Art, Creativity and Spiritual Practise

As an architect my job is a strange combination of project management and creative thinking. Lately I have wanted to strengthen my creative side and as architecture in its built form has some major limitations, I have been trying to combine my work with visual arts. When attempting to realize this vision I have come across a strange reluctance which is probably linked to some deep rooted fear of failure that has to do with stepping out of my zone of comfort.

I think art is about breaking one's boundaries and not being afraid of putting your self on the line. To be able to create something moving, one cannot be afraid to connect with the emotional stuff and the subconscious. So there is some connection to spiritual practises.

Also IMHO truly creative ideas come out of silence. The discursive mind just goes around in circles and is stuck in its preconceived ideas. This has recently led me to experiment with couple of approaches to enhance my creative potential. I may write more about that if people find this thread interesting.

If any form of art is your hobby or profession, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on creative process in general and ways of combining of art and spiritual practise.

As someone who has dabbled in the art world, ( mostly paintings ) I have had experienced, especially lately, creative ideas spring up from what seems like some where beyond the body/mind. I think it is important to not claim these as your own, and to see it as the universe ( Rigpa ) giving birth to form, via the senses and cognition. All of which are ultimately empty of any inherent existence.
In other words, let it flow. Although i think it is important to stress that you do have the option of being the editor of all this.

Hope this helps, Steve.

This sounds like a promising thread!
I draw, write, do graphic design and conceive of communication strategies for work. Just sitting there with a blank piece of paper and just writing down (or drawing) whatever inspiration comes up has proven to be a great meditation for me. Dreams also provide rich building materials.

When I started noting things as much as possible during the day I was a bit afraid that this would mean I would get so focused on the 'real-world-out-there' that my impromptu inspirations would suffer from it, but luckily I have found that the contrary seems to be the case.

I play guitar in an old-time, Southern Appalachian string band. I've always had a big problem, though, with excessive self-consciousness and stage fright whenever I play any kind of break. Last night, I was surprised to see how calm and steady I felt.
I have definitely ramped up the meditation lately, and this seems to be the only possible explanation for the change. It makes sense that as the mind moves more easily into experiential, rather than narrative, mode, you'd see an improvement in something like this. I noted in the car on the way over to practice and even tried to note a bit while playing the guitar and banjo. Interesting!

"I have had experienced, especially lately, creative ideas spring up from what seems like some where beyond the body/mind. I think it is important to not claim these as your own, and to see it as the universe ( Rigpa ) giving birth to form, via the senses and cognition. All of which are ultimately empty of any inherent existence.
In other words, let it flow. Although i think it is important to stress that you do have the option of being the editor of all this.

-Steve."

That was nicely put Steven! I could not agree more.

Do you have any particular method to cultivate a productive state when you work? Do you use any mind tricks that you have learned through spiritual practise to get ideas or to develop them further?

Many years ago I used lucid dreaming in finding solutions to some specific tasks, but there were too many limitations in that approach, although the experiences were often more vivid than real life. Now I have experimented with getting into solid 5th Pure Land Jhana and let dream like images arise and pass (4th jhana also works quite nicely). Sometimes it seems like I am wandering around in a dream world looking at whatever comes up. At other times when I am working on some particular task, I try to control the images a bit more by picturing a canvas in front of me and looking how it changes all the time. For me this kind of practise seems to loosen up things a little and gets me more in tune with my subconscious.

Antero.

[Edit:grammar]

I'm actually going to be studying fine art this year in NY so this will be my career. I find that a lot of times inspiration comes while meditating unintentionally. Something interesting that happens to me is that when I meditate and have dissolution of certain blockages that creativity flows better, its as if creativity gets stuck in the body and then gets released through awareness. High energy states, like the A&P, can make me very creative and think of many ideas, yet I can't settle down enough to carry them out. I guess this is where tranquility practice comes in.

"I think art is about breaking one's boundaries and not being afraid of putting your self on the line. To be able to create something moving, one cannot be afraid to connect with the emotional stuff and the subconscious."

