By Gentle Thug Productions
A Cup of Tea
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the
Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire
about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his
visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow
until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go
in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you
are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless
you first empty your cup?”
***
As artists,
there are times when we can become full of ourselves. We can forget that the
creative process is one in which we’re asked to keep ourselves empty so that we
can be filled over and over again by our Muse.
We must
allow ourselves to become perpetual students, not seeking mastery of certain
artistic skills for mastery’s sake, but emptying ourselves to the possibility
of lessons yet to be learned.
For years, I
thought of myself as a filmmaker, but I rarely picked up a camera. It was far
more important for me to keep my cup full by cramming it with books, lectures,
and videos on the techniques of filmmaking. How could I truly be a filmmaker
without knowing the “rule of threes”? How could I call myself a filmmaker
without viewing the entire film collection of David Lynch? And Martin Scorsese?
And Jean-Luc Godard? And Alfred Hitchcock?
As any Zen
master will tell us, we learn Zen by doing Zen. As any poet will tell us, we
learn poetry by writing poetry. As any filmmaker will tell us, we learn to make
movies by making movies. But first, we must let go of any legitimacy (or fear)
that drives us as artists.
We simply
empty ourselves to do our work because the work is all that there is. ...
No comments:
Post a Comment