Thread by @tasshinfogleman

been talking about drawing with @QiaochuYuan who said this the other day: "drawing as a meditative method for concentrating attention on an object for multiple hours has a lot going for it" which i completely agree with

i've done many many hours of meditation and i can concentrate pretty decently but i am genuinely astonished at how easy it is to get into concentration states while drawing

I've gotten into more flow state type areas from drawing recently than meditation ever, along a certain axis anyway

i'm not sure what the axes are yet, but there are axes. something like, i'm not still, and there's not necessarily the bliss of (lighter) jhana, but i am very present for an extended period of time, and interested and engaged.

i think awareness actually tends to contract for me a bit when i draw, i'm just seeing my screen and i get pulled in. will experiment with this

anyways, all the meditation helped i'm sure, to make it so that i can get this absorbed while doing something like drawing, but i'm just astonished at how consistent, and how good drawing / making art is for entering this sort of state of mind

i'd heard people talk about it quite a bit (with art and other things) but this is the most consistently i've been able to go there myself with something that is not a "formal meditation technique" in the traditional sense

i was really into Frederick Franck ~a decade ago, who was basically on about this - IIRC he said something to the effect of (and I'm paraphrasing quite liberally here) "i can't meditate for shit, I hate it - but when I draw, man, damn that's the good stuff"

big relate, Frederick

when I drawing, i often have genuinely no idea how l've been drawing for. an hour? four? idk, man, it's definitely been a while

i guess part of me is especially excited about this because, as i have said elsewhere, i've never really liked sitting meditation very much. i've done plenty of it, i can do it, but tbh, i don't love it a lot of the time.

always feels vulnerable to admit that, but hey, i don't like sitting meditation that much. i like other things better a lot of the time. when i meditate these days, i prefer lying down, standing, moving (esp. Tai Chi or dance) if it's more than 30m or so

but this art stuff - when i'm drawing, i feel like i could do it forever