I’ve been thinking about the relationship between meditation practice and photography lately, as I’ve worked with fall colors and water. (This image is from a few years ago, and it was about time to publish it).

I’ve practiced meditation a lot, and this “modern” phase of my photography very much coincides with the period in my life (since 2003) that has been most committed to sitting meditation practice, which is now very regular and taking up some hours of each day. Of course the practice has great influence on my life, on everything I do; and, it seems, especially on photography.

I think that in spite of several rewrites of my meditation in photography page, I haven’t articulated it very well, and maybe I can advance some clarity now (and I may rewrite that meditation page once again.”

I’ve recently realized, or realized more deeply, some things that photography and meditation practice have in common.

1) You work with what you’ve got, and nothing else.

In photography, we only have what is in front of the lens at any given moment. We can work to change circumstance, to catalyze causes and conditions to create a photograph we want (in some cases by using one’s own lighting, props, etc, or in my case by being in a light or environment that might provide opportunities for an image I might want). Just so in meditation: we learn to work with our experience, the actual only experience that we have in the moment. There is nothing else. Obviously in both photography and in the mind we could “post-process,” gussy things up and fabricate after the fact. But at some point that becomes a departure from both real photography and actual meditation. We work with what we have, in both cases. Through that process we become more familiar with reality. We learn to see better and cut through the conceptual thinking that gets in the way of real seeing.

2) You patiently await whatever arises.

The great meditation master Ajahn Chah once gave the following meditation instructions:
“Put a chair in the middle of a room.
Sit in the chair.
See who comes to visit.”

And of course he’s not expecting a real person to show up. But certainly something will show up.

And it’s the same with a camera and lens. The image from this week, and many more I’ve made, have really been made with this principle. For example this image is made from a certain corner of our little backyard pond. When I have some time, at this time of year when the trees are turning, I go there. I don’t know how it will look, only that there is some chance there may be foliage and sky reflections, and leaves, etc. But the light, the breeze, the state of the trees and clouds — I don’t know what they’ll be like. And they won’t be the same from minute to minute.

This print is for sale here.