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Life of the Bua (Lotus) 2026-02-05
The Life of the Bua. It also contains images of waterlilies. The focus of my thoughts change as I travel in Thailand, a majority Buddhist culture. Physically manifestations of Buddhism are everywhere. Thai Buddhist Temples are generally tall and ornate, they not only are visible but seem to scream for prominence. They are hard to miss.
But it is also, at least if you are there for long, hard to miss the impact of Buddhist philosophy on the culture. The quintessential Thai phrase seems to be “Mai Pen Rai” ไม่เป็นไร, often translated as “never mind”. It seems to more literally mean, “Its not a thing”. Mai Pen Rai is a request to deny attachment in the Buddhist sense, to not grasp for a particular outcome, to “go with the flow.” There are other manifestations. Thais are for the most part particularly soft spoken. This seems a manifestation of control of emotion that is emphasized as a goal in Buddhist philosophy. You are expected to be able to control emotions there and doing so makes you fit in better.
Back in 1975 Spring Semester I did not have a big introduction in my Asian Art History Survey Class to Buddhist iconography, just a little one. But we did learn of The Wheel of the Law and the Lotus flower. To my my mind these two round symbols are similar. The lotus in Buddhist art is often depicted from the top of the blossom, symetrical and stylized. Like the Wheel of the Law it is round. Round symbols make sense in a religion that stresses cycles rather than linear progressions. The big cycle in Buddhist thought, samsara สังสารวัฏ, in Thai pronounced more like “sangsarawat”, is the cycle of life; birth, aging, death, rebirth. They believe that living this cycle is to have suffering and that freedom from suffering comes from achieving nirvana, in Thai “nippan” นิพพาน. Its important to understand that the word “suffer” while close, dose not directly map to the Thai Buddhist concept (ทุกข์), and the words nirvana, samsara, and especially karma กรรม are not always quite the same. I am not an expert in this.
The Wheel of the Law, the Dharmachakra, is a symbol sort of representing the change in human understanding of existence instigated by the teachings of Buddha Sakyamuni. It also represents the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and dependent origination. The Buddha is said in this sense to have put the wheel into motion. I see it as a symbol of a process, not static, dynamic. I am unsure if others see it this way. The lotus on the other hand is a symbol of the goal, enlightenment. It grows from the mud, impure and full of desire or grasping, rising above, without stain, into purity, nirvana (นิพพาน). In Thai both the water lily and the lotus are often called “bua” but their long names are differentiated. Both appear frequently in temple plantings, but the lotus, whose leaves are (usually) elevated from the water, the religous variety, is Bua Luang.
Stylized images of the lotus and images of the wheel of law, both round, are used throughout Buddhist art. Graphically they are similar. For me, the lifecycle of the plant is a plain representation of samsara (that I also see it as linear brings to mind the competition of frameworks as I travel). Seed – sprout – growth – flowering – going to seed – dying or drying up, sprouting again .
That most parts of the plant appear in Thai cuisine just aides its integration into the culture. The root is used in drinks, soups and other foods. The stems are used in “curries” as well as other dishes. It seems most common in orange curry. The petals are used as the wrapper for Miang Kham (often served to royalty). The leaves are sometimes used as wrappers for steaming things.
These images I am posting are organized with BuaLuang (lotus) life cycle images first. Then are the water lily images. Most of the lotus images were shot at Benchakitti Park in January of 2026. The water lily images could be from any of the 28 years preceding that although most are 2026.
The album title “Life of the Bua” is named to parallel the common title of Buddhist history, The Life of the Buddha. For me the parallels in the story of Sakyamuni, Samsara, and the growth of Lotus plants seem important. It is meant respectfully as thoughts for contemplation and understanding.
Repairology
- Repairology
My brother Ralph bought a car used from a dealer. It had been repaired after a collision, but the repair was not evident. He uses the car for commuting. It had a new bumper fascia put on it as part of the repair but the fascia was painted without first applying a bonding agent to the plastic.. The fascia is the soft part of the bumper. The paint is peeling off of it. For someone wanting a neat car, this car has become grungy.
