Eric and I were traveling in Japan over the 2018/2019 holidays and we decided to spend a few days in Naoshima, an island in the Seto Sea famous for its many museums and art instillations. Eric and I went into an instillation, Backside of the Moon, by the artist James Turrell and the piece absolutely blew me away. Spoiler alert here: I am about to describe he piece, so if you had big plans to travel to Naoshima to see this work, you may want to skip this blog. Otherwise…proceed at your own risk:
The instillation is open, by appointment, for 15 minute slots. When your time arrives, you and a group of around 10 people are escorted inside a room that is pitch black. The docent announces there is a bench directly behind you and you are instructed to step backwards and sort of grope your way onto the seat. Then, you wait. In total, pitch darkness, you sit and do nothing at all. Minutes ticked and ever so slowly, I thought I saw a bit of a flash in front of me. More time and more and more, a bit of light appeared. Gradually the light brightened and grew until I could see a large illuminated square directly in front of me. Eventually, the docent returned to the room and instructed us all to walk toward the square, and we could all see, and proceed to, the light in front of us. Then, the docent explained we have been in the same room for 15 minutes and nothing in the room had changed. No light was turned on, no curtain pulled. What had changed was us, the viewers, our eyes had adjusted to the room and come to see the faint light that was there all along. Pweefff –that is the sound of my little mind totally blown…
After I left the exhibit, my first though was really that the piece is a perfect ubai — a parallel — for dhamma practice: This world doesn’t change, but us practitioners adjust our view, and slowly we see this world for what it is, for what it always has been: A world that is inconstant and stressful.
What is more is that I don’t expect change, I don’t always see it coming, because circumstances, and form, can shift at a creeping pace, but in the end the magnitude of change can be seen, just like the square of light at the back of the room. We mistake barely perceptible change for permanence and then face a huge –often heartbreaking — shocker when what we know and love changes in an undeniable way.
Additionally, I tend to look outward for change: I know that everything in this world continually shifts, but I rarely look inward to see how this common condition (duhh, it is called a common condition for a reason) applies to me. I don’t internalize change, but 15 minutes in a dark room was all it took for me to change. My rupa, my eyes, adjusted. My nama adjusts all the time too –it makes me see that even if I had a perfect, mythical, world, where nothing changes at all, I couldn’t hope to find satisfaction in it because I change. What I am used to changes. What I see and therefore what I want and what I imagine changes.
This particular art piece has stayed with me over the years. Over and over it comes-up in my practice as the perfect illustration for some topic I am considering, so I am sure you will see it again.
I will give a little further spoiler about this piece:
About a year later, this piece was an essential data point I used when I was trying to learn about and understand rupa. I had been deeply considering why all human rupa wasn’t the same and it was thinking back to this exhibit that made me realize that my own rupa body interacts with the rupa environment — that what I am exposed to and used to effects my form. That many of the physically based differences between humans — tastes, strength, fitness ability — arises not because of “specialness” but because all rupa form is subject to the same rules: It adjusts and shifts in reaction to other rupa in itself and in its environment.