Buddha wants everyone to be happy. He can’t make you rich, famous, sexy or pain-free, just happy. Buddha gets that pain happens, emotional intellectual and physical. But then I make it worse in my head, that’s suffering. When I stop making it worse and just deal, that’s being happy.
Us artists, we gotta express our sufferings. My angst should pour out into what I make. I’m supposed to “suffer for my art”. I think I’m, special because I express my suffering. I ignore how my suffering hurts others.
Meditation is a practice in how to experience pain(emotional or physical) and let it go. There is a delight in popping the zits of day to day existence. But I can repeat forever how “The Man” screwed me to myself. But to focus on the breath and just the breath, I have to be in the moment, not in the past or the future. My breath is here as I type. My kid not doing his dishes is in the past. I’m not smart and can only handle one thing at a time. So I have to let “dishes” or the breath go. So meditation is my practice in letting go of bad shit and paying attention to what I’m doing like writing. It works, when I can do it, now I’m trying to do it with my art too.
Making art is a practice too. I have to study, each drawing or writing session is just like sitting in meditation. But I worry as much about paying the “rent” as making work. The “rent”, “The Man” and life has often stopped me from making work.
So I’m swiping Buddha’s Eightfold Path. I’m writing an Artists Eightfold path to drop all the shirt and make art. There’s no fame, no fortune not even how to draw well promised it. The only goal is to make work and be happy.