Studio Day 60

Larry Wolf, Ghosts of Bodhisattvas (2026)
Bodhisattva Reimagined: The Buddha of the Future Made Whole
Art Institute of Chicago

also Studio Day 52

Studio Day 52 - Bodhisattva Reimagined

Ten X, Bodhisattva Reimagined - Study B
Photo: Larry Wolf (2026)

Ten X, Bodhisattva Reimagined - Study A
Photo: Larry Wolf (2026)

Bodhisattva Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future
Photo: Larry Wolf (2026)

Bodhisattva Reimagined: The Buddha of the Future Made Whole
Art Institute of Chicago

The Ando Gallery
Art Institute of Chicago

Bodhisatta Reimagined
Ten X

Tang Dynasty Treasure Meets Cutting-Edge Tech
Artnet News

What Would Minor White Do?

Photograph who you really are

Venture into the landscape without expectations. 

Let your subject find you. 

When you approach it, you will feel resonance, a sense of recognition. If, when you move away, the resonance fades, or if it gets stronger as you approach, you'll know you have found your subject. 

Sit with your subject and wait for your presence to be acknowledged. 

Don't try to make a photograph, but let your intuition indicate the right moment to release the shutter. 

If, after you've made an exposure, you feel a sense of completion, bow and let go of the subject and your connection to it. 

Otherwise, continue photographing until you feel the process is complete.

Minor White's instructions to students at the Hotchkiss workshop in 1971
 as described by John Daido Loori in The Zen of Creativity (2004)

Pre-Workshop Reading List

Carlos Castaneda: A Separate Reality (1971)

Eugen Herrigel: Zen and the Art of Archery (1953)

Richard Boleslavsky: Acting: The First Six Lessons (1933)

Minor White's reading list for students at the Hotchkiss workshop in 1971
 as described by John Daido Loori in The Zen of Creativity (2004)

Larry Wolf, Shadow on Stone (2025)

Six Realms Quick Sketches

Larry Wolf, God Realm (2024)

Larry Wolf, Warring Gods Realm (2024)

Larry Wolf, Human Realm (2024)

Larry Wolf, Animal Realm (2024)

Larry Wolf, Hungry Ghost Realm (2024)

Larry Wolf, Hell Realm (2024)

Intensives

Here's what's planned

• Daily - Drawings
• Self-Study - David duChemin - The Visual Voice
• Reading - Tim Carpenter - To Photograph Is to Learn How to Die
• Reading - Mark Sealy - Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time
• March through May - Spring Ango at Zen Mountain Monastery (virtual)
• April - Self-Directed Month at Latitude
• July - Jess T. Dugan - The Intimate Portrait at Anderson Ranch Arts Center
• August - Richard Renaldi - Beyond the Selfie: Representation and Psyche at Maine Media Workshops
• September - Filter Festival Portfolio Review

Discoveries - John Daido Loori - 1971 - 72

John Daido Loori (1971?)
Mountain Record

May 28, 1971

Learning how to turn the conscious thinking mind off and let the inner mind, the feelings, work free and open seems to be one of the major keys to heightened awareness.

July 9, 1971

I must continue to allow the “inner self” or “inner mind” to lead and let happen what may.

July 14, 1971

I have learned to be quiet with myself, and thus have discovered camera. Camera has shown me light making love, from this I learned that I no longer need to “take” pictures for I now know how to make Images. My Images have opened my inner self and thus I find my Images are becoming spirit.

Now I wish to discover how to make my Images disappear.

I am seeking Imageless Images.

August 1, 1971

My Images are an act of discovery not creation. Much the same kind of creativity as I used in science.

The subjects of my Images no longer make the picture. The viewer makes the picture by the combination of his inner self and my image.

August 9, 1971

Is-ness and else-ness direct themselves to the rational thinking mind.

Nothingness speaks to the spirit.

September 6, 1971

Today I photographed a feeling that I did not understand for which I received a gift of a place I’ve never been. 

April 19, 1972

I think the searching is over now, for awhile. There seems to be a path to follow. What’s needed now is time to work and patience to wait.

