When Anthony Was

#work #play #resource
Playing with the Buddha Board

"These ideas are not reality."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

The silly smile.  What else is there to live for?

Let's talk about something I was playing with today.  It's called a Buddha Board and it's fun.  The reason it's fun is because it's in the moment.  There is only the essence of what you are painting on the board before it dries up.  The way the board works is that you paint with water.  The water dries up and changes as it does.  Once it dries up it is no longer visible on the board.  It's fun because of change.  Everything is fun because of change.

My reasoning for what's not fun is because it is stale.  When I say 'it' I am referring to anything that feels like it is permanent.  Key word being feels.  We all know that change is a constant, but we forget.  When we forget that we as well as all our conditions, as well as the way we relate to those conditions changes, then there is nothing to worry about.  One can't worry in a state like this, because one doesn't know where to begin.  There is joy.  Worry doesn't come into being.

When drawing, there is a time for doing messy work.  This is in the early stage of coming up with what it is to draw.  I find this hard, because I want to develop clean and skillful drawing skills, and doing fast ideas is always doing your work with less care, in the skill-oriented sense.  It is all about getting the essence.  I've used a black ink pen and water brush quite well in this area before, and the Buddha Board replicates that, but does an even better job in lightening the pressure to do a clean piece of art.

I am playing with this idea today, not just the board.  Change is a constant.  Permanence is an illusion.  The one who controls is confronted with change as a constant battle.  They get distorted and illusioned with stability.  That stability is stale and hard.  It creates conflict and struggle.  What action is not struggle is action that comes from the essence of joy.  When joy is something that can't be held on to, but something that moves.  There is no final piece of art work in our lives. :-DEach piece moves in and out of the framing of how we are perceiving.  That's a beautiful painting.

Buddha Board in the studio.