Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;On Creativityand#8221;, is from a sparkling talk by Sangharakshita titled and#8220;Fields of Creativityand#8221; on a theme close to his heart. Full of warmth, wit and stimulating ideas.
Talk given in 2001.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
On Creativity
[Music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you, and happy listening. [Music] So, what have I been reflecting on? What have I been thinking about? Well, just a couple of weeks ago, I was in Birmingham at Marginaloka, and I was sitting out on my patio in the sunshine, yes, in the sunshine, and I started thinking about creativity. For some reason or other thoughts about creativity started coming into my mind, and I thought, well, perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea if I shared some of these thoughts about creativity with some of my friends, some of the people within the movement. So, my first thought was, well, why not go down to London? Why not share them with the people attending the LBC, who are always so receptive and enthusiastic and who always did me such a wonderful rock. So, I made a phone call or two, but smoothly, very efficiently, of course, it was all arranged. So, here I am, and of course, also launching here, Kanji Paolo's book. So, I use a very unrealistic expression, killing two birds with one stone. So, anyway, now for the second stone, creativity. One of the things that occurred to me, one of the thoughts that occurred to me was that nowadays we use this term creative, rather loosely. It's been rather debased, rather vulgarised. Some time ago I heard of something called creative accounting. Well, it used to be called falsification, but it's become creative. All sorts of things have become creative. You sort of get a sheet of paper and you scribble on it a bit and you're being creative, apparently. You believe in winner prize, who knows. So, this term creative and the term creativity, these terms have become rather overworked. They've become clichés, they've lost much of their significance. So, I was just trying to think what it really meant to be creative, what creativity really meant. I don't want to spend too much on this topic because it is rather abstract. I want to get on to something more concrete as soon as I can. And let's just linger up for a few minutes on this question of what is creativity. Creativity we could say means producing something new, bringing something new into existence. But it isn't just that, because everything that is new is not necessarily creative. Even though what is creative is new, or the creativity does consist in the bringing into existence of something which is new. Or if you like something which is original. Of course, people nowadays also set great store by being original. But you can't really be original by taking thought. That sort of originality is a force, is an artificial originality, it's not the real thing. You can only be original, you can only produce something original if you are original. That doesn't mean being eccentric. It means in a way being yourself. It means being in touch with yourself. Knowing who and what you are. Having or developing insights, vision, having imagination. If you can be yourself in that way, well you will be creative in the sense of producing something original, something which part takes of the nature of creativity. So I think it's quite important, you know, to understand this. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [music fades out] [BLANK_AUDIO]