zen & creativity

Zen & Creativity

Cultivating Open Awareness

Where do great ideas come from?

Often out of “nowhere”

● In the shower● While exercising● While relaxing

Archimedes - Eureka!

Newton’s Apple

Where do great ideas come from?

But also from intense, focused activity

● Related to the desired objective

● Or even unrelated

Flow - Zone - Zen

“Flow, also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.”

Components of Flow

● Intense and focused concentration on the present

moment

● Merging of action and awareness

● A loss of reflective self-consciousness

Components of Flow

● A sense of personal control or agency over the situation

or activity

● A distortion of temporal experience, one's subjective

experience of time is altered

● Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding

Can we cultivate “Flow”?

Zen practice is highly relevant

● Being intensely aware, focused, but more importantly

● No subject/object separation - “I/Me” is removed.

How to build that type of awareness and focus?

Meditation and awareness practices - the Zen Arts

My Meetup Intro

"Randy is a Business Analyst at work and a Zen Chaplain in his spare time. In other words, he goes back and forth between full-blown analytical mode and "letting go of thoughts".

My Analytical Bio

● BS in Physics, MBA (Quant. Analysis)● Naval Officer (Nuclear Engineer)● Engineer in defense industry● IT manager, 10 years in Europe● Career break for 7 years

No visually creative talent! (have you seen my slides?)

My Zen Credentials

● Meditator since late 70’s

● Formal Zen training from 2003

● Ordained in Soto Zen tradition

○ Silent Thunder Order

○ Shukke Tokudo 2013

What is Zen?

What Zen is Not

● A Theology

● System of Metaphysics

● A hippy excuse to zone out

● Easy

The name says it all...

Sanskrit:

Chinese:

Japanese:

English:

Dhyana

Chan

Zen

Meditation

Zen is a Practice

Zen Patriarchs - Bodhidharma and Dogen

Eihei Dogen - founder of Soto Zen

“To study the Way is to study the self.

To study the self is to forget the self.

To study the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things”

Sound a little familiar?

Let’s parse it out and see...

“Study the self”

● Study the person - what are their wants, needs, pain

points, and behaviors?

● Understand how they relate to and interact with the

world.

● Maybe develop a persona!

“Forget the self”

● Remove the subjectivity.

● Realize that there is no “self” independent of

relationships.

● Once we have studied and see ourselves clearly, we can

observe objectively.

“be Enlightened by the ten thousand things”

● Idiom for “everything”.

● Basically, if we remove our filters and biases, what’s left

is reality, “truth”.

Data driven research!

Don Norman

Author of The Design of Everyday Things and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group

“It’s Everything”

Focused Awareness

The Traditional Zen Arts

Chado - the way of Tea

Shodo - the way of the Brush

Kado - the way of the Flower

Kyudo - the way of the Bow

Haiku - “live words”

Shodo Examples

“When the self disappears, the brush paints by itself… the poem writes itself. There is no longer a gap between artist, subject, audience, and life.”

John Daido Loori - Abbot MRO.

EnsōSymbolizes absolute

enlightenment, strength, elegance, the universe, and mu

(the void).

A Han with Enso Calligraphy

Haiku - a Personal Example

Traditional Haiku adhere to 3 key principles:

● 17 Syllables in three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 (this is the one most

Americans know)

● A seasonal reference (most don’t know)

● The essence of haiku - the “cutting word” - which often represents the

juxtaposition of two images or ideas.

Haiku - a Personal Example

“Spring in a new land

A teacher plants learning seeds

Duncan now blossoms”

Written at the end of the school year

when we had first moved our son to

the USA from Europe. in appreciation

for the huge impact his teacher had

on his transition.

They don’t exist for the sole purpose of creating a work of art, but they are

rather a method for opening the creative process.

D. T. Suzuki

Zen Arts Extended ...

But really, is the art of Process

“Zen and the Art of…”

Archery (Herrigel)

Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig)

Anything and everything, really, even the mundane...

Chado - the way of Tea

Practice: Direct Experience

The tea ceremony in Zen involves experiencing a cup of tea, but an important part of the ritual takes place at the end of the ceremony, when the tea master brings out all of the implements used for the guests to examine and appreciate. The tea bowl is presented as a unique work of art, without peer. It is examined by the guest both visually and tactilely.