This is well said and rings true for me as a jazz musician, Antero. I'm very interested in this topic; please share more about your recent experiments! I sense a strong connection between my music and my spiritual practice both in performance settings and in individual practice.

In performance, we improvise based on a shared form (the melody and harmony of the tune). While each instrument has a particular role, everyone's performance is (ideally) affected by what everyone else is playing at that moment.
So, on the bass, while I'm improvising a walking bass line that weaves a connection between the chords, I might also respond to what the soloist is doing, the drummer's rhythmic accents, the pianist's harmonic alterations/substituions, and contribute some of these myself, etc.

I give you this quick primer to illustrate the fluid spontaneity required to play this music at the highest level. Like you say, I've also found that the discursive mind is not your best ally in the creative moment. If I think about it too much, the music sounds contrived and the moment will have passed by the time I respond to it. Ideally, everyone in the band has spent enough time absorbing the language of the music through listening and practice that when the time comes, you can just play.
So there is an element of letting go; letting go any preconceived notions of how the tune should go and any selfish desires that do not serve the music.

The process over the past couple of years for me has been learning to listen to the inner sense of what the music needs rather than the intellectual. There is a feeling to it.

The most obvious influence of my spiritual practice on music thus far has been in the lessening of negative judgment.
I am very judgmental by nature and it used to be a big obstacle for me in music. If I didn't like someone's playing, it would really get to me and would sometimes be apparent to the audience.

This has changed dramatically since I got stream entry. Some time after 1st path, I found that I could sometimes play from a state that was fully involved in the music, bringing lots of excitement and energy but with zero judgment. None. I would have lots of fun and have no idea of how it sounded. Very cool.

Lately I have been more detached on the bandstand. My awareness is somehow more continuous and panoramic.
Over the past couple of weeks I sometimes find playing happening automatically.
There is something tactile about this. I watch my hands move but it's "I'm" not the one doing it. There is also greater clarity in the mind, like some bandwidth has been freed up.
Staying aware while playing used to be a challenge but last night I found that I had tons of mind power (?) while playing.

I could write a lot more about the parallels between spiritual practice and individual music practice but I'll end the ramble here for now.

I've wondered sometimes where creative limitations come from. I wondered about this because when I was 13, fiddling around with piano, I found I had easy finger dexterity and could play blues riffs really fast. The wierd thing is, I literally had no sense of what rythm was. I understood chord changes and improvising and, with an elcectric organ, that got me into a rock band. But I actually wondered how everyone knew when to change chords. They'd say "listen to the d*mn drums!" and I was still clueless. At some point I got it, a real light bulb experience, but it was very hard for me to do it reliably and took the steam out of my junior high riffing.

At home I would pound on the piano for hour or two playing as fast as I wanted and hoping to find some rythm in it. Once, while repetitively playing much the same thing over and over for an hour or so, I went into a trance and had a dream/vision of a black musician playing honkey tonk in a smokey basement bar, and at that moment it was me. My arms and fingers were alive with rythm. I couldn't believe it. It only lasted for a couple of minutes but now I had felt it.

I'm still rythm challenged and have some kind of diagnosis that supposedly explains it. But how to explain those minutes when I totally wasn't. To this day I can tell when I have a certain inspiration and often jump on the piano to enjoy a chance to experience some rythmic competency. Other times I'm kind of hopeless. So only play when I feel the energy.

So I guess my question is, supposedly we're limited by our genetics, bodys, brains. But what about when we're not?

Very interesting, guys! Thanks!

"That was nicely put Steven! I could not agree more.

Do you have any particular method to cultivate a productive state when you work? Do you use any mind tricks that you have learned through spiritual practise to get ideas or to develop them further?

"

Antero, i really think the best thing is to just let it be. What comes up is what comes up. If nothing comes for the moment, then thats how it is.

Total acceptance of what is ! Other wise its more contrived and less pure.

