What's The Matter With Matter Painting

Buddhism, and a few other systems of thought, claim that the ordinary mind habitually makes mistakes. One of these mistakes is that the mind sees phenomena as more stable and permanent than they actually are. This is not only mistaken but actually harmful. The ordinary mind sees a home, family and friends, life, and even a self as long-lasting, stable, on-going and even permanent. This mistaken clinging leads to quite a lot of pain when these so-perceived, long-lasting things are inevitably ripped away, and can even be considered a form of pain before then. To Buddhism and other thought systems, things are changing so rapidly that they do not really have an identity. The you of sixty years ago is not only not the same, the one of a second ago isn’t either. Not only are we not on stable ground, true reality is like being hurled out of an airplane without a parachute and we are falling, falling, falling. The good thing about this according to these thought systems is that there is no ground for a crash landing. In that way, it’s not even correct to say we are falling. Perhaps flying. Perhaps soaring. One thing demonstrated by my new painting, though, is that, since in 60 years I have not really changed at all, this concept of constant change cannot be right.