Zen of Creativity (eBook)

Melting Snow

All the way to heaven

is heaven itself.

In the fall of 1980, after I completed Zen training in Los Angeles with my teacher, Maezumi Roshi, I came to the East Coast with the intention of establishing a Zen arts center-a place where Zen training would be used as the vehicle for studying, enhancing, and cultivating a creative life.

The Zen Arts Center opened in Mount Tremper in October of 1980. Its main thrust was the practice of art within a Zen context.

Art had been a passion of mine since I was young, but its deep connection to my spiritual journey didn't become obvious until much later. I started photographing when I was ten, and by the time I'd reached my mid thirties photography had become an important part of my life. While working as a research scientist, I began teaching photography part-time at a local college. Spirituality was not in the picture-at least not overtly. The first time these two areas overlapped was in the late 1960s when I traveled to Boston from New York to see a photography exhibit titled 'The Sound of One Hand,' by Minor White.

I didn't yet have any sense that art might be a doorway to serious and transformative spiritual practice, but something more than good technique drew me to Minor's work. Minor was a 'straight photographer': he didn't manipulate his prints during the developing process, yet his images transcended their subject. Looking at his photographs, I felt myself being pulled into another realm of consciousness. Minor's work pointed to a dynamic way of seeing, a new way of perceiving.

My life has been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and utter it.

henry david thoreau

One day in 1971 I received a letter from Aperture magazine announcing a workshop that Minor was giving at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. I took one look at the price and threw the letter in the garbage. A friend saw me, and she picked it up.

'Isn't this the man you're always talking about?' she asked. I nodded. 'Then why are you throwing the letter away?'

'I don't have the money to pay for it.'

'Send it in, John,' she said. 'Something will come up.'

And, miraculously, something did. A month later a tax refund that I had completely forgotten about arrived in the mail. I sent in my portfolio, along with my date and place of birth so an astrologer could determine whether this was an auspicious time for me to do the retreat. With the acceptance letter I got the workshop's reading list. It consisted of three books: Carlos Castaneda's A Separate Reality, Eugen Herrigel's Zen and the Art of Archery, and Richard Boleslavsky's Acting: The First Six Lessons. Nothing on photography. What did my astrological chart or these books have to do with photography? At the time I was making my living as a physical chemist, and my rational, highly critical mind did not take well to these requests. But I really wanted to study with Minor, so I went along with what he asked.

When I arrived at the Hotchkiss School I saw that there were sixty participants, ranging in age from eighteen to seventy. Minor greeted us as we arrived. He was a striking figure, well over six feet tall, with a flowing mane of white hair. He moved quietly, gracefully, and when he entered a space, he filled it completely.

This oceanic feeling of wonder is the

common source of religious mysticism, of

pure science and art for art's sake.

arthur koestler

The first full day of the workshop began at four in the morning. The sound of a bass drum moving down the hallway arrived without warning. It was pitch black outside. How are we going to...