Source

Selections from John Daido Loori Journal Entries 1971-1974, Mountain Record, Zen Mountain Monastery Archives

Bridge to Now

The narrative from my application to the Bridge program at the Hyde Park Art Center, to be curated by Jory Drew.

What I Might Get

I imagine the Bridge Program as a mini-residency and mentorship, a time to focus on one project, to challenge myself to go as deep and far as I can in the five weeks, to participate with others on a similar adventure, to take myself seriously (but not too seriously) as an artist.

I want to learn from the other artists and from the program curator - How do they make their art? How do they incorporate their lived experience? How do they create space for their viewer/audience to engage on their own terms? 

I am currently working with the imagery in The Bull, a poem by Ocean Vuong, a Vietnamese-American Buddhist. I’ve been making watercolors and drawings based on that. There is a mix of desire, longing, fear, and loss in the poem, as we enter into a not knowing, heightened sexual awareness and vulnerability. There’s also a thousand-year history of ox herding as a Buddhist teaching metaphor of the search for enlightenment and living after enlightenment. It’s traditionally a combination of woodblock prints and poetic commentary. Bulls and oxen have a long European history as well, from bullfight to minotaur. I am engaging with this as a drawing and watercolor exercise, where does my mark making take me? And also as a conceptual research into the culture of bulls and oxen.

Larry Wolf, Bull (2022)

I expect the Bridge Program will bring a few surprises and discoveries about myself and the work I’m making.

What I Might Offer

I bring a curiosity about how others see the world, how they make sense of it, how they make their art. I bring a commitment to listen closely to what is said and listen deeply for the message beneath the words. I am both an outsider and an insider. We will be finding our personal truths by working together to understand who we are.

I have taught contemplative photography courses which emphasize looking closely at images, for what they contain and for what they evoke in each of us. I bring this openness to look and see, to making, viewing and discussing artwork. 

I have training and years of experience as a mentor and coach, teaching meditation, leading advisory committees, working with nonprofits as a volunteer and board member. I have taught collaboratively and found ways for groups to move forward while acknowledging differences. 

I am a retired married gay white male Buddhist born Jewish former technology executive. I didn’t think I’d make it to my current age of 70 - many of those identities might have killed me - from gay bashing, from AIDS, from anti-semitism, from a family history of early deaths. Some of those identities gave me privilege - a masters in computer science, a job with a national healthcare provider, and, clearly, being white. They have shaped who I am and what I bring.

A Work That Works

To Hold Infinity

The work is an altar made from a sheet of 8 ½ x 14 paper, printed front and back, folded to be freestanding. Light passes through it, in a kind of radiance, as well as reflects off of its surfaces. 

The impetus was the sudden death of a friend’s wife, his grief and yearning for continued connection with her. He asked if angels needed fire to get to heaven, as a reframing of her request to be cremated. He felt her spirit in the waves on the beach and the quiet of a moonrise.

The work combines photographs of a solar eclipse, a full moon and a nuclear explosion, with my own drawings of hands which cradle the cosmos, the angels which populate our world. They are manipulated in Photoshop and through risograph printing, with the final version produced on the laser printer at a local copy center. 

The paper is folded as a variation on an 8-page mini-booklet zine, modified to be viewed without turning the pages. It is a descendant of the portable folding triptych shrine. The title is from the poem Auguries of Innocence by William Blake (To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour).

Larry Wolf, To Hold Infinity (2021)

This webpage provides more information and shows the evolution of the work: https://www.larrywolf51.com/p/to-hold-infinity.html

Artist Statement

I create works as a self-discovery process and to share that with others. For the past year, I’ve been making zines and three-dimensional works from single sheets of paper. I want the work to be touched and manipulated, sometimes with a DIY component, not kept at a distance as something too pure to be handled. My work combines drawing and watercolor as well as new and archival photographs.

In addition to zines, other paper-based and photographic traditions inform my work: origami, calling cards, snapshots. The work lives at the intersection of small-scale mechanical reproduction and hand crafted unique objects. The resulting object is ephemeral and strong, easily mailed, easily recycled, possibly archival. They are passed among friends as part of a shared experience.

