To design a lamp in the shape of a sword, this is truly outside of the box thinking. In creating art, we need to think about both the content and the form, how both can be beautiful. And Supreme Master Ching Hai can achieve this.
A draft doesn’t have perspectives, and it doesn’t need any. Master’s drafts of the lamps look very intuitive. When she wants to convey a sense of beauty, her designs show it. But these drafts don’t just depict the forms; they contain a lot of feelings. This represents light, and it has an element of time in it, so this draft feels like 4 D. Also, her designs are imbued with spirituality, something invisible, so they are actually 5D.
This lamp is called the “Spiritual Lotus.” In our heart, we also need a blooming flower. So it’s not just the form of the lamp that’s beautiful. The beautiful also lies in its spiritual meaning.
Spiritual Lotus
Supreme Master Ching Hai uses bamboo to make a Spiritual Lotus. Every time there is an event, when this light is set up, it would bring out the entire background. This bamboo gives the petals of the flower a soft feel because they are curved and layered. With a bamboo post underneath to support the flower, the whole lamp looks great! The design of this flower lamp is an excellent representation of life aesthetics. It’s a combination of real life and aesthetics; it’s practical, innovative, and beautiful. It also makes us feel warm.
Bamboo is an oriental material, and it represents our culture. It’s embedded in our daily life. It’s also very beautiful. When Master uses it for the lamps she designed, the light shines through layers of bamboo, and it looks very poetic. Master gains endless inspiration from real life. That’s because she lives for the moment. All things in nature, like the birds and the geese, can be incorporated into the clothing or jewelry she designed. Her talents are truly one of a kind, even though she had never set her mind on being an artist. Many people work on being an artist, but creating art for art’s sake won’t make their art beautiful. What makes art beautiful is creating it for the sake of life.
Life is our teacher. Actually, life is the goddess of art. Tang poet Su Dong Po used to say, “When a clear-minded person looks at nature, nature become his own. A leisurely person is the owner of nature.” These aren’t his exact words; I was just paraphrasing them. A leisurely person is the owner of nature. But one can even jump out of nature. In nature, there are flowers, but there aren’t any bamboo flowers. In designing a bamboo flower lamp, Supreme Master Ching Hai expresses her enlightened feeling about nature.
A good piece of artwork can give each individual viewer a different association. If an artwork is too realistic, then what you see is what you get. Also, each of Supreme Master Ching Hai’s designs has a spiritual name, and it adds another layer of meaning.
The Supreme Master Ching Hai often says that She never intended to become an artist. Nevertheless, as an enlightened person, always living in the present and being romantic and carefree in nature, Her art works, casually created by intuition, are often unique and original. Whether it is Her paintings, painted fans, or Longevity Lamps, the exceptional creativity and beauty always impresses the viewers with pleasant surprises.
One such example is the Longevity Lamps that the Supreme Master had created intermittently over the past twenty years. Totally different from the ordinary, dull lamps on the market, the Longevity Lamps are enriched with meaningful delight. The intuition from which the Supreme Mater created these lamps is indicated by the names of the lamps: Celestial Rain, Embarking, Tai Chi, Love, Contentment, and The Wisdom Sword. Each lamp is designed with a unique, often unexpected, concept . For example, the Celestial Rain does not have a lampshade; instead, surrounding the light bulb are chains of finely polished but irregularly shaped bamboo strips, hanging like raindrops. The soft light projects fragments of shadow on the wall, creating a very poetic ambience. The Spiritual Lotus generates a touch of Zen with bamboo-made lotus petals pointing upwards, engulfing the light bulb in the middle. It is a lighting fixture that looks like a flower ornament. The Wisdom Sword looks like a powerful sword, but, as it points downward, people feel safe and reassured looking at it.
Celestial Rain
The Wisdom Sword
As a nature lover, Supreme Master Ching Hai loves using natural material for Her artistic creations. Her lamp designs use mainly bamboo, wood, and glass, giving a touch of warmth. However, She also uses many other different materials, depending on the location at the time of creation. Take, for instance, the huge stone lamp placed inside a pavilion surrounded by woods, it was necessary for the lamp to have a rugged appearance, so colorful stone slates were carefully fixed on the lamp to yield a subtle sense of beauty.
The beauty of art pieces, no matter how exquisite, still belongs to the physical level. However, Supreme Master Ching Hai’s art pieces are spiritual creations based on Her intuition originating from the Heavenly Kingdom. Therefore, Her art creations are the manifestation of truth, goodness, and beauty. She is absolutely free and open, totally unrestrained by the rules of this world. The source spring for Her creativity is inexhaustible and Her creative power boundlessly extends to infinity. Therefore, watching the artistic creations by Supreme Master Ching Hai can awaken and elevate the viewers spiritually. This is also one of the ways for a great Enlightened Master to bless people of the world.
~ Zheng Hui Mei, Art Commentator, Formosa Taiwan
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