July 3, 2010
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Bencsik and SI-LA-GI: Art Must be Used
BENCSIK: After your first exhibition in Hungary in the Ernst Museum you had another one in the Obudai Pincegaléria in the autumn. This exhibition was pointedly built on the teachings and practice of Buddhism; a part of the exhibition room was transformed into a meditation sanctum. When and how did you encounter Buddhism and in what way has the ideology been absorbed by your creative activities?
SI-LA-GI: I first encountered Buddhism through Japanese calligraphic art. Later I had a Japanese master in Stockholm who taught me karate for 12 years after 1968, and through him I got initiated into the living tradition of Buddhism since every training session begins and ends with meditation. The sport itself is a spiritual manifestation where spiritual power plays a very important part. When, in the case of karate, you are supposed to get into combat, the techniques you have practised for years will only operate properly if you exclude thoughts totally, and you completely empty yourself, because you can achieve perfection only in an empty state. This is the true artistic manifestation of karate. You learn the techniques for years, just like you learn the alphabet, first the letters, then the words, later sentences and finally the whole comes together in poetry. True karate is like that. Unfortunately in many places of Europe it has been deteriorated and considered nothing more than a sport, although the greatest masters in Japan are still living and theaching in monasteries. So I got in connection with Eastern ideology, Buddhism through my master. Then, in the early 1970′s I met a lama from Tibet who founded a monastery in Stockholm. He gave me the first teachings and I began to practice Buddhism, to meditate actively and to go in for the practical besides the intellectual part. Later I travelled to India several times, visited holy places where I spent some time to find masters.
BENCSIK: What are the criteria according to which you select your masters and what is the relationship between master and disciple like?
SI-LA-GI: On a basic level it does not have a great importance as meditation is the same in most of the Buddhist schools. You purify your body, speech and minde doing these basic meditations, and when you are done,- and they need very serious energy concentration and a long time- you become purified and more and more intuitive. It will become more and more obvious for you in which direction you should go to look for a master and you will find him and receive teachings from him. This is a mutual relationship, because if he consents to teach you, you will form a spiritual relationship, and he takes me just as I take him. It is a profound relationship with no trace of hierarchy, so much so, that beyond a certain point it is important for the student to leave his master in order not to allow a dependency to be established between them. The relationship between master and student does not have any rules. If I have the time and the opportunity I go to live in a monastery, if not I just meditate on my own to my own abilities as it is in my own interest.
BENCSIK: What is your master’s attitude towards your artistic activities ? Does he express an opinion? Does this topic have a place in your relationn-ship at all ?
SI-LA-GI: He does not care about it. It is my personal need to make these works because they help me to understand who and what I am. From the point of view of Buddhist meditation artistic creation has no significance. On the other hand art is a kind of meditation for me.
BENCSIK: That means artistic creation is an aid to meditation and it is not meditation that helps you create ?
SI-LA-GI: They have a mutual effect on each other. What I create has a certain tendency, a direction, but it also contains a large measure of intu-ition, eventuality and chance, but the end result has its washback effect by all means. Basically both are means used to achieve purity. The aim is not to fortify myself, because if I try to fortify my ego all I do is set a trap for myself. The larger the ego you create for yourself in your life, the more difficult it will be to part with it.
You must constantly be prepared, continuously condition yourself and look upon each and every minute as the most important one, otherwise you become lazy and then it will be difficult to grasp what is essential. Just like death that may come at any moment. You must be ready for that, too. You must be alert in every moment. Because you must prepare very thoroughly for death, that is the task of life, then in death you prepare for life. Meditation is preparation for death. It is very important how you die, in what mental and physical condition you are in when the last moment comes. It is like a bullet shot out of a barrel. The soul leaves the body, and this means that, like in your dreams, or in your imagination, everything is possible, every possibility of infinity may come true. The soul flying away from the body however needs a certain direction. After all it is a very great gift to be born in the human form. You are pressed into a dimension but still, within limits, you have the possibility to condition yourself, and, if there is a method, you may internalize it and with its help make certain things conscious in your thoughts, and when this state comes to an end you could use the period of relaxation and fulfil the concept you have have discovered. Everything that happens after your death happens to you still, that is still you. According to Buddhism if you take a drop out of the ocean that is an individual, when you put it back, it will become one with the Whole and it will be inseparable from it. But as long as you cling on too your ego you make it impossible for yourself to fall back into the ocean and become one with the Whole, to dissolve in infinity.
BENCSIK: You’ve mentioned that you have travelled a lot, that you have been to parts of the world strange and far away for European people. What motivated these trips? Is this craving for adventure typical of your ideas about art as well?
SI-LA-GI: I went to different countries, to different places for different rea-sons. But basically I was always intrigued by the unknown, to step on unfa-miliar ground, to experience the unknown physically, in person, and to feed on the physical experience in a spiritual way. The purpose of my trips to India and to Nepal was to visit Buddhist masters. In the majority of the cases I had to overcome serious difficulties, to cross mountains and glaciers, to go through terrifying adventures to reach my destination. During your travels you have to face various kinds of ordeals and the way you overcome them is very important. These are the teaching points of the trips. When you run into a new problem you must react and this gives the stimulus, this brings out your true personality. The same thing is true when pursuing art. I ex-periment with things the final outcome of which I cannot exactly foresee that is what makes them interesting. I am not interested in repeating or recreating things because then I would lose the spontaneity and what I do would be too manipulated and too predictable.
I have never had a theoretical attitude towards the process of artistic creation. But I have always been intrigued by change, transformation, the difference between the phenomenon and its manifestation, the relationship between material and spirit, reality and unreality, the infinity appearing through repetition even in meditation. The manifestation of good and evil energies, the constant and parallel presence of good and evil spirits in man, in the world and in works of art. How is it possible to trap the spiritual in matter? Primitive rhythms for example contain good and evil forces and connect them to a given space, how is it possible to comprise these contents into works of art? In African, Asian and Australian cultures where these things manifest themselves in very emotional and intuitive ways, if you are open enough, you can acquire a lot of knowledge. For me, it is much more important to live through things like that, than process them in a rational and analytical way.
BENCSIK: Does that mean that these are rather emotional concepts than intellectual creations?
SI-LA-GI: Yes, so to speak.
BENCSIK: What are the criteria you consider first and foremost during the process of creation? Do aesthetical considerations have any influence on you at all?
SI-LA-GI: I think if something is made really well, it will become aesthetic to a certain extent, or its innate anti-aesthetic quality will change into an aesthetic one. Anyway, I like to make things perfect for myself, and use materials in a way that they become a compact unity. Eventuality is involved in the process but the final result should not be a matter of accident or luck, presentation should be the framework which emphasizes the essential, so that content should have a form constructed exactly and meticulously. Aesthetic quality however is not an objective in itself, only spirituality is important.
When I create something I want to convey the feeling that is in me at the moment. It is almost like a conversation. If you paint a mark in a picture it will change it immediately. The painting reflects like a mirror. A conversation will be established between the work to be born and myself. This appears in the “fine tuning” of the details at times, at other times when I feel that I have been too preoccupied with the details and neglected the essential, I need to gather some more energy to fill my own work with spirituality again.