The process of creation is a personal unpacking/repacking of aspects of my white gay male jewish buddhist technologist life. I lean into the potential for queerness and shield myself in the ordinary. I combine my history with the current moment - the long shadows of AIDS, the Holocaust, colonialism/racism - the recent deaths of my parents and the end my corporate career - the exuberant days of early Gay Liberation and the quiet joys of a walk with my husband. There is an undercurrent of grief, of loss, and also of new life and celebration, a firebird arising from the ashes, a wolf in sheep's clothing, an irritating grain of sand around which a pearl forms.

Examples

Larry Wolf, SIP-Mobile (2022)
SIP Installation 2022

Larry Wolf, Angels (2021)
SIP Installation 2022

Larry Wolf, Zines (2021)
SIP Installation 2022

Oxherding

John Cage, Zen Ox-Herding Pictures

Stephanie Wada, The Oxherder

Yamada Mumon - Lectures on the Ten Oxherding Pictures

Too Much Coffee Not Enough Time

Emails with Stephen

Feels like too much coffee and not enough time these days. 

Remember when you used to ... 

Larry Wolf, Duffle (2017)

Ha.. I remember that guy...

... and our wonder filled time in San Francisco five (!) years ago ... planning for Courage Labs, the chat bot, Wisdom 2.0, morning practice sessions, walking and eating and living, discovering a book of essays by Rebecca Solnit in a neighborhood bookstore. Then flying off to a conference in Orlando.. all of that after a month on staff at a Karme Choling dathun.

Larry Wolf, Karme Choling 360 (2017)

I miss that guy.. I'm in a kind of mourning for him and his dreams.. 

Larry Wolf, Flying (2017)

While I play with color, shape and math magic

Larry Wolf, SIP Logo Hypar Permutations (2022)

Thanks for inviting that guy to the conversation

 

A Breathing Room

Texted from my mother to my sister in 2015

Thich Nhat Hanh,
Peace Is Every Step (1992)
Maxine Wolf,
Photo of Book Sent to Daughter (2015)

A Breathing Room - An Embassy of the Kingdom of Peace

I recommend that we set up a small room in our homes and call it a "breathing room," where we can be alone and practice just breathing and smiling, at least in difficult moments. That little room should be regarded as an Embassy of the Kingdom of Peace. It should be respected, and not violated by anger, shouting, or things like that. When a child is about to be shouted at, she can take refuge in that room. Neither the father nor the mother can shout at her anymore. She is safe within the grounds of the Embassy. Parents sometimes will need to take refuge in that room, also, to sit down, breathe, smile, and restore themselves. Therefore, that room is for the benefit of the whole family.

Invite The Bell To Sound 

I suggest that the breathing room be decorated very simply, and not be too bright. You may want to have a small bell, one with a beautiful sound, a few cushions or chairs, and perhaps a vase of flowers to remind us of our true nature. You or your children can arrange flowers in mindfulness, smiling. Every time you feel a little upset, you know that the best thing to do is to go to that room, open the door slowly, sit down, invite the bell to sound -- in my country we don't say "strike" or "hit"a bell -- and begin to breathe. The bell will help not only the person in the breathing room, but the others in the house as well.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step

Thich Nhat Hanh

11 October 1926 -- 22 January 2022

Ocean Vuong, Instagram Post (2022)

Ocean Vuong, Instagram Post (2022)

@ocean_vuong 

Thank you, teacher, for being. How proud I am to come from the land you come from, how proud I am to call myself Vietnamese. And Buddhist. And prouder still to know these labels are not fixed, are but merely shells, upturned rafts we use to make it ashore. Thank you for helping us ashore. But most of all, thank you for preparing us for us.

Nam-mô A-di-đà Phật

"This body is not me.
I am not limited by this body. 

I am life without boundaries. 

I have never been born,
and I have never died. 

 

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars, manifestations from my wondrous true mind. Since before time, I have been free. Birth and death are only doors through which we pass, sacred thresholds on our journey. Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.

