“Kaliflowers” Digital Painting by Manoj

Recently I purchased a “Dreamthon 500”. If you are not familiar with this machine, it can most easily be described as a “dream transcriber”. Very simply, you hook yourself up to several electrodes leading to the machine and in the morning any dreams you had during the night are transcribed and can be printed out via any ink jet printer. Below is the transcript for a dream I had last week where I found myself serving as a moderator at a symposium on “Zen and Creativity”. The members of the panel discussion consisted of some of the big names in the world of Zen and I remember feeling a bit intimidated as I tried to lead a fruitful discussion on the topic.

Dreamathon Transcription #33, Sept. 27, 2008, 5:15 AM

Manoj: I’m delighted to be here tonight to host such a distinguished panel. This is truly a “dream team”.

Panelists: Mumbling and polite laughter from several participants around the table. (a barely audible “hey Oj, you the Man, “ from one unidentified member).

Manoj: Hey it’s my dream and I can pun if I want to, (breaking into song; “You would pun too, if it happened to you”). Anyway, let’s get started. Throughout the centuries, art and Zen have been intimately connected. I see we have D.T. Suzuki here, the author of Zen and Japanese Culture. Mr. Suzuki, could you give us some insight into this connection between art and Zen as developed in Japan?

D.T. Suzuki: Yes. “The artist’s world is one of free creation, and this can come only from intuitions directly and immediately rising from the isness of things, unhampered by senses and intellect. He creates forms and sounds out of formlessness and soundlessness. To this extent, the artist’s world coincides with that of Zen.”

Jake Sensei: “In general I agree with D.T. but would add that while the creative act may involve times when “the senses and intellect” are momentarily bypassed, the intellect is an essential part of who we are as artists and human beings and that spiritual evolution involves an integration of these faculties.”

Manoj: So would you both agree that at some level the aim of the artist and the Zen practitononer is the same?

D.T.S.: Yes. “ What differentiates Zen from the arts is this: While the artists have to resort to the canvas and brush or mechanical instruments or some other mediums to express themselves, Zen has not need of things external, except ‘the body’ in which the Zen-man is so to speak embodied….the Zen-man transforms his own life into a work of creation..”

Manoj: I assume this applied to “Zen-woman” as well?

D.T.S.: Yes, Yes, of course. I’m sorry I forgot what century it is. But, please let me finish. “While art is art and has its own significance, the Japanese make use of it by turning it into an opportunity for their spiritual development.”

Jake Sensei: “I would say that for the awakened person art and spiritual development are not separate.”

Manoj: So, along with Zazen and the various other traditional practices associated with Zen, creative pursuits can be considered a Zen practice.

How does this work?

Jake Sensei: “ By encouraging the student to practice out of his/her own natural aptitudes, the teacher is supporting both the student’s growth and the gift that students offer the world through their creative endeavors.”

John Daido Loori: “I first made a personal connection between art and Zen practices when I was asked by Maezumi Roshi to create color photographs for his book The Way of Everyday Life, which consisted of his commentaries on Dogen’s “Genjokoan”.

Manoj: Well, photographers frequently provide pictures for books and magazines and this is not usually considered a spiritual practice. What was different in this case?

Loori: “These pictures needed to go beyond simple illustration of passages and bring the teachings to life in a visual way. Isn’t this what Hakuin and Soen did in their brush paintings? Can a photograph reveal the inexpressible aspects of the teachings of Zen in a visual way? These questions became my work in the fact-to-face meetings with my teacher.”

Manoj: So your work on this project led to issues or questions that were central to your overall Zen practice and were the source of discussions with your teacher?

Loori: Yes, “As our work with the creative process evolves and we see how creativity extends beyond art into our lives, we may notice barriers that keep us from seeing in a way that’s unhindered by ideas of attitudes. These barriers pop up as we struggle to find equanimity in our art and day-to-day activities.”

Manoj: This talk of “barriers” and “struggle” doesn’t sound like much fun. Isn’t creating supposed to be fun? A lot of people say they do their art because it is “therapeutic” or “meditative for them. They talk about “flowing” or “Being in the Zone” through their creative pursuits. Is this how art supports Zen practice?

Jake Sensei: “Art is not always ‘fun’ by my definition. It can be, but it also may be the necessary avenue for a person or Zen student to express his own dissatisfaction with the world or specific life events. That’s not always ‘fun’.”

Ezra Bayda: I’d agree with Jake. “I’ve been ‘absorbed’ in a movie, been ‘in the zone’ as an athlete, at one with chopping carrots, where there is no separation between you and the carrots. It’s true that there was no sense of self, but the “no-self” experience, when we’re absorbed in activity, can also be a form of what is often described as ‘waking sleep’. At best, it’s an experience of absorption or concentration. There’s nothing wrong with these states of mind; in fact, they can foster the enjoyment of artistic creation or athletic performance. However, we can experience these states and still not be truly awake. “

Manoj: So what does it mean to be “truly awake”?

