To me, self portraits have always seemed like a quintessentially narcissistic art form. All of the ones that I have drawn or painted throughout my life have been a necessary evil, for a class project or due to a complete lack of subject matter. It is nice to not have to remind someone to sit still all the time. Self portraits are a last resort, anything else would be self-absorbed, right? Right?
There is a culturally appropriate level of self-aversion that nearly everyone my age accepts without question. (I can't speak for people outside the 18-25 demographic. One can hope that this changes with age. I suppose I'll find out eventually). This aversion manifests itself in ritual self-deprecation, dissatisfaction with any reminder of our physical appearance ("I look awful in that picture") and our inability to take complements at face value. Anything less is vanity.
From a Buddhist perspective, this is ridiculous. In terms of "things-that-cause-suffering," aversion is exactly the same as desire (Richey 2014). It is painfully evident the kind of suffering this self-aversion causes. The twinge of nervous guilt as I upload today's picture is testament to that.
There is a culturally appropriate level of self-aversion that nearly everyone my age accepts without question. (I can't speak for people outside the 18-25 demographic. One can hope that this changes with age. I suppose I'll find out eventually). This aversion manifests itself in ritual self-deprecation, dissatisfaction with any reminder of our physical appearance ("I look awful in that picture") and our inability to take complements at face value. Anything less is vanity.
From a Buddhist perspective, this is ridiculous. In terms of "things-that-cause-suffering," aversion is exactly the same as desire (Richey 2014). It is painfully evident the kind of suffering this self-aversion causes. The twinge of nervous guilt as I upload today's picture is testament to that.
Portrait of the artist, Saturday 1:00 AM
As I drew this picture, I tried to focus on the ideas of atman ("self" in Sanskrit) and anatman ("non-self") and how they relate to the way I view myself as an artistic subject. When the question "Does the self exist or not?" was posed to the Buddha, he refused to answer. This refusal indicated two things. First, holding a view of either the existence of a self or the non-existence of the self would be too extreme and fall into the category of "wrong view." Either way, this is an ego-centric question. Secondly, the Buddha did not feel that this question was worthwhile since the presence or absence of a "self" did nothing for the cessation of suffering (Bhikkhu 1996). The interconnected nature of reality means that putting a strong distinction between "self" and "other" is unproductive.
"The questions [...] are not 'Is there a self? What is my self?' but rather 'Am I suffering stress because I'm holding onto this particular phenomenon? Is it really me, myself, or mine? If it's stressful but not really me or mine, why hold on?'" (Bhikkhu 1996).
Still, the act of drawing a self portrait forces some unwanted self-contemplation. The concept of "self" creates a gigantic road-block. The whole process became much easier when I chose to view my reflection as nothing more than a collection of light and dark patches. This view removes all value judgements, since it's pretty difficult to view a vaguely triangular dark spot as "bad" or "good." It just is.
Letting go of the idea of the self, even if it's just a little bit, can help with a lot of things."It is the task of meditation to dismantle this structure by penetrating the selfless nature of all phenomena" (Bodhi 2011).
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