 

So laugh with me,
hold my hand,
let us say good-bye,

say good-bye, to meet again soon.

We meet today.
We will meet again tomorrow.
We will meet at the source every moment. We meet each other
in all forms of life." 

Thich Nhat Hanh

Slow Down. Relax. Breathe.

Larry Wolf, Hello Birch Coffee (2021)

I was visiting my mother in her apartment last July. We would have breakfast and dinner together. I would usually go out during the day to run errands or to visit a museum. On a typical day, I would get up before her and take a walk to Birch Coffee on 88th Street, about 10 minutes away. I would talk with my husband Eric on the phone as I walked there and bring my Americano back to her apartment. We'd make breakfast and sit together to eat it. 

Are You Breathing?

On the second or third day, I was rushing through breakfast, though I don't remember why. She asked me "Are you breathing?" 

My mother was a trained therapist, a good diagnostician. She was a keen observer. Of course, she was right. 

I was not breathing. Or more accurately, breathing so shallowly it was almost nonexistent. And I was eating quickly. Both true. Both big deals. Both long-standing behaviors. Important to address. Air. Food. Essential for life.

My usual response when under any kind of pressure, any kind of deadline, juggling toast and cooking eggs, cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen, any time when results matter, is to shift into shallow breathing. To not make a sound. To not ruffle the waters. To become invisible. 

What might be just a passing moment of tension, a need for extra attention, gets held. I hold my breath, not just for that one instant, but for minutes, hours, afterwards. Locked in. A stranglehold. I exaggerate. Barely.

We laughed. I know better. I have accumulated many months, probably years, at meditation programs. I teach meditation. The first instruction - breathe. Just breathe. Not to still the mind. Not to develop awareness, except of breathing. Connect with this simple essential aspect of being alive. This breath. Now.

So here I was, at 70, getting a lesson in the importance of breathing, from my mother. One breath and the next. Stop. Sip the coffee. One sip. Breathe. Unwind the tension. Breathe. 

Feel it in the belly. My belly. Relax. Breathe. Relax. Breathe. Feel. Relax. Feel. Relax.

Have a spoon of cereal. One spoon. Not too full. Put the spoon down. Chew the cereal. Breathe. Sip some water. Breathe. Pick up the spoon. Have a next small bit of cereal. Or fruit. Or just appreciate the moment. Continue the conversation. Breathe.

Larry Wolf, Breathe Breathe Breathe
(2021)

I filled my journal that day with that one word, breathe, repeated over and over again. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. ... to be continued.

Ah. Ah. Ah. Let the mind settle. Stop stirring the pot. Just let it all rest. For one breath. This one breath. 

Pause gently before the next one. Feel it in my belly. Feel it in my chest. Be still. Breathe. Move. Breathe. 

Joking. Not Joking.

For the rest of that week, it became our joke. A very serious one. I can't live without breathing. None of us can.

"Are you breathing?"

"Are you pausing between bites? Put down the folk, the spoon. Breathe. What's the rush?"

What a wonderful week we had together. We went to museums and art galleries. We had meals out and meals in. We made art together. We told stories.

We breathed. We shared living. A simple miracle.

Open and Playful - John Daido Loori

Zen art is open-ended. The enso or Zen circle, a symbol of enlightenment, for example, is almost always left open. The missing piece is to be supplied by the viewer. In completing the brushwork, the viewer gets involved and experiences a sense of completion to the art. Haiku only presents a glimpse, yet its emotional impact can be enormous because the reader has room to enter and create the full picture. The poet only provides the seed.

...

Whether serious or playful, witty or evocative, Zen is alive because it is spontaneous. If you want to experience this spontaneity in your own life and work, don't waste your energy on judgment or reflection. This is a good photograph, this is a bad photograph. I like this, I don't like that. That's just the brambles, the entanglements that keep us from really getting in touch with our creative heart.

