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Title: The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life
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Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
List Price: $16.95
Our Price: $9.87
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| Customer Reviews: |
| The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by Ballantine Books Enlightening Blend of Subjects | This book is filled with excellent points that, especially with any Buddhist or Zen background, truly hit home. It gets at issues and the substance surrounding both creativity and the practice of Zen from multiple angles including the artless arts of Zazen, the author's own story, the stories of others, religious examples, and normal explanations. If one doesn't cause some sort of understanding in you the next will, not about the concepts but about the processes that are their essence.
This book would be worth reading again, because at a different part of life the message that you need to hear will have changed, but it, or its seed, may still reside within the pages. | | The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by Ballantine Books John Dado Loori | | A most creative and quiet way to immerse yourself into the creative process...would highly recommend! Kate | | The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by Ballantine Books A Big Commitment for Creativity | I am certain that even that torrent of innovation, Pablo Picasso, was interested in improving his creativity. So it's no surprise that the title of this book would pique the interest of artists
Loori is a photographer who adopted Zen and established a monastery that is noted for its way of integrating Zen and art. He begins the book by telling the story of how he came to be a Zen Buddhist after being influenced by the great photographer Minor White. He then explains how to adopt several Zen practices to enable one to be more creative and he describes exercises to develop these skills. These include the practices of still point, direct experience, caretaking, experiencing without identifying, and expressing things for what else they are. He next discusses the Zen aesthetic as expressed in various forms of Zen art with examples from history (or at least legend) and his personal experience. As the book progresses, various forms of enigmatic statements that appear to be common in the Zen tradition are introduced. For example, the author states "In the Zen transmission of wisdom, nothing is transmitted; nothing goes from teacher to student".
It would be nice if some principle could be extracted from a religion (for surely that's what Zen Buddhism is) that could be used by an artist without actually adopting the religion. On the other hand, I have never heard of a Christian way to be creative without being a Christian. So I suspect that Loori has placed the horse before the cart. If we are to practice the creativity of Zen Buddhism, we must first become Zen Buddhists and then the Zen creativity will come.
I'm not certain if readers are willing to adopt a religion to perhaps find new creativity as artists. I particularly wonder if an artist would be willing to confine his work to the constrained limits of what Zen art appears to be: haiku, pottery, calligraphy and so forth. I have always admired artists who work to innovate within rigidly defined standards, like the pueblo potters of the American southwest, but I have never been anxious to abandon my own art to adopt these traditions. Even the pictures that Loori provides of his Zen photographs, like the picture of a heron in black and white, look remarkably like the ink drawings shown throughout the book. I might have been more receptive if I had seen a color landscape that had been influenced by Zen principles.
I will acknowledge that I did not try the various exercises suggested by Loori throughout the book. It seemed clear that these were not one-shot exercises that could be tried and finished. Rather they were ways of behavior that would have to be practiced day after day to have an effect. And I was not interested in becoming a Zen Buddhist.
Even though I believe most artist will not want to adopt the path to creativity suggested by this book, I think artists will find it valuable to see how art is shaped by the cultural beliefs and milieu in which it is created. | | The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by Ballantine Books great experience! | | i ordered the book for a class and the book arrived within a few days. also, in the condition that was stated on the website. | | The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by Ballantine Books Class | | I bought this bought for my design college course and it has been pretty helpful. I don't agree with all of the theories and practices but my teacher really does. It is good that I have to read it, it helps me understand him more. If you would like to learn practices of zen or zazen I'd recommend this book. It is also helpful if you like creative arts. | | The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by Ballantine Books Product Description | For many of us, the return of Zen conjures up images of rock gardens and gently flowing waterfalls. We think of mindfulness and meditation, immersion in a state of being where meaning is found through simplicity. Zen lore has been absorbed by Western practitioners and pop culture alike, yet there is a specific area of this ancient tradition that hasn’t been fully explored in the West. Now, in The Zen of Creativity, American Zen master John Daido Loori presents a book that taps the principles of the Zen arts and aesthetic as a means to unlock creativity and find freedom in the various dimensions of our existence. Loori dissolves the barriers between art and spirituality, opening up the possibility of meeting life with spontaneity, grace, and peace.
Zen Buddhism is steeped in the arts. In spiritual ways, calligraphy, poetry, painting, the tea ceremony, and flower arranging can point us toward our essential, boundless nature. Brilliantly interpreting the teachings of the artless arts, Loori illuminates various elements that awaken our creativity, among them still point, the center of each moment that focuses on the tranquility within; simplicity, in which the creative process is uncluttered and unlimited, like a cloudless sky; spontaneity, a way to navigate through life without preconceptions, with a freshness in which everything becomes new; mystery, a sense of trust in the unknown; creative feedback, the systematic use of an audience to receive noncritical input about our art; art koans, exercises based on paradoxical questions that can be resolved only through artistic expression. Loori shows how these elements interpenetrate and function not only in art, but in all our endeavors.
Beautifully illustrated and punctuated with poems and reflections from Loori’s own spiritual journey, The Zen of Creativity presents a multilayered, bottomless source of insight into our creativity. Appealing equally to spiritual seekers, artists, and veteran Buddhist practitioners, this book is perfect for those wishing to discover new means of self-awareness and expression—and to restore equanimity and freedom amid the vicissitudes of our lives.
From the Hardcover edition. |
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