Category Archives: Study

Winner of Otherhood’s “The Artist’s Rule” Comment Contest: Cole Matson

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For his comment on Otherhood Podcast: Episode 1 with Christine Valters Paintner, Cole Matson is hereby awarded a copy of Paintner’s book, “The Artist’s Rule.” The comments were all great, and the decision was a hard one.

The passion and devotion Matson offers in his poetry really captured my attention, though. And I’m a sucker for the old mystics.

The winning comment:

Nathan and Christine,

Thank you for this wonderful podcast. It was good for me to hear the effect that being a Benedictine oblate has had on Christine’s artistic practice, as I am considering oblation myself.

In support of contemplation bearing fruit in artistic creation (as in a motto of the Dominican Order, “to contemplate and to share the fruits of contemplation”), I thought I’d share with you a couple of the poems that arose out of a recent Ignatian silent retreat, after I had been reading John of the Cross and Lady Julian of Norwich.

“For John of the Cross”

Lord, let me love You
with the flame of ten thousand fires.

Let me love You
with a flame that dries and crackles,

burns and blackens the crust of my soul,
hides deep down in the heart of things,

to warm and beat,
flickering forth with tongues of fire

to burst through the shell of my cindered soul,
and leap to dance as love again.

Lord, make me all flame.

“For Lady Julian”

Lord, teach me to love my weaknesses
as Lady Julian loved hers,
seeing that the soiled, torn stain of our sins
blackening the white cloth of our humanity
was such a little nothing
because that cloth was worn by Christ,
who picked us up out of the Pit
and sat us next to Him at table,
with His Father and His Spirit,
all of us dazzling white,
with the wounds we ripped into our flesh
shining scars praising God’s glory,
His merciful meaning: ‘Love’.

Blessings on your work.

Cole

Runners up

I loved this, from Greene Fyre, via facebook:

To oblate in clarity, nor obtuse. To endeavor obscurity: a recluse? Divining the divine: propinquity. A pursuit sublime from antiquity.

Thanks also to Donelda Seymore, Genora W. Powell, Jaqui du Rocher, Jann Durkin and many others for your thoughtful reflections.

Contact nathan@artmonastery.org if you’re interested in joining our Artmonk Reading Group, where we’re about to go through The Artist’s Rule together.

Otherhood, the Podcast: Episode 1, Christine Valters Paintner and “The Artist’s Rule”

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Otherhood, the Podcast: Episode 1, Christine Valters Paintner & "The Artist's Rule" [ 27:05 | 17.43 MB ]

Meet Otherhood, the Podcast.

In this, the first episode, I interview Christine Valters Paintner about her new book (the Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul With Monastic Wisdom), the oblate life, and what it means to be both an artist and a monk.

BTW, we’re giving away a free copy of the Artist’s Rule to whomever leaves the best comment on this post. Just sayin’.

Immanence

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I’m heading off the grid for a week, but I really look forward to giving this more attention when I get back: ”artmonks: children of Thoreau & Whitehead,” a post by Adrian Ivakhiv.

If Thoreau’s quest to “live deliberately [...] and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” were cross-bred with A. N. Whitehead’s insight that creativity is the driving core of all things in the universe, the “universal of universals,” then today’s “artmonks” are children not of Marx and Coca-Cola (as Godard once labeled the activists of the 1960s and Xiaoping Lin more recently called the Chinese artistic avant-garde), but children of Thoreau and Whitehead.

The monastic ideal has always been about living deliberately. And in a world that is rapidly outgrowing the secular-religious divide — becoming simultaneously post-secular, for those outgrowing the constraints of secularism, and post-religious, or at least post-traditional, for those no longer in obeisance to inherited religion — monasticism today is reinventing itself in interesting and creative ways. “Artmonks” are those who bring a mindful deliberation and dedication to the creative process, following it wherever it leads them. They are the monks of immanence, post-traditional devotees synthesizing the vita contemplativa with the vita activa in an age of Burning Man and the internet.

