The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life

Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art. LEONARDO DA VINCI

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’

“Whole body and mind seeing,” as Master Dogen refers to it, is the total merging of subject and object, of seer and seen, of self and other.

Koans are designed to short-circuit the intellectual process and to open up the intuitive aspects of our consciousness. To understand the vitality of koan study, one must understand that the question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” for example, is not a riddle or a paradox. It’s a question that has to do with the most basic truth. It’s n

In the sixth century C.E., Bodhidharma, considered to be the first ancestor of the Zen lineage, put forth the four points that define Zen: Zen is a special transmission outside the scriptures, With no reliance on words and letters. A direct pointing to the human mind, And the realization of enlightenment.

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things. EIHEI DOGEN

Venture into the landscape without expectations. Let your subject find you.When you approach it, you will feel resonance, a sense of recognition.

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.

We eat but we don’t taste, we listen but we don’t hear, we love but we don’t feel. We spend our lives lost in our heads.