Our FBA Dharmabyte today,and#8221;The Creative Experience,and#8221; is an excerpt from the talk and#8220;Art and the Spiritual Lifeand#8221; by Sangharakshita in 1969.
and#8220;Art is the organisation of sensuous impressions that express the artistand#8217;s sensibility and communicate to his audience a sense of values that can transform their lives.and#8221; Using his own definition, Sangharakshita investigates the relevance of art and the artist to higher evolution.
This talk is part of the series and#8220;The Higher Evolution.and#8221;
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio – the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. [music] Now, before closing for tonight, I want to say a few words about the psychology as it were of art or of artistic creation. How and why is it, we may ask, that for the artist, the production of works of art should be a means, even the means of higher evolution. What happens when the artist creates? What happens? Now, much could be said on this topic. Curstler, we know, has written a very thick book on this subject that is, sorry, the act of creation. But tonight, we have to be brief. There isn't very much time left. Briefly then, when the artist creates the objectifies, and when he objectifies, he can assimilate. And this is not unlike what happens in the process of traditional Buddhist visualization exercises. When, for instance, in meditation, we visualize the Buddha. What happens? First of all, we close our eyes and we see. Not just think about, we just see a great, say, expanse of green. Above that, a great expanse of blue sky in between a great bodhi tree. At the foot of the bodhi tree, we see the figure of the Buddha in the orange robe. And we see the very peaceful features, the golden complexion, the compassionate smile. We see the curly black hair. We see the order. We see the five colors of the order. We see all these things. And we see them as clearly and vividly as though the Buddha himself sat before us. And we're not only visualized like this, but we recognize also the great spiritual qualities of the Buddha. We see expressed in the Buddha's face wisdom, compassion, love, peace, tranquility, assurance, strength, fearlessness, and so on. And gradually, as it were, we draw near to these qualities. We feel as it were, we are drawing near to this visualized image. We feel that this visualized image is drawing near to us. We feel that we are absorbing as it were within ourselves. The Buddha's own qualities of love and wisdom and compassion and so on. And if we persevere in this exercise, if we keep it up, not just for a few days, but for months and maybe even for years, eventually the time comes when, we as it were fully assimilate all these qualities of the Buddha and become one with the Buddha in that meditation experience. And when that happens, the unenlightened being, we may say, becomes transformed into the enlightened being. And we realize our own Buddha nature. But in the course of this practice, in the course of this process, in the course of this exercise, what has happened? What was potential in us, that it was a Buddha hood? What was there all the time, unknown and unrecognized, in the depths of our own being, in the depths of our own nature, has become actual, has become realized by us, by being first objectified, by being seen out there, even though it is in here, and then having been seen out there, gradually assimilated, assimilated more and more, until we become one with it. And the same sort of thing we may say happens in the case of artistic creation. We've spoken of the artist as having experienced something, some higher level of being and consciousness, and then creating out of that experience. But it isn't really quite so simple and straightforward. It's not that the artist has the experience itself fully and perfectly and completely first, before creating. If he had it in that way, if he had it fully and perfectly, he wouldn't be an artist. He'd be a mystic, which is something higher, or at least something that potentially higher. Now, what the artist has is at first a sort of vague sense, an indeterminate experience of something, and this is his starting point. He clarifies this, he intensifies this, in the process of actual creation of the work of art. And we may say that the original experience of the artist, the creative experience, is like a sort of seed, a seed which is pulsing with life. But the nature of which is fully revealed only when the flower, that it would say the work of art itself, it stands complete and stands perfect. Now I hope that I've been able to say enough tonight to show the nature of the relationship between art. I won't say on the one hand, because that would suggest separateness, but between art and spiritual life. And I hope it has been made clear that art, true art, art in the real sense of the term, is an integral part of the higher evolution, and that the true artist is himself, one form of the new man. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this screen. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donny. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] You [BLANK_AUDIO]
