1. Zen & Creativity
Cultivating Open Awareness

2. Where do great ideas come from?
Often out of “nowhere”
● In the shower
● While exercising
● While relaxing
Archimedes - Eureka!
Newton’s Apple

3. Where do great ideas come from?
But also from intense, focused activity
● Related to the desired objective
● Or even unrelated

4. Flow - Zone - Zen
“Flow, also known as the zone, is the mental state of
operation in which a person performing an activity is fully
immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement,
and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence,
flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one
does.”

5. Components of Flow
● Intense and focused concentration on the present
moment
● Merging of action and awareness
● A loss of reflective self-consciousness

6. Components of Flow
● A sense of personal control or agency over the situation
or activity
● A distortion of temporal experience, one's subjective
experience of time is altered
● Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding

7. Can we cultivate “Flow”?

8. Zen practice is highly relevant
● Being intensely aware, focused, but more importantly
● No subject/object separation - “I/Me” is removed.
How to build that type of awareness and focus?
Meditation and awareness practices - the Zen Arts

9. My Meetup Intro
"Randy is a Business Analyst at work and a Zen Chaplain in
his spare time. In other words, he goes back and forth
between full-blown analytical mode and "letting go of
thoughts".

10. My Analytical Bio
● BS in Physics, MBA (Quant. Analysis)
● Naval Officer (Nuclear Engineer)
● Engineer in defense industry
● IT manager, 10 years in Europe
● Career break for 7 years
No visually creative talent! (have you seen my slides?)

11. My Zen Credentials
● Meditator since late 70’s
● Formal Zen training from 2003
● Ordained in Soto Zen tradition
○ Silent Thunder Order
○ Shukke Tokudo 2013

12. What is Zen?

13. What Zen is Not
● A Theology
● System of Metaphysics
● A hippy excuse to zone out
● Easy

14. The name says it all...
Sanskrit:
Chinese:
Japanese:
English:
Dhyana
Chan
Zen
Meditation

15. Zen is a Practice

16. Zen Patriarchs - Bodhidharma and Dogen

17. Eihei Dogen - founder of Soto Zen
“To study the Way is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
To study the self is to be enlightened by the
ten thousand things”

18. Sound a little familiar?
Let’s parse it out and see...

19. “Study the self”
● Study the person - what are their wants, needs, pain
points, and behaviors?
● Understand how they relate to and interact with the
world.
● Maybe develop a persona!

20. “Forget the self”
● Remove the subjectivity.
● Realize that there is no “self” independent of
relationships.
● Once we have studied and see ourselves clearly, we can
observe objectively.

21. “be Enlightened by the ten thousand things”
● Idiom for “everything”.
● Basically, if we remove our filters and biases, what’s left
is reality, “truth”.
Data driven research!

22. Don Norman
Author of The Design of
Everyday Things and co-founder
of the Nielsen Norman Group
“It’s Everything”

23. Focused Awareness

24. The Traditional Zen Arts
Chado - the way of Tea
Shodo - the way of the Brush
Kado - the way of the Flower
Kyudo - the way of the Bow
Haiku - “live words”

25. Shodo Examples
“When the self disappears, the brush
paints by itself… the poem writes itself.
There is no longer a gap between artist,
subject, audience, and life.”
John Daido Loori - Abbot MRO.

26. Ensō
Symbolizes absolute
enlightenment, strength,
elegance, the universe, and mu
(the void).

27. A Han with Enso Calligraphy

28. Haiku - a Personal Example
Traditional Haiku adhere to 3 key principles:
● 17 Syllables in three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 (this is the one most
Americans know)
● A seasonal reference (most don’t know)
● The essence of haiku - the “cutting word” - which often represents the
juxtaposition of two images or ideas.

29. Haiku - a Personal Example
“Spring in a new land
A teacher plants learning
seeds
Duncan now blossoms”
Written at the end of the school year
when we had first moved our son to
the USA from Europe. in appreciation
for the huge impact his teacher had
on his transition.

30. They don’t exist for the sole purpose of
creating a work of art, but they are
rather a method for opening the
creative process.
D. T. Suzuki

31. Zen Arts Extended ...
But really, is the art of Process
“Zen and the Art of…”
Archery (Herrigel)
Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig)
Anything and everything, really, even the mundane...

32. Chado - the way
of Tea

33. Practice: Direct Experience
The tea ceremony in Zen involves experiencing a cup of tea,
but an important part of the ritual takes place at the end of
the ceremony, when the tea master brings out all of the
implements used for the guests to examine and appreciate.
The tea bowl is presented as a unique work of art, without
peer. It is examined by the guest both visually and tactilely.