Ivakhiv lists a handful of outstanding artmonks:

Some others who’ve pursued their creative visions down whatever spiritual rabbitholes they led them include Joseph Beuys, Yves Klein, Marina Abramović, Stan Brakhage, Genesis P. Orridge, David Tibet, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Andrei Tarkovsky, Derek Jarman, Carolee Schneemann, John Cage, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, Richard Long, Betsy Damon, Mary Beth Edelson, Vito Acconci, outsider artists like Henry Darger and Ferdinand Cheval, and on and on and on.

Pico

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Renaissance humanist philosopher Pico della Mirandola, who died at 31 in 1494 shortly after determining to become a monk, wrote “The Oration on the Dignity of Man” when he was only 23:

He [God] received man, therefore, as a creature of undetermined nature, and placing him in the middle of the universe, said this to him: “Neither an established place, nor a form belonging to you alone, nor any special function have We given to you, O Adam, and for this reason, that you may have and possess, according to your desire and judgment, whatever place, whatever form, and whatever functions you shall desire. The nature of other creatures, which has been determined, is confined within the bounds prescribed by Us. You, who are confined by no limits, shall determine for yourself your own nature, in accordance with your own free will, in whose hand I have placed you. I have set you at the center of the world, so that from there you may more easily survey whatever is in the world. We have made you neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, so that, more freely and more honorably the molder and maker of yourself, you may fashion yourself in whatever form you shall prefer. You shall be able to descend among the lower forms of being, which are brute beasts; you shall be able to be reborn out of the judgment of your own soul into the higher beings, which are divine.”

The Monastic University

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Is there room for monasteries on university campuses these days?

More and more, I envision joining the work we’ve been doing at the Art Monastery Project to existing academic institutions. Imagine artmonks & postgrads, exploring the wide world of (secular/interfaith) monastic living together.

Especially if you convinced them that being a monk didn’t have to mean being silent, celibate & sober, I imagine that there would be plenty of graduate students (perhaps in religion, philosophy, business, neuroscience, art, art history, physics, music, mathematics…) interested in living an experimental monastic life for a semester or two, alongside artmonks and monks from existing monastic traditions.

How could universities not benefit from fostering self-sustaining contemplative communities?

Contemplative Studies

Timothy Morton of Ecology Without Nature points out:

There’s a brand new field of “contemplative studies” opening up, which will play a big part in the American Academy of Religion’s conference next year. It involves humanists and scientists working together to think about practices such as meditation.

Morton references a promising program at Brown University:

The Contemplative Studies Initiative is a group of Brown faculty with diverse academic specializations who are united around a common interest in the study of contemplative states of mind, including the underlying philosophy, psychology, and phenomenology of human contemplative experience… Our goal is to develop a coordinated program in this rapidly emerging field that focuses on many of the ways that human beings have found, across cultures and across time, to concentrate, broaden and deepen conscious awareness as the gateway to cultivating their full potential and to leading more meaningful and fulfilling lives.

A New Nalanda

Last September, Indian parliament approved plans to rebuild the campus of Nalanda University, a monastic university in northern India that existed for almost a millenium before it was sacked by Turkic Muslim invaders in 1193 CE. The new university, “aimed at advancing the concept of an Asian community…and rediscovering old relationships,” will serve as a post-graduate research university with programs in:

  • Buddhist Studies, Philosophy, and Comparative Religion;
  • Historical Studies;
  • International Relations and Peace;
  • Business Management and Development;
  • Languages and Literature;
  • and Ecology and Environmental Studies.

I’m curious if Brown’s program or the new Nalanda will be open to incorporating the institution of the monastery, at some level.

Given the current economic situation most universities are facing (especially here in California) and the low-cost nature of monasteries (especially ones that grow their own food or produce a sellable product…), it seems like an experiment worth making.

Shambhala Acharya Judith Simmer-Brown on Monasticism

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Shambhala Acharya Judith Simmer-Brown, in Buddhist Geeks, Episode 146 “Investing in the Future of American Buddhism”:

Vince: So before we close, maybe if I could ask a little bit about monasticism, where you see it heading. This is something you said you wanted to come back to.

