Most asked QUESTION 1
Many photos have been photographed up close in Miksang Photography. Do you only photograph details, or also whole scenes?
In the beginning we practise becoming more conscious in seeing one thing a time. From a standing or sitting position, how we see it. Not later another day, but in the here and now. Right in this moment where we are. We practise seeing without our reactive thinking, without our reference frame of knowing what it is conventionally, naming as objects and dividing it immediately in ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it’ and without diving in to associations.
This is breaking long practised habits that we have mastered over time. And at the same time we tune in to our inherent sanity, our basic goodness, our inherent ability of pure perception and clear seeing.
We shift our attention to appreciating details in our everyday world. And to foster this new habit, it is easier to start off in a simple manner. In the beginning we dismantle layers of opinions, beliefs and assumptions simply by looking closer. We allow ourselves to stay longer with a visual resonance, connecting to something simple in a complex visual world.
So we start feeling connected, and we can see clearly in any environment.
When we start seeing the details onin our world, we miss nothing.
We are thinking beings, and we are very good at thinking. Thinking comes in very handy; but how and how much we think is not always helpful.
As soon as we experience a sensory experience thinking is triggered super-fast. This stems from our lifelong conditioning of naming everything, and wanting to know what things are so we semi-secure ourselves in feeling safe with who we are and what our place in the world is.
We relax into seeing clearly, and taking in visual perceptions and we go below this surface.
As we relax our thinking mechanisms more, we quickly go deeper, and we start seeing things as they are. Free from our usual references, free from mental knowing and labelling.
We relax by practising what we notice. We begin to make room in ourselves so we can notice what strikes us visually, out of the blue, sudden; directly from the world around us, through our eyes into our heart.
It turns out that seeing from the heart is very often something very simple and poetic. When we come to understand this, we can use this understanding as an encouragement to develop inner silence and mental calmness about what we see.
So it becomes easier to connect with the simplicity and natural poetry of that moment, in the here and now.
What Miksang photos characterize is simplicity
A successful Miksang photo reflects a moment of vivid and heartfelt seeing. From inner stillness it is possible to experience heartfelt seeing in every situation, and it often is a very simple thing we resonate with. And to genuinely and precisely photograph this, from a settled sense of being and expressing is what we aim for, so we can relate fully to the simplicity of the whole.
Nothing is added and nothing is missing - exactly enough.
What is a detail?
And, when does a detail becomes a detail, and when does a detail stop being a detail?
In fact, everything is a detail of some bigger environment.
Even a landscape is a detail of the surrounding wider environment.
The earth is too enormous for us to see as a whole while standing in the bathroom looking in the mirror, or even standing on the top of the Himalayas. The earth becomes more of a complete detail when seeing it from a space shuttle. And from a cosmic level it is just a speck of dust in the universe.
The process of perception here is all about learning to recognize what visually resonates, in the here and now and understanding the fullness of a heartfelt joyful vivid perception. This means knowing what we see clearly from our inherent basic goodness, from the sanity within, and knowing what is part of our heartfelt visual perception and what is not.
This can be a leaf on the sidewalk, a pattern of light on the wall, reflections on a red hood of a car, or the layers of green and blue of the ocean and sky altogether, or some clouds, or the bubbles of soap in the sink, and so on. There are infinite perceptions, ranging from small to big!
When something has stopped us, we see it from the heart; this is a complete experience, a complete image of various forms, lines, colors, texture and shapes. It is complete, nothing is missing.
We first simply need to settle into our inherent clear seeing and learn to discern what resonates or what we start thinking about. We need to shift our loyalty: from relative looking to absolute looking, to look and see beyond the relative world of naming, beliefs and associations. And settle into the experience of giving expression to our experience of seeing afresh, with our cameras. Genuinely and precisely, without rushing to the next thing, without anxiety - confident and elegantly.
"God is in the details", is the directive to be found in the works of architect and designer Ludwig van der Rohe.