34. Practice: Direct Experience
See for yourself if it is possible for you to take up an ordinary
teacup and just experience its physical existence, without
naming, analyzing, judging, or evaluating it. Just feel it. See
it. Through it. Experience it without the mind moving. When
you find your mind moving, acknowledge the thought, let it
go, and come back to the cup in the same way that in zazen,
you let it go and come back to the breath.

35. John Daido Loori - Abbot and founder
of Mountains and Rivers Order
“Single-pointed concentration develops our
intuition. We become more directly aware of
the world. We notice in ways that are not
clearly understood, but are very accurate.”

36. How to
Meditate?
“Think Non Thinking”

37. 5 Minute Guided Meditation
The basics of Zazen:
● Body / Breath / Mind
● 5 Minutes Now…
Instructions for home:
https://zmm.mro.org/teachings/meditation-instructions/

38. Practice: Meditation
Set aside some time on a regular basis, daily is great, but
whatever you can manage. Start with short periods, even
just a few minutes. Use one of the many online guided
meditations or instructions.
Don’t just do something - sit there!

39. This is really
hard to do
But it gets easier, with practice

40. Process is Meaningful

41. Creativity as
Process

42. “Perform a ritual until it
becomes empty of meaning.
Then, fill the ritual with your
own understanding.”
Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston -
Abbot of the Silent Thunder Order

43. Setting Up my Desktop

44. The Problem
● I need to set up my desktop every day.
● Same apps, same screen layouts.
● Tedious, repetitive, no value add.
For me, not the same as a craftsman laying out tools.

45. The Solution - I wrote a script to automate my morning desktop setup

46. I created a Github account! Does that make me a developer?

47. The Solution
● Effective and Efficient - it takes less time and is
consistent.
● I can modify my script as needed.
● It is elegant - I am pleased every time I use it.

48. Practice: Caretaking
Create a simple practice for yourself using some routine
task that you do every day, such as washing the dishes,
sweeping the floor, or making the bed. Make an agreement
with yourself to perform this task with total awareness.
When you wash the dishes, just wash the dishes. As Thich
Nhat Hanh said, “You can wash the dishes in order to have
clean dishes, or you can wash the dishes to wash the
dishes.”

49. Practice: Caretaking
The same is true of any other task that we do almost
mindlessly. Try bringing to it a mindfulness that is not
critical, evaluating, or analytical, but focused simply on being
present in the moment.

50. Milton Glaser - designer of the famous
I ♥ NY logo
“We’re always looking, but we never really
see… it’s the act of attention that allows you
to really grasp something, to become fully
conscious of it.”

51. Ōryōki
(vessel that contains) just enough

52. Ōryōki
Eating utensils for the personal use of Buddhist monks,
Ōryōki also refers to a meditative form of eating using these
utensils that originated in Japan and emphasizes
mindfulness awareness practice by abiding to a strict order
of precise movements.
Along with the robe, the bowl itself is considered a symbol
of transmission from teacher to student.

53. The Problem
● How to serve food to many efficiently.
● Medieval sanitation.
● Support mindful awareness practice in silence.
The first two are very common requirements, but the third
makes all the difference.

54. Ōryōki Demonstration

55. The Solution
● Effective and Efficient.
● Innovative, then and now.
● Actively in use for seven hundred years.
Most importantly, it not only consistent with awareness
practice, but actively facilitates it!

57. Oryoki bowls on shelf during retreat

58. Dealing with being “Stuck”
The more we try the more we can be blocked.
Instead, “sit with” the experience.
Don’t try to fix anything, just experience what is...
R-A-I-N Mindfulness Practice

59. Using R. A. I. N
1. R Recognize what is happening
2. A Allow life to be just as it is
3. I Investigate inner experience
4. N Non-Identification

60. “Between the stimulus and the
response there is a space, and in this
space lies our power and our freedom.”
Victor Frankel

61. References
"Design Thinking 101". Nngroup.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 27 Dec. 2016.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-thinking/
"Flow (Psychology)". En.wikipedia.org. N.p., 2017. Web. 24 Jan. 2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
My Lunch-n-Learn on Meditation
http://www.slideshare.net/earlra/meditation-the-subtle-art-of-being

62. References
"Zazen Instructions - Zen Mountain Monastery". Zen Mountain Monastery. N.p., 2017. Web. 24 Jan.
2017.
https://zmm.mro.org/teachings/meditation-instructions/
Ōryōki. (2017). En.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 24 January 2017, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cry%C5%8Dki

63. Feel free to contact me
Randy.Earl@Gmail.Com
Twitter: @randy_earl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randyearl