Project - Colors of Compassion 2005

Project: A multi faceted process of reflection and action that included the collaborative development and creation of images by the Deer Park loving community for a central social space at the Deer Park Monastery.

Theme: What makes a happy, loving, and harmonious community.

Concept: The Healing our Families, Building True Community project was an interactive, multidisciplinary, revolutionary experience in mindfulness that culminated in a large public work illustrating what makes a happy community. Participants practiced healing our families and building community through a number of reflective, educational, and celebratory processes. At the same time the project aspired to catalyze reflection upon what makes the happy, beautiful, harmonious community that is the Sangha. All of the activities for fun and growth in the process of creating the public piece as well as the final celebration were occasions for collaboration.
Social collaboration transcends individual privileges where separate expectations are replaced with equality, and collective self-interest. By creating experiences of dynamic demographics, with exercises that everyone can create in, there is a collective unification, a support of new community that is inclusive in its being. Joyful, inclusive existence is a part of the salve that heals ourselves and our community. At the center of these exercises for positive shared experience is an artistic representation of inter-being, with the focus being the Sangha of Deer Park.

Method: Participants of the Colors of Compassion retreat and the greater Deer Park Sangha were invited to contribute to the creation of this public project. On the first day of orientation, each of the participants was asked to contemplate what makes a happy, loving, and harmonious community through the course of the retreat. This personal exercise in reflection was a contribution to the focus of the retreat theme, Healing Our Families, Building True Community.
During two days of the Colors of Compassion Retreat participants were further integrated into the art making process. Volunteers collaboratively projected a series of drawings created from photos formerly taken at Deer Park. 4 large main drawings, as well as smaller sketches, included images from the Colors of Compassion retreat and were projected on two of the large walls in the main social area of the Monastery. The collaboratively drawn images were accompanied by a selection of quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh and participants that relate to what makes a happy, loving, and harmonious community.
On Saturday, each of the participants finished their daily dharma discussion groups by choosing a sheet of multi colored paper to write their statement about what makes a happy community.
The project culminated with a celebratory session of drawing, opportunity for personal dialogue, and community connection. With the help of several volunteers, each of the statements that people generated in their discussion groups were fastened to the two walls of the Deer Park social area with gel medium. Everyone in attendance concurrently had the chance to color in the large drawings and text that had been generated and projected on the previous days.

During the wall coloring there was an additional series of stations where participants could also reflect upon community and inter-being. These creative settings expanded the possibility of looking deeply by providing materials attractive to alternative learning styles or varied creative sensibilities. The Community Stations included:

Loving Community Monuments
In this station, participants were asked to create monuments in modeling clay that represent their vision of a loving community. These sculptures in both process and product were opportunities to express inter-being. The completed Loving Community Monuments were displayed in their own viewing area for reflection and inspiration.

Family/Sangha Encyclopedia
A wide assortment of visual art supplies accompanied sketchbooks that were the material focus of this station/installation near the public art piece. Collaborators were free to express themselves in the sketchbooks regarding a loving, happy, and harmonious community. Afterwards, the books continued to be drawn/written in and kept as a document of the project and experience.

Harmonious Community Camera Documentation
Three Disposable Cameras were freely passed around for participants to document the celebration from their perspective. By recording moments of mindfulness the cameras were another way for participants to look deeply at the process while celebrating the inter-being of the product.

The final product of this process was the large collaborative colored drawings of images of Deer park and a selection of large quotations. This project aimed to empower residents and visitors alike by beautifying Deer Park with art works that feature images of themselves and their voices, that they were directly involved in creating.

Colors of Compassion:
Healing Our Families, Building True Community
September 14 through September 18, 2005
Deer Park Monastery, Escondido California

Project Albums

Colors of Compassion

Slideshow Narrative

Healing Our Families

Building True Community

Video clip

Project Related Audio

1.Building Community/Sangha from Thich Nhat Hanh

Project Related Links