Welcome to I Wayan Karja's page

SILENCE
By Wayan Karja

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.”   (Elisabeth Kubler-Ross)

Nyepi Day, the Balinese Day of Silence to celebrate the New Year, falls on the day following the Dark Moon of the Spring Equinox. Nyepi is a day of introspection, to meditate on values such as compassion, patience and kindness and how to express one’s spirituality. No traffic is allowed and people stay in their own houses. No work is done, no lovemaking. Light is kept to a minimum and the radio and TV, if on at all, are turned down.                                                                                   

Nyepi. Silence...no traffic, no smoke, no fire, no cooking, no food, no visitors, no leisure, no pleasure, no desire, no work, nothing to do, no activities at all.....just silence and contemplation. I contemplate colour...colours transforming into light...only light...white...pure crystal light. In silence one can see and feel the moment, the ‘now’...deepening the silence, watching the breath...being one with the state of silence. Silence is freedom from duality: right and wrong, good and bad, to be rid of everything, no “baggage”, no responsibility, no fretting about past or future. There is only now.

Silence and nothingness are the beginning of ideas. Ideas are always there, like the sun which never sets. I must always be ready for the next arrival. Clarity is essential to see, to feel the truth…and silence is a pre-requisite for clarity. In this condition of silence and clarity, life is like a blank page, emptiness, a starting point for visualizing the essence, the inspiration to paint....

Inspiration comes and goes; it does not care whether I invite it or not...I must always be ready to welcome it. Silence inspires my work and my work takes me back into the silence, which frees me to be open to further inspiration. Painting is my diary; a diary I must write in daily to express my feelings and keep my mind clear and open. And to open the creative channel one needs to be silent. Now and then, the silence calls forth a sublime idea and I feel blessed. My work becomes my spiritual practice.  
                                                        
The deeper the silence, the more simply I think about life, the more simply I paint – and life itself seems simpler as a result. Painting is simply transforming nothing into something or something into nothing.
I visualize myself as a tree. My branches bear the fruit of intellectual learning and Western approaches to art…but my own Balinese roots naturally grow as strongly as the branches.         

Nyepi...silence...the Dark Moon is the starting point for a tiny point of light. Light and dark hold between them the whole range of colours and herald the New Year – the first blank page of the future.

Rotary Series