Tony Stakes Art

The purpose of my art is to raise group consciousness.

I call this period in my art, my St. Stithian's College Period, as the St. Stithian's College Chapel is my symbol of spirituality, where it all began for me, back in 1957 to 1968, where I was a boarder in Mount Stephens House together with Paul Verryn who went on to become a Bishop in the Methodist Church.

Unlike Paul Verryn, my Spiritual Quest has been a lifelong struggle with Methodist and Christian concepts, in spite of my intense loyalty and enduring love for St. Stithian's College - 'Saints' - as it is so fondly called by many of us old boys.

My purpose is not to discredit the Church per se - for I do understand that all Headmasters are expected to support a Christian mandate, particularly at Church schools. Their lot is not an easy one, however, I am not painting for the sake of Headmasters, College concerns or teachers or parent associations; but rather for the thinking young individual who is concerned with his own Spiritual Quest and Journey beyond the prisons - religions of inflexible inculcated dogmas propagated by religious institutions.

I have come to abhor Christian brainwashing and religious mind control, and it is to be discovered that God of love - of so many St. Stithian's College Sunday sermons - has indeed left a sickening trail of blood and vindictive vengeance behind him, in His Name.
I find myself in complete agreement with the Very Reverend Jeffrey John, the Deacon of St. Albans in Southern England, who has discussed the Christian theory of penal substitution which argues that God sent Christ to Earth to be punished for the sins of mankind. I quote the Very Reverend Jeffrey John " Even at the age of 10, I thought this explanation was pretty repulsive as well as nonsensical, " he said. " What sort of God was this, getting so angry with the world and the people he created and then, to calm himself down, demanded the blood of his own son? " And anyway, why should God forgive us through punishing somebody else? " "It was worse than illogical, it was insane. It made God sound like a psychopath. If any human being behaved like this, we'd say they were a monster. That explanation of the cross just doesn't work. "

John Selby Spong, Christian Philosopher, puts it like this "To speak of a Father God so enraged by human evil that he requires propitiation for our sins that we cannot pay and thus demands the death of the devine human son as a guilt offering is a ludicrous idea to our century. The sacrificial concept that focuses on the saving blood of Jesus that somehow washes me clean, so popular in evangelical and fundamentalist circles, is by and large repugnant to us today. This understanding of the divine human relationship violates both our understanding of God and our knowledge of human live. To see human life as fallen from a pristine and good creation necessitating a divine rescue by the God-man is not to understand the most elementary aspect of our evolutionary history. To view human life as deprived or as victimised by an Original Sin is to literalize a premodern anthropology and a premodern psychology. Yet historic Christianity has traditionally been understood in terms of these categories. Baptism to wash away the stain of Adam's sin in the newborn child is just one practice that emerges out of that understanding. To frighten parents into baptism by suggesting that their unbaptised infants might be damned to an eternity apart from God is insulting primarily to God. Who amongst us could worshop such a deity?"

A case of rational and intellectual high treason? "In a nutshell the crux of factual Christian belief is this: An omnipresent God(?), who in his abence (!), negligently allowed an astute talking snake (with vocal-cords and a very atypical reptilian brain), to begile a rib-woman belonging to a dust-man (in the common Snake-Human dialect of the time), to partake of the forbidden fruit of some fabulous mystical-mythological tree-that has evaded all identification attempts to this day. Men say this is God's Word. But is it? But now kindly tell me again if you believe in this, why exactly it is that you do not believe in fairies?"

George Carlin has this to say about God's love. "Religion has actually convinced people that there is an invisible man - living in the sky - who watches everything you do every minute of the day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever till the end of time...but he loves you!"

It seems monsterous that we have a God of Love who has left a trail of blood behind himself in the Old Testament, who demands our unconditional love (from our side) but is only prepared to recipricate from his side, conditionally.

It is on this basis why a Buddhist symbol has been designed for every private college or school in South Africa as an alternative to this religious non-sense. In this respect Religious-Art History is being made in South Africa. Certainly nothing like this has occured before.

The circle and my return to St. Stithian's College spiritually - is almost complete. I return to gaze at the stained-glass St. Stithian's College Chapel window of the good Samaritan, mindful this time that the Samaritan was not a Christian at all, but rather a Buddhist loosing himself in his duty of 'Metta' - or loving-kindness. I am reminded of Gary Gach in his 'The Complete Idiots Guide to Buddhism', when he states that had Jesus and the Sakyamuni Buddha met, - they would have been two good buddies. I can live with this idea.

My favourite inspirational quotation comes from Shunryu Suzuki on the occasion of him visiting the Yosemite National Park waterfalls in the United States of America. He observed how the waters part during the free fall and meet and merge again at the foot of the waterfall, where the river resumes its flow, as a river.
"Before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called "mind-only," or "essence of mind," or "big mind." After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river , or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life.
When the river returns to its original oneness with the river, it no longer has any individual feeling to it; it resumes its own nature, and finds composure. How very glad that water must be to come back to the original river! If this is so, what feeing will we have when we die? I think we are like the water in the river. We will have composure then, perfect composure. It may be too perfect for us, just now, because we are so much attached to our own feeling, to our individual existence. For us, just now, we have some fear of death, but after we resume our true original nature, there is Nirvana. That is why we say, "To attain Nirvana is to pass away." "To pass away" is not a very adequate expression. Perhaps "to pass on," or "to join" would be better. Will you try to find some better expression for death? When you find it, you will have quite a new interpretation of your life." (Shunryu Suzuki 1986)

This led me to write the following communique for private colleges and schools: Are Private Schools and Colleges in South Africa ready for Buddhism? A useful perspective of Methodist and Christian values in the light of some other world religions. Click here to download a copy (3.1 meg). This communique is extremely important for senior high school students busy with divinity studies.

Please click here to download a copy of "Big Mind: The Great Way of Suchness" (581kb).

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