Thinking

Visualising Meditation

Thinking is a self-generated, animated movie (different every time you play it) based on the experience of a ten minutes shamatha – meditation session.

This self generative movie is an expression of the mind (inner circle), thoughts (the little shapes that form on the screen), the space we are in and the noise surrounding us (knitted graphic in the back). All of the elements are created by the same generative pattern – a reference to the Buddhist understanding of all things as being one. As a thought appears on the screen, a sound is triggered, disturbing the peaceful state of mind and thus again creating confusion. Its shape shares a resemblance with the prayers written in Sanskrit. Its sound is generated from the processed recordings of the sounds of things surrounding and influencing us everyday.

Shamatha is a way to make the mind more stable and clear, whilst keeping it flexible. In meditation, what we’re doing is looking at our experience and the world intelligently and without judgement. We’re letting the thoughts, ideas and perceptions appear, and we simply see them for what they are and let them go. “The human mind is by nature joyous, calm and very clear. In shamatha meditation we aren’t creating a peaceful state — we’re letting our mind be as it is to begin with,” (Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche). We’re simply allowing a gap within the confusion to appear. And it is in that harmonious moment that we are completely in tune with our mind, ourselves and the world.

The work was a part of the collective exhibition “Private Bits” hosted by NetFilmMakers at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg Mezzanin space in Copenhagen. The exhibition was curated by Carl Emil Carlsen, also exhibiting were Vera-Maria Glahn and Marcus Wendt from Field studio and Tim Knapen.