By Rio Branham

I want to talk about an idea expressed in this quote from Rev. Gyomay Kubose,

Living in oneness with [the] Buddha’s teachings is a creative life in which everything becomes meaningful.

I’ve been coming across this idea in lots of different places, that a spiritual life, awakening, enlightenment, is related to creativity in some way. This idea resonates with me; it’s a relationship that I’ve witnessed play out in my own life.

Early on in my life I adopted a story that I was not a creative person. I think it’s a common dichotomy that is taught in our society, that people are either creative or they are not. Artists are special people that have a gift not many people have. I put myself in the box of being a math person, and therefore not a creative person. This seemed to be an obvious truth made manifest by my poor attempts at learning to play guitar so I could be cool like my musician friends. So I gave it up after high school and embraced my identity as a nerd and left creativity as a pursuit to the creative people.

But as the years went by I came to see there was a downside to fully leaning into the story that I was just a logical/intellectual person. After leaving the religion I was raised in, largely because it required me to believe in things that didn’t seem logical or rational to me, I found myself trying to come up with a worldview that I could defend with data and evidence, but these attempts ultimately led to nihilism. We’re all just made up of atoms; we’re fully products of our environments; there’s nothing inherently meaningful in the world.

It wasn’t a pleasant conclusion but it was the only conclusion that I could come to without having to believe anything based on faith. But It left me feeling depressed. I wanted there to be something left at the end of my intellectual breakdown of beliefs, something that felt optimistic and positive and defensible that I could cling to. I did want there to be meaning, but logically I felt compelled to conclude that there wasn’t any.

Thankfully I had some experiences that helped me begin to break out of this story I found myself so attached to. I realized that maybe creativity was actually an essential part of being human and something that I had been neglecting. I was doing a great job of developing the intellectual part of myself but that left me lopsided and not well-rounded. I started to pursue guitar again but instead of being motivated by comparison to others, it was intrinsically motivated, something that I realized I wanted to do for myself, something that felt missing from my life. That shift has been immensely valuable and changed my life in some major ways and I can even draw a line from this shift to the path that led me here to Buddhism and the fellowship.

Part of what changed for me when I decided to challenge the idea that I was not creative and to pick up guitar again was the simple realization that I could learn new things. Seems pretty silly, but I felt stuck in my life at the time, stagnant. But seeing myself progress from day to day as I practiced the guitar gave me confidence to try other things and see that this story I had been building my whole life was false. I wasn’t stuck, I was dynamic, I could do lots of new things.

Creativity started to take on a broader meaning in my life, a spiritual one. It wasn’t just about art it was about being able to craft and hone my own stories and like Rev. Gyomay says become the artist of my life. I think this means that we have the opportunity to tell our own story, with our own perspective and the lens through which we see the world given where we find ourselves.

This process, for me, helped bring me out of the depressing nihilistic worldview. I felt like, if I was able to create some meaning in my life where previously I didn’t see any, then maybe that experience could be repeated in other areas of my life and possibly even, like in the quote, everything could become meaningful. It was encouraging to see a small step into creativity have a self-perpetuating effect and give rise to more opportunities for creativity.

Another place this idea has shown up for me is in the book Dharma Breeze by Dr. Nobuo Haneda. He talks about how the ultimate realization of the Dharma by the Buddha during his awakening was the truth of impermanence. I love the way he characterizes impermanence. He says,

The truth of impermanence is the truth of the constant newness of life. It is creativity itself.

Instead of viewing impermanence as the fact that all things end, he sees it as the fact that all things are constantly becoming new again, changing from one thing into another, or being re-created. There’s something about the ever-evolving, dynamic nature of life that embodies the dharma.

I see this creativity of impermanence in the history of Buddhism. We know Buddhism has taken many forms over the years in different places, Theraveda, Mahayana, Tibetan, Zen, Pure Land, and what we’re doing in our Sangha which isn’t strictly any of those. All of these are re-creations of the essence of what came from the Buddha’s life. I think these re-inventions are necessary so that the Dharma doesn’t become stagnant. Dynamic so that it can adapt to the people at any given time and place.

But, notably, this act of re-creation doesn’t mean throwing out what came before, very much the opposite. Nobuo Haneda talks about the relationship between Tradition and Creativity. He says that creativity does not exist without tradition, in fact creativity is the natural result of studying and honoring tradition. As we explore what has come before and express our studentship, we learn from others and in so doing begin to see how we can express truths and ideas in our own way and this is his definition of creativity.

