Meditation for Creativity Jumpstart
I’ve learned something interesting from the last few weeks of meditating twice daily (as demanded by Herr Sifu in exchange for getting to wear black uniforms): It makes your brain leaky.
In a good way.
Okay, so all brains are “leaky” (it’s even a technical term, a la Andy Clark and other extended- and emergent-consciousness types). But I don’t mean technically-leaky in the mathematics-of-using-a-skateboard kinda way; I mean leaky in the things-bleed-together kinda way.
And this, as many of you will know, is the core of creative ideas. When the brain leaks, you turn your head and think you saw a fairy — you may know it’s a shadow, and if you weren’t all zinged out you’d have never thought twice about it. You hear a voice and suddenly you can hear the similar voice of a long-dead somebody, clear as day. You notice all kinds of odd, stupid, and beautiful things, like how the date on the cereal box you’re holding is an anagram of the birthday of the old friend you ran into the other day, and isn’t that also the number of syllables in the last line of “Slouching Toward Bethlehem”?
A leaky brain can give you screwy ideas, for sure — and I don’t mean to shill for the tinfoil-hat community or anything. I know crazy, and what I’m talking about here might be crazy, but it’s not Bad Crazy; I’ve never had simple leakiness mess with my reality-checking skillz — though if yours are shaky, then maybe think twice before inducing any extra leakiness, sure. Still: among those screwy ideas are often the gems of art, or the random coincidences that make you feel One With Everything (and not in the hot-dog sense) all day long.
So, on the offchance that life is feeling a little too grown-up for you lately, if the really spiffy ideas have dried up, and the magic around the corner hasn’t caught your eye in far too long…I thoroughly recommend meditation. For me, it was specifically going to twice a day that seems to have kick-started the Kilgorian Leak Generator (and I LOVE YOU if you got that reference), but if you’re not a regular meditator, who knows, once might do it! It’s at least worth a shot, considering the benefits…and the consequences of the other techniques artists tend to use, many of which are Schedule 1 narcotics…!
(Remember, I have that no-frills meditation how-to post if you need it.)
4 comments
Thanks for sneaking something good back into my life. :)
This post has been sitting in the back of my mind for a while now, just waiting for the right moment to strike.
About 7 years ago, I meditated more regularly (and did other crazy stuff like it) and you are absolutely right, leaky is the perfect term to describe its effect. I explored Buddhism rather deeply at that time and got some amazing results, but over time I simply forgot its value. Up until a few weeks ago, when I got annoyed with how routine and uninteresting my life had become. I’m now dedicated to studying more again and while looking for ways to get my old motivation and creativity back, I remembered your post and put 15 minutes of meditation right back on the schedule. Who knows, now that I have learned some Japanese along the way, I might just explore the Zen koans again, this time in their original language.
Hi muflax! We believe in sneaking good things in wherever possible. *yay*
Wonderful to hear you’re back to meditating; I hope it does all kinds of marvelously leaky things for you. ;) Only one nitpick from me: Japanese certainly isn’t the original language of Zen! The Japanese word is their pronunciation of “Chan”, the type of Buddhism practiced in Shaolin monasteries in China. But to be fair, Buddhism itself came from India, and it was a traveling Yogi and disciple of (India’s) Gautama Buddha who brought the ideas to the Shaolin Temple that combined with their Taoist knowledge to form Chan/Zen.
Why yes, I DO like traditional Chinese thought. Why do you ask? ;)
Oh, don’t nitpick on me. ;) Nitpicking on completely irrelevant things always gets in me in all kinds of trouble, so I’m happy to see it done to me for a change.
But I already knew that about Zen. It’s just that (so far at least) I have mostly been exposed to Buddhist texts and practices originally from Japan or told through a Japanese perspective. But maybe that’s just because it’s more recent (for values of recent that include the 13th century) and thus better documented, less distorted. But I’m picking up some Chinese right now, so maybe this perspective will change.
But the funny thing is, if you go down the road of where something “originally” came from, you always end up in the weirdest of places where you can’t tell if the conspiracy theories aren’t all true after all or not. The more cultures and history you know, the weirder modern religions look and humanity’s lack of a real long-term memory gets really funny. When a manga starts picking up Christian theology to be exotic, but the Christians actually took it from the Gnostics, who picked it up from travelling Buddhists, it all starts to go full-circle.
Anyway, thanks again. :D
Hehe, okay, okay, fair enough! I shalt not nitpick. And I’m certainly not one of those “everything originated in China” types (though it is objectively true that *most* martial arts did).
I like to think that we as a species don’t have a “real long-term memory”, as you so succinctly put it, because perhaps we don’t need one. Are we really alive to spend our time learning the lessons of ancient history, or to experience the moments we’re given to live in?
(Heh, yeah, you totally can’t see ANY Zen influence in my thinking, no sir. ;)