"So I guess my question is, supposedly we're limited by our genetics, bodys, brains. But what about when we're not?" - kacchapa

Nice question. No answers here though.

"Antero, i really think the best thing is to just let it be. What comes up is what comes up. If nothing comes for the moment, then thats how it is." - stephencoe100

Exactly! Not making a big thing about a dry spell usually let's it pass easier.

'Like you say, I've also found that the discursive mind is not your best ally in the creative moment. If I think about it too much, the music sounds contrived and the moment will have passed by the time I respond to it. Ideally, everyone in the band has spent enough time absorbing the language of the music through listening and practice that when the time comes, you can just play.'
- Nadav

I really love your clear descriptions of performing artist's way of approaching this topic! In your line of work you literally have to put your Self on the line. There is not much you can do to hide possible errors'¦ Anyway it seems to me that from the silence comes the most appropriate reaction to any situation. This is something I have been trying to cultivate and integrate into various aspects of my life lately.

'The process over the past couple of years for me has been learning to listen to the inner sense of what the music needs rather than the intellectual. There is a feeling to it.'
- Nadav

I have also noticed that during the past year my way of doing things have started to shift from the intellectual to instinctive. For a person who has always played it safe, this has been a radical change for me.

"Over the past couple of weeks I sometimes find playing happening automatically.
There is something tactile about this. I watch my hands move but it's "I'm" not the one doing it. There is also greater clarity in the mind, like some bandwidth has been freed up."
- Nadav

Nice! I would be interested in hearing more about how do you prepare yourself for a performance. Do you do any type of practise before, during and after the show? Or do you just surrender to each moment and let everything flow?

"Antero, i really think the best thing is to just let it be. What comes up is what comes up. If nothing comes for the moment, then thats how it is.

Total acceptance of what is ! Other wise its more contrived and less pure.

- Stephen"

Great answer! I guess that if I want to integrate my spiritual practise and my hobby, accepting the situation is not a bad way to start

"I have also noticed that during the past year my way of doing things have started to shift from the intellectual to instinctive. For a person who has always played it safe, this has been a radical change for me." -Antero

That's a good way to put it - intellectual to instinctive. It's interesting because I'm still very analytical and pedantic, only now it's almost entirely after/before the fact, rather than me getting tripped up about it while playing.

"I would be interested in hearing more about how do you prepare yourself for a performance. Do you do any type of practise before, during and after the show? Or do you just surrender to each moment and let everything flow?"

Interesting question. I don't have a set routine for this. Before a show/gig, I usually have some time to sit around and relax, and probably do whatever my current practice is at that time. During a performance, until recently I didn't have the "bandwidth" to sustain any kind of deliberate practice, so I'd try to just stay aware. I really don't get a break as a bass player - as long as the song is going on, I'm playing. Unless it's a drum solo. I've used these little breaks (during drum solos) to refresh my awareness. I've found myself spontaneously noting, shifting into the witness, or watching eye flutterings in these moments. I do a lot of playing with my eyes closed so it's not weird for me to listen to the drummer with eyes closed.

As I mentioned, things have been opening up more lately. I find myself with a wider perspective while playing. My musical ear has also improved lately (hearing the way the pianist plays the harmony, for example) but I'm not sure what effect if any meditation has had on this. I am excited to see where this goes for me - the connection between meditation and music. I'm especially curious about performance while in direct mode/PCE when that becomes available. I bring a lot of intensity/energy to the bandstand, which seems to be fueled by emotional involvement in the music so I'm curious how this would change.

I've tended to be a bit wary about claims of spiritual practice inspiring artistic creativity. I suspect that it can contribute ultimately to a wise creativity; I suspect also that spiritual practice might (on the other hand) ultimately draw someone away from art.

An early stage of my own mediation practice led to arising of a very important realization for me: that I would never write a piece of music that would "satisfy" me. And with that realization, I felt measurably free... from our cultural mythology of the self-driving, masochistic sense of what great artistry is supposed to be.

