I have a selfish relationship with meditation. A little too selfish. Whenever I am in a deep rut, I run to it like a fish without water. I would meditate for an hour, sleep with meditation music on, take frequent breaks to tune into 5 minutes of guided meditations. You get the drift.
It works too. I feel connected to myself, my deepest sense of existence and I am able to tap into some unknown source of stability that is usually able to drag me out of dark places.
However, I also know that in order to nourish a mindspace where its easier to respond to emotions, this streak of selfish meditations must give way to a continuous practise.
Sometime in late 2020 though, I started drawing immediately after a meditation session. With no expectation of form and shape, I was able to return to a pure play of colour. Sometimes I would draw the shapes I saw when my eyes were closed during meditation and sometimes I would draw along as a guided meditation played along.
Today, as I was listening to my favourite Buddhist teacher on YouTube: Nick Keomahavong, he suggested to use chanting as a way of meditation. He also suggested to try chanting for 21 days to reap the benefits.
I immediately reflected back to my days of drawing my meditations and how I loved the process of a quiet reflection looking internally and then putting to paper forms and colours that I experienced during the process.
I want to go back to the same feeling and hence, this project. 21 days of meditation drawings.
A drawing from the book Tantra Song - one of the only books to survey the elusive tradition of abstract Tantric painting from Rajasthan, India—sold out in a swift six weeks. Rendered by hand on found pieces of paper and used primarily for meditation, the works depict deities as geometric, vividly hued shapes and mark a clear departure from Tantric art’s better-known figurative styles. They also resonate uncannily with lineages of twentieth-century art—from the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism to Minimalism—as well as with much painting today. Rarely have the ancient and the modern come together so fluidly. Read more about these meditation paintings here