everyday as an art form

Chogyam Trunga wrote a book many years ago called True Perception: the path of dharma art.

It is about living our lives everyday as an art form. It is how I want [and aspire daily} to live my life. Some days feel like a theatre piece playing out on the world's great stage. Other days are quiet and subtle, like enso drawings effortlessly painted onto the page with dense, black ink. And other days are chaos and disconnection, bearing only a resemblance of my neurosis that comes out like a Jackson Pollack painting on a bad day.

If we envisoned ourselves living an artful life, living our life as an art form, what would we create?

I would create beauty.
I would create simplicity. Wabi-sabi.
Taken from one of my favorite books of the same name.
I would think of restraint.
I would pick things that had meaning, being selective in what I put on the palatte.
I would certainly be more conscious of what I speak, how I act and what I wear.

no time like now to begin.

Read Chogyam Trunpa's original essay HERE.

copyright 2009 Alisa Barry