Starting In Silence, Part 2

Fingerpainting on the Moon: Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom
by Peter Levitt

(Page 2 of 2)

Our rational minds may not know how to respond, but years of writing and teaching has made it clear to me that some part of us does know. It is our deepest self. It uses such teachings to awaken the unified voice of our intuition and our yearning for wholeness. When this voice becomes sufficiently aroused, it begins to speak. I have something for you, it says. Something you will love. Something you can use for your next creation. Something that will take you home. Come closer.

Sometimes we can hear this voice. After all, it is our true self speaking and is rooted in something very large. More often than not, we are unaware that we are even being called. In part this is because we keep a distance between ourselves and our world. We feel our safety depends upon it. We close our eyes to the creative spark all things contain and tell ourselves we don't have the interest or the time. But we are only turning a blind eye to ourselves. It is a risky thing to do. And it is the wrong risk to take.

It is in the spirit of awe, inspiration, yearning, and the need we all have to discover the light of the creative sparks in our lives that I urge you to close the gap and give yourself entirely to all parts of your world. When you do, your work will be intimate and true. It will take a risk, to be sure — but it is a risk whose name is discovery and joy. Then you will begin to unravel the mystery of unrecognized words and learn to read the book of creation.

But who has written this book?

It is you.

And who will read it?

The you in everyone who holds it in their hands.

And how can it be understood?

Ah! The mystery becoming known.

But is it real? Is it me?

Only give yourself to the book and you will know.

But what will I know? How will I know it?

Welcome home!

Risk

A lone syllable. A single word. Sometimes a noun. Always, in the heart of it, a verb. All creative expression depends upon our willingness to take a risk, and yet just to say the word creates a feeling of excitement and fear in most people, a sense of danger rooted in the threat of change. Years ago I was told a story in which the painter Paul Klee said, "When I paint what you know, I bore you. And when I paint what I know, I bore me. So I paint what I don't know." Isn't that wonderful? Paint or write what you don't know. Create what you have not even begun to suspect! This is risk. It is the freeing intent behind most original work. According to Klee, the means to help our deepest selves make their mark in the world is right here in the tip of our innocent pencil or brush — the one we hold in our hand — if only we will risk.

Often, however, we avoid taking this first step, and therefore never get to the last. We convince ourselves that conditions are not exactly right or that some special moment of inspiration or insight must occur before we can create. In order to help you move past such hesitation — which can last a lifetime if you allow it to grab hold of your life — let me tell you what writer, painter, and calligrapher Kazuaki Tanahashi had to say in his book Brush Mind: "There is no need to imagine before you paint. Painting brings forth imagination." In other words, no special conditions are needed. This was his way of encouraging us to have confidence in the life-giving capacity of risk. It has been proven time and time again. One brush stroke leads to another. One written word calls forth the next. All we have to do is begin.

Our willingness to risk brings the moment, ourselves, and our work to life in a way that did not exist just seconds before. It can be very exhilarating and powerful when risk taking ignites us into the new. But, of course, while risk does create life, death is also present as a possibility. Often, just before we risk something in our lives, even something small, the fear of dying can be found.

It is only natural to feel this way, especially since in creative work something does die. Something must die for our work to create something new, even if it is only an old idea. The key is to risk everything, to let everything go and die into our work, as Tanahashi does when he paints. It was to honor this quality in him that I wrote this poem:

The painter dies
with each brushstroke.
That's how he came
to be so old.

By now we have all lived long enough to discover that one gateway to freedom depends upon our ability to alter how we look at what is right before us. When we do, what has previously blocked our way appears to unlock itself, as if by sleight of hand. As it says in the Heart Sutra chanted in Zen temples around the world, when there is no hindrance in the mind, there is no hindrance at all, and therefore no fear exists. What a joy it is when the wall falls down or the seemingly impenetrable dissolves. This is a kind of dying; it is the dying of one or more beliefs that were never more than illusions that whispered in our ear with such authority we took them for real.

Light as they might appear, however, these illusions wield a heavy power over our psyches, and it takes the strong medicine of risk to unseat them. When we make risk our ally an onrush of creative, life-affirming energy becomes available to us equal to the amount that had been held in check. Then the environment of our inner lives becomes more free and feels instantly permeated with a sense of rightful peace. Such freedom is what it is all about.

What I love about Klee's commitment is the freedom it provided him as an artist to fully explore what he, in that very moment, proved to be. Freedom frees everything it moves through, everything it touches. Look at the playful quality of the paintings for which Klee is mostly known and you will discover in his use of color and form precisely what I mean. The freedom he experienced while painting permeates the work itself and becomes part of the viewer's experience as well.

Copyright © 2003 by Peter Levitt. Excerpted by permission of Harmony, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Peter Levitt's books of poetry include Bright Root, Dark Root and One Hundred Butterflies. He has also published fiction, journalism, and translations from Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish. In 1989 he received the Lannan Foundation Literary Award Fellowship in Poetry. A longtime student of Zen, he edited Thich Nhat Hanh's The Heart of Understanding and Jakusho Kwong's No Beginning, No End: The Intimate Heart of Zen. He has been leading workshops in writing, creativity, and spirituality in the United States and abroad for thirty years.