CD#09 I vow to live creatively, softly, kindly
April 2021
In this Creative Dharma, Brigid Lowry writes on living creatively during a year of offering loving kindness to herself, Ronn Smith sits on Gaudi’s mosaic bench and reflects on how our fragments make a person, and – as he rests in a felt sense of ease – Brad Parks examines creativity in meditation. And there’s more. ⁂
IN THIS BEAUTIFUL BROKEN WORLD WITH TENDER ACHING HEARTS
I vow to live creatively, softly, kindly
by Brigid Lowry • fremantlepress.com.au/contributors/brigid-lowry
I like Christmas. Ignoring the commercial crap, I give the season my all. It’s a time of getting together, of making cards and gifts and edible delights. It’s summer and beach and salads and ice-cream and falling asleep under a tree. It’s wearing bright colours, hats, sparkly jewels. It’s the season to celebrate and make merry, to hang out with beloveds, raising a teacup to mystery and magic, enchantment, divinity and delight.
My year of loving kindness to myself is nearly over. I’ve come a long way since I began making a conscious daily effort to be good to myself. Shame and non-acceptance are not running my show the way they used to. Life feels softer, sweeter. I’ve learned that I don’t have to apologise for being myself, and that when I treat myself with tenderness I am stronger and happier.
Seeds have been planted; however, the tree of me will need kind watering from now until forever because she is still there – the neglected girl sent to school with unbrushed hair, the frightened child whose father killed himself, the kid whose mother drank too much. The one who trudges, who just gets by. The baffled one. The sad person. The witchy critic.
These parts of me live alongside the strong woman, the funny one, the smart one, the loving mother, the joyous grandmother, the loyal friend, the dreamer, the seeker, the optimist, the writer. It’s quite a circus in there sometimes, yet I know the way forward. To stop thinking of myself as a fix-it project. To live beyond the labels. To not consolidate the self as a fixed position. Instead, to inhabit each moment fully, to be contented, to live in a simple, generous way, to appreciate the goodness around me, to stand steady in the face of difficulty.
More and more I trust that creativity and rest are my best medicines, that play is the highest form of research, as Einstein said. Creativity requires me to be open to my inner life, to allow ambiguity, to trust myself and my process. Creativity invites me to dress colourfully, to sew and draw and cook, to visit the beach and the park, to practise doing lovely things which are necessary for my healthy survival. It lies beyond seeking security, approval, comfort and control.
Under the surface of duty and habit are fresh ways of being and doing. It’s big wisdom to examine something carefully and realise that if it brings you trouble, stop doing it. This includes negative self-talk, mean-spirited behaviour, grabbing more than you need, hanging out with people who bring you down, any behaviour that exploits or demeans others, anything that wears you out or drains you.
Starting from a place of self-acceptance, moving outwards into a world that badly needs love and good energy. Extending the hand of truth, integrity and kindness to others is a deep form of self-compassion. Although we do not always see our place in the great mystery, we are not separate. We are our mother’s recipes, our neighbour’s sorrow, our friend’s memories, our dog’s friskiness. We are the last cigarette we ever smoked, the first heart we ever broke, the fireworks, the folly, the shoe abandoned at the beach.
All of this is connected in ways we will never fully understand but here we are, in this beautiful broken world with our tender aching hearts, a part of something vast and magnificent. To trust life as it is, and savour one’s part in it, what could be lovelier or kinder than that?
It has been quite a year. The things I have lived I share with you. Let us give the Buddha the last word, which always seems a wise thing to do.
You can search the tenfold universe and not find a single person more worthy of loving kindness than yourself. ⁂
A Zen student, a socialist, and a creative writing teacher, Brigid Lowry has written eight award-winning young adult books. Born in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, she lives in Perth, Western Australia. This is an excerpt from her latest book, A year of loving kindness to myself (Fremantle Press, April 2021) © Brigid Lowry 2021.
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
– Mary Oliver
OUR FIRST READERS’ MEETING
Exploring the creative intersection of art and meditation
by Ramsey Margolis • tuwhiri.nz/about • Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand and Brad Parks • creativedharma.substack.com • Santa Barbara CA, USA
The recent Creative Dharma readers’ meeting felt like the coming together of a community of people who share an interest in creativity and a secular approach to the dharma. Like buds in Spring, blossoming with the promise of beautiful and fragrant flowers.
Ronn Smith spoke on creativity and the dharma, where it comes from, and why a newsletter is a good forum for ongoing conversation. Brad Parks’s talk on the place of creativity in meditation practice is reproduced in this newsletter, updated as a result of the discussion that followed.
And Ramsey Margolis made the case for a voluntary paid subscription, with all the revenue received being given to creatives across a range of artistic mediums, as well as supporting creative dharma communities and individuals who are getting a community going. There’s more on this later in this newsletter.
