Photography and meditation

“In practicing meditation, we’re not trying to live up to some kind of ideal – quite the opposite, we’re just being with our experience, whatever it is.” – Pema Chödrön

From my experience of practicing both meditation and photography, I notice there are quite a few parallels between the two practices. Both demand commitment, discipline, practice, and technical skills. Despite putting in time and effort hoping to achieve those noble qualities, there is no guarantee meditation will lead to great wisdom any more than taking vast number of photos will bring forth great art.

Both practices encourage us to cultivate an innocent, childlike wonder at life, a capacity to see the world anew with fresh eyes and curiosity. Both require an ability to focus steadily on examining what is happening, with meditation, on our inner world, and with photography, on our external environment. To see clearly involves a shifting in perception. Our habitual view of a familiar world is replaced by a keen interest in examining the revealing of each moment, that is always new and cannot be repeated. Whether you are following each breath as you sit in meditation, or whether you are composing an image, you find yourself bear witness of an unfolding reality that is beyond your control at every moment.

My meditation practice has heightened my awareness and feeling for each sensuous moment of my life, the same goes for my photography, it has taught me to pay closer attention to what I see around me every day. Both practices heighten my curiosity of my being in this world, through sensual and tactile contact.

With the convergence of my meditation and photography practice, I also hope to bring an uninterrupted, nonjudgmental awareness of each moment from my meditation practice to my photography. By bringing my contemplative act of observation to my photography, I align my awareness of my body and senses before I decide to take an image. I find that minute moment of self-awareness before I push the shutter heightens the intimacy of the image taken.

I see both practices as lifelong paths. In both cases, I find myself being encouraged to follow my intuition instead of my intellect. I also find there are no end results to be had with both practices. It is the realization of the unfolding of each moment, beyond our control, to see things clearly as they are, that is the gift if one is willing to be on the receiving end.