It's been a while since I've been to a practice day and last Saturday was my first in many months. Actually I have not been practicing Miksang Contemplative photography that much this Winter. But as the days are becoming longer I have more energy and I am looking forward to spending more time out of the house with my camera.
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| two sweets on a smooth surface |
So last Saturday I gathered with a few other people in our teacher's home, we chatted about where we were in life concerning our visual awareness and our practice as contemplative photographers.
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| green leaf on sidewalk |
Our teacher explained again about Simplicity: the space around a specific form and a form in space. We have done this before and I didn't understand a bit of it, but after today it seemed that I finally got the gist of it. Sometimes it just takes time to let the words sink in.
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| nylon ropes |
Our teacher showed us some examples out of her own practice and it slowly started to dawn on me.
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| red curve in sidewalk |
It really is about something on or in a certain surface, that can be a sidewalk, table, sand or a room. Since it was really about things this time (of course you can practice this with people, but they tend to move around a lot) we also practiced looking longer and deeper at the image we stopped for.
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| blue rope in sand |
Looking longer at something gets the speed out of your thoughts & doings and makes you more appreciative of what you see.
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| four empty chairs in a waiting room |
The photo above of the four chairs was a risky one: I experienced the space around the chairs when I first saw it, but I was not sure if our teacher considered this Simplicity. She did. She has been investigating the quality of Simplicity herself for quite a while and she recognized the space around the chairs in this image.
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| concrete square in sand |
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| a single tyre track in sand |
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| two pigeons in sand |
Looking at one thing at the time gave room in my head, it made the world a little more organized. I live in such a fast, hectic world with a lot of stimuli but practicing Simplicity and looking longer took the speed out of myself and made me happy. Just looking at one thing at the time, it's as simple as that.
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