The Source of Creation

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From a talk given during the Easter Retreat, Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, 1991

As monastics, we are often asked where creativity fits into our way of life. The tone of a monastic environment is very simple. We aim at as simple a life as possible so people wonder where the creative instinct fits into all this. It is often difficult to understand why, for instance, music does not feature in our lives in the monastery when it seems to be so intrinsic to most other spiritual traditions of the world.

Since it is so often asked of us, naturally it is something that we contemplate and of course, as individuals, it is something that we are involved and concerned with, and consider in our own way. Often the assumption is that, since the monastic life represents the epitome of spiritual life, we have to strangle the creative impulse or the capacities that we have, our talents, inclinations and creative abilities. All of that has to be hidden away or discarded, and looked on as distractions, unnecessary for Enlightenment.

This is not really a healthy approach. Many of the people in the Sangha have creative back-grounds and are very artistic. The other day I was talking to an anagarika who had been helping in the Italian vihara for the last few months. Though there were only 4 or 5 people in the vihara, there was a former anagarika living locally who was a jazz pianist and singer; the anagarika who visited us used to play the saxophone; Ajahn Thanavaro used to be a drummer and Ven. Anigho was a lead guitarist in a well-known band in New Zealand. These facts came to the attention of the members of the Sangha here in England, who politely asked if the artistes had ever got together. The reply was, “No, no! And if we did, I never told you so!!” So it is not as though the people who are attracted to living a monastic life are bereft of the inclination in these directions. This place is stuffed full of poets, artists and Page 2 of 10

musicians of one sort or another and you might have noticed that, generally, we are not a repressed bunch of people. So how does it all fit together?

The Buddha was often criticized in his own time as a life negator. There is something within us that is very strongly affirmative towards life and our existence as human beings. That ‘life affirmation’ is highly praised and given a lot of energy and support in our society. In our own time, as in the time of the Buddha, to be enthusiastic about life, to take one’s life in both hands and really make something of it is to be highly praised, and we celebrate someone who has ‘done something with their life.’ And so the Buddha’s whole approach towards spirituality – promoting renunciation, celibacy, simplicity, non-accumulation and so forth, has attracted much criticism. People used to call him an annihilationist, someone who was denying the spirit of life and the spirit of all that was good and beautiful in the world; someone that had a big downer on life, a nihilist philosophy, – ’it’s all pain’, ‘it’s all a dreadful mistake’, ‘it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.’ ‘You have to minimize your life, grit your teeth and wait until it’s all over, and the sooner the better!’

It was felt that the Buddha really held that kind of a view. He was questioned on it and he once replied that his Teaching did tend more in the direction of the nihilist than the affirmative: “My Teaching is much more in the direction of desirelessness, of coolness rather than in the direction of desire, of getting, of possessing, of accumulating.” Yet it would be incorrect to call the Buddha-Dhamma a nihilist philosophy; it is not life-negating.

The Buddha said that because of the way that we are conditioned as human beings, we tend to drift into the two extremes of, on the one hand affirmation – affirming and investing in conditioned existence and seeing the beauties, delights and good things that life possesses in terms of what Page 3 of 10

can be achieved or derived by conditioned existence – or, on the other hand, criticising the conditioned world as a dreadful mess, a mistake which one wants to get away from. The Buddha pointed out that these are two extreme positions that we fall into and are points of view on life that do not actually respect the true nature of things, because they are bound up with the view of self, the view of the absolute reality of the material world, and of time.

This is not seeing things in a clear, true way. What the Buddha was always pointing to was transcendence of the conditioned sensory world, of selfhood, and the illusion of separateness. When we sit in meditation and look into the nature of our own minds, we can see how much the mind will grasp at anything. Depending on our character, sometimes it will grasp at positivity – affirming things to get interested in and excited about, or it will grasp at negative aspects that we don’t want to bother about or that we want to get rid of. But any kind of holding on or pushing away, however subtle, affirms the sense of self. Even if the impulse is destructive or nihilist, we still operate from the view there is something here which is ‘me’ or ‘mine’, which ‘I’ want to get rid of and not experience, it’s an intrusion upon ‘me’, a corruption in ‘me’, and I don’t want to bother with it. I want to get rid of it.

Sometimes, when the mind has a really perverse streak we can even bring pain upon our-selves; we can actually know that something is wrong, is going to bring pain to us or to those around us – but we go ahead and do it anyway. “I know it is wrong, I know I am going to get into trouble; I know it is going to hurt; I know I am going to get criticised for it, but I am going to do it anyway!”; the ‘spitting at God’ impulse! – “And I don’t Page 4 of 10

care if you are the Creator of the Universe”!

Sometimes, we will do anything to bolster the sense of ‘I’ and keep it alive. Pushing against or holding onto something just to feel there is someone here who is pushing or holding, because this very powerful sense of ego, of ‘I’, is terrified of non-existence, of dying, of non-being.

