Winter Solstice

This journal is written by Margaret Sabrina Groton.

I am 24 years old, living in Brooklyn, NY and I teach art at a charter school for grades K-4 in the Bronx.

I graduated with my B.F.A from Cornell University, up in Ithaca, NY, in 2022.

I have been studying Thangka painting since January 2023 under the tutelage of Master Pema Rinzin.

I plan to go to Dharamsala next year.

I hope one day to live freely as an artist, escape traditional society, and find peace.

I recognize the contradiction in specifying all of this about “Who I Am”.

I “know” ( emphasis on those quotation marks) that ultimately I, like everyone else, is on a path of Realizing Non-self, of Realizing there is No Margaret, No Thangka, No Buddha; Just …

I wanna say Emptiness, but I don’t wanna sound phony, so I’ll stop there, with dot dot dot .

Right now I am writing this, my first entry, in the sunset light of the 2024 Winter Solstice. This winter sun is halfway down the horizon of the woods beside which I was raised. 

And now it is gone, now it is just glow.

And I am sad by this, I am disturbed by this kind of thing.

It is thoughts just like this that get processed while I draw the Buddha, in the Tibetan way: meticulously, gently, exactly the same as my teacher and my teacher’s teacher.

Through this journal, I intend to chronicle what this practice teaches me. I have been studying thangka painting with Master Pema Rinzin for almost a year, my first class was in January 2023.

I think it was this time last year that I was wallowing about how I would never learn real Buddhist art unless I went halfway across the world. That week my father found Pema’s number online, I think through an AI search engine of all things, and set up a time for us to meet. Pema adores my father. My father is very wise and is the reason I study Buddhism.

So that was almost a year ago, and within this time I have drawn only six Buddhas. And of course, I haven’t touched any paint yet.

I Realized something this week, something I thought I Realized months ago but turns out I didn’t, turns out I changed my mind (suprise suprise). Now I am ready to Realize and Decide.

This is a thing we do— we think we Realize something, but it takes us Realizing it twice, thrice, a million times over to really Decide to change. So thangka is teaching me this, and I am starting to accept it, and this is my Decision, my Promise:

I will not focus my art practice on anything but the Tibetan way.

I kept getting lost in a hundred different desires— Oh, I’ve always wanted to be a tattoo artist I gotta make my portfolio and visit studios and find an apprenticeship, and Oh, I gotta start making more hippie dippy paintings and vending my art at music festivals, and Oh, I have to develop this drawing language that I’ve been doing, I’ve gotta make better and be an abstract artist at the psychedelic frontier, and Oh, I oughta get my Master’s in art therapy, etc etc etc. And I was trying to do all of this at once, on top of a full time teaching job two boroughs away.

So with the first anniversary of my first class with Master Pema approaching, I’m officially Realizing and Deciding that I must choose, choose one thing, one thing right now to give one hundred percent to, one thing, and release all other things.

I trust this now. I choose this: to study with my heart, the Tibetan art of thangka, and to learn all I can by practicing in this Way.

This choice means trusting, letting go, and accepting, which I really gotta learn to do.

As I get older, I mean, I really gotta learn…

sometimes i remember death. it is always on my mind, but only sometimes do i really remember it.

It also means real, real, real patience.

I mean this art takes 30 years to master, more than a third of one’s life.

I promise today, the shortest day and the longest night of the year,

I promise to myself, my parents, my brothers, my friends, my teacher, my guru,

I promise to commit,

ten thousand percent, with all my heart

to merge my artistic way with the spiritual path.

I accept it as Buddhist, I accept it as Tibetan, and I prioritize this practice above all else.

I’ve been abstracting the world around me for so many years, trying to find Margaret in it all.

I accept now that this is not the Way.

I feel reborn in this Decision. I feel safe knowing that there is a clear discipline to follow, and doubtless because I learned through experience that juggling more than one discipline defeats the purpose of them all.

And though I know that once I get to shore I must abandon the boat, it’s nice to finally unpack my bags, and call one boat home.

From In the Process and On the Path,

Margaret Sabrina

December 21, 2023