Naturalness, spontaneity, and playfulness are all aspects of the ordinary mind that catches a glimpse of the world of things just as they are. To live this life fully means to see all of it. The doorway to this experience is the creative process. Please delve deeply into it. Give it a chance to do what it is capable of doing. Engage it fully with the whole body and mind. If you do, sooner or later, this limitless way of being will be your own. It will never make sense, and you'll never be able to explain it to anybody, but you will experience it, and by so doing, you will make it real.

John Daido Loori, The Zen of Creativity, Cultivating Your Artistic Life (2004)

Liminal Time and Space

Adrift

Liminal - unmoored, in transition between one place, one time, and another, beyond even that, a fog of not knowing, whether there was a past place, whether there will be a future place; adrift in the present, without goal. 

Perhaps anxious. Perhaps joyous. Perhaps the present moment is crystal clear and vibrant with life. Perhaps the present moment is a dream, madness and symbolist, luminous. 

Sensing the deep currents of life. The tides that circle the earth, pulled by the moon The grand scale that our daily lives are placed within, blown by the wind, taking root in freshly plowed ground. New moments unfold.

A Walk Across a Bridge with Levi

Levi Shand is a Dadaist displaced a century forward in time. He uses a camera to explore concepts and emotions. He asks questions which have no answer and yet have a compelling need to be addressed. 

In October 2019, Levi led a small group of us with our cameras on a wander across Chicago neighborhoods, most showing the wear and tear of an ever changing city - some torn apart by interstate highways and urban renewal fifty years ago, some pulsing with life, all intermingled.

Each hub of activity has a history, waves of immigration and colonialism, of ethnic identity and globalization, of hegemonic design and grassroots disruption, of systemic inequity and liberation, of personal growth and dissolution. Each wave leaving an imprint that shapes and is erased by the emerging present. 

Crossing a literal bridge, spanning railroads and river, Levi described it as liminal, a transition. This was a place where the scale shifted and the humans seemed to have disappeared. Vast. Open. Unprotected. A multidimensional corridor connecting near and far, conduits of power and transit that separate the terrain they cross as they reach across distance.

And yes, when we are on the bridge, we might not see the bridge.

Larry Wolf, Chicago (2019)

Larry Wolf, Chicago (2019)

Larry Wolf, Chicago (2019)

Larry Wolf, Chicago (2019)

Larry Wolf, Chicago (2019)

Larry Wolf, Chicago (2019)

Levi, along with Shawn Rowe, co-founded Chicago Active Transit Arts 

To unite communities in examining and demonstrating the efficacy of walking, bicycling, and mass transit in art-making and appreciation in Chicago. 

Join them for a class or an event. Follow them on Instagram @active_transit_arts. 

Stuck Between Old and New - Video from Sean Tucker

Sean Tucker is a modern minister to the heathen of photography, us scruffy souls who are foolish enough to seek enlightenment and salvation in photography. I watch his YouTube videos and follow him on Instagram. He is a master image maker and a compassionate human. He pours his life into his work and offers it to the world, in visuals and in words. (So too does David duChemin, a story for another time).

Sean recently moved to York as one of many changes in his life. He is living in a liminal world. This video opens with amazing images, framed like photographs, beginning in stillness, coming to life. Mysterious. Magical. Embracing the liminal. 

He welcomes us with these quotes.

"Honour the space between no longer and not yet." Nancy Levin

"Not until we are lost do we begin to find ourselves." Henry David Thoreau

"New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings." Lau Tzu

"When we are betwixt and between, we are in that graced time where something genuinely new can happen." Richard Rohr

Every moment in our lives holds the seeds of new beginnings. Every moment is also the falling apart of what was. How I cling to the known, shy away from the unknown. Except. Except when I am as fully in the present moment as I can be, when time stops, when mind shifts into a mode of curiosity and wonder. The personal matter less. The heart breaks open to a tenderness of emotion, beyond the specific drama - being human - alive, breathing, seeing, feeling. A place where art happens.

Sean tells us of his pain as he moves away from his past and into a new present, of the plans which keep getting derailed, of the need to move beyond this time of transition, and yet, to honor this transition, to live fully in this moment. He is a master storyteller. Take a few minutes to soak in his presence. Explore other videos. Join him in his journey of discovery. Follow him @seantuck on Instagram to see the daily flow.