The Buddha was not pointing to life affirmation, or negation, but to the understanding of existence, and of life; to seeing clearly the true nature of things. When we see clearly, then we don’t define fulfilment by material achievements or creations or things. It doesn’t have to be demonstrated by material achievement, or by the absence of the material world, or by experience and possessions, feelings or associations. The Buddha’s insight is very much into the ability we have to hold the material world: to experience life and the people around us that create the fabric of our life; to be able to harmonise with that completely without being deluded by it. It’s rather like being awake in a dream. We know that we are dreaming, that everything around us is simply dream-stuff, but we can be in accord with the dream without being deluded by it.

People often say, “If the Buddha was beyond suffering, why did he other to live in such a miserable way?” “Here is a being who was liberated, incapable of suffering, so why did he choose a life of celibacy and renunciation, living as a mendicant, walking around the Ganges Valley barefoot for 45 years, giving his time up to teaching people who, for most of the time, understood very little of what he taught?.” He himself said that it was going to be incredibly difficult to communicate his understanding to people. Many people assume that someone who is completely liberated, can really ‘enjoy’ life, – go out and have some fun. They think, “Once I get enlightened, I am really going to have a good time.” One of our Australian bhikkhus, who had been a guitarist, expected to get enlightened after a Page 5 of 10

couple of months of meditation so that he would be able to play really well! “It will really do wonders for my technique!” – this is what he thought. “Get this enlightenment cracked, back on the road, go to the top of the charts, make a lot of money and be happy!” If we are completely beyond suffering and nothing in the world could make us miserable, then surely we could have a little bit of a good time?

But the Buddha had realised what it takes to have a good time. He lived in the way of completely fulfilling everything in life that he saw was conducive to happiness. This is really worth contemplating. Why did he choose to renounce, why did he choose celibacy, why did he choose simplicity and homelessness, just living on alms food? What one sees is that the Buddha’s vision of life was very different from the rest of us. When he was enlightened he had insight into the nature of the world. Our worldly mind-states do not allow us to see it that way, but the Buddha realised the limitations of the satisfaction that comes from the sensory world; although it is gratifying and pleasant enough; he saw that the true happiness, the true bliss in life, is in being free from the illusion of self-hood and separateness. “The greatness happiness of all is to be free from the sense of ‘I am.’”

This does not mean self-destructiveness, wiping oneself out, but to realise that ‘I am’ is just a thought in the mind; anything we define ourselves as, any characteristic we claim to be, or think we are, is but a half-truth. When the mind realises and is aware of this, then we are blissfully content, blissfully happy. And so the Buddha simply lived his life in a way that respected this realisation, this sense of purity and simplicity. When someone asked him about this, saying: “You monks really live a rough life. I could not live like that. You seem to be so hard on yourselves.” The Buddha answered; “Who Page 6 of 10

do you think enjoys life more, the Tathagata or King Bimbisara?” (the local king). “Well, the king of course; a lovely palace, surrounded by beautiful people, lovely music, delicious food to eat, and he can amuse himself whenever he wants to.” The Buddha said, “I can sit experiencing uninterrupted bliss for seven days continuously without a moment’s break; do you think King Bimbisara is capable of that?” “No”!

Despite the pleasures that we can experience through sound and sight, feeling, etc., the bliss of the free mind, the mind which is unattached, far exceeds any other. The Buddha taught this realization of emptiness.

When we talk of emptiness or the empty mind, it is not a mind devoid of feeling or objects or of any experience. It is not everything vanishing and the mind being an empty space where nothing else is happening. But it is a mind empty of the sense of ‘I,’ of ignorance, of grasping and rejecting. When the mind is empty there can still be sight, sound, feeling, smell, taste, touch. It can all be there, but there is no grasping. Everything that we see, hear, taste, touch, think, remember, every mood, every aspect of ourselves and our world, every particle of it, is experienced as a pattern of consciousness in the mind. And so to understand and realise emptiness, is to be able to see that reality, that actuality.

It is almost, in a sense, seeing a transparency of experience, the dream-like, mirage-like nature of our world of experience. The Buddha’s description of emptiness, and what that takes us to, is a mind which is fresh and alert and can respond freely to life.

This is where, in a sense, creativity comes in to our life as monastics. By giving up the need to have fulfilment expressed in terms of artistic creations or a beautiful home or bringing up children or anything of that nature, by living with a mind which is unattached, empty, and free, every-thing which is creative, or which needs to be created or said or done, arises from Page 7 of 10

that pure clear space. It arises with a freshness and naturalness that gives it tremendous beauty, simplicity, and loveliness. Thomas Merton talked about this when he used the expression ‘Divine Silence’ or ‘Silence of God.’ Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk who wrote a great deal in the 1950s and 1960s and was very influential amongst modern Christians. He said that “The monastic life is a life wholly centred upon this tremendous existential silence of God which nobody has ever been able to explain, and which is, nevertheless, the heart of all that is real.
“The value of the monks’ Public Prayer is therefore not drawn so much from its sound as from the deep silence of God which enters into that sound and gives it actuality, value, meaning. The beauty of Gregorian chant and that which distinguishes it from every other kind of music, lies in the fact that its measured sound, in itself beautiful, tends to lead the soul, by its beauty, into the infinitely more beautiful silence of God. Chant that does not have this effect, no matter how great its technical perfection, is practically without value. It is empty of the silence of wisdom, which is its substance and its life.”

