Page 155 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

Some years ago in Kalimpong, I once went for a walk with a

Nepalese friend and we happened to stop at the foot of a
magnificent pine tree. As I looked up at the smooth trunk, and

the mass of deep green foliage, I could not help exclaiming,
'Well, isn't that a beautiful tree!' My Nepalese friend, who was
standing beside me, said, 'Oh yes. It's a beautiful tree. There's

enough firewood there for the whole winter.' He did not see the
tree at all. All he saw was a certain quantity of firewood. Most of

us look at the whole world of material things in just this way, and
it is something we have to learn to undo. We have to learn to
look at the things themselves, for their own sake, untainted by

any trace of subjectivity, or of our personal preferences and
desires.

This sort of attitude or approach is very much emphasized in Far
Eastern Buddhist art, i.e. in the art of China and Japan. In this

connection there is the story of a certain apprentice painter who
once asked his master, a celebrated artist, how to paint

bamboos. The master did not, however, say that you take your
brush and make certain strokes on the silk or the paper. He did
not say anything about brushes or pigments, or even about

painting. He only said, 'If you want to paint bamboos, first learn
to see bamboos.' This is quite a sobering thought — that you

rush in wanting to paint something when you haven't even
looked at it first. But this is what many artists actually do, or at
least what many amateurs in art do. So the disciple, we are told,

just looked: he went about looking at bamboos. He looked at the
stems, and he looked at the leaves. He looked at them in the

mist and the rain, and he looked at them in the moonlight. He
looked at them in Spring, in Autumn, and in Winter. He looked at
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