CULTIVATING COMPASSION
A Place Called Emptiness
steaming hot cup of tea, the more she helped me to see myself clearer. As one dear sister said, she was a mirror neu- ron, which helped us to heal our pain body. Slowly but surely, she began to let me into a secret, that she was Empti- ness. Tibetan Buddhists call Emptiness Sunayata and Yoruba Ifa tradition call it Orun. The inner child in the painting was ironically not Empty but teaming with radiant life and creative powers. She did not vanish in the Emptiness but fully Became. She taught me to let go of the noise of rhetoric, hate, an- guish, and to return Home. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel talks about homelessness in her book Sanctuary . Homelessness is for her a physical place but also an inner place. The times we are in that have seen others sup- porting “a blatant hatred ignored by so many others” has endowed many of us with “a shared sense of home- lessness.” Now we are plagued with the questions of Unbecoming and Be- coming, “Where is home? What is my true nature, and what does it mean to be at home with it? When I don’t feel at home, where can I find sanctuary?” The inner child of the paintings taught me that home was found in the Empti- ness.
Sinking deeper and deeper into the canvas of Her creative emptiness, I experienced an opening pathway of Self-Compassion and Compassion. My heart flew open. It was later that I discovered Sunyata can also mean openness and compassion and emp- tiness and according to Khenpo Tse- wang Dongyal Rinpoche reveals, “two sides of the same coin.” Compassion is important for our times and the fact we may ask why is itself a sign of the times. Heather S. Lonczak in her article 20 Reasons Compassion is so Important in Psychology, reminds us: “Imagine a world without the count- less individuals who risked their own lives to save others during wartime (i.e., the thousands of Holocaust mar- tyrs listed as the Righteous Among Na- tions). Imagine a world without those who’ve run into burning buildings or executed other heroic feats of rescue during times of trauma. It’s unthink- able.” The inner child of the Peace Am I paintings taught me you have to have a ground you stand on. It can be a cloud, a mountain, a river, a planet. It represents what you must conquer
I began the Peace Am I art series in a moment of frustration, while looking for images of children of color being embodiments of peace. My frustration was old, in fact two-years-old. Being a mindfulness instructor, I had hunted for such images over the years with- out much avail. I found a few of them, but not enough for me to dance in my yoga socks. It was in that all too famil- iar moment of frustration that a small voice whispered to me, “paint what you wish to see”, and I did. I remem- ber holding my paintbrush with terror, because I am not a trained artist, and I was producing my first image “I Am Love”. I thought “I Am Love” was to be the first and last painting, but a year later I had seventeen of them. After finishing each painting of what I now call my Peace Am I series, I would make a cup of chamomile, then sit and meditate upon them. I was cui- ous to know the depth and breadth of their meaning. With each sitting, I was pulled deeper into their essence, “I Am Love”, “I Am joy”, “I am Gratitude”, “I Am Whole”, “I Am Enough”. I be- gan to recognize that these qualities spoke of the inner child in touch with BY OMILEYE ACHIKEOBI “OMI” LEWIS
their own innate nature. They spoke of a being who was compassionate, filled with love and a curiosity about life. They spoke of the inner child the world has lost on the way. As I looked at her floating with her dog on a cloud, rubbing noses with a dolphin or stand- ing strong with the mountains – I real- ized this inner child was in touch. As I further meditated at her feet with my
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PATHWAYS—Winter 20-21—41
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