Judith: I think the returns are not in on monasticism. I personally think that monasticism does need to be established in this country. It may never play the role it did in Asia, where it was the major force in all the Buddhist traditions, but there is some precious gem that monasticism has always been for Buddhism. And I think that having authentic monasteries in our traditions is really, really important in the West. So that there’s some kind of a repository of a certain lineage of practice and study and mentorship that we otherwise could lose. So even though there are many who pooh-pooh monasticism in American Buddhism, I wanted to put a plug in there. Because I think it’s really much too precious to just shelve and say, “It’s not American.” That’s subject for more conversation perhaps at another time.

Vince: No, actually I think we should maybe go into that a little more.

Judith: Okay.

Vince: I think it would be interesting and it’s really relevant, especially because when we look around, or I look around, I don’t really see many monastic communities that are working, that are convert Buddhists, that are Western Buddhists. I know of one Theravada group in California. Ajahn Amaro.

Judith: Ajahn Amaro

Vince: But very few.

Judith: Yes. There are very few and there may always be very few. But my experience of monasteries first began at Tassajara when I was a Zen student. And it’s a real monastery. It’s a Zen monastery. And it’s an amazing place. And I learned something in my bones about practice being at Tassajara, learning how to cook in the kitchen, learning how to slice mushrooms, learning how to lead a monastic day getting up at four in the morning for zazen and then, during sesshin doing long days. And the whole cradle of monastic training at Tassajara is just absolutely amazing.

And then in my time as a Tibetan Buddhist I’ve spent a lot of time at Gampo Abbey in northern Nova Scotia. Pema Chodron is the abbess of Gampo Abbey. And it’s an amazing community. Again, very remote, very deep practice. Practice in one’s bones, so that the routines and practices of the day are so potent and the study part is so rich as well.

I also have had a number of monastic students at Naropa, and its been very difficult for them being solitary monastics in the US. But at Naropa they’ve been able to find something that is at least a little bit like monastic community. My feeling is that the monastic vocation is not something that many people will hold. But there are those for whom it is deep in who they are. Pema Chodron’s a very close friend. She has monasticism deeply embodied in her. And her life as a monastic has produced such incredible benefit for many, many people. She would not be beloved the way she is if she were not monastic. It’s just very clear. There’s been a kind of purification of her, over the decades that I’ve known her, that comes from her monastic discipline and training. So that didn’t come from nowhere. That came from exertion and blessing and commitment and practice and study.

So I think we need to make a place and endow monasteries to continue. And there will be different kinds. You know, it took Thubten Chodron’s monasteries, the strictest in the Tibetan tradition here; she follows the most strict version of the vows. Gampo Abbey has a slightly altered thing. There may be different kinds of monasteries. Zen monasteries are very different from Theravada or Tibetan ones. But I think we need to have those places in our culture, as part of the mosaic, what makes up American Buddhism. And I don’t think they are the same as our practice centers where we go for a short-term retreat–like a month or three months. And those are short term compared to the monastic life that goes on for years.

The Buddha

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“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.

Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.

Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many.

Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.

Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers or elders.

But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live to it.”

- The Buddha

Via “Thought for the Day” at Wisdom at Work

[Part of the Daily Lectio series, named after the Benedictine tradition of lectio divina, “divine reading.” For instructions and background on the series, click here. Subscribe to the Daily Lectio RSS feed. Send comments or suggested readings to nathan@artmonastery.org]

Chapter 1 of Augustine’s Rule

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[Part of the Daily Lectio series, named after the Benedictine tradition of lectio divina, "divine reading." For instructions and background on the series, click here. Subscribe to Daily Lectio. Send comments or suggested readings to nathan@artmonastery.org]

Starting on October 2nd, I’ll be doing a Jesuit retreat on the Rule of Augustine (which I’ve written about here: “Up to our necks in Augustine”).

