Photography as Meditation

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Photography as a Puzzle

Buddhist koans are verses written as a form of poetry. Their purpose is to help the mind find understanding beyond reason. “With empty hands I enter and look! The spade is in my hands.” “I wander on foot and ride on the back of an ox.” “I walk across the bridge, and behold that the water does not flow; rather, the bridge flows.” These are some examples from John Daido Loori’s, The Zen of Creativity. You can reflect at length on these thoughts and still not come to a logical conclusion. Koans are not the only examples in history of art that opposes the idea that logical terminology is the only way to understand reality. In some Dadaist performances, words are cut from newspaper articles and mixed in a hat. The words ...