Last year a construction “barrel” ( I one of those orange and white stripped affairs designed to damage cars in construction zones), blew in front of the car on the highway. Ralph did not report it or file an insurance claim. It would have been a hassle and life is busy. The barrel ripped the fascia. He now thinks that maybe he should have filed a claim. So it goes.
A few days ago he drilled some holes on either side of the tear in the bumper fascia and connected the two sides together with plastic cable ties. The cable ties are white. The fascia without the paint is black. According to Ralph, ” the cable ties are what I had”. This got me thinking of repairs, how they are made, and why they are made, and how they are perceived. Right now the categorization slicing instrument in my brain is slicing “repair” into five different kinds.
Coverup. (also known by the name “Buyer Beware Repair” or repair by gonif גנב)
This is the kind of repair that is not supposed to be seen. Cars are often fixed after collisions so that you cannot see the repair. The same brother had the case of repair that he did not see and he bought a different car with damage. In Thailand 30 years ago we saw cracked water jars being skillfully repaired in the city of Ratchaburi with cement and then covered with skillful trompe l’oeil painting. These repairs cover a perhaps functionally deficient product so that it looks undamaged. If you are tuned in to the idea of ” buyer beware” then this sort of covering up of defects is acceptable. If you believe that the seller should point out faults in a product then they are not acceptable repairs, unless we are first told of them.
Dis-appearance: In Phon Bok Thailand Stoneware mortars that have chips or surface details that are not perfect have them covered up with super glue covered with ashes. These repairs cover only cosmetic “flaws” that would lower the price because of appearances. Mortars that have functional defects are used for landfill, to make decorative walls, they are not sold. The mortars have to take a lot of abuse and are not expensive. If damaged they are not worth the hassle. Even the makers do not try to cover up functional defects. This would lower the value of their products.
Ratchaburi Jar being painted (1989)
Cosmetic repair in Phon Bok
Just Repair: This is just a repair. No, or little consideration is made concerning the repair. It is just repaired. Nothing is covered up or concealed. This is the kind of repair that is held in high regard by Soetsu Yanagi when discussing Korean wooden bowls. It has a stance of honesty, of thusness, it is what it is. The bowls are turned from green wood. When they crack, they are repaired. This is what my brother did. He repaired his bumper with available cable ties. No cover up, no intent to do anything but make it functional.
Intentious Repair:
Bumper fascia repaired with cable ties (photo credit Ralph Katz)
This is a Just Repair specifically made with the intent of looking like a just repair. Pretentiously, rather than just making the repair, the intent is to make it look like you did not care about appearances. You not only might not care, you want others to know that you don’t. Louis does these. The picture of a bumper posted to the web by a sophisticated artist, even if the art is music, makes me wonder if Ralph’s qualifies as intentious. I have not asked. Either way it has sparked my interest. I have appreciated it. The bumper, at least in my mind is interesting. Appreciated it enriches life. Appreciation appreciates the value of an object or event.
I have shirts that I bought in 1989 in Thailand. In Thai the name of the shirts seems to be “humble shirts”. I wore mine every wash until they got fairly worn. Others would say “worn out”, but I prefer “broken in”. After that I wore them on non-school days. My personal feeling is that these shirts still have use with a little repair, and that long use is as functional, maybe more functional than recycling. So I have repaired these shirts. They are repaired rather funkily, wow spell check has “funkily”! The repairs are so obvious and perhaps overdone that they might go beyond intentious into the next category, The Conspicuous Elevation of Repair Repair.
Conspicuous Elevated Repair, Kintsugi.
Kintsugi is a Japanese repair technique often used on ceramics using urishi lacquer, a natural resin. It is water proof and holds up to mild heat. The repair resin, made from the sap of the urishi tree, is sometimes filled with iron oxide, but the upper layers are often instead filled or surfaced with gold powder. This makes the repair, a record of the objects history and its breaking, obvious. It makes the damage obvious, making it impossible to ignore. It holds, displays, asserts that use becomes tangible part of an object. In highlighting use and wear it elevated repair seems to demand that bowls are drunk from and not just displayed that you know it and that you remember.
