard.
It requires a sort of a watching, a witnessing, if you wish, of what is.
And then the question of what to search for probably will be answered by yourself.
( birds chirping ) It isn't the place, it's... the place is in the interior of oneself.
Vézelays are here, inside of one.
You... you create Vézelay in this moment.
If one remembers, "Be still and know that I am," Vézelay is here.
( birds chirping ) Well, I can't answer some question.
Words are... words are not very adequate to express what one might find.
One finds this moment.
( choir singing ) ( church bells chiming ) I begin to be able to be here... to be here more entirely, to know more about what is changeless in myself and what comes and goes.
I see that everything will change, that this vibration of the silence which is here in all its profundity always is, always will be.
I work as I know how with the stillness.
Now as I prepare to stop, I have an impression of myself as I sit here.
I try to remember the way I am now and the true sitting-- true meditation-- begins when I get up, when I move; when I'm in the midst of the world's activities.
I try to continue to listen to the stillness as I move.
>> The Ox Herding Pictures symbolize the search of a human being for the understanding of himself and of the universe.
It has had a great... great influence in Zen Buddhist training, these pictures, and it takes one from the early stages of search to the completion of a developed human being.
They go from the young man with stirrings of something of aspiration inside of himself and then he he feels there's something he's looking for, so he goes in search for the... symbolically, it's the ox.
He goes in search for this "something," and then he realizes that to... in order to be in touch with the oxen, to be in control of the ox, which is his inner life, he needs to develop qualities of attention, of work ethics, and... and of a right relationship with himself and with others.
So the series takes one around to the different stages where finally he knows a little more about his inner life, and he's more in touch with this inner life, and then finally it brings us to the old man in the marketplace, which for me is the most interesting picture.
Because the old man symbolizes someone who's... who's gathered the fruit and is now ready... ready to share it and to impart to others the fruit of his own life and of his experience.
Nature is not quite enough.
Nature is beautiful in itself, and nature should be in accordance, in harmony, with people.
But people give off a certain vibration, a certain energy which, interacting with each other, produces something special.
The monastic life is more a question of preparing to go into life.
If I retire into my little ivory tower, what good am I?
Unless we're engaged, life is pretty dull, isn't it?
You can't just sit around contemplating your navel.
Without the world, one doesn't live for oneself alone, after all.
And without... without mingling, without relationships, I think life would be much more barren and not as rich as it is with contacts that one has.
That's very simply that.
The whole secret in life, and whether it's inner or outer work, is to give total attention to what one is doing now.
If people would concentrate and really look and see how they're working and what they're doing and give their total interest and attention to the moment or to the task at hand, it would change many things.
>> This is out too, you know, these lines?
It's clean, cleaned up... >> Now we go two on 50.
Three on 50.
>> If I had nothing to do I would get tired so quickly, but when we've got things to do, we... some energy comes out that we didn't even believe exists.
You see, look outside-- here's the hustle and the bustle of Paris or New York or London and the people moving about.
A lot of it is useless and unnecessary, but sometimes something creative and new and very beautiful comes about.
New energies are developed, new combinations come into being.
New possibilities arise which could not have arisen without being in the city itself.
I think that the city is the visible deposits of what we have been and what we wish to be.
Every move we make, every thought we have, leaves a deposit which unfortunately is... we're not... our perceptions are unable to grasp the fact that this room is filled with materials.
But sometimes we do have an intuition about places, streets, buildings, rooms, and we sense the difference between one atmosphere and another.
The city is where... where the game is really serious.
You can't get away from the city itself.
But the city, at the the same time, feeds one.
The trick here is to know how to eat the energies which are all around us.
Most of the time we don't avail ourselves of the wonderful array of impressions which come in through vision, through hearing, through sensing.
Most people never stop-- they don't know the immensity of the moment of stop.
If one paused for a moment, one would change many things in the midst of... in the midst of the hurly-burly game of life.
One pauses, and in this stop, there's a great in-gathering... in-gathering which can help more to change one's life.
It's only in a moment of stillness that one is aware of another life within one which is truly, truly important for us and which we are not enough in touch with.
This all comes down to a question of being attentive.
If one gives attention to this moment, one begins to be in touch with the body; to know your feet are touching the floor and then to be aware of the onset of emotion and always to be attentively watching.
In the city, there are certainly more opportunities to see oneself in action and to receive the abounding energies which are all around one.
If one lives wholeheartedly, what more can we ask of ourselves?
Then we have to dispose of that... yeah.
Yeah, can we get it?
Good.
So along the way of being engaged in life, one may have moments of, "Ah, this is what is meant by being whole-- even holy."
It's meant to be here.
All right, we'll leave that the way it is.
So now we have the possibility to move this out of the way.
And then when everything is important, there is no inner, there is no outer, and this is on the way to uncovering a still further energy of a very fine, special nature.
Hmm!
Sometimes one wonders how it could come about.
How much intention there really was.
See, this proves that there are no insignificant objects.
Nothing is too small.
So I like to draw these little things and show the life in the things that are all around us at every time.
This gave the theme for the show which was transfer-parencies.
Well, if it awakens some people to the objects of life around them, it's not bad.
>> You've been... have you been here all day?
>> No, I just... >> You're going to stay a while?
>> I suppose I'm supposed to stay, you know?
>> Yes, yes, I did... >> Oh, hey, how are you?
I think all ways lead to the to life itself; no discrimination between the monastery, the church or synagogues or whatever and life itself.
This way, you're sitting and where I'm sitting can be a sacred place.
I don't like to use that word, but in a certain sense, there's a vibration which can change this place that we're sitting, and if we knew this better-- if we felt this-- the world would change.
One has to be.
Be in touch with this element in oneself.
This silence, if you wish.
This interior silence which is behind my talking, my machine just spouting, or my relationships with outside.
There's always this vibration which is inside, outside, everywhere.
And so the marketplace becomes a place of of potentiality and of relationships.
Even when one goes to the... literally, the marketplace, one sees presentations of fruits and vegetables and fish and fowl.
And for me, this means that there's an innate, an inborn drive towards the aesthetic.
Even the humblest grocery store keeper, she wants to arrange the fruit just so.
And you see a fish market, the way he places his fish and his oysters and so and so.
Now, when one is in the marketplace, one realizes that behind all the haggling and behind the bargaining and the shouting and the fuss, there is the possibility of seeing the sacred, if you wish, in every human being and every piece of fruit that we have here, and every shouting merchant.
If you're calm in the marketplace, wherever you go, you spread that harmony.
Within each individual human being there is this spark of the divine.
There really is, but we've been trained to ignore it; we don't know how to be in touch with it except in special moments.
When one doesn't want anything, when one is not grasping and one is... can be still interiorly, one then is open to this fullness which is all around us.
So symbolically, it ends with a circle-- which is nothingness or emptiness-- and then goes back again to the old man, just an old man walking around buying a few pennies worth of vegetables and so and so.
The old man in the marketplace mingling with people, and as the... as the saying goes, "With bliss bestowing hands, he doesn't do anything, but when he passes by, the flowers grow and people are happy and sharing."
And he changes things, the old man, just doing nothing.
>> You can send Marielle your love right now.
Do you want to send your love to Marielle?
>> Yeah, how do I do it?
>> Just say whatever you want to say, and we'll make sure she sees.
>> Marielle, you are the most loved of all-- no question.
Most, most, most love... beloved.
>> Now clap your hands so we'll have a sync.
( clapping hands ) >> Okay?
>> Great, thank you.
