Judging And Judged Painting

Most of us think we are somewhere inside our body and, also, that we are our body, some unspecified combination of mind (or awareness) and body, and that everything else is outside of us. The world is a place where physical events can happen and we have to do our best to protect ourselves and survive and also to have some fun, enjoy ourselves. I will call this the ordinary view, and it is basically a materialist view and primarily physical and even if a few of us know that there is something wrong with this view and don’t intellectually accept it, we still mostly operate from an underlying habitual belief in this view. Another view that perhaps a few beings here operate from is one that proceeds from the foundation of awareness, which is completely mind-based. Lately I’ve been calling this view, probably inappropriately, the Nexus, because the word seems to mean both “connected” or “interconnected” and “at the center of.” I keep repeating as if a mantra in the face of everything I encounter, “This is the Nexus. That is the Nexus.” So say if, from the ordinary viewpoint, one is trying to push ones hand through a solid wall, in the Nexus the thought that the wall is hard is just a mental event in the Nexus, as are all these thoughts: I have a hand; my muscles are straining; my hand is hurting; I cannot move my hand further; there is a real wall stopping my hand. Actually anything experienced in the ordinary view can be broken down and seen as purely mental components and to recognize this is the first step in seeing the Nexus. And in the Nexus, beyond these mental components, there is nothing. In my painting, Judging and Judged, I am not just talking about the more coarse form of judging, like that of right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, pleasant and unpleasant, though that kind of judging is included as well. Every time one enters a room, a new situation, or even the next moment, the mind checks, judging to see if anything has changed. This is so habitual one is almost unaware. Is the couch on fire? Is there a porcupine on the table? A room might seem fairly stable but we approach life with the same habit. So then any changes, say like aging, sickness, and death, instead of seeming natural and obvious since they are bound to occur, come as horrible shocks. Worse for us though even than the shocks is that judging like this completely undermines the possibility of keeping a view of the Nexus, even if we have managed to develop one. Why is the Nexus a more accurate view? How can it be if all of us hold the ordinary view and not the Nexus? The ordinary view says that the mind arises from the physical reality of the brain, even though, ever since there has been an understanding of the mind and brain no one has been able to explain how this could possible occur. But, despite what neuroscientists would like to believe, this will never be explained. Awareness cannot ever arise out of what we are trying to claim and see as inert matter. But the Nexus can explain the physical, although admittedly only as a confusion and misunderstanding. Is it possible for us all to have a view that is confused, for all of us to misunderstand something in the same way. Yes, certainly. Here is a perfectly good example of this. All of us continue on with the basic impression that we look through our eyes as though looking through a window. The whole structure of our ordinary view is built on this impression. But if we just did even the most rudimentary examination of this impression with just the most basic logic, we would see that it is absurd and is not the reality of the situation at all. That, however, is the problem: we just proceed without the least bit of examination of what and how reality actually is happening. And why is the Nexus, besides being more accurate, a better view? With the ordinary view, based on material, no matter what good might come, the end result is complete failure. One loses one’s body and any objects, family and friends one might have collected. I don’t know a lot about the Nexus, but I know for beings who operate from there, the issue of awareness coming to an end is not something that is relevant

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:40 W x 34 H x 2 D in

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