CD#00 Pilot issue: introducing Creative Dharma
Creative Dharma, a newsletter? What’s this all about?
CD#00 • June 2020
WELCOME, DEAR READER
A very warm welcome to the pilot issue of Creative Dharma, a newsletter
This newsletter is an experiment, the outcome from conversations among supporters of The Tuwhiri Project around the world on the phone, by email and on Zoom. Conversations that turned into a coronavirus lockdown project steered by a guy who lives on a hill overlooking the harbour in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. ⁂
Taking part in the conversation
CLICK or PRESS on the ‘Leave a comment’ button and your message will be posted as a comment to this issue of the newsletter; you can also leave a comment on the web page for this newsletter here:
https://creativedharma.substack.comEMAIL newsletter@creativedharma.org or Reply to the email of this newsletter and what you send will be seen only by the editors. ⁂
DEVELOPING CREATIVITY
So, what’s this all about?
By Ramsey Margolis (Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand) and
Brad Parks (Santa Barbara, California, USA)
Our intention is to engage with meditators who are interested in bringing creativity into their dharma practice, and to invite the participation of artists who would like to engage creatively with the dharma, bringing meditative sensibility into their practice of art – writing, music, painting, sculpture, video, photography, performance, and more. Out of this process, we will curate the contributions received and create a monthly newsletter. Our aim is to offer something dynamic, collaborative, evocative, and surprising.
Why are we doing this? Well, there’s a slightly better chance of averting climate catastrophe, we felt, if a few people were to come together and create a small, vibrant and active community. We saw the need for a newsletter that engaged with those who appreciate and choose to share their knowledge and experience of a creative, secular approach to the dharma – the teachings of the historical Buddha, Gotama, and recent, secular riffs on them. Then we decided to connect with creative artists who have an interest in how meditation practice and the dharma might help them be present and engage more deeply with their art. This newsletter is the result.
Let’s face it, acknowledging and resisting the power of greed, hatred and delusion can empower each of us to be more creative, open and compassionate. And that can’t be a bad thing.
Why did we name it ‘Creative Dharma, a newsletter’? In conversation, a Tuwhiri supporter observed that while ‘secular Buddhism’ – reimagining the ideas and practices of the tradition so as to address conditions in our contemporary world – has opened up a set of ideas that may or may not be widely acceptable, ‘creative dharma’ suggests tasks to be actively accomplished in potentially innovative and influential ways.
We will explore how the entire range of artistic expression may be inspired by spiritual practice, not only those familiar images of iconic religious figures. Using the term ‘creative dharma’, in future newsletters we will set out many of the key secular Buddhist (or secular dharmic) insights in ways that are accessible, clear, and engaging.
Creatively.
In a Tricycle article from 1994, Stephen Batchelor wrote:
‘Rather than remaining the discrete preserve of the rare spiritual genius, how might creative imagination be released into the hands of every practitioner? Could we envisage a democracy of the imagination, in which each individual ceases to be a passive recipient of spiritual truths and becomes instead their active creator?’
Both these questions resonate deeply with us. They affirm our experience of secular Buddhism, which we, and others, first encountered in 2006. For us, it confirmed that a contemporary approach to Buddhism can be a creative, demanding, yet also practical and authentic approach to dharma practice.
More recently, speaking in Cambridge, England, last year, Stephen Batchelor suggested that ‘when we practise the dharma creatively, it’s an art in itself, in that we allow the imagination to run freely in ways that are not necessarily predictable, logical or rational, and so it becomes a response from our whole being, from the heart. Our use of the imagination,’ he said, ‘can be thought of as a way of being in the world that goes beyond concepts, theories and doctrines.’
It is in this spirit that we will be examining creative dharma.
We’ll encourage contributors to these newsletters to explore the many ways in which a creative dharma can be an aesthetically rich and personally fulfilling way of practising the dharma, as well as contributing to the development of artistic forms.
The world is going through the most severe social and economic crisis in living memory. How can we respond creatively to such conditions, in these difficult times? What would you like to contribute to this conversation? Click reply to this email to leave a comment, or send us an email. ⁂
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. – Maya Angelou
ART & DHARMA
Exploring art and secular dharma
By Rupert Bozeat (London, England)
I am a retired university lecturer in design currently living in London. Last November, I completed the two-year Bodhi College secular dharma course with Stephen Batchelor.
Since my earliest exploration of Buddhism and dharma I have been intrigued and puzzled by the apparent lack of an arts element. Art and creativity have been central to my life and I presumed that creativity would be an aspect of dharma. Despite asking a number of prominent practitioners I have failed to find a dharma group or practice focused on exploring links with the visual arts. The Royal Drawing School ran a mindful drawing course that I attended, and I have done a few sessions of Zen calligraphy, but neither approach focused on how dharma can be explored through western art practice.
