Siddhena shares drawings he made for a book of Osho’s commentaries on Tao – plus more recent artwork
Slipping into the stream,
we become nameless
As does tao dissolving into Tao.
I’m here to share a story, or more a process, behind some drawings. For me this process reflects the mystery of the Master, and how time and place are merely ‘di-mensions’ in what is unbounded and infinite.
Somewhere I have read that ‘Tao’ can be translated into ‘Principle’.
And yet somehow its very nature seems ‘unprincipled’.
And it would seem each so-called definitive translation of the Tao Te Ching offers only an interpretation, another ripple in the oceanic, in the forever-appearing-and-reappearing of Now.
So here I share my brief story, a personal ripple, along with some drawings that bear witness to its rise and swell.
I was settling in California and becoming part of a small design group, after finally leaving India and my Pune involvement in Osho’s vision.
Now the marketplace!
A dear friend had supported me in that significant and inevitable step, by recognising and reminding me just how creativity had shaped that path for me. Now it was time to bring the creativity back into a worldly and Western realm!
Then one evening I received a message asking if I would make some illustrations for a compilation of Osho’s commentaries, to be published as TAO: Its History and Teachings.
They were to be images of Taoist Masters, whom Osho had made so vivid in his discourses.
So, the Master is here and the lamp is lit.
I pulled out sheets of paper and some sticks of Conté crayon, thinking that I would sketch some ideas before sleeping.
Sometime later the floor of my living room was filled with drawings, and I was empty.
I took a few photos for the publisher, sending them by email, and explaining that these were preliminary sketches, to be developed later. Were they suitable? I showered, slept for a few hours, then checked my mail.
I read that they would be used just as they were, nothing else needed.
Oh! but they weren’t finished, just sketches drawn spontaneously… I sighed to myself.
Slowly, as my mind backed off, I found myself letting go into what I can only describe now as that stream of Tao. And so, without a thought, I sent the drawings on to the publisher.
This whole process has since become a release into the nature of Tao. I now share these drawings as testaments to that revelation, that transmission. And also some others I’ve done since then, which have also brought me into the stream and to the ‘less and less’ in myself, the empty flow, that has sometimes arisen in my ongoing drawing process.
That fragrance in the process, when even the first marks seem enough or too much, and the drawing is more like the flickering of shadows on a white wall, yet again slipping me into the stream of Tao.
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