Gratitude Is the Muse at This Art Auction

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Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society held their sixth annual Silent Art Auction and Street Fair this Saturday, September 12, 2015, from 1pm-5pm at their Melrose sangha location - 4300 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles CA 90029.

This year’s auction included donations from Mike Giant, Moby, Tim Armstrong, Adam Dare, Beth Lapides, and private sessions with many of the Against the Stream meditation teachers. The street fair featured music by DJ Amore One (aka. Guido Corleone, Chris Devcich), a food truck, tattoo booth by Shannon O’Sullivan, classic car show, and a bounce house and face painting for the kids!

Gratitude to all the artisans who donated and everyone who came out to enjoy the street fair and bid on the art! All proceeds from the annual auction go to the Against the Stream scholarship programs.

Following is an article from ATS’s second annual auction in 2011 ...back when the tradition was only just beginning. (Photos from 2015 and 2011 included below. All images are copyrighted and can only be used with photographer permission and credit.)

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“In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Earlier this month, on a normal Monday evening in an unassuming building on Santa Monica’s quiet Colorado Avenue, something magnificent happened.

Noah Levine, founder of non-profit organization Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society (ATS), asked his class of meditators (known as a sangha) to consider donating items to the society’s second annual silent art auction.

And they did.

Sitting silently on cushions or in chairs, the sangha listened to Levine’s simple request for the donation-based organization’s upcoming event. He explained that funds raised by the auction would support the organization’s programs and scholarship fund – thereby allowing sangha members who wouldn’t normally be able to afford a meditation retreat the opportunity to participate.

In the weeks that followed this simple request, over sixty items, much of it original art created especially for the auction, quietly arrived at Against the Stream’s Melrose Avenue location.

Anyone who’s ever tried to fundraise – even for the worthiest of causes – can attest to how difficult it can be to inspire donations, monetary or otherwise.

Even well known, successful non-profits often lean on human emotion to get the job done – relying on people’s sympathy (and even, in some cases, invoking their pity) to inspire money-in-the-bowl. Most successful non-profits customarily reward their donors with everything from baseball caps to fancy formal functions.

All because people find it difficult to donate without the promise of something in return.

So, when Mary Stancavage, Director of Against the Stream, started receiving donations for the auction in abundance, one had to wonder what could have stirred such an outpouring.

When I dropped off the piece I created for the auction, I was moved to see a room full of heartfelt art created by people I quietly sit next to on a weekly basis in meditation.

It dawned on me that the muse in the room was Gratitude.

Talented Santa Monica-based artist and graphic designer Lorenzo Belmonte donated his original poster, Los Angeles Dharma Punx, to the auction and says, “I feel grateful for the American Buddhist movement that Against the Stream has brought to my hometown of Santa Monica… I have found refuge in the Buddha, dharma, and the sangha. This Dharma Punx piece is my way of saying thank you for that refuge.”

Renowned metal sculptor, Miya Ando, says of the piece she donated to the auction, “I am very grateful to be able to support the sangha in any way… I have so much respect for [Levine] and the organization.”

It was gratitude that inspired my donation to the auction as well.

The muse named Gratitude whispered in my ear as I sat amongst the sangha. “Make something. Anything. It’s the very least you can do to say thank you for a practice and a way of life that’s changed everything.”

“Art is not a thing; it is a way”

- Elbert Hubbard

Belmonte, Ando, and I aren’t alone in feeling grateful for, connected to, and inspired artistically by the teachings of Against the Stream’s new American Buddhism.

The new American Buddhism movement draws on all the Buddhist traditions while shaking free of the social and political baggage that’s become inherent in many forms of institutionalized religion.

As such, the movement is forging its own way.

Hundreds of students attend weekly meditation classes and retreats at the Santa Monica and East Hollywood ATS centers. And thousands of students are part of Against the Stream sanghas all over the world.

But, even with thousands of students listening to the dharma at Against the Stream, the organization is as humble as it was in 2006, when Levine, author of the national bestselling book Dharma Punx, first arrived on the Los Angeles scene and taught a class of thirty students in what used to be the Santa Monica Zen Center.

It’s the organization’s financial and philosophical transparency and every teacher’s commitment to a humble honesty that makes giving to Against the Stream so easy.

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.

- Sir Winston Churchill

With donations pouring in from merchants and artists beyond the sangha, Stancavage says she believes “it’s the integrity of what we are doing and what we offer that makes [even] total strangers comfortable in helping.”

There’s something very special about the donated art (and service vouchers, such as a Reiki session with Santa Monica-based energy healer Hilary Vreeland) that will be featured this Sunday.

When you’re in the room with the eclectic bouquet of items up for auction, you sense that gratitude is the theme.

It isn’t only the organization that’s grateful for the donations, but the artists themselves who are grateful to Against the Stream.

And Gratitude is a generous muse.

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If you’re interested in meditation, check out Against the Stream’s weekly class offerings in Santa Monica, East Hollywood, and Studio City.

To attend the current auction- free and open to the public - stop by the Melrose Avenue ATS center this Saturday, September 12th.

About the author: Amanda Michaels-Zech is writer living in coastal Southern California. She has written for Patch in Studio City, Santa Monica, and Hollywood. Michaels-Zech earned her BA from UCLA in Study of World Religions with an emphasis on Buddhist meditation traditions. Her original poetry + photography piece Shards of Self was auctioned in 2011. This year, her piece Girl on a Cliff will be auctioned.