What is the drawing saying?
— You cannot tell; it doesn’t tell. The drawing portrays distinct symbols, yet their relationship and meaning are left unexplained. Is it perhaps saying that a spiritual eye, more powerful than the sun, watches over each person’s passage across the river of life? Yet, is the watching eye altogether friendly? Is it safe? Or is this someone struggling to meet the glare of an unforgiving judge? It could be a reference the Buddha’s parable of his teachings as a raft to be used, then discarded when the goal is reached. It could be an evocation of the moment when the labor of creative work suddenly puts you in touch with something much larger than yourself, and it creates through you. But the drawing, like all visual thoughts, is silent. It does not interpet itself in words. When a visual thought is enfolded with enough significance and wonder, it becomes “visionary.” A single visionary experience may compact enough layers of meaning to occupy a person for many years. Another example of mea