A next major stage I can recall was increasing nervousness about my meditation. I began to fear that the meditation practice was undermining my artwork. My artwork was built around an emotional intensity, around an artistic mythology the most profound artistry has something of the emotionally extreme about it. As that emotional extremity began to dissolve, where would my art come from? After my presumed first A&P, my artistic identity was at sea... it took me two years to find a new direction for my work. I remember asking: "If I had to choose between artistic excellence and wise emotional health, which would I choose?" It was important moment that I responded, "I choose wisdom and emotional health -- let the artist identity die if it has to." Actually, the artist identity did have to die, to be replaced with a different kind of identity that chooses to actualize itself in art making, but (increasingly) realizes its self-worth is not defined by art making.

I can't (or haven't yet found) a way to stay present with and conscious of body sensations and truly engage in composing at the same time. Some people claim being lost in the flow of artistic creation is being akin to meditating, but it certainly seems to me to be something different very distant from meditation -- or at least from 1st-gear work.

By the way, performers in particular here might be interested to read "Effortless Mastery" by Kenny Werner -- kennywerner.com/ Provides specific exercises for learning to perform in what we might call a witness state.

I have created good, bad and indifferent art, all dependent on who ever is viewing them at the time.
i've changed my mind several times about how i view the same piece of art. Art that i've thought was a master piece, i have later come to curl up with embarrassment about and vise versa.

"My musical ear has also improved lately (hearing the way the pianist plays the harmony, for example) but I'm not sure what effect if any meditation has had on this. I am excited to see where this goes for me - the connection between meditation and music. I'm especially curious about performance while in direct mode/PCE when that becomes available. I bring a lot of intensity/energy to the bandstand, which seems to be fueled by emotional involvement in the music so I'm curious how this would change.
- Nadav"

Please keep us up to date how your quickly evolving practise is affecting your professional career. I think details of this kind are very interesting indeed.

I have never played an instrument and don't consider myself to be more musical than an average person. However there have been some interesting developments in how I experience music. When I started to experience the subtle vibrations in the body, I noticed how my sensitivity to music increased tremendously affecting my emotions in new ways. Lately if I listen to music that matches my mood I may even feel how each note is affecting the inner vibrations in different parts of the body. It is easy to feel how vibrations and emotions are all connected and flowing.

I would like to challenge the popular myth that art and creativity is comes mainly from suffering and artist needs '˜dark emotions' to be truly creative.

'Suffering is justified as soon as it becomes the raw material of beauty.'
- Jean-Paul Sartre

On the other hand:

'It is striking how close ties are between Rinzai Zen and art. In many religions art is considered merely to be an illustration of the far more important spiritual aspect. However, the Zen arts are seen as a means in a quest for Satori. There is, accordingly, a specific connection in Rinzai Zen between art and meditation. Heinrich Dumoulin described this connection as follows: 'The Zen arts are inspired by meditation and the meditation experiences manifest themselves in arts'. [1] Zen wants us to make ourselves free and untrammelled, and sees the practice of art as a way of attaining the awakening and liberation of the self [2] Yet the self may not be something we cling to or become poisoned by. Zen wants us to get in touch with the '˜inner working of our being', without seeking refuge in the '˜self' or resorting to anything external or superadded. [3]'

- Helen Westgeest: Zen in the fifties '“ interaction in art between east and west, page 13

[1] 'Die Zen-Künste sind von der Mediation beseelt, die Meditationserfahrungen offenbaren sich in den Künsten'. Dumoulin in WALDENFELS, 1980, pp 15 and 16.
[2] Interview with Ruosuke OHASHI in Kyoto on 9 November 1993.
[3] SUZUKI, 1991 (1949/1934), pp.41, 43, 44 and 64

(Cont.)

(Cont.)