In the conversation, we discovered that readers are excited about the fact that we are exploring the creative intersection of meditation and creating art, which felt good. The artists who read this newsletter work in a variety of media, and the meditators have practised in a range of traditions.
On the whole, practitioners are relieved to find a place, a venue, a publication which values openness and experimentation – a non-dogmatic approach to practice that honours and appreciates our differences.
As we look more closely at ways we can help this community develop, you can help. What would you like to see our next meeting focus on? Here are contributions from some of the participants.
❖ Bill Gayner (Toronto ON, Canada) writes:
I appreciated the recent online meeting as an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on how the newsletter is creating a space for us to explore the rich interdependent relationship between the creative processes intrinsic to both artistic expression and dharma practice. How tending the good earth of our lives, our practice can become one of bhavana, cultivation, seeds germinating and transforming into vibrant, life-giving interdependent gardens, fields and forests. I love your creative vision for Creative Dharma’s next steps.
❖ Rosie Rosenzweig (Wayland MA, USA) writes:
I’m interested in people’s lived experience during meditation and during their creative process. I’ve interviewed artists on this, and I want to hear from as many folks as possible.
➡︎ Photo by Amauri Mejía on Unsplash
❖ Scott Vradelis (Philadelphia PA, USA) writes:
It was exciting to participate in the Creative Dharma online meeting, sharing space and time with others who are curious about what it means to experience the dharma in a creative way. Exploring what it means to be creative with practice, to see practice as a creative act in itself, this brings an interesting perspective, one I am working to understand.
My personal interests move towards how the experience of art, or beauty in any form, is related to experiencing the dharma, especially within the context of the cessation of reactivity, ‘creating a space’ for action, towards appreciation and care.
Are they related, is it a viable map, and if so, how can it be supported within the canon? And does our ability to experience beauty allow us also to better understand suffering? Are they related? And then does that mean that experiencing beauty, as well as suffering (do they go hand in hand?) is related to the first task – embracing life? Is that why beauty can feel like grief? I don’t know.
❖ Susanne Franzway (Adelaide SA, Australia) writes:
It was good to hear about the different dharma/creativity experiences people are bringing to the newsletter. I think it was a great idea to field a group like this for discussion about the directions and possibilities for the newsletter, and would support the option of more meetings, maybe one or two a year.
❖ Christian Raymond (Austin TX, USA) writes:
First off, it was great to gather, even virtually to discuss issues and ideas relevant to creative dharma/contemplative arts (semantics to be sure!) and hear a range of perspectives.
As someone who regularly runs creative classes/workshops, I’ve found using breakout rooms for discussion/project development and then using the main room for ‘share outs’ can also be a great strategy to encourage participation.
One of the ideas you discussed which I’m really interested to hear more about is how CD is looking to support artists, an idea I love and is near and dear to my heart as an educator.As far as other topics for the newsletter, one central to what I do is the nature of what’s sometimes referred to as Interstitial art, which is creative work that is less definable and lives in the seams between/beyond genres and forms. For me personally, this sort of work (which my new novella in-progress is actually an example of) speaks to the unconditioned, boundary-breaking nature of what it means to go against the stream, and goes directly to the heart of the dharma.
As far as other ideas, one (you asked!) I’d love to see is the creation of an online Creative Dharma Gallery which could showcase the full gamut of the community’s work (and build community), from poetry to Extended Reality Media projects, interstitial art to interviews on how people integrate creativity into their dharma practices, etc... These could be guest curated by members of the community with expertise.
If you were at the meeting, do please let us know how you felt it went. And if you were unable to make it (perhaps you’re in Europe, where it was the middle of the night), we encourage you to write to us as well, either in an email or by leaving a comment.
You can watch a recording of the meeting here. ⁂
CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF TRICYCLE
The book of form and emptiness
A conversation around her soon-to-be-released novel between author Ruth Ozeki and Stephen Batchelor, one of several celebratory events
From Leonard Cohen to Laurie Anderson to Sonny Rollins, many great artists and innovators are also Buddhist practitioners. How does dharma practice support a creative life? Can meditation increase our capacity to be creative? ⁂
15 April • 7pm–8pm CET (Europe) OR 1pm–2pm EDT (US east coast) OR
5am–6am NZST (Aotearoa)
MORE COLOUR THAN THOUGHT POSSIBLE
The consideration of fragments
by Ronn Smith • creativedharma.substack.com • Cambridge MA, USA
The long, undulating bench, seen under the Spanish sun, is not easily forgotten. Located in Barcelona’s Park Güell, the 328-ft. cement bench is covered in ceramic shards that exhibit more colour than anyone would ever think possible. While some of the fragments are arranged in patterns, and others are assembled more randomly, the overall effect is one of intense luminosity, dazzling brilliance.
