2022 | H300 X W140CM | SHIBORI INDIGO-DYED COTTON, BAMBOO, LEATHER
The secret of Zen is just two words: not always so.
—Shunryu Suzuki Roshi
The Tibetan term bardo, meaning “intermediate state, transitional process, or in between”, is not just a reference to the afterlife, it also refers more generally to these moments when gaps appear, interrupting the continuity that we otherwise project onto our lives. These ruptures are happening all the time to dismantle the conditional who-I-am-ness. Sogyal Rinpoche says, to live in the modern world is to live in what is clearly a bardo realm; you don’t have to die to experience one. With the arrival of a particularly turbulent period of history that is full of uncertainty—a pandemic, climate change and the threat of world war—we are given the opportunity to embrace the dissolution required to form a new earth, honouring the uncertainty that proceeds change with the grace of the compassionate witness.