Rather than coverup, rather than mourning the inevitable, kitsugi is an affirmative joyful appreciation of the mutual arising of creation and destruction, afe, wear and tear, and eventual breaking of ceramics. The atmospheric firing of ceramics leaves a trace of its time in the kiln, the repair is just another page in the history of the work. Art is often made in a way the reveals the process of making. With tea ware in Japan there is recognition that who has drunk tea from a bowl, how it is stored, and in what manner it is handled becomes a part of the work. So does the wear and repair. Raku, a firing technique, and shino, a type of glaze both leave a surface with a fine network of cracks. This allows tea to stain the cracks and sometimes the clay body, overtime changing the appearance and making it appear worn before there really is any wear.
While most of the Japanese aesthetics surrounding tea ware stresses a quiet understated natural feel, Kintsugi seems almost diametrically opposed to this. . The contrast creates a sense of importance of the issues surrounding the repair .The gold, bright, valuable, associated with the aristocracy, seems wildly antithetical to the humble nature works that are repaired. On its visual soapbox, kitsugi loudly speaks, “I am a repair” . It is an unassailable statement affirming use and wear as an aspect of an object and aesthetics. If you don’t understand this, the gold slaps you in the face with the message.
(Look up boro repair and shashiko Japanese clothing repair)
But all of these repair techniques, and their associated intent are in some ways the same. Each tells a story, each leaves an impression of intent, or lack of it. Each expresses an attitude on the topic of mutual arising. Each tells of human nature. The difference is in the way we perceive and the way we appreciate them, and in our understanding of the intent of the person who repaired it. The difference, for the most part resides in the viewer. It is the viewer that appreciates, the creates the great value of the repair.
Non Repair repair
This is repair after intentionally breaking an object, or making an object specifically to look as if it is repaired. Goro Suzuki, whose work is purposefully broken is the master of the Non Repair repair. He intentionally breaks pieces to repair them, and really builds his work with kintsugi type repair techniques. For him it does not need to be broken to repair it. Its like he is saying, “If its not broken fix it anyways.” I am not sure that there is anything as conspicuous as this kind of “repair”. The fact that it is not broken screams for its own category . The function of the Non Repair repair is often to teach appreciation of repair.
The place where repair has become more a part of the aesthetic culture than elsewhere is Japan. But modern Japan is quite a throw away society. Houses get too old, cars get too old, clothes have to look new and respectable, hair is always highly tamed. But in this atmosphere kintsugi and the boro technique and shashiko clothing repair seem a response to this, a cultural self criticism. Not being Japanese it is hard to know.
The appreciation of the worn, the repaired, the aged, the imperfect, while it seems far from modern Japanese day to day life, is part of the cultural aesthetic. But it also appears elsewhere. New blue jeans in the US can almost be embarassing in youth culture. This is so true that new jeans are often bleached, stone washed and intentionally distressed in other ways before being sold. Some of the coolest “hippy” clothing were blue jean skirts sewn out of multiple pairs of worn out blue jean pants.
I often think of a bunch of poles or nodes pulling at the creation of worn jeans. - The Pragmatism Node and being a cheapskate. This is also tied to just being poor and not being able to afford or wanting to afford new cloths. Likely need and want could be separated out into separate nodes. There is overlap here with other nodes.
- Appreciation of the look, the Wabi connoisseur.
- Marketability, the Stone Washed Node
- concern for the environmental impact of cotton and consumerism, the Green Node
- the Clueless Node. This is the node of people for whom the buying of new clothes is just a distraction from the rest of their lives, they don’t notice.
These nodes are just like little elastic straps that pull on how we deal with our jeans or other objects. My old denim-type clothing is clearly elastically attached to each of these nodes.
Certainly I am not the first in my interest in such things. But the earliest serious interest, and just about the only significant historical cultural manifestation that I know about was the period surround what Louise Cort calls “The Teabowl Wars” and the moves in Japan from the aesthetic of glitzy teaware to wabi and move from connoisseurship of folk pottery to the purposefully making of wabi imbued wares.