My Drift

The story I'm telling about myself now, as an artist, began in January of 2016 when I left the company I'd been part of for 29 years (and by some stretch of connections, going back to 1976, a full 40 years). There was a time with my own  LLC continuing the health policy work I had done for over a decade and some time employed by a software company. That all ended in January of 2020, when I fully turned to nurturing whatever was coming next. Little did I know what 2020 would bring!

There are forty posts to this blog in 2020, as I worked with my archive of photos going back to my childhood, as I took walks in my neighborhood, as I helped my husband through an extended health crisis, as I took on-line classes. COVID-19 was ever-present and yet is not the main topic. 

I've been considering the larger social issues of how outsiders shape and are shaped by the dominant society, of how I, as a gay white cis-gendered male, have been both activist and assimilationist, priveleged and discounted; of how systemic issues of racism, of colonialism, of heteronormativity, of polarization, are my history, my life, my world to engage. I've been reading, writing, drawing, painting, photographing. Spending time in my home bubble with Eric and his mother. Spending time online with friends, relatives and in classes, with videos, podcasts, blogs and music.

Some themes running through this

The long shadow of the holocaust on my life as a gay man, as a Jew, and the roots which go back into the depths of history and well beyond the actions of any one country or regime. There are many genocides and collective trauma.

Coming out into the joys of gay liberation and then the war which was the first fifteen years of AIDS (and continues today). There are many celebrations and collective brilliance

Livelihood, not only as a source of income, but as an engagement with the world, an offering to others; living as a professional, an advocate, a teacher, as a husband, a son, brother, and uncle, keeping body and home whole, working with the interdependence of being.

Learning the basics of drawing and watercolor, and yes, also photography, exploring being an artist.

Having hope and perseverance even though the institutions I believed in turned out to be deeply flawed and undermine the ideals they proclaim, finding ways to be reborn from the ashes.

Simply being, without words. Here. Now. Alive.

Journey of Lost and Found

Back in the mid-late 1990s, in the early days of the Internet, my email signature was "Am I lost enough to find my way?" That seems to be what still drives me. Being lost. Becoming Found. Losing it. Beginning again. And there is the relative stability of my daily life, safety, shelter, food, companions. My own generally good health and those around me. 

There are daily reminders that it is all falling apart. Family and friends become sick, die, as do organizations. The illusion of a uniformly generous government is blown away with police killings, riots, insurrections, walls at the borders. 

And there are daily reminders of generativity, of the spring which is happening despite climate change, of the multiple rovers on Mars (US and China), of the magic of this keyboard and screen putting words and images out into the world.

In this fluid space, exploring through teaching, inviting others into a container to learn together, to surprise ourselves, to join our inner experience with the outer world, making artifacts which mark our journey. (Currently in the middle of the first run for Contemplative Photography.)

Larry Wolf, Pen and Paper (2021)

The Context That's Danced Within

Larry Wolf,
Blooms (2021)

It's spring. The world is waking up from the long chill of a pandemic (well, some parts of the privileged world).  There are COVID-19 vaccines. A change in the Federal administration. Some signs that Black Lives Matter has finally shifted the conversation beyond a single crisis and has sustained a conversation on structural racism and structural inequities. There are hot and cold wars across the globe. A helicopter flew on Mars. Confrontational, polarizing forces are still pulling us apart. Day to day, I keep seeking to make sense of it all, finding continuity while acknowledging change. 

Contemplative Photography - Seven Part Workshop

Explore Your Mind and Art Making
May 8 - June 19, 2021

Register at the Chicago Shambhala Center

This seven-week workshop explores the making and viewing of photographs as a contemplative activity. It’s a mashup of classic teachings on mindfulness and photography plus the explosion of photos in the modern world; it invites us to see the sacred and profound in our lives. 

