Anukampa is a concept new to me, the same way art was until I was about 8 years old or so. This lack of familiarity did not prevent me from drawing while resting on my belly on the cold tiled floor on a Caribbean porch. It did not prevent me either from building puppets together with a plywood theater to invite neighbors to gather for an afternoon function. And there were times when both anukampa and art would mingle in my vicinity unknowingly. On Valentine’s Day, I would walk to the paper supply store to purchase red cardstock to trace and then cut out hearts out that I would give away.
The Buddhist term anukampa refers to care and points to the act of caring, which can involve physical or spiritual caregiving. In other words, it is the act of giving attention to oneself or to others. In my novice’s understanding this is an exercise in seeing and holding (without judging or grasping) that which is in front of me, but also that which can be far away into unquantifiable distances, or simply deep within. The subject receiving anukampa can be a living creature, or an inanimate thing–like my blue kitchen counter. This week, for example, I have been carefully tending to the faux granite surface in my kitchen that houses the sink, and where I also place the cutting board to chop vegetables, and where I have some of my meals in silence, while facing the wall connecting my neighbor’s home with mine.
The practice of being present with my counter entails wetting a fuzzy towel with warm water and wiping oily spots or gathering tiny bread crumbs. I similarly move the towel along the edge of the surface in question for the sake of caressing it until I see it shine. From time to time, I lift baskets filled with cosmic messes, including a set of new combs and expired prescriptions, and I lift the flowered-printed tray holding a bottle of cat laxative to go under it and clean the area thoroughly. But what does this have to do with art? I initially treaded into this field in search for meaning. Perhaps it was while looking for tools and a term to name my eccentricities. For similar reasons, I welcomed art as channel through which I could co-create community and be able to express care for strange ideas or ways of being. When I was 7, I could have used art and anukampa to explain myself when building small wreaths out of yellow and orange calendulas to travel to the municipal cemetery to place these offerings on the graves of those who did not have any candles, plastic flowers or photos on their tombs.
Art would arrive for me formally through my studies of theater at 8 or 9. Anukampa, although already in motion then, has only become fully understandable as I am entering elderhood, at which stage the meaning of art is starting to crumble like the specks on my counter. Meanwhile the performing of care is taking center stage in my life. Art for me has been replaced by creativity, whereas I now understand of myself as a creative funneling an energy that is available to everyone, not just artists. Gradually, I am finding less meaning in art, as it relates to the making of objects to trade in the market, and as it speaks of the persona that I am expected to assemble for the consumption of an industry that churns one person after the other, as it seeks to deliver shiny goods and sparkly excitements to a public 24/7.
The layers that held together the meaning of art for me–like an onion–have been disintegrating in my hands to expose its core; pure emptiness of the kind that opens up to All and nothing concomitantly. I now have my bare hands to care for and to care with. I can put them into motion in an ongoing, perhaps continuously unfolding performance that could expand the scope of my relationship with creativity into the unmeasurable; starting with an old kitchen counter in a late Victorian house in the Bronx.
Meaning is pointing into the meaningless. There are unwholesome relationships to release myself from while also caring for them; and the goals that I visualize like stepping stones that I can polish for the mere sake of watching them glow under the full moon. Nothing else. More appealing now are becoming the countless minute things and beings in all dimensions who can use my care and have not gotten it before because of distractions provoked by Instagram likes, and the grant-writing tasks that have syphoned years of life force from my body with the enticement of a little bit more recognition…a few more lines to add to my 20-page CV, which I would be selfish to print when actually wanting to care for the present and presence of trees and bees and rivers and rain and the future of all. In the next panel I am scheduled to participate, I will introduce myself as a student of caring and proceed to care for those in the room, one by one–myself included–, our loved ones at home or on the road, our departed ones, and why not our future selves too–without having to explain anything to anyone or necessarily having to lift a finger. I will aim to talk with empty hands and an aging heart moved by care.
Who Cares? ©2024 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful
