Dimensionally Barrett

I'm wrapping up a three-month-long project exploring a series of visual analogs/interpretations of the "completion stage"/rDzogs-Rim in Vajrayana practice. The images that follow point to the luminositythat is inherent in the process of dissolving a visualization and reposing in mind-as-such/mind-in-itself/sems-nyid. The completion stage follows the generation or creation stage/sKye-Rim, in which an image of a buddha, bodhisattva, yidam, or other figure is held in mind. The visualizations may be quite complex or quite simple. They may be generated in steps (first a lotus seat, then a seed syllable atop the seat, and so on) or they simply appear to the mind to be meditated on, in the nature of light and therefore, translucent. I've had it explained to me that this is the "shamatha" or single-pointed or calm abiding aspect of Vajrayana practice and indeed, there's much to be said of it and for it, but the completion stage is not often remarked on in...

There are huge blind spots in my knowledge. I’m perfectly willing to admit this. But when it involves events and artists contemporaneous to me, I am astounded at what I’ve missed. In 1977, Philip Glass came across my radar with North Star . My friends and I were in thrall and decided this was among the most horizon-expanding music we’d yet heard (in a year that boasted Bowie’s Low and “Heroes” , Elvis Costello’s My Aim is True and plenty more). In 1978, I got to see Glass perform the suite (it was marketed and packaged as a collection of pieces, but I tend to think of it as a suite) and I was hooked. It wasn’t long before the name Robert Wilson permeated our brains and Einstein on the Beach became a holy grail of sorts. We heard the “Knee Plays” over time and bits and pieces here and there. I confess that I’ve never seen it staged but I’ve seen much of it in different videos and have heard most of it (I’m not sure I’ve heard all five hours); but it’s a major work of...

I've been a little busy in Nepal, to be sure. But Myanmar hasn't been out of my view. With the latest evidence mounting of genocide against the Rohingya, I'm struck by the silence of world leaders to actually do much about it other than censure the Myanmar government. Buddhist leaders have been vocal about condemning the ongoing atrocities perpetrated with involvement and support from so-called Buddhists (seriously, any monk that aids in torture and killing needs to take the fucking robes off...NOW). Aung San Suu Kyi is likewise complicit in this and I'm not interested in discussing what a hard place she finds herself in. Tell the military to stuff it, resign her position in protest and condemn the execution and displacement of hundreds of thousands. These are people and they were citizens until 1982; the regime that changed that didn't have anyone's best interests at heart, by the way, including non-Rohyingya Burmese citizens. But back to the rest of the w...

On a Walk Six years ago, I stayed at the Divyansh Guest House and would take a back route to the Kalachakra grounds through a small village and around to the grounds' entry. I went for a nice stroll and decided to go again to check out the route and see if anything had changed. In fact, yes. Some things had. As I walked past Tergar Monastery down Sujata By-pass Road, there’s another guest house, across from which is more pronounced development; the ponds look like they have been dredged of waste (at least of the overtly physical sort) and there is evidence of other refuse, perhaps storage shacks, etc., making way for more building. At a distance, the area still preserves its rustic beauty, but if you didn’t know the area, you wouldn’t know how much building has gone up. I strolled around one of the ponds and recorded mostly bucolic beauty, but noted that once I got back onto the by-pass, a newer building and the some in the distance that weren’t familiar to me. Above...

Christmas Day, Choraha Village, Bihar, India. This was a wonderful day of delivering a little respite to the students of the LBCS, and their friends and families. Mahendra, Kapil, and I began decorating the main classroom (complete with a tree!) and found a young man to wear the Santa Claus costume that was emphatically way too small for me.  I trundled out a little ad hoc speech about Christmas being a time of sharing and caring with and for one another and that Santa Claus isn’t just a big round guy who gives toys to kids, he’s very much supposed to be the spirit of giving and everyone has a Santa inside them. To prove it, one of the older boys fit into the costume enough to render the rest of us Santa’s Little Helpers! We sang “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” (honest to God, I couldn’t think of anything other than “Jingle Bells” and a bunch of carols that I could only half remember the words to), prepped paper plates for around a hundred people with pakora, cake, co...