Relation to teaware’s shift from being curated from folk pots to purposefully made to be “funky”
Timeline Maeow Afib
Timeline 2568 พฤศจิกายน 14
MaeowMaeow Wisan, whose nickname I will abbreviate as MM had a hospitalization this weekend. It started with them checking their Blood pressure. The new app attached to the cuff via Bluetooth® to their phone read, “irregular heartbeat”. Consequently they retook it several times. The blood pressure readings were all over them map, one low, one high, and it felt like the other times she went to the hospital for BP. This time however, they were feeling just fine. The next morning they got two more readings. Unsure what to do they went to the minor “Doc in a Box” where they have gotten good service medical advice before. The doc hooked them up to an ECG and the doc said, “You won’t like this, but you should go to the ER”. They told them that they did like it. They had come for advice on what to do. They thanked them and got a ride.
On the better machine, the more wires it has the better, it became clear that the problem was Afib.
MaeowMaeow has been admitted twice before for having their blood pressure all over the place and feeling bad. They also have been to the ER once more and had a doctors visit once. Each of these times, the vastly differing readings on the BP cuff should have alerted the MDs that the problem could be Afib. Each time they missed this. They assumed hypochondriac.
The previous times MM was getting BP readings on her cuff that were really high and really low. The readings were inaccurate because of the Afib. Those readings were typical of what you would have if you have Afib. But MM said their blood pressure was going up and down. While not true literally, the message contained the truth. Instead of being considered it was written off.
MM and I are disgusted by this. There is an arrogance in the belief that the non-expert has nothing to say, that their observations are of no value, that if they use the wrong language what they say has no substance.This arrogance is, in our experience epidemic in the medical field. MM should have been given a monitor years ago. If asked she could have said that she has had this feeling many times without going to the hospital or doctor.
We have read and been told that by itself A.fib is not really dangerous, but its side effects are. It increases the chance of stroke between 1 and 10 times and can also eventually lead to heart failure. It is also progressive. A.fib episodes tend to bring about more episodes although it sounds like the progression is slow.
MM’s parents ( the Rents )had the same disease as the MDs. But rather than having low respect for the utterances of patients, the parents had low respect for the utterances of their children. Further both the Rents and the MDs often believe that something is not realy until it is proven. They believe this is true, but only about things told to them by their children and patients respectively (maybe that should be “disrespectfully”) .
MM recently had the experience of having a doctor quote a medical journal article to them. When MM mentioned another part of the same article they rolled their eyes.
Doctors that listen well and respect what they hear are worth their weight in gold, or at least silver, and parents that do the same make the world a better place.
Timeline Monopoly
~+7 LE
At our house we played games. Some were simple card games like Crazy 8’s , Gin, etc. There were some oddball games from Hoyles Book of Rules, like Russian Bank. We also played board games, Candyland, Park and Shop which was my first introduction to “hard problems”, Stratego, and others. Oddly we did not play Backgammon. Checkers and Chess might require another entry on the timeline.
We also played Monopoly. In our house playing Monopoly cheating was fair. But you could lose a turn if you got caught before the next turn. This could include underpayment, stealing from the bank, and moving to the wrong space. Like when stealing my nothings, my brothers would gang up on me. Somehow they could roll the dice and know exactly where they had to move their token to without counting. I was not a great student at this point and had not learned to add well although I was passing. At some point I started to do my addition on the Monopoly board.
The board is broken into four sides. Each has the originating corner, space 0 and the final corner, space ten. The spaces at 5 on each of the sides are the railroads.
So, lets say you are on space 8 and roll a 10. That would put you on the next space 8. Lets say you roll a 5. The first two gets you too the corner and three remains leaving you on a the 3 space. Or lets say you roll a 9. That almost puts you on the next 8 space, but one before. I see this happen in my head. There are no words, A seven fills the space between 8 and 15. In my head addition is often visualized.
This year is +69 LE and I still sometimes add this way even though I have the table memorized.
The winter break before I married Gail I went to her house during Christmas. Her family plays games on Christmas day and they brought out the Monopoly set. I needed to know the rules. There are factional differences in how the rules are interpreted and I straightened these out. Then I asked, “Is cheating fair?” The silence is still reverberationg and the astonished stares are etched deep in memory. “Ok, I just wanted to make sure I understand the rules.”
