What we share

Making art and contemplative practice are human birthrights, deeply encoded within each of us. Sharing them is also part of our fiber. I find myself reflecting on this again when the shadow side of human nature—our fear and anger—threatens to cover even the sun. Then I turn to the poets and artists, ancient and contemporary, and to contemplative practice. 

I turn to the meditative practice of breathing with whatever arises to allow the natural compassion we also share as humans to arise from the silence and the intention to see clearly. I turn to these fundamental arts and practices because they are what has sustained us and allowed us to survive. I turn to them from the conviction of my own experience that, as an early Buddhist poem phrases it, “Never is hatred conquered by hatred,/but by readiness to love alone./This is the eternal law.” 

Inaugural Issue, September 22, 2016

We’re glad you’ve found Leaping Clear, the magazine that brings the arts and literature into focus with contemplative practices. We seek to present contemporary art in many forms by artists from many cultures and backgrounds. Likewise, we look to many contemplative and meditative traditions, from communion with nature to formal religious practices and philosophical reflections. 

Our site’s name, Leaping Clear, is drawn from this phrase—“leaping clear of the many and the one”—from Dōgen Zenji’s poem/text “Genjō Kōan.” In English this title is sometimes translated as "Actualizing the Fundamental Point,” or “The Issue at Hand.” Dōgen lived in 13th CE Japan and practiced as a Zen Master who wrote poems and what might be called today hybrid texts: essays, talks, and lectures with elements of poetic language.