I've recently discovered the artworks of John Currin on the internet, and I have to say that looking at his paintings gives me an enjoyment that I rarely find with contemporary art. It's so refreshing to see an artist who can actually paint, to present classical aesthetic traditions with a modern flavour.
I'll leave the judgements and controvercies about his paintings to art critics, and let's just take a look at some of them that I've found on the internet:
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Two well known spiritual figures emerged from India and the theosophical society in the 20th century, both were known as Krishnamurti as their westernized surname, but the two were quite differnt.
Jiddu Krishnamurth was a renowned spiritual teacher, writer & speaker, and had a great influence on the modern New Age movement. I've read about 3~4 of his books in the past few years, and an interesting thing about them is that I am unable to read them in the traditional fashion, ie. continuously from front to back.
Infact if you really follow what he says, you'll end up putting the book down, become observant of your thoughts, emotional states, and the external world. What he says is no longer the focus, as he points the direction of the discussion/exploration back to yourself. So you walk away from the books, and walk back into life and existence.
The other Krishnamurti (U.G. Krishnamurti, abbreviated as UG) was described as a spiritual rebel/terrorist, an anti-guru. He repeatedly said that he has no teachings to give, told people don't bother to listen to or understand his words, but many people find this to be too irresistable that they continued to seek him out for his spiritual wisdoms.
It's been 27 years and several months since I came to this world, so that makes me 27 years old in the ordinary sense. However, having to start a new life in a different country/culture at the age of 13, when my family migrated from Taiwan to NZ, meaning that I am only a 14 years old member of this society.
Moreover, at the age of 20, I went through a process of spiritual rebirth, so in that sense I'm only 7 years old as a spiritual being in awakening.
The spiritual rebirth was a confusing process for me, of course being born in the first place could have been an equally if not more confusing experience, but hardly anyone remembered much of it, and we really didn't have much to do back then other than slept & being fed.
Whereas in my case, I had to continue functioning as an adult on the outside, dealing with university studies and social interactions, while inwardly experiencing all kinds of calamity (but dressed with a sprinkle of rare occasional blissful moments of enlightment).
Since then, nothing in the world had been the same for me. Like an infant, I had to pretty much relearn everything about who I am, all of my beliefs were questioned and examined from several different perspectives. And that's not the end of the story, as the whole thing end up becoming a continuing process.
It's because of this process, that in 2003 I took the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain (a.k.a. camino de Santiago, the camino).
One of the optional finishing point of the camino is Finisterre, the westernmost point of Spain, known as the edge of the world during medieval times. Today many modern pilgrims still practice a traditional ritual, they burnt some of their personal belongings (eg. cloth) at Finisterre, symbolizing rebirth, the end of the old and the beginning of a new life.
A rather fitting ending to (approximately) 800km of on-foot pilgrimage I have to say, even though I didn't go through with the burning ritual at Finesterre (because I was unaware of it until my fellow pilgrims told me aabout it after we arrived there), and I finished my pilgrimage at the city of Santiago and took a day trip to Finesterre by bus instead, the visit was still quite an interesting experience.
The spiritual rebirth/awakening had been an interesting ongoing process, even though I intend to write a story based on my experiences someday, at the moment many things are yet to happen, and the ending is all but unknown, so for now all I'll just reflect what comes to mind by writing here.
Photos below:
1)Finisterre, the end of the then known world.
2)Me at Finesterre, it was raining and with the help of my fellow pilgrims I ended up wearing an improvised raincoat made out of a rubbish bag.
3) A fellow German pilgrim burning her cloth at Finesterre.
I noticed that sometime between the year 2000 and 2002, the voices in my head have changed from predominantly speaking in Mandarin to English.
I can easily switch my mind back to using Mandarin of course, but it just became a habit for me to conduct logical thinkings in English.
It's been a long journey for me, from 13 years ago when I could barely understand English conversations at a normal pace, to where I am today. I still wish that someday English grammar can become a second nature to me though, so that I don't have to constantly refining my words and combating confusion with tenses...etc.
In the past I've had discussions with people about what language do we (multilingual person) use for thinking, observing myself I find that my thought usually started out as a hunch, impulse, or feeling, and gets translated into its verbal equivalent of sounds and words.
There is a function in my brain where I can decide which language to translate it to.
Of course once you get so used to this process, the time lapses between thoughts and words are so minimal that they became negligable. So in the end, for most people, their words are their thoughts.
Learning to use another language as a primary communication tool slowed this process down, thus allowing me to observe how these things worked in my mind, and noticing what a pure thought is like.
I've experimented with focusing my attention purely on the thought impulses without translating them into words, and the experiences were pretty much like meditation. Pure thoughts, feelings and awareness, without any verbal interpretations of the experiences.
In a similar way, when I am asked about some deeply spiritual questions, (eg. The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything ^^ ), if I tune my attention inwards, I became silent.
It's not that I couldn't think of any answers, but that they seem irrelevant compared to the silence.
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