Contemplation: thinking deeply, inner vision, to clear a sacred space

Photography: drawing with light, showing the visible surfaces of things and the artist’s inner state

Each two-hour session begins with contemplation: settling our mind-body and opening up to our experience in the current moment. We’ll then discuss some aspects of photography, bringing our collective knowledge and curiosity to the topic. We’ll end with a question to work with as we make photos during the week between sessions. After the first week, we will present and discuss the images we’ve created between sessions.

The workshop uses contemplation practices, from a mix of Buddhist and artistic traditions, which emphasize our experience of the present moment. Each week will use one technique, for example, a body scan of our current sensations as well as working with breath and thoughts as objects of meditation. We will also use slow looking techniques rooted in the arts, taking time to look and look again; to discuss what we’re seeing and then look some more, seeing more and more in the image; seeing more and more of the world. Learning by doing, participants will apply the contemplative practices to photography.

We’ll use whatever camera we have at hand and, over time, increase our ability to make images with the device. As we build familiarity and confidence in using the camera, it becomes an extension of our mind, an extension of our body. We will use photographic exercises that freshen our approach to the camera, that ask us to look more closely at what we’re seeing, what we’re photographing, and how we go about creating the photograph. 

The workshop gives us several weeks to experience the interaction of seeing and creating. We will take contemplative techniques and apply them to photography. We will take photographic processes and treat them as contemplative activity, and treat photographs as objects of contemplation. 

To register: The Chicago Shambhala Center https://chicago.shambhala.org/program-details/?id=478232

What The Camera Saw - August 2000

Larry Wolf, What The Camera Saw (2021)

At a summer-long meditation retreat in the Rockies. 

Now, February 2021, reflecting back, an accordion-fold zine.

Flashes ... 

surprising ... 

catching myself … 

my hand …  

see … 

what’s real … 

I don’t recognize that hand … 

foreign … 

strange ... 

attached to the rest of me 

I wonder ...

Larry Wolf, What The Camera Saw (2021)

Larry Wolf, What The Camera Saw (2021)

Larry Wolf, What The Camera Saw (2021)

Larry Wolf, What The Camera Saw (2021)

Larry Wolf, What The Camera Saw (2021)

Larry Wolf, What The Camera Saw (2021)

Larry Wolf, What The Camera Saw (2021)

Larry Wolf, What The Camera Saw (2021)

[Index of Poems]

Briefly, but no longer, available on Etsy.

Muddy Water Becomes Clear

 

Larry Wolf at Wisdom 2.0 (February 2017)

The glass of water in the photo has mud at the bottom which has settled over the course of a meditation retreat. The critical step is to stop stirring, allowing the dirt to naturally settle. So too with our minds.

I wrote about the retreat on my work blog back in February 2017. The need to combine stillness and action continues.

Meditation Redux - Seminal Works

 Revisiting Teachers and Teachings

Larry Wolf, Personal Buddhist History (2020)

I'm looking at the journey that got me here, reexamining some of the stepping stones of my journey with Buddhism. The ones here have survived, in some form, on my book shelf going back to 1970 with Siddhartha. The year before, I read  Maugham's The Razor's Edge during the summer I turned 18. Others by Hesse (Demian, Steppenwolf) were read a couple of years earlier in high school.

The books are roughly in the order they read. As I revisit them over the next several months, I'm sure other titles will surface, ones I have and ones to track down. Some of these may get commentary. For now, here's the list.

Hermann Hesse - Siddhartha

Suzuki Roshi - Zen Mind Beginners Mind

Chogyam Trungpa -  Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (not here because my copy was falling apart), Myth of Freedom, Shambhala

Jack Kornfield - A Path With Heart

Thich Nhat Hanh - Peace Is Every Step

Bernie Glassman - Instructions to the Cook, Bearing Witness

Pema Chodron - The Wisdom of No Escape, Start Where You Are

Clark Strand - Wooden Bowl

Sue Bender - Everyday Sacred

Shantideva - The Way of the Bodhisattva

Koshein Payley Ellison & Matt Weingast (eds) - Awake at the Bedside

Larry Yang - Awakening Together

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche - In Love With The World