Meditation, Illumination and Plato’s Cave

Photography as Meditation: The Friday Flower. Sometimes just photos. Sometimes with writing. Appearing every Friday.

illumination. © 2009 Mahala Mazerov

When I take photographs, I work in a state of meditation and engagement. I’m searching through the lens for an image that goes beyond labels. Beyond peony. Beyond flower. Beyond petal. Until something new is revealed.

I believe there’s a dialog going on, but it’s not a verbal one. Even after I edit my shots and select the images that resonate I don’t usually have a story or a why.

In that respect, this image is different. I remember being drawn in to the luminous gold at the center. (A luminosity that unfortunately is not well conveyed here. I’m tempted to learn to play with Photoshop, but love the immediacy of printing as is with minimal adjustment.)

In that golden center I discovered a state of spiritual illumination, of unceasing meditative awareness.  In that moment petals turned to turned to ice and the story of the ice caves came into my mind.

My Tibetan Buddhist lineage, the Drikung Kagu, is known as the Blessing Lineage. It is also known as the Practice Lineage as there is a history of yogis immersed in meditation that continues to this day. Many great Drikung yogis are featured in the popular documentary film, The Yogis of Tibet. (Click the link to view it free, online.)

Anyone who repeats the much overused stereotype of meditation as hiding away from reality, has never spent any real time in meditation.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet and receive teachings from people who have completed a traditional 3-year meditation retreat, or have spent as many as 12 years (!) engaged in silent meditation. Invariably they are people of great humility and humor. You might easily pass them by because they make no great show of themselves in the world. But in the right conditions you catch a glimpse, or hear a story that indicates their exceptional inner power.

They are engaged in reality in ways far beyond our minds (which run endlessly like hamsters on a wheel) will ever grasp.

In the remote landscapes where yogis and yoginis meditate in caves, there are stories of hardship and harsh weather. [Scroll for photos of Lapchi meditation cave.] Food is sparse and simple; comforts and distraction are reduced to zero. Sometimes layers of snow and ice build at the entrance of the caves. You have to break through to go out and see the sky.

That’s the story that came to me in the golden center of this flower. It’s a place that calls to me now, a place to discover illumination found at the center of meditation.

Truth be told, I feel like I’ve been too much in another cave lately. Plato’s Cave. Chained with my back to what is real, seeing only shadows on the cave wall. Shadows created by others, of what they want me to see, know, believe, buy, value. I’ve held my own fairly well, but lately I’ve gotten lost in meaningless distractions (not the soul-feeding, revitalizing variety) and in business marketing programs (as I learn to bring courses and projects to you) in particular.

I choose instead the cave where illuminating awareness is born and nourished. Then I will break free to see the sky, and create blessings.