New Studio
It has been over two years since Mark left his physical form. There has been much movement on the internal planes and the meetings we now have regularly are opening up deeper levels of understanding and integration with Mark’s teachings.
It is a challenging time both in the world and personally. So much emotional and psychological content is being unearthed. And there is massive work to be done on the outer plane with the organization of all the artifacts Mark left — Dharma, art, and personal.
One of the new huge developments that is happening is that as of December 1st, I have rented a larger art studio at the complex where Mark’s current art studio is located. When Lee relocated to India in 2016 and Mark moved out of Malibu, his Oxnard art studio became the storage bin for a lot of his art work and Hard Light physical archives.
In addition to the studio, there were multiple other storage units that housed paintings and sculptures that Mark had created through the decades. Some of the work dates back to the 1970s.
I rented the larger studio in an effort to move everything under one roof and to hopefully bring some fresh air into the situation and facilitate the opportunity to make sure all the work is photographed and documented. During the month of December, along with help from Dave Crotty and Stan Deland, we will be moving the old studio and the storage unit contents into the new larger studio.
Laughing Dog
As I get closer to some of the old art, I thought about a sculptural installation Mark created in 1982. This piece jumped into my mind yesterday and I decided to show a picture of it. Muktananda was still alive at the time but, unbeknownst to Mark and me, Baba was nearing the time of his death. I remember how Mark’s Oakland art studio felt when he created this piece. The Gurushakti was streaming. Muktananda had taken Mahasamadhi by the time Mark showed this work in 1983 in the Southern Exposure Gallery in San Francisco.
The name of the installation is Laughing Dog, an archetype Mark always identified with. It was autobiographical. The central element is a pack of wild dogs made of plaster, wood, glass, tar, and aluminum. Two of the dogs, one light and one dark, point their snouts to the sky in a gesture of howling. From the ceiling of the gallery were hung diaphanous cloths each adorned with a feminine figure painted in one of the colors of the five elements. On one of the dogs was a plaque affixed into her back, displaying a feminine form like the ones seen on the veils.
I always knew that the piece was describing the nature of the Wisdom Goddesses flowing into the animal nature. During my meditation this morning, I had a new level of understanding about the piece. What came to me is the name of one of the Chod texts that is in Mark’s personal collection. It is called “Laughter of the Dakinis.” This Chod practice is from the hidden teachings revealed by the master Jigme Lingpa in the 18th century.
Jigme Lingpa had a vision and in this vision, the wisdom dakinis gave him a casket containing five yellow scrolls and seven crystal beads. At the instruction of a dakini, he ate the yellow scrolls and crystal beads, and all the words and meaning of the teachings were awakened in his mind.
Mark received a copy of The Laughter of the Dakinis sometime around 2009 from a Bhutanese Rinpoche and Cho Master with whom Mark practiced at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. It was once again made clear this morning that Mark IS Laughing Dog and, along with the Dakinis, he continues to howl at the wild and wrathful leela of the Divine Play.
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