This relates to the same principle that the Buddha pointed to: when the mind is awake, still, and pure, then every action is invested with that divinity, that sacredness. This has also been the basis of a lot of Buddhist art, particularly in Japan. People have also extended this into spontaneous art in more recent times in the West, trying to find the point where art and life meet (or collide!) with each other, and investigating which is life and which is art? Which is the real thing? One modern composer, John Cage, writes outrageous, weird pieces: his ‘Living Room Music’ is the sound of people in a living room moving all the furniture and cushions around; or his most famous piece – 4'33" – is a pianist sitting with their hands over the keys for four minutes and thirty-three seconds without touching Page 8 of 10

them. What you hear is the distress and indignation of the audience, whispering and trying to find out what is going on; that is the music! So our concept of what is music, what is art, is challenged.

I have something of a creative streak myself, I suppose. When I was younger I used to have fantasies about being a great writer; find myself a garret and go and starve in it and create unique masterpieces – be some marvelous, compelling figure like Kafka or Rimbaud and produce pithy, obscure wonders. I used to sit down and get deeply into some piece of writing but then I would realise, to my dismay, that I didn’t have anything to say. I kept realising that, although I could put words onto paper and express things, I didn’t know anything, and I really didn’t have anything worth saying. So I realised that this effort was foolish. Why not wait until I had something to say and then maybe the writing would happen! I was suffering from what I call the ‘Roy Jenkins effect’: he was once asked if he had had any regrets about his political career. He replied that he used to say that he would have been fulfilled if he had become Prime Minister – but then he realised that he had never really wanted the job itself, he had merely wanted to have been P.M.. I wanted to be known as a great writer simply for the prestige and the identity alone, like Roy Jenkins.

As the years went by, I found that in monastic life there are long periods of time when one is not expressing anything in any formal way. In our formal sitting and walking meditation there is no material expression but, more importantly, the way that we talk with other people and move around, this is its own expression, and in a more tangible sense. During the run of life in a monastery there is a time for us to do things like giving Dhamma talks, or writing for the Newsletter; these are art forms. Page 9 of 10

I was asked to write a book a few years ago after I completed a long walk from our monastery in Sussex to our monastery in Northumberland. People said “Please keep a diary,” so I started writing. It was about 250 pages long by the time I finished. I then designed it, arranged the photos and illustrations, and organised the lettering. I had a great time. Since then various opportunities have arisen when something needs to be done and I find that it creates itself. On the birthdays of my mother, father, and two sisters, I draw birthday cards for them. If I sit down to draw a picture just because there is a spare moment, it is terrible. But if there is a reason, a cause for it, then amazing little pictures seem to appear – exotic and colourful. What arises is elicited by the occasion, by the person it is for, by the moment and the mood. It does itself! When the ego gets out of the way, that which needs to appear seems to manifest. It is in accordance with the time, the place, the situation and so it does itself.

For instance, at the end of last year, the nun who was supposed to be editing the children’s magazine Rainbows threw up her arms in despair crying, “I can’t do this, it’s too much!” I found myself volunteering to help. Not only did I help put the whole thing together but I created illustrations for a whole week. Yet, when there is nothing to be drawn, written or created, then I don’t feel that I should be creating something to show people that I am an artist or am this, that or the other. Perfection or talent or fulfillment of ourselves as human beings does not have to be manifest. The free mind is the truest, purest affirmation of Truth, of the very heart of life. Whether that manifests as material things or as actions that we perform, or whether it doesn’t, we realise that that is not the important thing.

If something needs to Page 10 of 10

be done then it happens; we find that we are not holding back or being unkind. If people don’t need a hand, then we know how to restrain, how to hold back. But if we see something that needs to be done, then we come forth and we find that that which is necessary, which accords, is what appears. As soon as a sense of self appears in anything we do, then the whole thing takes on a much more clumsy and discordant tone. One can see very strongly when there is self-consciousness or self-assertion; it stands out. When it is absent, there is a real fluidity in the per-son, a freeness, an easiness; every gesture is magical, beautiful.

(All twelve-parts of this series are accessible on the Ajahn Amaro | Articles page )

Footnotes:

1 - “Now the view of those whose theory and view is ‘I have a liking for all things’ is close to lust, to bondage, to relishing, to acceptance, to clinging. But the view of those whose theory and view is ‘I have no liking for anything’ is close to freedom from lust, to non-bondage, to non-relishing, to non-acceptance, to non-clinging.” (M. 74) Nanamoli translation, Buddhist Publication Society.

2 - From Thomas Merton, Monk and Poet, by George Woodcock, Cannongate Press.