The Painting Process: “What” is “This” that comes “Thus” by Richard Stodart In every here-and-now moment of deluded/enlightened exertion in the painting process of being-time, the equilbrating dynamicity of “What” (not-thinking, light, equality) and “this” (thinking, darkness, discrimination), are mediated in and through “thus” (nonthinking) for fairness or equilibrium. Self-deluded dualism—‘dark sliding’ in duality–and the ‘stink of enlightenment’ in nonduality, are penetrated so that no gap exists whereby thinking is able to withdraw from not-thinking, or not-thinking from thinking. Instead, the painting process expresses the  dialogical communion of light-in-darkness (not-thinking in thinking) and darkness-in-light (thinking in not-thinking), in and through nonthinking. As one side is illumined the other is darkened, forging an expressible, discriminative psycho-physical path of being-time order-in-chaos and chaos-in-order. Chaos (undifferentiated, inaudible and not-thinking light) mediates order (differentiated, audible and thinking darkness), challenging and illuminating it in the equilbrating process for utmost clarity of expression. Conversely, order mediates chaos by calling the illumination of chaos into order’s abysmal depths. In this intimate exchange, chaos challenges the abstract fixations of order that predispose it to ‘dark sliding.’ Order, on the other hand, undermines a tendency in chaos to assert itself as a privilege with order. Nonthinking in the painting process, the third foci of the process of discrimination, mediates thinking and not-thinking for fairness. Nonthinking functions as a mouthpiece/negotiator with the symbolic utterances of being-time, verifying its processes of thinking and not-thinking in and through its nonthinking. If for any reason nonthinking’s mediation is lost, the painting process falls into self-deluded dualism. When this occurs (by way of thinking without not-thinking) nihilistic or eternalistic causation occurs. Similarly, when not-thinking functions without thinking, idealistic obscuration of causation occurs. In both instances of irrational hubris, the dynamic “thus” or mediator of the painting process’ becomes a distant absolute and static source, obscuring the native intimacy and expressibility of thinking and not-thinking in the painting process with two probable outcomes: 1) the painting process withdraws from the ordering process of thinking and confines its action to abundant color and form in not-thinking’s undifferentiated chaos. 2) the painting process withdraws from the abundant dynamicity of chaos by privileging order over chaos, in which case the symbol may be too sparse, lack vitality and also accessibility. To re-establish unity the painting process may rely unduly on the process of synthesis. The process of synthesis alone, however, is not enough to overcome the bifurcation of being ‘in’ time. Intimacy in the painting process—arrival (the dialectic nonduality of duality and nonduallity) and non-arrival (their being-time in and through thusness)—requires mediation in and through nonthinking, which revaluates and reconfigures chaos and order in thinking and not-thinking, rooting out their respective tendencies to either fall into or obscure causation. A prerequisite then for true discrimination in the painting experience is the mediating linguistic and symbolic ‘mouthpiece”/”negotiator” of nonthinking, in and through which “what” is ‘this” and “this” is “what.” The total exertion of this impeding is the painted picture of being-time. The realizational passage of “I” painting is the enactment of expressed dharma stages illuminated inexpressibly in an through emptiness. All dharma stages as such evidence nondual passage in a painted picture of the time-being Home HOME%20PAGE.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0
 
 
 
 
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