The image of this spectacular bench came to mind as I meditated after a recent dharma talk. The teacher had asked if there were any questions, and a 50-ish man indicated he had one. Although his question would eventually prove to be quite simple, he stumbled over each word as he tried to find the right language to shape his question. There was something about how to interact with another person. Something about how to handle a situation in which he found himself unable to respond in an appropriate manner. Something about how he was being perceived or judged or dismissed. For a long time, it was difficult knowing where he was going with this, or what exactly he was asking.
And then it became clear. He simply wanted to know how to ‘show up’ in a conversation when the person he was trying to talk to was making assumptions about who or what he was. He admitted that he quickly grew irritated and often angry when this occurred; he resented being reduced to a single ‘signifier’, either apparent or presumed. He felt unvalued, rejected, made to feel he had nothing to contribute. ‘What can I do about this?’ he asked. ‘How do I manage these interactions?’
⬆︎ Part of Gaudi’s bench – photo Karoly Lorentey (Flickr)
I honestly don’t recall the teacher’s response, probably because I was thinking of similar situations in my own life where a presumption about some part of my identity – my age or sexuality or professional experience, for example – negatively impacted what I had hoped would be an open, honest conversation. Some of these situations could and would be laughed off in time, others have left residual scars (which I value).
Here one could talk about clinging to a sense of self, I suppose, or self and not-self. But there was something else about this man’s situation that held my attention, suggesting it might be useful as the focus of a meditation. One of my contemplative techniques includes anchoring my sit in a creative, experiential inquiry, as described by Martine Batchelor in What is this? (Tuwhiri, 2019), which Martine co-authored with Stephen Batchelor. In this practice, the meditator returns repeatedly to the question ‘What is this?’ as a way to access ‘the whole experience of the present moment’.
As Martine writes:
If we’re using the question when we’re sitting, we just ask (inwardly, silently), ‘What is this?’. But we need to note that this practice is about questioning; it’s not a practice of answering. […] The anchor is the question, and we come back to the question again and again. You’ll notice that if you come back to the question, you come back to the whole experience of the moment.
This process of asking ‘What is this?’ will often, in my experience, open up a space in which I can work with mental proliferations more directly, sometimes more creatively. This was certainly the case when I used it to reflect on my interest in the question tendered during the Q&A period. As Martine states, this is not a practice of answering, and I have no helpful advice to offer that individual, but what showed up during the meditation was the image of that magnificent bench of brightly coloured ceramic shards and broken chinaware in Barcelona, designed by Antoni Gaudi and Josep Maria Jujol.
One can easily get lost in looking at each piece, each tiny fragment, but the entirety of the design can be appreciated only when one steps back and views the serpentine bench from a distance. It is then that the fragments can be seen to form a transcendently beautiful object designed to please the eye and, with its numerous alcoves, encourage social contact.
So, what does all this have to do with the man with the identity crisis in the Zoom room? His quandary reminded me that we sometimes get caught up, or stuck, in how people see only part of who we think we are. We see ourselves in one way; they see us in another. Sometimes this fissure is inconsequential and it doesn’t matter. But occasionally it matters a lot, and then we feel our identity – that which we might believe is our authentic self – is left unacknowledged or worse, maligned.
Buddhism and Secular Dharma have a lot to say about this, but I’m focusing not on how people perceive us or how we think other people are perceiving us, or even how we react to how we think people are perceiving us. I’m focusing on the ‘fragments’ … from a distance. I’d like to suggest that an awareness of these self-identified fragments actually provides a way of letting go of a sense of self that surfaces in those moments of reactivity with another person. In other words, can we embrace the total collection of shards, rather than lament their discrete brokenness?
Which brings to mind the mosaic ceiling of the Baptistry of Neon, in Ravenna, Italy. The octagonal building’s ceiling shows an old, bearded Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. Twelve apostles proceed around the perimeter of the central mosaic in two directions, ending with Saint Peter and Saint Paul. It was the description of this ceiling in a college course on art history that prompted my life-long fascination with mosaics. ‘We can’t really appreciate this work until it is illuminated by candlelight,’ rhapsodised the professor. ‘It’s the flickering flame of the candle over the uneven surface of the individual tiles that brings the image to life.’ Not unlike how our dharma practices give life to the totality of who we are, I now think. ⁂
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CREATIVITY IN MEDITATION
Resting in a felt sense of ease
By Brad Parks • creativedharma.substack.com • Santa Barbara CA, USA
A lightly edited version of his talk to the recent online meeting
Imagine, if you will, a world without creativity (in whatever way you understand that quality, or practice). Would the world appear as it did to Hamlet in his darkest hour: ‘weary, flat, stale and unprofitable’? A world drained of colour, vibrancy, ambiguity, emotion. Would art, science, literature, music, mathematics, the natural world survive?