The first thing I did when I decided to pursue guitar again was to get a teacher. I knew that I needed someone to show me what I didn’t know and help me learn for myself. This expression of humility and studentship of the tradition of guitar was the foundation that opened the door for me to explore my own creativity.

Relating creativity to tradition in this way feels like a sort of middle way when it comes to art. I sometimes hear debate in music circles about whether learning traditional or formal theory and technique hinders creativity because you become limited by how things have been done before, whereas others say that it is an essential foundation and without it you are limited by what you don’t know.

This framing breaks down the myth of originality by recognizing that we are all influenced by our surroundings, whether that’s formal training or simply all the cues and ideas that we absorb from our environments. Regardless of what those influences are, they will be present in whatever we create in our lives. Our uniqueness and contribution comes from our perspective and how we interpret and understand the world around us.

Haneda mentions how artists often say that what they create doesn’t really come from them, it’s something that they discover that already existed and they are simply the conduit for bringing it to life. Rick Reuben, a renowned music producer, also talks about this in his book The Creative Act. He states that the work of an artist is not to be totally original, but to be aware of their surroundings, the environment and culture, the tradition. The creative act is to pull together what they sense and observe and filter it through their own personal lens.

Having this perspective of creativity aligns with the idea of interdependence. It breaks down the idea that creativity is something reserved for special people. We are all interconnected and influenced by our surroundings, our karma, and our upbringing. Creativity is something that we are all a part of and have access to.

I think of the creative life that Rev. Gyomay talks about as being fully engaged with our life. Being a student, like Christopher Sensei likes to say, being a naturalist of our life. When we adopt a mindset of curiosity and humility as we move throughout the world we find meaning where we would have otherwise ignored it.

I love the story of Dharmakara and how he became Amida Buddha. It’s a perfect example of this engagement with life. Dharmakara meets an awakened being and is so inspired that he wants to become awakening himself. Not only that but he wants to create the Pure Land, a place for all beings to become awakened. But he is not able to do so right away, he has much to learn, so he sets out to learn all that he can from all the many Buddhas. Throughout his journey he keeps encountering more and more Buddha’s, until every creature and even inanimate object becomes a Buddha from which he can learn. Only after this inexhaustible task is complete is he able to create the Pure Land.

Amida Buddha is awakened by his eternal studentship, his constant desire to learn and Amidha’s creation, the Pure Land, only came out of being engaged and finding meaning all around him. This story embodies Rev. Gyomay’s quote. By finding meaning in everything we discover a creative life and our own awakening, just like the Buddha.

So what does this all really mean for each of us. It may manifest in a traditional art form, I have found that music is a huge part of my own spirituality and how I connect with the dharma. But this is so much broader than just what we traditionally would think of as creativity. A creative life is one in which we are ever evolving, constantly changing, creating new versions of ourselves and new ways of being in the world through learning new stories and unlearning old ones. If you didn’t notice, that’s already how life plays out whether we are conscious of it or not. We simply have the opportunity to become aware of it, to stay curious, and to more fully engage with this neverending process by acknowledging the reality of the creativity inherent to impermanence.

I also find the impermanent nature of things to be a source of meaning itself. Precisely because each moment doesn’t last it becomes a singular moment from which to learn something that only this moment can provide. This doesn’t mean that there is inherent meaning, or some specific meaning that we are searching for, like a right answer. The meaning comes from the engagement itself. Not letting any of the unrepeatable moments pass us by without seeing them for what they are and letting them have meaning simply because they are a part of our lives. It’s a life-long practice that I certainly haven’t perfected, but I have moments where what previously would seem dull becomes interesting, and less and less of life slips by unnoticed or unappreciated.

Just like how artists bring to life works of art that came from their awareness of the world, we truly do get to become artists of our own lives using the paint brushes of awareness. Each of our lives becomes a re-telling through our own creative lens. Like a life-size lego set where we can pull from the blocks of experience and memories and ideas and build something completely unique to us, but will one day crumble and once again transform into something else.

I love how much poetry and art is a part of many traditions. We have our scrolls with calligraphy on display each Sunday. We have an altar which has beautiful statues, flowers, incense, and candles all meaningfully arranged to activate all our senses through a creative process to bring us to the present moment and appreciate what is currently here. May we similarly become a part of our own creative life and imbue it with meaning.

Namu Amida Butsu