-Caroline G.c. Vandenabeele, BA student from Belgium

I used to think of impermanence the way most people do — as things slipping away; stories coming to an end; forms appearing and dissolving; words of consolation here and there… everything ends, the good and the bad. The Buddhist teachings on impermanence felt true and also somewhat heavy. Everything changes, nothing lasts. Yes. And?

During the winter break, sitting in a coconut plantation in Sri Lanka, something unusual happened. On two consecutive days, I found myself seeing the space between the trees rather than the trees themselves — the latter more like stickers in a children’s book, to be stuck and unstuck at will. The moments were nothing but brief flickers of shifting perceptions, but overwhelming. I tried to replicate the experience in different places: cities, restaurants, the beach, the airport… but nothing happened and I filed it under “unusual experiences” once I got back to Kathmandu end January, ready to start the Spring 2026 semester.

This semester, studying Buddhism and Art at RYI with Professor @DianeDenis, something shifted further. Not through a text or a lecture, but through walking; through using my hands; and through paying attention differently.

It started with a workshop on clay. Rolling clay into a ball, shaping a figure that I laughingly labeled as a Yeti, a Nepali friend looked over: a Yeti must have large feet, he said. Without hesitation, I added them. Big blobs of clay, feet far too big for the figurine… and when the Yeti wouldn’t stand, I rolled the clay back into a simple ball, pinched some eyes and ears in it, and then threw it back in the used-clay-bucket where it would be mixed back into its original form – just clay…  That small, light Yeti moment stayed with me. How quickly a form changes. How deeply our sense of what is possible – and of what must be – is shaped by layers of memory, culture, a few words here and there, habitual patterns. It struck me – things are not as we perceive them – and they are always only one of endlessly possible configurations.

That insight followed me into my photography project. I began walking without agenda, following the contemplative photography tradition of Julie DeBose — seeing before naming, turning away from habitual superficial scanning and flat seeing. What I found were threshold moments. Places where something is neither fully here nor fully there. A fire that looks like a figure, then doesn’t, then does again. A bird already halfway gone. Trees in conversation with a cloudy sky that will never look the same. Thangkas hanging outside a shop, their destinies completely open — one may reach a personal home altar, one a Rinpoche’s room, another one may rest for a long time forgotten at the bottom of a tourist’s drawer after his return home. A scarf on a chair, still holding the shape of someone who has just left – traces of the person still there.

These are images of transience. Not of loss. They are images of potential.

Later, Ikebana confirmed what the clay and the camera had already begun to show me. In the Ikebana workshop, we spent time carefully placing each branch, each flower, each stone: heaven, humanity, earth … and then the arrangement is dismantled. In that dismantling, the same materials could become part of countless other compositions. Nothing fixed. And because nothing was fixed, nothing was limited to a single outcome.

This was the essence of my learning in this class: Mi rtag pa — not as loss, but as openness. The field of endless possibilities that opens when a form dissolves.

My fellow artist-students and I will be showing our work. The title of my project for this exhibition is Traces. Thresholds. After you’ve left, before I arrive. That gap – between departure and arrival, between one form dissolving and the next not yet declared, the seeing before the naming – is not empty. It is full of what has not yet decided what it will become. It is full of potential.

Nothing is lost.

The name falls away — and something stirs beneath.

The person leaves — the warmth lingers, then that too moves on.

The sacred travels — to altars we cannot yet see.

Mi rtag pa is not an ending. It is the world, breathing.

Prof. Diane Denis’ course has many impacts that are far from measurable by any outside standards. But if you are interested to see the visual results, come and see our work— at the Buddhism and Art Student Exhibition at Rangjung Yeshe Institute. https://buddhistartexhibit.wordpress.com/art-exhibit-2026/