MQuan Studio

9/22/13

9/13/13

Dagger

Zen teacher Taigen Daniel Leighton said,

"Manjushri is the bodhisattva of wisdom and insight, penetrating into the fundamental emptiness, universal sameness, and true nature of all things. Manjushri, whose name means 'noble, gentle one,' sees into the essence of each phenomenal event. This essential nature is that not a thing has any fixed existence separate in itself, independent from the whole world around it. The work of wisdom is to see through the illusory self-other dichotomy, our imagined estrangement from our world. Studying the self in this light, Manjushri's flashing awareness realizes the deeper, vast quality of self, liberated from all our commonly unquestioned, fabricated characteristics"

9/7/13

The Four Reminders

Joyful to have Such a human birth, Difficult to find, Free and well-favored.	But death is real, Comes without warning. This body Will be a corpse.
Unalterable Are the laws of karma; Cause and effect Cannot be escaped.	Samsara Is an ocean of suffering, Unendurable, Unbearably intense.

9/4/13

Fukushima

I get lost in the news of the world. Standing on a whale, fishing for minnows.

9/3/13

Some New Work

8/20/13

I Love the Moon

8/15/13

Karen Black

“Rafelson thought I might be too complex for Rayette, but I told him I’m essentially simple, that really everybody is essentially simple, that we are all just beings who, uh, be,” Ms. Black said in 1970, referring to Bob Rafelson, the director of “Five Easy Pieces,” and her character.

“Certainly Rayette can just be,” she said. “I dig her, she’s not dumb, she’s just not into thinking. I didn’t have to know anybody like her to play her. I mean, I’m like her, in ways. Rayette enjoys things as she sees them, she doesn’t have to add significances. She can just love the dog, love the cat. See? There are many things she does not know, but that’s cool; she doesn’t intrude on anybody else’s trip. And she’s going to survive. Do you understand me?”

7/23/13

Small Dark Jewel

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "I was six years old when my parents told me that
there was a small, dark jewel inside my skull, learning to be me." So said
the Leo science fiction writer Greg Egan in his story "Learning to Be Me."
Let's pretend that you, too, have a small dark jewel inside your skull
that's learning to be you. It's a good metaphor for what I believe has been
happening all these years: You have been gradually mastering the art of
being the best Leo you can be. It hasn't been easy. You weren't born
knowing how to be your beautiful, radiant, courageous self, but have had
to work hard to activate your potentials. Now you're moving into an
especially critical phase of the process: a time when you have the chance
to learn how to love yourself with greater ingenuity.

6/15/13

Custom Garland of 108 Beads

I very much enjoyed making this custom garland of 108 beads. Based on the book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying written by Sogyal Rinpoche, Andrew Harvey & Patrick Gaffney, the garland is covered in an edit of the text and broken up into 4 sections representing the 4 Bardos. It begins with a mirror, and ends with 3 beads of Om Mani Padme Hung in script.

"Go to a quiet place and rob all your perceptions, and steal all the stars and planets in the sky, and dissolve them into the belly of emptiness, the all-encompassing space of the nature of mind.”

"Everything is spontaneously liberated in the absolute nature, like knots untied in the sky."

"The entire vision then dissolves back into its original essence, like a tent collapsing once its ropes are cut."

5/30/13

NYTimes Home Section (!!!) May 30, 2013

HUGE Thank you to Rima Suqi!!

5/28/13

House and Home!

5/12/13

Eye Crescent Stars

Eye Platters

5/3/13

Impermanence

'Whether we die enmeshed within our hopes and fears or free ourselves by recognizing the selfless luminosity of our innermost being, impermanence lies at the heart of all existence. In illness or health, life or death, the body is the greatest teacher of impermanence.'