Bayda: “ I find it helpful to think of “awakeness” in terms of a continuum. At one end is “waking sleep and the realization that we are asleep often prompts one to move to the next stage which is the concentration mode. Then comes mindfulness. Both cases, are limited forms. “As we increasingly understand that practice is not just about nice states of mind induced by concentration or absorption, nor just about freeing ourselves from our personal psychological conditioning, we may move along the continuum of awareness to what is often referred to as wide open awareness”.

Jake: This is the “no point of reference” or “no separation of Shikantaza or “just sitting” practice.

Manoj: So is this wide open awareness basically the same as what we have been referring to as “no mind”, “beginner’s mind”?

Bayda. Yes. “There is a very particular sense of being – a visceral experience of presence- that can be activated by wide open awareness. There is vividness, as if you were here for the first time.” There are still problems etc. but ..”the sense of who we are, the sense of me, with all of my stories, loses its substantiality, its heaviness-and when we say “I” there is a knowing that it’s not quite the truth.”

Manoj: So I gather from what Jake, Bayda and Loori have said that while creative activities may be fun or produce “highs”, this is not really the point of incorporating our creative practice into our Zen practice.

Norman Fisher: I agree with that. “ Working with the imagination through art requires discipline. This is developed through an encounter with the materials. At first, you approach art out of passionate personal need to express your inexpressible feelings. But once you wade in, you find that the medium—the words or paint or sounds—is extremely resistant to your self-expression. Things don’t just fall into place.”

Manoj: So the resistance of whatever materials you are working with serve as Genjokoans then?

Norman Fisher: Yes, “you have to grapple with the materials, reshaping yourself to suit them. It turns out that making art is not so much self-expression as a dialogue between what we think we want to express and the materials that seem to have their own demands.”

Jake Sensei: “I think it’s fair to say that when we let go of what we want to express and just let the materials serve as conduits for what is waiting to be expressed, we are creating in a most authentic way. Authenticity is the true expression of the moment; of no interference from a deluded self. The art of the awakened person is truly free in all aspects.”

Manoj: So if one is approaching a creative pursuit as a Zen student, in addition to whatever is being created, one’s self is being re-created in a fashion that is consistent with Zen?

Suzuki: To repeat, “the Zen-man transforms his own life into a work of creation..”

Jake Sensei: “I think it is problematic to say that the person transforms his or herself. I’d reword this to say that the Zen practitioner’s life is transformed when he or she gets out of the way. The Zen artist progresses by letting go through the struggle with the materials mentioned by Norman.”

Norman Fisher: Right. “Engaging in this dialogue moves you to a degree of attentiveness and concentration beyond the private and the personal. …Art practice gives us a path into the rich and unique content of our own lives. I don’t need art to know what I think and feel. But without art, what I think and feel quickly becomes circular, self-centered, and limited. Making or appreciating art gives me a way to start with what I think and feel and then to plunge deeply enough into it that it becomes not only what I think and feel but also what anyone thinks and feels and, even beyond this ,what isn’t thought or felt at all.”

Manoj: So it sounds like art is an integral part of your Zen practice.

Norman Fisher: Well” Zen has probably saved me from myself; poetry has probably saved me from Zen…My lifelong involvement with poetry has kept me sane within a fairly narrow and rigorous life of religious practice.”

Manoj: Could you elaborate?

Fisher: “ We who are engaged in spiritual practice should never forget how painful and destructive such practice may become when our enthusiasm for the truth of whatever tradition we are pursuing becomes exclusive. Not only does narrowness of view cut us off from others who practice and believe differently than we do, it also cuts us off from ourselves.

Art provides a way to discover truth, but not the sort of truth that is handed to us already vetted. Instead, we must find it ourselves anew….We need art as a form of recreation, re-creation of ourselves and our world, a freshening of what goes on day by day in our ordinary living…..”

“Art defamiliarizes the familiar, and thereby makes it new…We can, therefore, approach our daily task with this heightened sense of things, taking care of our homes, our relationships, our communities, and ourselves with attentiveness and love—that is, as if we were artists grappling with our materials.”

Manoj: It sounds like working with creative activities as a part of our Zen Practice requires some degree of commitment so that the ego gets involved and comes up against the inevitable barriers or problems that will arise.

Norman Fisher: “A classical koan presents us with an insoluble problem. The only way to extend ourselves into that problem completely is to stop trying to solve it, in other words, to stop trying to make something of it, and simply to allow it fully to be what it is, which would necessarily mean that we would take it so personally that it would be our life.”

Manoj: So as Loori suggested, art practice really becomes a source of Zen Koans?

Jake: “As I see it our creative practices do engage our egos and because we feel drawn to these practices, they provide wonderful opportunities to examine our egos; to examine who we really are. This is why we refer to these creative practices as “Genjo Practice” at The Vista Zen Center.”

Norman Fisher: “That makes sense to me. “In Genjokoan Dogen points out that we do not need to take on some old saying of the masters in order to confront directly the issue at hand; in fact each moment of our lives, if we would let go of our definitions and protections and illusions, and lean fully into it, begs the question; ‘ What is to be done?’ ‘What is this moment after all?”

