Where Is Your Trust?

8"x10" acrylic on canvas board

“If I was asked to get rid of the Zen aesthetic and just keep one quality necessary to create art, I would say it’s trust. When you learn to trust yourself implicitly, you no longer need to prove something through your art. You simply allow it to come out, to be as it is. This is when creating art becomes effortless. It happens just as you grow your hair. It grows.”  -John Daido Loori from "The Zen of Creativity"


I have come across two pieces of writing on "trust" this morning and I don't believe in coincidence. I need to hear this.  I think our understanding is like some moveable puzzle and we always need certain pieces at certain times, to help us with our understanding of truth, the universe and our place in it. My puzzle needed the "trust" piece right now.  Lots of lovely pieces have been moving into place but there was a gaping whole where trust should be.


I think we need trust everywhere in our lives, even Loori"s reference is specifically to art. Trust, when we wear it well, can be like a shimmering veil that, flows over everything, making  us graceful, patient and wise.

studio bits (charcoal & newsprint on card)

Marcus over at Wake Up & Laugh wrote a lovely post about "entrusting" which was the second finger pointing toward "trust". He tells a story of a family's trip to Disneyland in which the little girl becomes so excited that she runs toward something and gets lost. On finding her the father says, "if you get lost again, remain calm and wait where you are. I will find you." Later she needs to call on these wise words and the father finds her calmly sitting in one place waiting for him.  This is his example of "entrusting".  The child trusted her father to find her.


We might use this story for a metaphor for how to conduct our own lives, keep calm and if you feel lost, wait where you are until you have an experience of being found. That experience may be an event or simply some internal sense of how to proceed, an inkling, a hunch, but it won't come from your thinking mind.


But for me the story was instructive about how to use trust in our lives.  We don't throw out our thinking mind and just trust blindly or wildly, that can get us in a lot of trouble. There are situations that do not deserve our trust.  Often we have little "niggles" about who or what not to trust and sometimes we ignore them. Our desire can easily get in the way of clear seeing. Then we learn by hindsight. But as long as we learn we train ourselves in how to use trust next time.

 more studio bits (6"x6" acrylic & charcoal on canvas paper)

It comes back to the Zen idea of "we do our part."  The child used the rational part of her mind, remembering to stay where she was.  As a bonus she stayed calm!  But that wasn't hugely necessary. She just needed to stay put to be found. Weeping would have been fine, she'd still have been found.  But she did save herself a little suffering by remaining calm. Perhaps her calmness mirrored the depth of her trust?  Or perhaps pointed toward her temperament? But she knew where to use "trust".  If she hadn't believed she'd be found by staying put she might have done other things.  And so it is for us.  The hard part often comes in knowing when and what action to take and when to "trust".  I think we do the best we can and learn from that. After all what is life if not our own little experiment in living a human life?


Trust. I need to remind myself of this valuable quality over and over. How do you use trust in your life?
                                                       

Hearing The Still Small Voice

In an email exchange with a friend the topic of "intuition" came up. It ties in deeply with the things I have been trying to capture in my studio lately (eek, capture, that sounds a bit like I'm chasing a fly around the house). As part of a project on "seeking authentic voice" I have been turning my attention to "listening" and patience during my studio time. I have had mixed success with both. Given I'm not a particularly patient person (who, moi, as Miss Piggy would say) I expected patience and listening to happen right away! I learned these are skills that, well, get this, take patience to develop. (Duh, as Homer Simpson would say) Where do these guys come from??

But when my friend talked about intuition, I began to revisit the "listening" aspect of practice. Gasp, I learned I'm not the greatest listener! I recognized that cultivation of that "still small voice" requires the willingness to just sit and be with the canvas in the same way you would be with a friend who is telling you some story from their life, something important and arresting. If the voice is still and small, it requires quiet and attention, right? Otherwise in my busyness, my need to get on with things, get something done, exert my wants, I drown out that voice.

I think we have to be willing, willing to do what needs to be done to hear this voice, willing to clear a space for it, willing to be available, willing to explore and be quirky and creative in that exploration, and ultimately, willing to receive. I think of myself as this little short wave radio set, just tuning in to see what's out there. And then of course having faith once I find a channel that's not all static, to believe that this is a channel that I am supposed to be listening to. John Daidoo Loori talks alot about this receptive state in his wonderful book, "The Zen of Creativity"

Here's what Jisho Perry of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives has to say on listening for that still small voice:

"Most of the time we are not quiet enough to hear anything other

than the noisy demands of our greeds, angers, worries,

fears, frustrations and the "busyness" of our everyday lives.