Lacking any established group/practice, I have been developing what I am calling drawing meditation or mindful drawing, inspired by The Zen of seeing by Fredrick Frank, the resource I have found most resonates with my approach. I ran a week-long retreat on mindful drawing in Italy with five participants from an art and or meditation practice background and was hoping to run a followup this June. That has obviously been put on hold. I am currently running a weekly Zoom version, and have created a website with exercises and background on the ideas I am exploring at:
I have begun posting videos of drawings and exercises on a mindful drawing meditation YouTube channel:
youtube.com/channel/UCTiFh3Hvbe6NUrkDTIK_xLQ/videos
I also have started an Instagram account @drawing.meditation with the hope of finding like-minded individuals.
Following a lead from Stephen Batchelor, I have been looking at paintings in relation to dharma. Being blessed with access (temporarily truncated) to some of the finest paintings on the planet, I have been exploring how dharma finds expression in and through painting. I will be posting short essays on this on:
and I invite readers of this newsletter with a similar outlook and interest to contact me at rgbozeat@gmail.com or in a comment on these essays and/or on any of the other platforms. Given all of the above, you can see why I found the announcement of this newsletter too good an opportunity to miss! ⁂
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones. – John Cage
SYMPOSIUM
Putting art making back on the map
You may not have come across this: a few years ago, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies organised a four-day dharma and arts symposium for artist-practitioners with the theme, ‘Putting art making back on the map’. Those present examined the intersections of artistic expression, Buddhism, and dharma practice.
Among the people taking part were David McMahon, Gay Watson, Julie Puttgen, Mirka Knaster, Stephen Batchelor, Roshi Pat O’Hara, Roz Driscoll, Ruth Ozeki and William Edelglass.
Over a four-day period in early 2016, artists shared their work, participants heard personal narratives of creation and expression in relation to dharma practice, and there was discussion of the ethics of art and art-making as a form of practice, as well as more scholarly considerations of the historical and philosophical contexts for art, expression and image-making within Buddhist culture and practice.
Some of the presentations can be viewed on the BCBS website; the first of three pages from this symposium is at:
buddhistinquiry.org/article/putting-art-making-back-on-the-map-dharma-and-arts-symposium-at-bcbs
Were you there? What was it like to take part, and what changed in your practice of the dharma, or your practice of art after the event concluded? ⁂
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards. – Arthur Koestler
CREATIVITY IN MEDITATION, CREATIVITY IN THE DHARMA
This is the first of several articles on creative dharma and its connection with the arts. Keep an eye on your Inbox on the 1st of each month, and if you can’t see this newsletter look in the spam, social and promotions folders (if you have them).
How might we connect creative meditation practices with creative dharma?
By Ramsey Margolis (Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand) and
Brad Parks (Santa Barbara, California, USA)
What is the relationship between a creative, experience-based, secular open awareness meditation practice – one that is followed by reflection, journaling, and discussion – and a creative approach to the dharma?
Since you’re reading this, we’re guessing you have an established meditation practice. Or perhaps you’ve made art in one or more media and you want to bring the sensibility gained in meditative practice into your art. Not so long ago our practice may have reflected a strenuous and ambitious effort to ‘escape the cycle of birth and death’, to enter into a perfect changeless condition. Now, though, we may find ourselves wanting to understand and appreciate our immersion in the rich web of life through the cultivation of awareness and compassion.
Where do we find a like-minded community with others who are willing to take the necessary risks that honest exploration requires, and what do we do to nourish our curiosity and commitment, together and on our own? When we look around, much of what passes for ‘Buddhism’ can strike us as somewhat tired and formulaic.
Could the cutting edge of dharma practice be discovered through a combination of creativity and relational dharma? One that allows us to find ways to develop and apply our human capacities for imagination and relationship towards reducing the suffering of all beings in our shared world? This kind of approach could expand our horizons and enlarge our field of action, while not losing touch with our ethical foundation.
It’s this question of ‘the cutting edge’ in meditation and art that we’d like to examine with you in the coming months, and we’re keen to read and reflect on your responses to what’s on offer in this newsletter. Perhaps you may be inspired to create something – an image, a poem, a song, a sculpture, an essay, a performance – that you’d like to share.
Creative dharma will only be developed in community, and those communities will be composed of individuals who are willing to express their unique and sometimes idiosyncratic talents in aid of human flourishing. An engaging conversation between meditation and art will be something we create together, and this newsletter will provide one space where this dialogue can occur.
When European explorers sailed to Asia in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, they had no idea that the traditions and practices they were coming across in communities as far apart as China and Sri Lanka had the same essential core. When the teachings of Gotama, the historical Buddha, travelled from the place where Nepal and northern India meet now, south into India and Sri Lanka, west into Pakistan and Afghanistan, north into Tibet, China and Mongolia, and then onwards to Korea and Japan, east and south into Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam – these teachings changed with each new encounter.
