"…our universe is born, and burns, and blossoms using an all-pervasive intelligence with which the creative process develops…."

Recently, I performed an expanded reading of my poetry and prose at California State University, Northridge. Before reading my central piece, a narrative poem titled The Rugged Crossing, I mentioned this was my favorite piece of work. The professor immediately seized upon my comment shouting out from the rear of the class a simple one-word question, "Why?" The moment felt immediate, akin to facing one's roshi in dokusan. The class waited; stared; they too expected an answer.

My thoughts fluttering and flying, I said, "I was searching for a way of making sense of a life that appeared directionless in my mind. I lived many experiences in a short period of time and I needed a map to understand their relationship with one another and their relevance along my path. Further, I desired to thoroughly comprehend my relationship to the universe, to nature. I felt guilt over some of my experiences; my peripheral involvement in supplying arms and ammunitions for a violent revolution in Guatemala, and a sense of joy and success over others; love at long last discovered, marriage, a healthy spiritual development, and my artistic success as a writer. I had creatively proceeded, transcending my past. I wanted to bring this living experience together into a cohesive whole that made sense to me, and writing The Rugged Crossing enabled me to formulate the questions and arrive at the answers. In this way, the art of writing helps me to stay in contact with The Path."

I nattered on, telling the class I am forty-eight, and that for now, this poem suffices. But if I live correctly, continuing to create my life through further experiences, when I am sixty-eight, I'm certain the poem will not suffice.

Struggling through a rebellious, dangerously sincere youth 'I always knew', though the noble vision of always knowing lacked broad universal perspective. It never dawned on me, rather than being the center of my world, I exemplified but a single living facet of the gem through which an hoary universe shines its ancient light, and that in turn I light other facets. I did not know my true face, understand my practice or worth, nor suspect my age.

The creative process cannot begin within you and I, because by the time it enters our awareness it is a primigenial dynamism, operating through a breathing cosmos allowing space and time to create. This allowance we call 'Tao'. If our universe did not demand a constant revolution of change inside the single cell, I wouldn't be here creating anything. The process is ancient, yet forever fresh!

The creative process opens as nature's revolution, and nature evolves because of it. Each of us, as working aspects, reflects the nature of the universe through our desire to carry on the creative process. Nature imbues us simultaneously with insecurity; the quality of never really knowing, and the instinct for survival; our inner voice insisting that we must know, we must finally understand, and reflecting these qualities creates a challenge we strive to answer.

Each human being undertakes a courageous expedition searching for answers through their individual manifestation of the universe, and for the artist this sojourn leads us through the labyrinths of auditory, visual, and intellectual expression. Often bewildered, we compose our songs, paint our canvases, choreograph dances, and write our books sharing this search with one another, the journey to make sense of our lives. We learn - a combination of collecting knowledge and achieving wisdom - and cast light empowering others and ourselves in the unique fashion of our kind.

The human mind is not designed to comprehend infinity - everything, everywhere, all time, here now. We visit our lives in sections, exploring each one, gaining bits of enlightenment, sometimes painfully, and often with joy, and then moving along. When we perform this way, we meet life creatively, we proceed, and we become and reflect the process. Meeting life creatively is the practice we call 'Zen'. Understanding this broad perspective nurtures individual expeditions, because when our vision matures realizing the unity of nature's elements, as zenists say, stone is heard growing in a mountain, and you and I become aware that we are part of a vast, deep adventure - the drama of creation - and we each transcend as beings greater than our sum, a reflective quality transcending our individuality. As artists, we desire to explore and express our new perspective to others. We cannot escape concluding that at the same time a mountain is only a mountain, it is more.

After a period of training designed to awaken our individual awareness to universal creativity, we say the muse clings to our robes, that art is not a thing we do, it is a process we are; we feel the calling.

***

In the beginning, our expression of the individual creative process grows out of an a priori belief. The statement that we hold an a priori belief is ironic. It must be, because humanity is only capable of a relative experience through which we view our universe. We simply are not available to absolutes. During the day, first we are hot and then believe in a world of open doors and windows. At night, first we are cold, and then shutting our doors we burn wooden Buddhas for warmth. Yet, as far as it goes, we claim certain a priori beliefs, and that after the fact, as we learn to perceive the universe through these beliefs, we find the experience of living our days and nights strengthens this a priori knowledge. It is upon this knowledge that our individual reflection of the creative process grows, and eventually transcends itself.

As a philosophical Taoist, what is my a priori belief? As an artist, what is my individual springboard, the firm foundation from which, and through which, my artistic quest shapes itself?

Today's Buddhism is widely believed to be a godless religion or philosophical practice. However, neither Buddha or Lao Tzu discussed God's existence one way or the other, though Buddha was schooled in a polytheistic culture, and Lao Tzu came close to admitting a monotheistic perception of the universe driven by an all-pervasive, political intelligence. My a priori statement; our universe is born, and burns, and blossoms using an all-pervasive intelligence with which the creative process develops. An inherent, intelligent, cosmological light is the first and continuing artist. I do not believe the statement can be made for a creative intelligence separate from the universe - creative intelligence and the universe are a single torch.

What qualities of the creative process support the existence of, and define intelligence?

Observe a quality of permission in the universe - the permission in space and time to become, to create. Some of us may view this creation process as willy-nilly, devoid of order and form. Although, science, while it cannot prove the existence of intelligence, can certainly measure the creative process's order and form. Science is in the business of taking what is visible and scientifically known, and utilizing it to measure that which is invisible, thereby decreeing it as known. So, old-field science uses classical physics to measure and predict, with some variables, a result called quantum physics. Science informs the west of what the east has known for centuries, that the creative process does indeed operate out of form, an intelligent order. The universe is born of creative process. The creative process is born of intelligence.

If the universal creative process has intelligence working within to establish order and form, must it have a direction?

From note to measure to the bar, to the musical composition; from the letter to the word, to the sentence, the paragraph and finally the book; from seed to root, to the tree, to the forest - creativity develops along a virtual path from simple to complex. To creatively meet life is to harmonize with the path. As artists, we use our chosen medium of expression to guide us along this path, to enable our realization of the path. Living as a philosophical Taoist and daily sitting in zazen is part of my practice. Just as important, my art, the art of writing, plays a large role in my life practice.

***

For myself, art is much like science - that is, I use what is known to ask questions about those things in life I'm not so sure I've got a handle on, and I continue the writing, the intelligent process of creative discovery, until the unknown becomes known to me. Scientism within the creative process is another facet holding and spreading light throughout the gem. Science, art, and a spiritual belief in universal intelligence are all a part of the creative process. Sacrificing one to the other means losing touch with our path, it means living out of harmony with the universe.

Humankind's true face is a naturally unified cosmos, our work is the practice of realizing our path, and our worth is the value of the creative process - for the process is who and what we are.