Our culture encourages a constant input of noise: the music

in elevators, or while waiting on the phone, car radios, car

phones, television, radios, headsets to wear while exercising.

We have a difficult task to find a quiet time when there is

not a major input of external noise. Even when we have

established a time in our day for meditation, when we can

listen to the silence, it is usually anything but silent. It still

takes time to let go of the internal noises we generate for

ourselves. If we establish a regular practice of meditation we

create a situation where the noise and busy mental

processes can settle."

So I am heading into the studio with my headset on and my magic decoder ring. I'll send you a picture. I am really going for it. I will strap a pair of those old rabbit ears onto my head. You know those ones we used to put on the TV. Remember those. And when the reception was particularly difficult we'd put some tinfoil on the round tips at the ends. Pass the tinfoil, please.

Enlarging The Universe

I'm thinking about creativity today because I was really inspired this morning when I looked around my cyber neighbour- hood and found even more people out there doing creative things.  One of my big inspirations for the day came courtesy of Gallery Juana.  She was writing about her washing machine as suggested by Keri Smith (100 Ideas), a virtual tornado of creativity.  I'd seen her name mentioned before but this was the tipping point for me.  I had to go check her out. She has just published the cutest little book called "How To Be An Explorer Of Your Own World"

As I read the excerpted parts she posted on her website I was struck by how Buddhist it seemed and secondly what good common sense advice  (both her advice and Buddhist practice) for living whether you do art or not.  I think we are all artists ultimately (and this is a conclusion Smith draws)  and that we are our own original works of art, always works in progress. How we live our lives becomes our medium, paint, ink, blood, clay.   I've always thought collage was a good little metaphor for how I create myself, drawing a little bit from here and there and assembling it in new and different ways.

Explore, pay attention to detail Smith suggests.  Well there it is, awareness, mindfulness, whatever you want to call it, a primary tenet of Buddhist practice.  This paying attention reminds us how rich life is with delicious details.  "Everything is interesting," she says.  Paying attention serves to pull us away from our lazy habit of sliding over things, getting caught up in the little soap opera going on in our heads.  Gather things, collect bits.   In her list of 100 Ideas she says "draw your dinner" or " illustrate your shopping list".  It's creative, it's fun and it helps direct the mind to paying attention.  We only get to live this life once, we might as well wake up and appreciate it, the sorrows, the joys.

She also suggests we lighten up which in my mind is an important aspect of Zen training.  We often take ourselves and our little lives way too seriously, mooning, moping and worrying about so many little things.  Someone once told me a story of telling their troubles to a Zen master and he just kept saying, "it doesn't matter".  How much stress do we create for ourselves worrying about things that are beyond our control or really "don't matter" when it all gets thrown into the cosmic soup pot.

"Be open to what you don't know"  Smith encourages and this reminds me that we are always standing on the edge of the unknown.  It also reminds me that we have more options than we think, something my Zen teacher likes to point out to students when we feel boxed into a corner.  If we're open we can see possibilities that otherwise remain in the shadows for us.  Sometimes just saying "I don't know" opens up a world of possibilities.  It's humbling too and that is always a good thing.

"Be a detective" Smith urges.  And Buddhism always suggests we examine Buddhist ideas for ourselves.  See if they are true for us, make them our own.  Does attachment really lead to suffering? Explore that in your life and see if it is true for you.  Examine your daily behaviour, do some of your actions lead to suffering?  What might you do differently?  Think about things like right speech.  How do you feel after you say something unpleasant to someone or about someone?  And all the while remembering not to beat yourself up with the answers you get, that's the hard part sometimes.

As I walk out into this creative and interesting evening I feel grateful to be exploring this wonderful creative online world.  So many wonderful inspiring ideas are flying around and filling my head.  I am encouraged to keep that sketch book active and alive and create little bits of experimental art here and there.  I encourage you to open up to your own awesome creative possibilities.

I will let John Daido Loori have the closing words (from "The Zen of Creativity")  "Through our art we bring into existence something that did not previously exist.  We enlarge the universe."