Creativity

How to be creative while doing jobs which seem not to leave any space for creativity, like cleaning, etc.?

It is from Krishna Radha. She cleans. But I also do the same thing: every morning, every evening, twenty-four hours -- cleaning your mind, cleansing. But I never feel that there is any need for any other creativity. Cleaning a floor can be a tremendously creative act. Remember, creativity has nothing to do with any particular work. Creativity has something to do with the quality of your consciousness. Whatsoever you do can become creative. Whatsoever you do can become creative if you know what creativity means. Creativity means enjoying any work as meditation; doing any work with deep love. If you love me and you clean this auditorium, it is creative. If you don't love me then of course it is a chore, it is a duty to be done somehow, it is a burden. Then you would like some other time to be creative. What will you do in…

One day you spoke to us about perfection and creativity. What is the relationship between artistic creativity and perfection? Is not creativity in music, painting and poetry an attempt to reach perfection in visible and audible form? Is the artist simply creating a more refined ego as the so-called saints you often talk about?

The real artist certainly thinks of totality -- how to be total? -- but never thinks of perfection. And the beauty is: those who are total, they are perfect. And those who think of perfection are never perfect, never total. Rather, on the contrary: the more they think of perfection, the more neurotic they become. They have ideals. They are always comparing, and they are always falling short! If you have an ideal that unless this ideal is fulfilled, you will not think yourself perfect, how can you be total in your act? If you think, for example, that you have to be a dancer like Nijinsky, then how can you be total in your dance? You are constantly looking, watching yourself, trying to improve, afraid to commit any fault... you are divided. A part of you is dancing, another part of you is there -- judgemental, standing by the…

I want to be creative. What should I do?

Now this is something to be understood: you can vomit the same thing only if you have not digested it, remember. If you have digested it you cannot vomit the same thing, something else may come. Blood may come but not the same Vrindavan bread. That will not come. It has disappeared. So you have to simply keep it down there in your stomach without digesting it. Then you are thought to be very, very intelligent. The most stupid are thought to be the most intelligent. It is a very sorry thing, a sorry state of things. The intelligent may not fit. Do you know Albert Einstein could not pass his matriculation examination? Such a creative intelligence -- it was difficult for him to behave in the stupid way that everybody else was behaving in. All your so-called gold medallists in the schools, colleges, universities, disappear. They never prove to…

Is the drive towards creativity only another expression of our inability to sit quietly and do nothing?

You will not see any logical connection. There is no logical connection, but there is something more fundamentally connected. What he is saying is, "Bodhidharma came to teach suchness. This bamboo is long, so what? This bamboo is short, but there is no problem. I have never heard these bamboos discussing, `Why are you long and why am I short?' Neither does the short one feel inferior, nor the long one feel superior. They are both enjoying existence in their totality. "So just be, without comparing. Settle down in your own consciousness, and you will know the answer, the answer that cannot be given from outside." Issa wrote: <q>AROUND THE HEARTH -- THE SMILE THAT BIDS US WELCOME IS ALSO A FAREWELL!</q> He is saying, the beginning is also the end, the meeting is also a departing. One has to understand this contradictoriness, this paradoxical nature of existence. The welcoming…