I met Seema Kohli serendipitously at an event in London called The Art of Kindness. http://artofkindness.co.uk/home/?i=1 in 2017, where I interviewed her about what kindness is and posted the video on instagram.
We became friends and she hosted me to stay at her place when I went to India in 2019. When I stayed with Seema I got to see her connection with wisdom and how she lives her life.
Seema Kohli’s canvases are layered with many, many stories rooted as much in philosophy as in knowledge gained in modern times, a parable of tales both imagined and real, till one can no longer tell the real from the imagined. Art columnist Kishore Singh says “if you look closely at her canvases and the tapestry of motifs unravels into more legends; turn voyeur and the epics are but a background to the unfolding melodramas of daily lives turned epic. She serves up the Upanishads and newspaper headlines in doses of caffeine. It is this that gives her canvases credible status as a chronicler of narratives past and present, Indian in their essence but universal in their context. “I am a mirror,” she says. “When I paint, you see not what I have made but what you want to see.” “I,” Seema Kohli, painter and teller of stories, “am both myth and reality. Pick the one you want, but remember, the mirror distorts, and so the myth might be reality, and reality myth.”
She describes breathing with awareness is what mediation is. She simplifies what others may make more complex. We talk about flowing and flying, you loose that sense of gravity when she focuses on her work.
She shares her ritual of coming into the studio.
She touch's on different beliefs and how they amalgamate as one.
There is only one consciousness. There is only one womb which we all come from.
We talk about morning and evening routines.
The very idea of being born is an act of violence and kindness both.
We are being born every moment. We are alive because of the kindness of the other.
Our breath is our main connection. The moment we breathe out we take in someone else’s breath.
We are totally interdependent on each other.
We are tied to each other by breath. Everything is feeding off each other.
The word kindness puts me in a sense of humility. You cannot be kind without being humble.
Knowledge cannot come from books you have to practice it
Wisdom recipe (32:48 minutes)- How you see the other?
Ingredients: Humility, kindness, a lot of love, introspection, solitude, spending time with yourself make yourself a friend yourself.
Method: Whoever it is, an animal, non-living or living. We do not know the journey of the other being. We are not usually very kind to ourselves. We are judging ourselves. The moment you become kind to the fact this body is something we have, we need to nourish it. It is important to be kind to yourself. Look at it as something as a gift you have received. You have to have a faith or belief in some supreme consciousness that nourishes us all. We have received this. Be kind to yourself. In response to your being kind to yourself you see yourself in the other. There is not much difference. We both sustain each other. Kindness is the first step to have the idea of love. You cannot be kind without love. You cannot express love without being kind. No love can happen. The idea of kindness to be more humble, approachable. By spending time with yourself make yourself a friend to yourself. I do this by getting up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror and say what a beautiful day. A new day I was not expecting this. First thing is to smile at yourself, while working or looking in the mirror.
The things we do not learn we are made to understand.
Instagram @SeemaKohli https://www.seemakohli.com/