A Contemplative Approach to Creation with
Emma J. M. Ates
Ates is a contemplative creative practitioner whose work spans photography, painting, collage, clay, land art, multimedia, and song. Rooted in Buddhist practice and the contemplative arts, her explorations unfold through attention, sensory experience, and creative expression, giving form to qualities of presence and encounters with the world.
A Contemplative Exploration of
Creation
Ates considers herself an explorer of expressive creation and a practitioner of visual arts and contemplative photography. Her approach is rooted in the formal transmissions she has received within Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism and modernist Zen, as well as in her training in Dharma Art and the contemplative arts. Her work participates in the ongoing transmission and translation of these practices within a contemporary Western cultural context.
She understands creation as a sensory and expressive continuation of śamatha and vipaśyanā practice. Inner attention extends through the gaze, gesture, body, and various artistic media. A work may then make perceptible a state of mind, a quality of presence, or a direct encounter with the world.
Early Explorations and Artistic Training in France
Artistic expression played an important role throughout my childhood. Drawing and painting offered spontaneous ways of exploring my surroundings, imagination, and inner experience.
This interest gradually deepened and eventually led me to complete a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts at Aix-Marseille University. During these formative years, I became particularly interested in painting and photography. I also discovered Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, especially his reflections on perception, the lived body, and our sensory relationship with the world.
During the same period, I encountered Chögyam Trungpa’s contemplative approach through True Perception: The Path of Dharma Art. The meeting of these two perspectives profoundly influenced the way I came to understand creation as an embodied experience grounded in presence, direct perception, and the relationship between the body, the gaze, and the world.
My studies allowed me to explore a variety of media and develop the theoretical, technical, and critical foundations that have continued to support the evolution of my artistic practice.
The Evolution of My Practice Between France and Canada
Moving to Canada introduced me to a relationship with art that differed from what I knew in France. Toronto’s cultural diversity, along with my encounters with Shambhala and the contemplative arts, gradually added a new dimension to my creative expression and my understanding of its purpose.
My exploration of different media, followed by my training in expressive and creative therapies and art therapy, transformed my relationship with the creative process. The medium became a partner in a more intentional exploration of the mind, body, emotions, and that which seeks to take form beyond words.
At the same time, I continued a line of inquiry inspired by Buddhist teachings and Dharma Art. This approach understands creation as a practice of presence and direct perception. It is not solely about producing or representing something, but about meeting experience fully and allowing authentic expression to emerge. Creation thus becomes a relational space between mind, sensation, gesture, material, and the world.
Dharma Art & Contemplative Arts
The contemplative arts bring together practices grounded in attention, direct perception, and embodied experience. The contemplative arts extend inner meditation into the outward expression of the embodied mind. The gaze, gesture, breath, and relationship with the medium become forms of practice in themselves. This approach does not focus solely on achieving an aesthetic result; it invites us to encounter what is present with curiosity, precision, and openness.
Dharma Art, introduced in the West by Chögyam Trungpa, extends the meditative practices of śamatha and vipaśyanā into creativity and everyday life. Artistic expression can reveal a quality of presence and make visible how the mind encounters the world, without immediately imposing interpretation or preconceived intention.
I deepen this approach through Nalanda Miksang contemplative photography, Shambhala Art, and creative practices arising from Zen, including brushwork, sumi-e, and ikebana. Since 2022, my regular work with Jody Hojin Kimmel Sensei of Zen Mountain Monastery has particularly supported this meeting of meditation, sensory experience, and artistic expression.
Current Media and Areas of Exploration
Ates’ current practice continues a contemplative creative inquiry begun more than fifteen years ago, now deepening under the guidance of Jody Hojin Kimmel Sensei. It unfolds through photography, painting, drawing, ink, collage, clay, land art, multimedia, and song.
Her ongoing exploration, Traces of Mind, takes new form through three-dimensional rice-paper sculptures and Hitsuzendō brushwork. Ink, light, and space become part of an inquiry into how the embodied mind finds expression through gesture and material.
Her attention rests on presence, the relationship with the medium, and what emerges through the process. Rather than seeking an identity as an artist or orienting her practice towards the art market, she approaches creation as a continuation of meditation. Informed by Buddhist practice and Thích Nhất Hạnh’s teachings, this inquiry invites simplicity, a slower pace, and joy within ordinary experience—including its imperfect, changing, and vulnerable dimensions. It explores what it means to be human and earthly: our relationship with the body, emotions, and the living world.
This personal practice nourishes her work in art therapy, Contemplative Creative Therapy, and the Lojong Center for Contemplative Creative Science. It deepens her attentiveness to what emerges through gesture, material, and sensory experience, while informing the ways she shares contemplative creative exploration and meditation with others to cultivate greater awareness and joy in everyday life.