Miksang

I'm incredibly excited about a photography conference/retreat I signed up for recently.  It's called Miksang.  This was started by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and is the art of contemplative photography.  It is seeing beyond looking.  Too often, we go through our lives too busy to really take in the world around us.  We start off being able to see everything when we're small.  One simply has to watch a toddler's fascination and excitement about something we adults consider mundane to remember this.  The trick becomes, then, how to see like a child.  And in Miksang, this is taken a step further:  how do I see as a child (or with beginner's mind for all my fellow Buddhists) and translate that into a photographic image.  I know that this is a place I can get to when I have camera in hand.  When I truly let go of all my shoulds and oughts to simply be present, I cease to exist.  I become everything and nothing.  I am photographer, camera, and subject.  It's a strange concept, and I have to admit, sounds a bit "new-agey" when you first hear it.  But I see it more as this:  I know, in that moment, that I am interconnected with everything in the universe, and that what benefits one benefits all; and that what harms one, harms us all.  I am perfect, just as I am, with all my imperfections.  I think this is the state that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (a professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago) describes as Flow.  

So back to my conference.  It's in LA.  Actually, worse, it's in the Valley.  And most people who know me know that--with the exception of a few tiny enclaves--I don't like LA.  For me, LA represents everything about American culture that I hate:  pretension, self-loathing, a strive to have someone else love us without ever loving ourselves, pollution, wantonness and waste.  Oh, and traffic.  I can't forget that.  So I foresee a big challenge for me.  I will need to embrace everything that I love in a setting where my feelings about that place can be the utter distraction. I need to forget my preconceived notions, get out of my own way, and see the world with the eyes of a child.  I'll let you know how it goes.