Life: a gift to be celebrated

• All about paddy fields

Before enlightenment carrying water and chopping wood. After enlightenment carrying water and chopping wood (Some Zen master or another)

Even today one senses, from whatever senti ments one can gather from our people, that the cycle of paddy cultivation has always been central and close to their hearts. Grain equalled wealth, and the ability to grow one's own symbolized independence and self-sufficiency. The process involved in this act was one that proudly celebrated that independence, while at the same time revealed and confirmed the humbling dependence on mother nature. The appropriate word may be; interdependence.

More and more, our people are being moved far from this idiom. Acquiring a paper-based education, securing a job which aims at distant and abstract ambitions, enables them to finally purchase their rice in some mini- supermarket on the rush back home.

Just one little symptom of a vast alienation process that removes one from that immediate and intimate contact with the natural/mystic forces that surrounds one when one is involved in an occupation that puts one in tune with it.

This 'modern' abstracted idiom undernourished one's natural need to be connected to the nature- whole to the extent that one becomes oblivious of that need, and also corrodes one's relationship and attitude towards work itself. More and more, work is seen as a burden, as something one doesn't want to do, but forces oneself to do in order to get what one thinks one wants, thus splitting one's life into two periods; one of resentment and the other of reactionary release. This split attitude mars the individual, his living-working experience, and the quality of the work itself, finally conditioning one to believe that life is a bargain where one buys one's rewards with one's suffering, rather than confirming what life was really meant to be; a gift to be celebrated, and work being part of that celebration as an act of totality and love. Two elements which cannot exist when one sacrifices this living moment for some future reward.

In contrast, to be involved in work that is connected to life directly, be it cultivation, craft, art or anything where the benefit is intrinsic, is one with the act, is something that connects one with the whole and leads to a sense of fulfilment and meaning. Of course, today's 'goviya' the younger ones specially, tend to curse the mud as they plough through it; being part of a T.V. induced, salary, trouser, car, fridge and washing machine consumer conditioning that is designed to twist their minds to such an extent that they themselves cannot any longer feel that benefit of the mud between their toes.

To the 'goviya' of a simpler past work was not a burden but a celebration, a participation, a party. A process that renews the body/mind/soul contact with the fulfilment, depth and joy that is always available and underlying the human experience in this miraculous, everyday, ordinary moment. This celebration that goes on and on. Anyway... with these few paintings I wish to simply celebrate that celebration.-Rahju

More Plus * The Sri Lankan self help guide to Jesus * War: reverse the trend * First go to school then think of going to war

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