Connected and Creative (part 3)

For the past two days, I’ve been considering the remarks of a friend about staying connected and creative. I’m reminded of the unexpected power of the words we say to each other. While my memory continues to gradually degrade as I live into my late sixties, there are still moments and actions and words that bring me up short and stay with me long after they pass.

I suppose the words that catch us are the ones that touch something inside us that is true but, till that moment, not fully expressed. ‘Connected and creative’ stirred a reservoir of experience and understanding that have been a thread of my life for almost as long as I can remember. In Zen we call these words and phrases ‘turning words’  They are words that go deep into our heart-mind and wake us up to what has always been present but never, until this moment, fully realized.

Yesterday, I wrote about the three directions of connection—connecting to yourself, connecting to what is right in front of you, and connecting to the whole. As we settle into these three awarenesses that are not separate, we move out of the world of our opinion and thought and into the ever-changing world life itself. This full engagement allows for the arising of actions and words and ways of being that are new. We call this creativity.

Creativity is our wholehearted participation in the circumstances of our lives. It is not about making something up or coming up with a new and clever idea. Creativity arises naturally when we are present with the conditions we encounter, internally and externally. We receive the many and changing aspects of what is here. We are in relationship to and moving with a world that is in constant flux. From this place of receiving and being present with what is here, we are able to make new choices. Creativity is not something we do, but rather a following of what is already present in the moment.

Creativity is life responding intimately to life.

Peter Hershock, in his wonderful history of Chinese Zen, CHAN BUDDHISM, uses the term ‘responsive virtuosity ’. He says over and over that this is what Zen masters cultivated and practiced.   What a wonderful way to describe the possibility of living creatively in each moment. This is not about making the world conform to our opinion, but rather an ongoing dance where our words and actions have the possibility to surprise us as much as anyone else.

In these times of sheltering where we live, so much is limited. Now, several weeks in, so many things are becoming repetitive – same old same old. Routines, partners, children, apartments all now quite familiar. My encouragement for today is to see if it is possible to meet your same situation in some new way. Allowing yourself to be present with what is here, can you discern and perhaps even follow some dimensions of this particular moment that you had never noticed before?