Zen and the creative act
Have you ever listened to something over and over, thinking each time that you understood it, and then suddenly you really get it - as though you were truly hearing it for the first time? I just had one of those moments watching Joseph Campbell. I’ve listened to his Power of Myth interviews at least 4 times now. They’re fascinating (a must-have if you’re into storytelling or mythology), but I always blew off the last interview as a bunch of overly-spiritual, new-agey gobbledygook. Well, until today. Now I think I really understand how zen and several other theologies converge on the creative act.
Joe (as I like call Campbell, just like I always call Mozart, Wolfi) talked about the difference between eternal and everlasting, saying that heaven was everlasting but not eternal. This is usually when I tune out, but stick with it: everlasting means something exists throughout all time. It travels with time to infinity. Eternal exists independent of time. Time is irrelevant, or as Joe puts it: time does not exist in the eternal.
For whatever reason, as I heard this, I thought of my experience when I’m doing something creative - when I’m really in the groove shooting pictures or writing. Time vanishes when I’m in that place. I have absolutely no sense of it. As all my friends know, I normally have a very acute sense of time, so much so that I don’t bother wearing watches. I can guess the time accurately. Not so when I’m creating: I not only sense time passing, it really doesn’t seem to exist for me.
Joe went on to describe that when you experience the eternal, you reach a place without desire or thought. You have no intentional path; you intuit your way. You have a sense of something greater than yourself that guides you.
Bingo: again exactly like my experience: my brain suddenly goes quiet. I feel directly, tangibly connected to my subject. I don’t know where I’m going, but I can sense something outside me that I follow. If I’m writing, I call it the story telling itself to me. If I’m shooting pictures, it’s a visual thing - almost like an arrow that appears and says, “here, now!”. This is exactly the state of no-mind that all those zen books were talking about. Or, in Joe’s school of thought: it’s experiencing the eternal.
Earlier in the interview, Campbell had talked about the gospel of Thomas. It says that heaven is not something that is to come. It is already here, but people are blind to it. Several other theologies believe similarly on this point. The obvious conclusion therefore, is that you can experience heaven any time you want if you choose to and learn how.
Adding this all up in my little noggin gave me a completely different way to look on life. I’m a perpetual procrastinator. One of my most common tricks is, “I’ll get to have this thing I really want once this other thing is done.” It is a perfect echo of the idea that heaven comes when you die and until then you will experience none of it. The idea that heaven is already here is a completely different model. Each time I do something creative, I do get a little taste of heaven (at least it feels that way). All I have to do is tap into it more often.
Ergo: Make good art.
My favorite mantra appears once again! Even if all the rest really is new-age gobbledygook, it’s still a handy way of breaking a procrastination pattern.