'Direct experience of here and now

In Zen, Satori is acquired by the intense experience of here and now. We can generalize and say that the modern artists who were been researched, also expressed a direct experience of existence in their work. Several artist (including Cage, Geiger, Götz and Klein) were of the opinion that when, in turn, a spectator looked at their works, his awareness could also be heightened. The public can perceive the artist's interest in the intense experience of the moment in the highly expressive rendering of lines, comprising the traces of vehement action, as well as in the effect of the colour fields or in the everyday actions and objects of '˜living art'.

The direct experience of existence was also linked with the artistic process in the form of intense concentration during work, adding a ritualistic character to the creation of art-works. It was a disciplined ritual, comparable in a way with the practise of the Zen arts. The artists in question differed, with their preference for concentration and disciple, from the Surrealists, who tried, for instance by using drugs, to avoid all awareness.'

- Ibid., page 221

I've always been particularly fond of this quote by author Barry Hannah:

"Those that don't avert their eyes are the real artists. It is concentration, that's what Dostoevsky said. Concentration is what the artist is about: he can look, and look, and look, and look. He carries no brief. He will tell you everything he sees. This sensibility will overcome every tendency to capsulize or moralize or philosophize; it is why, despite the themes and philosophy announced in behalf of an author by others, the actual art experience is much more whole."

I wanted to bump this up and see anyone else has anything new to add to this topic.

I've noticed a few things about my music playing lately. As always it's impossible to say what's been affected by meditation rather than having spent more time with my instrument, etc. I imagine that a non-meditating musician could identify with most if not all of my descriptions. Ultimately it's all one practice anyway.

Playing music used to involve a lot of effort. I used to have to bring a towel with me to every gig because I'd sweat so much. While I was playing, often with my eyes closed, I wouldn't have much processing power left for any kind of meditation technique, though usually enough for judging the music, the other players, and other wandering thoughts.

These days, I find myself much more relaxed while playing. Playing, at its best, is effortless. Most gigs I don't end up sweaty anymore. Playing happens automatically, without taking up as much of my conscious processing power as it used to. I've played around with this lately and found that I can do vipassana (even some noting) while playing, and still keep the form of the song. This is while I'm playing an accompaniment part, so though it's still improvised, it's not as involved as a solo. I don't think I could note while playing an improvised solo. All of this is just for curiosity... my playing is probably better when I'm not trying to note body sensations and mind states.

I've noticed how thinking about my playing while I'm playing trips me up. As soon as I start to think about the form of the song ("is this the 1st A or 2nd A? when's the bridge coming?"), I'm likely to mess it up or hesitate (which leads to hesitation in others). If I just play, then everything happens when it should.

This is an interesting thread. I come from a musical background myself. I play mainly acoustic guitar, but also piano / keyboard, djembe, and a little bass guitar. I have noticed a few things happening when it comes to writing, performing, improvisation, or just jamming, and how this seems to relate to my spiritual practice.

If I remember back to about 8 years ago, the main driving force behind my writing music and playing guitar by myself at home, was a sort of self therapy thing, where I would work out or address psychological conflict and emotion. Most of my songs were based on some mental perspective of critique of how the world affected "me". Most of the actual writing process was analytical, pattern and thinking oriented. I was highly self conscious about playing for others or how others judged what I wrote.

As I became more skilled and natural at playing and improvisation this shifted greatly, and my spiritual practice took this to the next level. I started jamming with people more frequently, and improvisation started coming naturally. I began to start entering concentrated states of "flow" while improvising on guitar, and I experienced states of flow while playing in drum circles, sometimes there was no "me" playing.. just hands playing the djembe.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29

When I started getting really serious about vipassana noting and my practice, making it my priority in my life, my interest in music dropped off dramatically. The old motivation behind my music, expressing my suffering basically, and creating soft mellow music that was therapeutic to me, began to fade. After I started having some success in my practice, experiencing prolonged periods of equanimity, and euphoria / bliss, etc... my interest returned a bit in music and the motivation was more about trying to share my mental state with others, bring them over to my side with music.