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Categories / Portraiture /Tags / Asia / black and white / monks / Portraiture / Taiwan / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / Comments Off

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The collection of The Divinity of Nirvana has been a segment especially selected from my Life series, which focusses on the faithful lifes of monks.

Through more than a decade of searching for self identity and self recognition, I have become more keenly aware of the divine arrangements of circumstantial fate amid the disconcerting modern world that need not be conveyed through words, written language or any technology.

Exactly what constitutes as mental faith, faithless, and exactly who is the thinker? I think therefore I am; the course of thought that fosters the existence of an individual pertains to doing everything with the heart.

Yet what Buddhism has referred to as mindless asserts that the heart does not exist, and only when the heart moves would the heart bear a sense of being, namely thoughts and ideas. When a heart is not occupied, it does not exist because there is an element of emptiness in the heart, hence the term “true nirvana”, or the “sacred heart”, refers to a state free of worry, obsession or desire, meaning that there is nothing to invoke ideas in the mind.

When the mind works in resonance with mortal fate, the arisen awareness and phenomena are referred to as the “divine existence”, something that mortals can understand.

The profiles of the followers of faith in this collection bear two significances: In the mortal world, with the manifestation of the heart being a sign of direct reckoning, what monks have chosen the path for following the higher order and abandoning the pursuit of earthly desires have been to pledge their lives in transcending the mortals, and refocusing their energies in meditating and refining the genuine heart and tenacity. As cited in the Diamond sutra (Jin Gang Jing): "All things tangible are in virtual nonexistence." Tangibility and intangibility are merely the manifestation of a true transformational discovery, in that it remains a long, winding path for an individual to truly grasp the meaning of life. The imagery of monks with four virtual elements combines in echoing the divine existence of spiritual thoughts that exist but is also transient, the very nature of “React to nothing” in a “Sacred heart”. With modern people preoccupied by the superficial, with the tendency to pursue things that glorify themselves, and the pursuit of material gratification, the human heart that searches for satisfaction externally would never be satisfied in the pursuit of material and spiritual enjoyments. While what prompted monks to choose the path of searching for the higher order by abandoning mortal attachments is something that ordinary people may find hard to understand, or to an extend of coming up with mortal biases. Choosing to become faithful followers by pledging to the Buddhism order takes tremendous perseverance and courage, compelling one to reflect upon the Zen thoughts in every second in refining one’s willpower, and abandon the mortal ties by transforming worries into Bodhi in becoming a merciful and wise individual between heaven and earth, even in the absence of a transformational discovery. True freedom derives from the abandonment of all mortal confinements. The least we can do is to alter our mentality by being less judgmental, greedy or distractive on all things, and try to want to desire less and share more of our merciful good deeds.