Nourishment.


51

Nourishment.


We live and move and have our very being in the universe, our place and home being this earth, this creation. The Tao Te Ching says that the spirit of this creation is the Tao. Others will call it something else.

No matter what we call this creative spirit it is this that nourishes our being and allows us to be what we are to express our inner thoughts in various ways. The creative person is nourished by everything around them, their fellow human beings and the environment in all its wonder. 

Every time the artist considers a new work or verse or piece of music, they look first to the world around them. They watch the sea as it roars towards the shore or gently laps upon the sand. They hear the sound of waves as it throws the pebbles with a gentle rattling sound. Or the river as it flows towards the sea as part of that continuing cycle of life that inspires them.

Sadly, there are those who go through this world almost blindly with little or no thought of the world, they lack any respect for the spirit of creation, the Tao. Those in touch with this Tao, respect all living things without thought or measure simply because they are in harmony with all things. 

Living such, they are in turn fed and nourished by creation. Every brush stroke they make every note they write is fed and encouraged. In this way, we become aware of how unique we are. Each stroke or note comes from us and no other. It is not ours to hold onto selfishly, so we offer what we are as an artist and being to creation, playing our part in the creative process.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Be Calm

Image
63 Be Calm   Life seems to be lived at a frantic pace, everything has to be done, and everything has to be done now. It was, not so very long ago, that the attention span of a human being was considered to be twenty minutes. Recent figures say that now the attention span of a child is down to fifteen. Teachers have now to prepare lessons keeping this in mind, changing the activity more frequently than before to allow them to hold the students' attention. In sharp contrast, Lao Tzu tells us that nothing good is achieved from rushing around. A simple statistic seems to give some support to this. When the speed limit on motorways was reduced by ten miles an hour there was almost an instant drop in the number of deaths on the roads. We gain so much more when we take life at a slower and simpler pace. How can the mind be fed and inspired by the beauty of life around us, if we are in too much of a rush to see and take it in? How can we learn from one another if we do ...
Read more

Solitude.

Image
42 Solitude. "The sage takes such things and makes the most of it. Embracing his solitude." I could have made those two sentences into one by adding the little word, by. Lao Tzu on more than one occasion speaks of times of solitude, here he goes a stage further and says he embraces it as if it was a dear and precious friend. The creative person will be familiar with the thought of embracing solitude. Most creative things are accomplished after and during times of working alone. Some may find it helpful to be part of a group, working together and sharing the experience, but even those moments are just an interlude to the many hours closed away in the studio or at the workbench. The writer, sitting at the keyboard hour after hour putting words from the mind and moving them into flowing and captivating prose. It often seems that we live with a fear of solitude and silence. Some say it is the loneliness of such, but that may be too simple. We seem to be in...
Read more

Yin - Yang.

Image
28 Yin - Yang To be truly creative the artist of either painting, music, sculpting or composing must know the strength of the male and grasp firmly to the sensitivity of the female. To know and to sense both the Yin and the Yang. It is in knowing and sensing this marvellous harmony of the universe that the creative person finds the joy of the Tao as the creative process flows and streams. Lao Tzu says when we grasp both the Yin and the Yang we become again like a child. In this state of being, we can create with real freedom. He goes on to speak of the uncarved block of wood. In the hands of the creative, living with the Tao, it can become so many wonderful and useful things.                                                                               The artist who ...
Read more