Back in 1966, when I was 18, I flew to Europe for almost four months of hitch-hiking the continent. I landed in London, circled up to Stockholm. Then flew to Rome, spent a month in Italy. Then to Nice, Barcelona, north to Berlin, and finally Paris, where I flew back to the U. S. I stayed in hostels, slept sometimes on a beach, once in a doorway, a few nights in a guest house owned by someone who gave me a ride.
In the Hague, a woman I had met invited me to see an art exhibit in a gallery where she worked. The paintings were tiny. I don’t remember the exact size but maybe an inch or two square, and of incredible precision and beauty. We needed a magnifying glass to study the depth of detail. I loved it. This was one result of the trip, a love of art. I had expected to be awed by the art of Florence, Rome, and Paris, and was certainly not disappointed in what I saw. But the Hague was an unexpected gift.
Ever since then, if I happened to hear about any exhibits like it, I rushed to see them. This led me to discover Japanese netsuke, the 1 – 2 inch carved toggles used to fasten a pocket container to the sash of a kimono. They were made mostly of wood, ivory, or bone. Such art showed how a thing used daily for mundane tasks can be crafted with care and beauty.
Many of the etchings of Japanese artists like Norikane Hiroto and Tanaka Ryohei are small, approximately 3 by 4 inches, although they also created larger works. Their art brings us to beautiful rural Japanese landscapes with human dwellings, but no humans. A deep quiet fills everything. Many pieces by both artists are in black and white, while others include color.
Norikane doesn’t try to copy nature but lets the power of a place speak. Often in his art, one element stands out over the rest. In one famous piece a snow-capped Mt. Fuji stands powerfully above a village, stream, and bridge.
Tanaka’s etchings are so precise and clear, that a sense of great harmony fills the scene. Each detail, each place, awakens us to see how all details and all places fit together. His art reminds me of the line by English poet William Blake: “To see a world in a grain of sand…”
We don’t always know how much attention to give to details. We can easily overdo it, get hooked by one detail and miss the whole ⎼ lose the forest in the individual trees, for example. Or we do the opposite, focus on generalities, and miss out on how each act, in each instance, the details are what pulls the whole together. How the way we choose what to wear in the morning, for example, or brush our teeth, salt, and pepper our food, or take a breath influences our day. We can get lost in what we expect, or think is true, and miss what is staring us in the face.
Years after the European trip, in a retreat organized by psychotherapist Lawrence LeShan, I learned a meditation that helped me better balance the place of details and individual moments in understanding the whole. Recently, I began reading a book by Meido Moore, Hidden Zen: Practices for Sudden Awakening and Embodied Realization, that described a similar practice.
A synthesis of the two practices:
First, pick out an artwork, or a view of any safe place or object, in nature or otherwise, a tree for example, or a pinecone for you to enjoy and get more familiar with. Sit so you can view the whole object, someplace you can relax yet focus attention. Take a few deep breaths.
If it feels right, pick one area to focus on. Be curious and move slowly from one part to the next, focusing on as many details as feels right, embracing each with as much clarity as you can and without getting fixated on any. If you do get hooked, notice your feelings, thoughts, emotions; and then move on, spreading out your vision.
When you feel you’ve examined enough, let your eyes softly linger on the whole, taking it all in. Then notice how you feel. Are there any places in your body of tension, strain, or softness, joy? What feelings arose in you as you looked?
If it feels right, close your eyes partly or fully and focus on the artwork and go from one section of the piece in your memory to another. What do you remember?
Then open your eyes again. What stands out? Do you notice anything you didn’t see in your memories? Notice how the whole is created and enriched by all the details.
What differences did you notice between when you studied the little details versus when you just let your eyes, mind and body softly linger on the whole?
And lastly, you might turn inward, and rest your attention in the act of seeing itself, and on noticing this, here, now.
Conclusion:
By touching in this mindful way, we’re touched; we feel what we see. The artwork, and each moment of life takes on more dimension; the person seen and the one seeing come more alive.
Humans, for as long as we’ve been on the earth, have discerned that when the storm of stories, plans, thoughts, and traumas we often call a self gets quiet, we perceive more of the universe around us.
So, maybe we can set a time in the day to meditate or practice mindfulness. We can take a slower breath. And if we feel safe we can notice and acknowledge, with kindness and without being judgmental, whatever is speaking inside us. And then we shift attention outwards to notice whatever specific details we see, smell, taste, touch, or hear.
Or, alternatively, we can focus on something beautiful that’s nearby. And we let in first the details and then the whole, the spaciousness of what surrounds us.
This openness lets us see, feel, understand whatever we sense or consider with more depth. Our mind gets more welcoming, and the borders of who we are surge out towards everything.
And in that vast and possibly dimensionless space, everything has a home. And so, everything can be itself.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
