Photography as Meditation | Luminous Heart

Category Archives: Photography as Meditation

Buddhist Women Who Blog

by Mahala Mazerov - 2 Comments

Photography as Meditation: The Friday Photo. Sometimes just photos. Sometimes with writing. Appearing on Fridays. This week’s image is an abstract macro photograph of a water offering bowl on a Buddhist shrine.

Back in December, I had the sweet honor of being included in Marguerite Manteau-Rao’s list of 15 Great Women Buddhist Blogs. She’s @minddeep on twitter, and writes poetically of her practice on her Mind Deep blog.

Belated thanks to you, Marguerite, for including me and introducing me to so many inspiring women.

I’ve copied Marguerite’s post and links below. I’m sure you’ll find kindred hearts among these women as much as I have.

After two days of Googling the hell out of the Internet, and back and forth tweets on Twitter, here it is, finally, the promised list of 15 Great Women Buddhist Blogs – in no particular order:

108 Zen Books

Smilin Buddha Kabaret

Mind Deep (I added Marguerite’s lovely blog here, because of course she didn’t include herself in the list.)

How did I come up with the list? I looked for Buddhist sisters whose blogs reflected a deep commitment to their practice, and also to blogging. Women from all walks of life. Moms, activists, teachers, writers, artists . . . A few, I knew already. Most of them, I just discovered. I hope you will enjoy ‘visiting’ them as much as I have!

If I have forgotten anyone, please add their names in the comments below.
Last, I need to thank Jack at Zen Dirt Zen Dust for his generous help.

Genju then was kind enough to collect additions from the comments on Marguerite’s blog. Here they are:

Buddhist in Nebraska
Meditate and Destroy
Wandering Dhamma
not2wo
Giving Notice Now
Full Contact Enlightenment
Donna Quixote
Zenshin
Damchoewongmo

If you know anyone who should be added to this list, please include them in the comments below.

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A Brief & Beautiful Prayer

by Mahala Mazerov - 11 Comments

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

blush of compassion. © 2009 Mahala Mazerov

One of the themes you’ll hear me talk about on a regular basis at Luminous Heart is the concept of meditation beyond the cushion. By that I mean more than bringing the fruits of practice into life, and even more than trying to bring mindful awareness into our activities.

For most of us life is moving too fast. Our meditation practices (if we have them) are not established enough to be in the palm of our hands or at the top of our mental response when we most need them.

So when I talk about meditation beyond the cushion I’m referring to ways to continually train your mind in love, compassion and awareness as you move through your day.

One of my favorite practices is a brief and beautiful prayer called The Four Immeasurables. It comes from the Buddhist tradition, but the qualities it exalts are universal. Anyone, of any spiritual practice can recite this prayer:

May all mother sentient beings boundless as the sky have happiness and the causes of happiness.

May they be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.

May they never be separated from the happiness which has no sorrow.

May they rest in equanimity free from attachment and aversion.

The wish that all beings have happiness is love. The wish that all be free of suffering is compassion. Happiness which has no sorrow is joy. Freedom from bias, attachment and aversion is equanimity.

The Four Immeasurables are traditionally recited three times during meditation sessions, but I love taking them beyond the meditation cushion. I like having something memorized. I recite them when I’m waiting for something or someone, when my mind is chattering or when I’m ungrounded. In truly challenging moments, when I want to reach for some kind of spiritual support, The Four Immeasurables are right there for me.

There’s actually much more meaning than you would imagine condensed in these four lines, but I will leave a detailed exploration for another time.

I believe simply repeating the prayer (silently or out loud) will take you where you want to go, opening your heart and developing the qualities of love, compassion, joy and equanimity for yourself and others.

Recite the prayer for yourself, and let me know how it feels. I’d also like to know the prayers you take beyond the meditation cushion. (Even if you never actually sit and meditate.)

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Meditation, Illumination and Plato’s Cave

by Mahala Mazerov - 17 Comments

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

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.

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Photography as Meditation: The Friday Flower

by Mahala Mazerov - 13 Comments

A new series is born. Sometimes just photos. Sometimes with writing. Sometimes on Fridays. (Grateful thanks to Hazel Colditz for this inspiration.)

Protection. Vulnerability. Being born. © 2009 Mahala Mazerov

As soon as the idea to create this series was formed, I knew I wanted this photograph as the inaugural image.

Something is clearly being born. Everything shimmers. We catch a glimpse of the luminous yellow that is to come.

I love the way the sepals and petals remind me of Buddhist imagery of the thousand petaled lotus. Born in the mud and blossoming in purity, the lotus symbolizes the development of individual beings towards enlightenment. In Buddhist art and in meditation practices Buddhas, deities, and sacred syllables sit on and sometimes arise from a lotus. I can easily imagine a little Buddha hovering here.

Spending more time with this image, I see vulnerability. I see the tender responsibility of wishing to protect and allowing to set free.

The sepals, the calyx as a whole whose job it is to protect the flower while it develops, are not much stronger than the petals in their care. Their menacing-looking points offer small protection. The whole bud is vulnerable. It’s easily broken or crushed. But a harder exterior would trap the flower and prevent it from blooming.

How often do we find ourselves walking this line, trying to protect and bring forward a dream, a birth, an awakening? Our natural response may be to harden some part of ourselves. What we really need is the green flexibility of the calyx and the promise of the flower.

When I’m feeling vulnerable I’ve discovered what I mostly need is some small safety that encourages me to blossom. In that way something new can be born. It doesn’t guarantee everything will go easily. Maintaining mindful awareness is hard work and the decision to stay with a raw and tender heart can make that even harder. But there are moments when true freedom is born. I catch glimpses of my enlightened heart. I discover that the ultimate ground of protection is the fully-opened flower of my heart.

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