Each day, I’ll read 1 of the 8 chapters of the Rule of Augustine:

Chapter I

Purpose and Basis of Common Life Continue reading →

Up to our necks in Augustine

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On Saturday the Art Monastery, a community of artists from a wide range of spiritual traditions working to apply the tools of monasticism to art-making instead of religion, will embark on a 7-day silent retreat in the Jesuit tradition, in which the primary form of activity (and inactivity) will be to read the Rule of St. Augustine, a 1,500 year old document—only about 7 pages long—written by someone who is arguably the 3rd most influential figure in Christianity (after Jesus and Paul).

Are we masochists?!

For a while, it’s been evident that monasticism is still something very other for us artmonks. Sure, we inhabit a monastery, we’ve done meditation retreats, we’ve chanted compline every night for months, and we’ve shared meals and chores and periods of silence and selective abnegation. Yet still, the monastic experience as it has existed for thousands of years remains a strangely scary and romantic, exotic creature. And yet, if we aim to concoct our own Art Monastic rule and vows, we had better know viscerally what it is we’re dealing with.

The unique combination of Jesuit exercises—at their core a form of meditative, reflective reading that unfolds into a visualization practice—and the Rule of Augustine will give us a chance to live, if only for brief moments, according to this 1,500 year-old monastic structure. Having done so, we can choose to incorporate some of the rules into our own set, or toss the whole lot out.

Why Augustine? For one thing, his rule is shorter than the others. He gets to the point. His rule is much less specific than Benedict’s.

Additionally, Augustine was hugely influential on Western monasticism as a whole in all the right ways:

[Benedict's] sources such as John Cassian and The Master emphasize the vertical [hierarchical], whereas Benedict includes that horizontal perspective, a perspective he learned from the monastic writings of, you may be surprised to hear, Augustine—whom we always think of harshly and whom we blame for so many of the problems of modern Western Christians, not realizing that in his monastic teaching, Augustine chose a very different side of himself, and that some of Benedict’s best soundbites about pastoral sensitivity and love for one another, in fact, are stolen from Augustine. (source)

To give you a better sense of the rather daunting task we’ve set ourselves:

We’ll have as our only companion an average of 1 page of Augustine—and nothing but 1 page of Augustine—each day for seven days. Seven days, alone, with the Christian’s Christian, the ideologue’s ideologue, the dogmatist’s dogmatist. 1 Seven days, alone, with the Christian Nagarjuna 2. To me, that prospect is both frightening and fascinating.

That’s one day listening to Augustine the prude saying things like, “Although your eyes may chance to rest upon some woman or other, you must not fix your gaze upon any woman,” and another day listening to Augustine the authoritarian saying things like, “Books are to be requested at a fixed hour each day, and anyone coming outside that hour is not to receive them,” and another day listening to Augustine the zealot saying things like “Chant only what is prescribed for chant; moreover, let nothing be chanted unless it is so prescribed,” and still another day listening to Augustine the fanatic saying things like “Subdue the flesh, so far as your health permits, by fasting and abstinence from food and drink,” etc.

Continue reading →

  1. One of our priest friends, who has just written his doctoral thesis on Augustine, says that Augustine never wrote a coherent, systematic theory of theology. He was usually responding, in his writing, very pragmatically to the world around him (even to atheists). The more I learn about Augustine, the more it seems like what he wrote was taken out of context in support of dogma by medieval scholars, and later served up as a comprehensive ideology by the later church. ↩
  2. Immediate, unscholarly parallels between the Christian philosopher born in North Africa in 354 CE, and the madhyamaka philosopher born in southern India around 150 CE: similar thoughts on the nature of time; similar thoughts on the limits of conceptual knowledge; separated in time by only a hundred or so years; similar impact on their respective growing religious movements(?) ↩

Monk Manifesto » Abbey for the Arts

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[Part of the Daily Lectio series, named after the Benedictine tradition of lectio divina, "divine reading." For instructions and background on the series, click here. Subscribe to Daily Lectio. Send comments or suggested readings to nathan@artmonastery.org]

With the previous post in mind, I invite you to meditate on this, Paintner’s Monk Manifesto: Continue reading →