Timeline Nothings
1960-62
My conceptual art carrier began with the setup of my factory to produce nothings. Nothings come in generally three flavors, chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. Of these many more chocolate nothings were produced than the other flavors.
Setting up the nothing factory required me to upturn my tricycle in the driveway. Making them required me to turn the wheel. If you turned it too fast it did not work. There are only so many nothings that can be produced in a day on a tricycle. Given its operation in a system of capitalism this stabilizes the price.
My brothers, both older used to gang up on me. It was not all negative. If you want to read about that see “Timline Monopoly”. But they would gang up on me and steel my nothings. Normally I would not have noticed, but they would say, “I stole your nothings”. This would set me crying. They were mean. It did not prevent me from making more.
Recently I did something special for my son Ben. I said, “you owe me”. He promptly settled his debt to me by placing 5 nothings in my hand. I did not know where he got them from. He said he got them from his fiance’.
WhatsInaCup
What is in a cup? [still writing]
An essay about a single cup,stoneware, a touchstone, vessel, works with coffee, tea, jelly beans.
I have been using a cup that I made in Thailand since 1988. This is an essay about the areas in my life it touchs, the thoughts that are tangent to its exterior, its place in my life.
I suppose that this starts in about 1972 when I first signed up for ceramics classes in High School.
I walked into school as 11th grade was about to start and got in a line. At the head of the line I was given my schedule. I had selected classes as the previous year was ending. These included Electronics, Choir, Trigonometry, I am not sure what else. I was given the schedule and looked at it. I told the teacher behind the desk, ” I can’t take this Trigonometry class”. We went back and forth with him telling me that he could not change it, getting mad when I insisted. Then I let him know that the teacher was my mother. He said, Come back here, lets see what we can do. I remember that the schedule after changing the Trigonometry class was really limited. I needed a different class for 7th hour. I tried Metals shop, Drafting, Hebrew language, Physics, Photo, probably others. There was something left called Ceramics. I think that I had to ask what it was. That is how I got started.
We did some American Raku firing during the class. When you do this you get surfaces that are outside your direct control. They have an air of naturalness at times. By this time in the semester I was reading books about ceramics every week, lots of books. A few were about this technique, Raku.
Raku, at least in some ways, revolved around a Japanese aesthetic principal, wabi. Wabi describes an appreciation of the worn, the old, the imperfect, in some ways just nature. While I have been told that it is Zen in origin, I think the real origin is closer to Taoism. In my first year in college I took a course from Dr. Walter Spink who described a person who was perfectly in tune with the Tao, the nature of nature. This person walked down to the bridge over the raging flood in a rocky mountain stream, disrobed waited a few seconds and jumped in. Perfectly in tune with the Tao, he washed up a bit down stream perfectly clean and walked back up to get his clothes. He understood the way, the way of the world, and without much effort could chose just the time and place to jump in and get washed out. Images of streams and rocks are seen as symbolic of The Tao. The ideas and practice of Taoism predate the Buddhism and particularly Zen by many centuries. However, Wabi is attached with Zen. I am not an expert in either, nor a practitioner.
Raku is really the granted title of a person who made teabowls. It then named the process and style of their making. The title is hereditary. The current holder is Raku Kichizaemon XVI. I met Raku XV at The Archie Bray Foundation. I found it not that remarkable a time except that I found it ironic that the slide projector we were using for his slide show caught fire.
Making work in this genre that really does it for me is difficult. The skill and sensitivity is something I cannot quite grasp. Excellence always involves the intangible, but for teabowls it often seems further from my grasp. I really started to appreciate the aesthetic early and in high school built a wood burning raku kiln in my backyard.
I ended up in undergraduate school in Kansas City, Missouri at The Kansas City Art Institute. The department head there, Ken Ferguson, was enthralled by Wabi Sabi. The museum next door, The Nelson Atkins museum always had a few pieces of Japanese teaware on display. Between Fergusons interest, the pots at the Nelson and the general tone of American Studio Pottery at the time we were all sucked into the aesthetic.
