Bhumisparsa

In May 1996 I first visited Wat Phra Mahathat Woramahawihan – the main Buddhist temple in the Nakhon Si Thammarat province of southern Thailand.
Lining the cloister around the main stupa, are many statues of a seated Buddha. All of these Buddhas have the same pose – the so-called Bhumisparsa Mudra – or Earth-touching Gesture – which is one of Buddhist iconography’s most important hand gestures – or Mudras.
In this gesture, the Buddha is seated in meditation while his right hand – with outstretched fingers – is touching the earth.
The mudra refers to the key moment in the Buddhist Canon of Siddhartha Gautama’s journey to Enlightenment; when he called the Earth to witness his triumph over the temptations and distractions of Mara – the demon of death and destruction – essentially – the world of delusion.
For me, the simple act of touching the material foundation of our physical existence – the earth – speaks volumes. In our lives, increasingly ‘ideologised’ and removed from objective reality, making contact with the Real, the Actual, can be a simple, but powerful act of resistance… an affirmation of our physical, non-delusional, grounded being.
For this video, I took a photo of each of the Buddhas lining the cloister, and attempted to recreate the battle between the meditating Siddhartha and the almost overwhelming distraction, temptation and delusion around him – a portrait of composure in the eye of the storm. 
For those interested in seeing more of this magnificent temple complex, I recommend my video – Thunderstorm at Wat Phra Mahathat Woramahawihan – which I recorded on the same day.
The drastic difference in form between these two videos represent two different strategies I employ for engaging and disengaging the viewer’s cognitive and sensory systems.
In the case of Bhumisparsa – I use intense sound¹ and image to bombard the senses, and thereby momentarily overwhelm the possibility to ‘read and interpret’ what’s happening. Literally a sensory roller-coaster ride – giving us the opportunity to just live and enjoy a little bit – even if it takes us out of our comfort zone. 
We are so conditioned to approach a video as a kind of text which is to be read – rather than really looked at and listened to. In this convention, the shots in the edited sequence are all subservient to the script or narrative – like words in a sentence. A shot is only held long enough to be ‘read and understood’ before cutting to the next. By extending the durations of the shots into minutes rather than seconds, the viewer, after having superficially ‘scanned’ or ‘read’ the shot – expecting another shot to swiftly follow – is cut off ‘mid sentence’… dropped into a semantic no-man’s land. 
Nothing happens, and an immediate mental discomfort sets in… the hand reaches for the remote control to escape this unsatisfying state – but WAIT! 
The onus is now squarely on the viewer to extract value from this sensory input – this experience. You now have the time to really look at the scene presented and listen to the sounds criss-crossing and enveloping it. The more you invest of your attention, your own time – your being – the richer the experience becomes. What’s more, the scene becomes your own, since you can select what to focus on, what to observe or listen to. Yes, this is a mediated experience, but an experience nonetheless. 
If there’s any message to take away from my lovingly curated snippets of Reality, it’s this:
Sure, you certainly don’t need to take in the ‘second-hand’ world of this video. I would recommend that you sit down somewhere and simply watch the world go by. Take the time, give yourself the opportunity to enjoy the magic and mystery of every little thing in the real world around you. I hate sounding like some self-help guru, but I really aspire for art to make us love life in this world – in all its beauty and sadness – or maybe – despite all its beauty and sadness.

1: The soundtrack for this video was an improvisation on my Yamaha CS-30 analog synthesiser recorded straight onto tape.