Rituals, beliefs and cosmologies were absorbed and digested to meet the needs of local conditions, cultural idiosyncrasies and the particular economic and historical realities. The result of these many adaptations is the richness of teachings we find today grouped with the label ‘Buddhism’. Wherever we are in the world, we too are adding to this richness.
Like all the previous generations of dharma practitioners, we too need to make these teachings and practices our own. Most importantly, if we want the wisdom that the dharma offers us to endure in a changing world, we will need to embody in our practice some of the best values of our era, because in essence this practice is about clarifying what our values are, and bringing them to life. Values such as inclusiveness, as against the scourge of discrimination based on inherited status, skin colour, gender, sexual and religious orientation. Our creative dharma communities must not be gated communities, but more like an open sunlit park where we can gather and enjoy the company of others in fruitful dialogue and in silence.
As contemporary dharma practitioners we recognise the central value of bringing creativity into our daily activities and our personal relationships. And we want the structures of our organisations to reflect our civic, voluntary and democratic values. In other words, we want our practice to be appropriate for today, for the worlds we live in and want to live in, both intimate and public.
This approach will make the dharma more relevant than simple transplants of earlier versions of the many Buddhist traditions. We can be pragmatic and down-to-earth in the development of our communities, with an orientation that reflects the perspectives of its members: if you were to take the rules of a tennis club and repurpose them for a creative dharma community, and that works, then fine.
That said, since we seem to need some raw materials, we might want to start with something that’s on offer now. We have access to Tibetan Buddhism, Japanese Zen, Korean Son, the Theravada in varied iterations, and so on. Each of these contains so much poetry, so much philosophy. Or do we start over?
We can never go back to the ‘original’ teachings. What are widely agreed by scholars to be the earliest teachings were chanted by monastics for a few hundred years before being written down to become available to us in the Pali canon and the Āgama canon. In English translation they contain more than 10,000 teachings that have been attributed to Gotama or his close companions.
These texts are understood to be talks that Gotama gave to those who came to listen, and his responses to their questions. The fact that these discourses had been committed to memory by generations of practitioners is a remarkable multigenerational accomplishment. Gotama didn’t speak Pali or any of the languages of the Āgama canon, by the way; he is likely to have spoken a language known today as Magadhan.
You may not be surprised when we state that much of what is found in the Pali canon can also be found in other religious traditions that were present in northern India 2,500 years ago. How then might we discern what Gotama taught his followers, from what came later? What creative transformation did these teachings undergo as they travelled through centuries and across continents and seas, through the human mind and heart?
Have there been additions, and deletions over the centuries? Yes. Most definitely, and we are now part of that ceaselessly changing tradition. We’ll go into this in next month’s Creative dharma, a newsletter. ⁂
Do you have a friend who might find this of interest?
You may wish to encourage them to subscribe.
LETTERS
When asked why they subscribed to a newsletter that examined creativity and the dharma, people sent responses many and varied. Here are excerpts from just two.
I
The topic is very interesting. I approached meditation thanks to music and in particular to the theme of improvisation. I play jazz piano and I was lucky enough to play with professionals even though I never had the courage to think of being a professional musician. I know that the experience of meditation is very close to that of improvisation, so perhaps we will have the opportunity to deepen the topic.
Stefano La Fontana, Orsenigo, Italy
II
I saw the link to the newsletter on a Facebook post. I have been quite interested in the past two years in the relationship between meditation and creativity, and discussing the topic with a few dharma friends. So I guess I am just interested in understanding more about creativity in general, more specifically creative awareness and applied creativity. I look at it more from a pragmatic perspective, thinking creative thinking is needed in order to tackle the issues in the 21st century. I guess artistry 😊 but you asked 😛. I’m looking forward to reading newsletter and sharing it with friends!
Karla Medrano, Leiden, The Netherlands
Okay, that’s it for the pilot issue. Expect articles on how reflective meditation is a creative practice, on why it’s more useful for our creativity to be oriented around four tasks than the ‘Four Noble Truths’, on ethics and creative dharma, artists who meditate, and much more.
What would you like to see in future newsletters? Is there anything you’d like to write, or you’d like us to write about?
Let us know what creative dharma (the notion) and Creative Dharma, a newsletter suggest to you. As for us, we’d like to see contributions from a more and more diverse range of artists and practitioners.
Replies to this email are posted as a comment to this issue of the newsletter. You can also send an email to newsletter@creativedharma.org and share our content on social media (we’d very much appreciate that, thank you).
Looking forward to seeing you again in a month from now. ⁂
Am not sure if this qualifies for inclusion, but my own experiment with Creative Dharma is an 11-minute audio-visual video collaboration entitled BUTTERFLY DREAM BUFFALO THUNDER, which takes Chuang Tzu's butterfly dream as a launching pad (and recurring theme) for synthesis of Buddhism, Taoism, Pre-Socratic Greek Philosophy, and Native American spirituality. For those who might have an interest, here's the link ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMUxLol0-pc
Keep posting.