In the 1970’s there was a strong “back to nature” cultural push. The organic foods movement got a big boost. Gas crises helped create a low energy mindset. Home grown and home made, local production and consumption all had strong cultural support. Natural looking fired surfaces were a rage, and in some ways still are.
A group of potters associated with the late Warren Mackenzie who was an apprentice of Bernard Leach taught at Minnesota State University and a group of potters gathered in the area. Many of them were dedicated to natural surfaces in their work and used the kiln as the creative instrument to make the surfaces. They fired with techniques now know as “atmospheric firing techniques” but not raku. Raku makes good ceremonial ware, but is not a good choice for daily use. The techniques used were wood firing, salt firing, a kind of firing called residual salt, and an offshoot of salt firing, soda firing. These techniques were used at high temperatures with non-porcelaineous clays to give the works rough natural surfaces.
Bernard Leach worked in Japan with a potter Shoji Hamada. Along with Soetsu Yanagi they were interested in what has been translated often as Folk Craft or in Japanese, Mingei. In school, Ken Ferguson was standing behind Gail and said, “I wonder how you could combine Mingei with Minnesota. Concentrating on something else Gail said, “Minegeisota”. Clearly already having this word at hand but now having someone else to blame for it Ferguson tried to use it as a putdown to these potters. Instead of it being a putdown, they embraced it. What had been known as the Warren Mackenzie style or school of pottery making became known as The Mingeisota School.
Prior to these names, atmospheric firing, Mingeisota, or knowing the phrase Wabi Sabi, I was already enthralled. I preferred wearing jeans until thread bare. The same is true of shirts. The use, the wear, the rips, all tell a story. The story “new” tells is a false cloak of respectability. Respectable cloths do not impact the respectability of those wearing them. You are how you look is only an “ism” an illness of an imperfect society whose focus is on trivialities rather than realities.
But when Yanagi, Hamada and Leach talked about Mingei, they were talking about ceramics outside of schools, outside of galleries, indigeneous, humble. I do not think that they were even at the beginning talking about what they made, it was too expensive. They were talking local production for local use.
Repair rather than replace is either the mark of people without much cash, or a sign of someone who values the natural of materials, the work of hands, the environment, or economy. People like this have values. New clothing is an affectation. I find it hard to label its draw to some as a value.
The affectation of the worship of the new, is in some a desire to show that they earn money. This desire is understandable as our language continually mixes up values and value or qualities with quantities. I am reminded of Lung Gaeow, an old friend in Thailand with little money or possession but a great human full of humor, compassion, and hard work.
While in school in Kansas City we were given an opportunity to order books from Kodansha Publishing on kilns in Japan and their wares. There was one book for each pottery village, sometimes two different ones. These books was about 18 inches by 12 inches with huge high quality color photographs and cost less than $5 each. A Japanese student, Akio Takamori who the community sorely misses, picked up the books and shipped them. These books introduced us to Japanese potteries, “The Six Ancient Kilns” and many others were included in these series of about 50 books. I fell in love with Bizen and Shigaraki, although there were countless others it seemed that also held my interest.
Bizenyaki, the Bizen potteries, fire much of their work to just the temperature that the clay starts to be vitrious, but can still maintain the orange color if protected from the flame and ash. How the kilns are stacked in Bizen became the primary decorative technique leaving some areas orange, some brown. Stacking with rice straw left markings from the alkali metals in the straw.
In graduate school a fellow student, from Thailand showed me slide images of a pottery in NE Thailand called Dankwian. The pots were almost exclusviely 20 gallon water storage jars, wood fired, no glaze, fired to about cone 7, a lot like Bizen pots. But these had never been snarfed up as teaware. They were intended for humble use. Most pots like this were long gone in Japan.
The graduate student, now retired Professor Poonarat Pichayapaiboon, and I took courses together. His English was spotty so as I helped him with English he taught me a bit of Thai. A few years after graduate school I heard that there was a Thai potter visiting the Archie Bray Foundation. I walked up, and in Thai said, “Hello! Where is the bathroom”. She pointed. I then asked what I though meant, ” Do you know of the village of Dankwian?” Not really meaning that she responded in English “What do you mean?”. Turns out she owned a pottery there. This is what prompted the Thai Fulbright.