“To study Buddhism is to study the self. This means that one looks deeply and honestly at all points at the way in which one’s life actually unfolds- looks, enters, and allows. This is always interesting, always provides a path forward, no matter what it is that arises. That anything arises at all is always miracle enough, whether we like it or not, so there is no judgment or resistance necessary, and even where there is judgment or resistance there is a settling into that with appreciation and awe.”

Jake Sensei: “Life, like Koans, isn’t figured out. It’s lived, hopefully with as much awareness and integrity as possible to provide mirrors for us to learn to move through life with as little suffering as possible.”

Manoj: But, as I understand it Genjo Koans are available every where, in all aspects of one’s daily life. Is there any reason why a Zen student may want to focus on creative activities to extend their practice?

Jake Sensei: “Generally, our creative pursuits are things we do anyway, regardless of whether we are practicing Zen or not. They are things we do because they are expressions of who we are and so there is a degree of commitment to them and we keep doing them even when difficulties come up. So, they are an ideal place to move into in order to extend the awareness developed through Zazen. These activities are important to us in some way we may not be able to express in other fashions. Art for art’s sake is valid.”

Manoj: Anna, you’re a painter and a Zen student. Do you find this to be true.

Anna Douglas: “Painting is an intermediate process between sitting in silence and being fully engaged in daily activities and relationships. When we sit in meditation we are disengaged from the external world of form. When we paint we are engaging with the world of form. We actively interact with our painting. Paintings are like thoughts. They arise moment-to-moment out of the mind, but unlike thoughts they don’t disappear. They arise and remain, inviting response.”

Manoj: And I assume it is through these responses that barriers, and Koans may emerge?

Anna Douglas: “As the painting takes shape before us in color and lines and shapes, we start reacting to it: we make like it and therefore want to protect it; we may hate it and want to destroy it; we almost always try to control it, to make it fit our ideas; or we get busy interpreting its meaning. In sort, all of our reactive tendencies arise in response to lines and shapes and colors. At times I find myself reacting to my painting with as much intensity of feeling as I do to living, breathing people in my life.”

Jake: “Yes, when my works “come alive”, I know I have finished. The koan of that painting has be answered.”

Manoj: And so, how can this lead to the kind of re-creation of the self that Suzuki, Loori and Fisher Jake Sensai talk about?

Anna Douglas: “Miraculously, when I surrender my judgment or concept about how something should look, the magic of painting actually begins. A process of transformation occurs. By accepting what is, not only do I breathe life back into my very being, but the painting also begins to breathe with a vital life of its own, becoming what it wants, not what I want.”

Manoj: So there is a “letting go” happening where you go beyond who you have been up to that point?

Anna Douglas: “ Learning to paint in this way is to experience in an immediate and interactive way what it means to live with “don’t know mind.” The more I paint the less I ‘know’ about my paintings. They seem to come from a place in myself about which I have little conscious knowledge.”

Manoj: And, would you also say that you come to “know” less of your self, a sort of “forgetting the self” to use Dogen’s terms?

Anna Douglas: Yes… “Each painting has the potential—if I can keep letting go—to be a journey into a compelling and unknown world. The boundaries of my being can expand, just as they do in meditation.”

‘It’s only paper and paint,’ I try to remember when I’m caught in a particularly strong reaction to my painting…,So why are we carrying on with our judgments, our need to control, our concepts, our interpretations—all in relation to a very fragile and impermanent piece of paper?…Because that is what the mind does! It does it on the zafu. It does it in life. It does it in relation to paper and paint. Working with the painting is quite simply another way of working with the mind.”

Jake Sensei: “Well said and this is why we emphasis both sitting practice and Genjo practice at The Vista Zen Center.”

Manoj: Earlier Norman Fisher seems to suggest that this process can be activated by those who “appreciate” art as well as those who “make” art. Perhaps this is a good time to look at how this works. Maezumi Roshi wrote a book entitled “Appreciate Your Life”. I’m wondering whether there is any connection between art appreciation and the kind of appreciation that Maezumi is talking about?

Voice in the Distance, Steve……Steve

Manoj: Who is that? Who’s calling me?

Cherie: Wake up Steve, you are going to miss morning practice.

Manoj: Maybe we will have to postpone this issue for another dream. Thank you all for your participation.

Acknowledgements.

As we know, dreams often reflect waking life experiences. The fact that I have read the following books and articles may explain some of the dialogue in this particular dream.

Zen and Japanese Culture by D.T. Suzuki

The Zen of Creativity by John Daido Loori

“Saved from Freezing”, by Norman Fisher; Tricycle, Spring 2005

“The Art of Awareness”, by Ezra Bayda; Shambhala Sun, May 2006

“Painting: Engaging with the World of Form”, by Anna Douglas; Inquiring Mind, Spring 1997

“Do you want to make Something Out of It?” by Norman Fisher; http://www.everydayzen.org/index.php?Itemid=26&task=viewTeaching&topic=Writing+%2F+Art+%2F+Creativity&sort=title&option=com_teaching&id=31

Numerous Interviews with Jake Gage Sensei

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 5:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.