Practice: Direct Experience

See for yourself if it is possible for you to take up an ordinary teacup and just experience its physical existence, without naming, analyzing, judging, or evaluating it. Just feel it. See it. Through it. Experience it without the mind moving. When you find your mind moving, acknowledge the thought, let it go, and come back to the cup in the same way that in zazen, you let it go and come back to the breath.

John Daido Loori - Abbot and founder of Mountains and Rivers Order

“Single-pointed concentration develops our intuition. We become more directly aware of the world. We notice in ways that are not clearly understood, but are very accurate.”

How to Meditate?

“Think Non Thinking”

5 Minute Guided Meditation

The basics of Zazen:

● Body / Breath / Mind

● 5 Minutes Now…

Instructions for home: https://zmm.mro.org/teachings/meditation-instructions/

Practice: Meditation

Set aside some time on a regular basis, daily is great, but whatever you can manage. Start with short periods, even just a few minutes. Use one of the many online guided meditations or instructions.

Don’t just do something - sit there!

This is really hard to do

But it gets easier, with practice

Process is Meaningful

Creativity as Process

“Perform a ritual until it becomes empty of meaning.

Then, fill the ritual with your own understanding.”

Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston - Abbot of the Silent Thunder Order

Setting Up my Desktop

The Problem

● I need to set up my desktop every day.

● Same apps, same screen layouts.

● Tedious, repetitive, no value add.

For me, not the same as a craftsman laying out tools.

The Solution - I wrote a script to automate my morning desktop setup

I created a Github account! Does that make me a developer?

The Solution

● Effective and Efficient - it takes less time and is

consistent.

● I can modify my script as needed.

● It is elegant - I am pleased every time I use it.

Practice: Caretaking

Create a simple practice for yourself using some routine task that you do every day, such as washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, or making the bed. Make an agreement with yourself to perform this task with total awareness. When you wash the dishes, just wash the dishes. As Thich Nhat Hanh said, “You can wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes, or you can wash the dishes to wash the dishes.”

Practice: Caretaking

The same is true of any other task that we do almost mindlessly. Try bringing to it a mindfulness that is not critical, evaluating, or analytical, but focused simply on being present in the moment.

Milton Glaser - designer of the famous I ♥ NY logo

“We’re always looking, but we never really see… it’s the act of attention that allows you to really grasp something, to become fully conscious of it.”

Ōryōki(vessel that contains) just enough

Ōryōki

Eating utensils for the personal use of Buddhist monks, Ōryōki also refers to a meditative form of eating using these utensils that originated in Japan and emphasizes mindfulness awareness practice by abiding to a strict order of precise movements.

Along with the robe, the bowl itself is considered a symbol of transmission from teacher to student.

The Problem

● How to serve food to many efficiently.

● Medieval sanitation.

● Support mindful awareness practice in silence.

The first two are very common requirements, but the third

makes all the difference.

Ōryōki Demonstration

The Solution

● Effective and Efficient.

● Innovative, then and now.

● Actively in use for seven hundred years.

Most importantly, it not only consistent with awareness

practice, but actively facilitates it!

Oryoki bowls on shelf during retreat

Dealing with being “Stuck”

The more we try the more we can be blocked.

Instead, “sit with” the experience.

Don’t try to fix anything, just experience what is...

R-A-I-N Mindfulness Practice

Using R. A. I. N

1. R Recognize what is happening

2. A Allow life to be just as it is

3. I Investigate inner experience

4. N Non-Identification

“Between the stimulus and the response there is a space, and in this

space lies our power and our freedom.”

Victor Frankel

References

"Design Thinking 101". Nngroup.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 27 Dec. 2016.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-thinking/

"Flow (Psychology)". En.wikipedia.org. N.p., 2017. Web. 24 Jan. 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

My Lunch-n-Learn on Meditation

http://www.slideshare.net/earlra/meditation-the-subtle-art-of-being

References

"Zazen Instructions - Zen Mountain Monastery". Zen Mountain Monastery. N.p., 2017. Web. 24 Jan. 2017.

https://zmm.mro.org/teachings/meditation-instructions/

Ōryōki. (2017). En.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 24 January 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cry%C5%8Dki

Feel free to contact me

Randy.Earl@Gmail.Com

Twitter: @randy_earl

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randyearl