The Intersection Of Creativity and Dharma

I would like to share some ideas on how I've worked with creativity within my dharma practice and approach to the practice and understanding of Buddhism. I hope this can provide some possibilities for how you might bring more creativity and fluidity into your own spiritual path and practice.

First off, I want to define what I mean by creativity. In the West, we often have this idea that creativity means creating something new and original. For example, taking the traditional Buddhist path and making it our own, making it new. Now, there is something to be said for making it our own, but in my experience, making it our own is something that comes out of genuinely working within the structure of it.

Before I got into Buddhism, I was a drummer, and grew up listening to and playing jazz, as my dad is a Jazz bassist. Some people may not fully understand what jazz is. They may think of it as an old-timey thing, but actually, jazz is perpetually iterating and continually re-creating itself based on the confluence of its history meeting and integrating with more modern forms of music.

In jazz studies, we start by working with the art, culture, and history of the music first, training with the ABC’s of the tradition for a while. Without having seen these first steps, some people may think jazz is completely improvised and free, when actually, the freedom they hear is hard won and developed over years of working with the structure and form of the music.

For example, we can take the music of John Coltrane, probably one of the most famous Jazz musicians ever as an example. If you track his journey as a musician from his early records to his later works, he became quite free and explored what's called Free Jazz towards the end of his life. When you listen to it, some of it sounds very chaotic and unstructured, but there is structure underneath his playing. He was able to play extremely creatively and “free” because he had mastered the structure of the music and his instrument.

Sometimes, people think that “being creative” means coming up with something completely new, but I believe that creativity actually comes from engaging with a structure or a path, transforming oneself, and then allowing that transformation to shine naturally. Initially this perspective was challenging for me because I didn't know how to adopt or work with the structures and ideas that are taught in Buddhism without either turning them into fixed beliefs on one side, or a self-affirming “It’s my truth, man,” kind of spirituality on the other.

So how do we work with the paths and structures of the Dharma without falling into these extremes? My advice is to take it slow. We don't need to create something new or make it our own right away, but we do need a mirror to look back at our own mind, behavior, and conduct. For me, the Buddhist path has provided (and continues to provide) an incredibly beneficial mirror to examine my thoughts, emotions, and identities. A way to pull apart the causes of suffering for myself, and to offer an alternative.

Taking it slow in this process can be helpful because we hold many unconscious beliefs, biases, and ideas about ourselves and the world, and it takes time to peel away these layers. This process can also be likened to sharpening a knife. When you sharpen a knife, both the knife and the sharpening stone wear away at the same time, this wearing away, or peeling away actually produces the phenomena of sharpness. In Buddhism, a sharp sword or knife is used as an analogy for the wisdom aspect of our mind that can be developed, and can cut through our minds projections and confusion.

I believe that many people who have a mindfulness practice or are just beginning their meditation journey can and have experienced powerful moments where thoughts arise but there’s nothing to stick to, and no identification with them. Although this experience is usually brief in the beginning of our meditation path, we can use this initial glimpse to inspire and broaden our experience of it. We can continually turn back and observe how we perceive ourselves, others, and how we relate to our emotions and thoughts. We can find and access more and more space over time.

This is where creativity comes in for me because when I personalize my thoughts and emotions, I feel trapped in a prison of my own making, with little space and creativity.

The Buddhist path is about freeing ourselves from the habitual patterns of believing what we think and feel. However, this does not mean we deny what we think and feel. Instead, we enter a process of curiosity. Curiosity is a tool that can offer so much space, understanding, movement, and creativity.

Initially, there are many ideas, philosophies, and perspectives to contemplate on the Buddhist path. If we get excited and passionate about these, of course our mind will inevitably cling to them. Though not the point, for many of us this is a necessary step (in the beginning) in being able to re-organize and look at our current beliefs in a different way.

But at some point, we also have to apply healthy skepticism towards our new beliefs as well. In this way, the Dharma becomes a two-way mirror to both look at itself, and to look at our own unconscious habits and beliefs.

This two-way mirror is very helpful, as if we go to the extreme of belief in our own habitual patterns, projections, thoughts, and ideas, we’re stuck in our own psychological materialism. Similarly, if we just believe in a religion or a spiritual path without applying a healthy skepticism to it, we just end up in another kind of materialism, spiritual materialism. For me, healthy skepticism means using curiosity to add creativity to our spiritual path through open questions and exploration.

I often use a process of “don't know" mind where I attempt to look at myself and the phenomena around me through a lens of open questions and raw awareness. Here I'm more interested in the process of curiosity and what questions I can ask from within it, rather than coming to an immediate conclusion.

When it comes to working with creativity in my Dharma practice, curiosity has to be the foundation, as this allows the temporary release of conclusion. Here I might take in perceptions that I'm hearing, seeing, thinking, and or how I'm relating to a belief, or most importantly, how I'm experiencing an emotion in as raw and natural a form as possible.

Our afflictive emotions are strong and can pull us in at any time, whether it's attachment, anger, jealousy, or pride. So we have to have a way to work with them through awareness and curiosity. We can also do this in a creative way.

This might start with an intention of curiosity towards a thought or emotion, and evolve more into a sense of awe as we begin to experience our thoughts and emotions like clouds moving through the sky, or brush strokes in wide open space!

But of course this doesn't happen overnight. We have to take it slow and use our wisdom and energy wisely to practice consistently and develop both curiosity and the capacity to connect with our watchful, aware quality of mind.