Human life is permeated by creative flows and currents, inside and out, and is sometimes burdened by the painful absence of those transformative aspects of our experience. Sitting quietly and still in meditation, we encounter the full range of our thinking, feeling and sensation.
It’s very tempting to approach meditation as a technical challenge: can I sit still, can I focus on my breathing, can I let go of thoughts and avoid getting lost in their content, can I find a standpoint from which I watch it all arise and pass away? Approached in this way, our practice can easily become little more than following the rules, mastering a technique, doing it right. We may pretend to mimic a kind of scientific pursuit of clarity and precision. A noble pursuit, perhaps, but somewhat limited in scope. Are we meant to dispense with the imagination?
By contrast, can we allow ourselves in meditation to relax a bit, to drift with the current, to receive whatever appears with a kindly embrace, to give our natural curiosity some room to open and expand? Is it permissible in our meditation practice to offer a space in which our body, heart and mind are able to follow their own course, to express their distinct inclinations and languages, to join together in unexpected formations? And, if so, how do we respond to the richness and complexity of our inner experience when it’s given room to breathe?
⬆︎ Photo by Brad Parks
I’m not aware of any easy answers.
Sometimes metaphors seem like the most appropriate way to point in a new direction. For example, I might find that rather than applying strenuous effort to doing it ‘just right’, I accustom myself to ‘navigating’ – as if I’m canoeing down a river, skiing down a slope, walking in an unfamiliar city perhaps – through a dynamic, changing landscape that offers opportunities for creative interaction with what I see, hear and feel.
My efforts shift toward developing a more flexible relationship with the content of my experience, rather than treating my thoughts and feelings as distractions or obstacles. I feel a little warmer, more generous, and more interested in the mysteries of my inner world. I hold the door open, and invite them in.
Naturally there are risks in any approach. There are eddies in the stream of our experience, whirlpools of rumination, doldrums and dead zones which can be humbling and bewildering. Sometimes the metaphors we apply to our experience simply fail us. It isn’t always smooth sailing and at times we may need to abandon the hope of navigating anywhere at all. No one metaphor is adequate for the richness of human experience. We can each discover our own.
In other words, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. We are, after all, individuals, and my way is not the high way. If we are to bring some creativity into our practice, that certainly means – at a minimum – that we grant the exquisite differences each of us brings to everything we do, to the ways we understand the world, to the individual meanings we derive from our long personal histories. In many moments in meditation and in life, we make choices, we interpret what presents itself to us, we act from the context of our views, values, desires and perceptions.
To the degree that we can open ourselves to the moment at hand, our capacity for creativity takes centre stage.
With less of an effort to ‘do it right’ and a gentler focus on the cultivation of the capacity to receive what arises with curiosity, warmth and permission, our certainties and convictions seem to have a lighter grip. As I suggested, I may ‘navigate’ a moving stream with elements of complexity and simplicity, clarity and confusion, struggle and ease. How do I keep my balance in this rapid flow, this dynamic dimension?
Perhaps here is where I can begin to develop a trust in my own creative capacities. Despite all the books I’ve read, the advice I’ve received, the experiences I’ve had, there may not be one right way to meditate – including this one! I’ll need to find my own way. Perhaps, as someone once sang, ’with a little help from my friends’.
What I’m wanting to highlight is that when we sit quietly and still in meditation – however we may do that – we are sometimes able to rest in a felt sense of openness and ease which allows our creative powers an opportunity to discover themselves and to develop, to grow and to play a role in our everyday personal experience.
Have you noticed an openness and ease in your practice? We’d very much like to hear about your experience. Please leave a comment. ⁂
I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.
– Frida Kahlo
NURTURING A GROWING COMMUNITY
We are seeking your support for what we’re doing with a paid subscription
Our recent readers’ meeting felt like a good first step towards a community of people with an interest in creativity and a secular approach to the dharma.
Around the world, people are starting to discover the newsletter; more than 350 now get it. Our readers have been telling us about their meditation practice, and how they bring creativity into that practice. We also speak with artists of all kinds to find out about their practice of art, and how they introduce a meditative sensibility into what they do.
We’re now looking more closely at ways we can help this community develop.
⬆︎ Photo: Daniel Hjalmarsson on Unsplash
We are seeking your support for this work with a paid subscription.
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Often described as ‘paying forward’, this is an invitation to participate in the ancient and rich tradition of dana. Giving dana, we’re reminded that it is the generosity of others that allows our communities to provide us with the resources and teachings that enable our practice to thrive.
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One of the reasons we started Substack is that we were concerned about the effects of the attention economy on the human mind. … We are feeding our minds with a poisoned information supply. … Substack is designed to be a calm space that encourages reflection.
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Expect the next newsletter on 1 June, including an interview with a painter who invites us to contemplate on water, an extract from Winton Higgins’ forthcoming Tuwhiri book Revamp: writings on secular Buddhism, and more. ⁂