The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life

The creative process, like a spiritual journey, is intuitive, nonlinear, and experiential. It points us toward our essential nature, which is a reflection of the boundless creativity of the universe.

Its only purpose was to point to the nature of reality. It suggested a new way of seeing, and a new way of being that cut to the core of what it meant to be human and fully alive. Zen art, as sacred art, touched artists and audiences deeply, expressed the ineffable, and helped to transform the way we see ourselves in the world.

Music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music. T.S. ELIOT

All creatures experience the universe through the senses. And at every moment, a different universe is being created by each being. A spider, for example, feels the universe through its legs, which touch the key strands of its web. It knows when it’s raining, or when food is available. It doesn’t think to itself, “That’s not a fly on the web. That’

If working samadhi is present in your life, in your being, then it will be present in your art. Art always reflects the artist. If you’re agitated, your art will be agitated. If your art is grounded in the still point, the self will be out of the way and your art will reflect its subject directly.

To be still means to empty yourself from the incessant flow of thoughts and create a state of consciousness that is open and receptive. Stillness is very natural and uncomplicated. It’s not esoteric in any way. Yet it’s incredibly profound.

In Zen practice, we touch the still point through single-pointedness of mind, which we gradually build by working on our concentration. First, we count the breath: inhale, one; exhale, two, and so on. When we reach ten, we start back at one. When we notice the mind wandering, we see the thought, acknowledge it, let it go, and start back at one. Lit

When thoughts finally disappear, the thinker disappears. Thought and thinker are interdependent, mutually arising. No thought, no thinker is called the “falling away of body and mind.” This is absolute samadhi, single-pointedness of mind. In single-pointedness there is no observer. There’s no awareness of time, self, or other. However, we can’t ope

In the Japanese art of this period we see the emergence of wabi, sabi, aware, and yugen—qualities that have become synonymous with the Zen aesthetic. Wabi is a sense of loneliness or solitude. Sabi is the suchness of ordinary objects, the basic, unmistakable uniqueness of a thing in and of itself. Aware is a feeling of nostalgia, a longing for the