3 Zen Things to do in a Recession
Yesterday, the Dow Jones fell below 10,000 points. Stress and risk are everywhere: the financial crisis, the deepening recession, the threat of losing one’s job and savings. Staying afloat in a sea of red ink is hard.
Sourcing from the ancient wisdom of Zen provides timeless lessons in a world of chaos. As a Sumi-e artist, the Zen principles are alive in my brush every moment. I take lessons from my brush. Here are three:
1. Spare your brush strokes
Less is more. In my Sumi-e paintings, I strive for maximum meaning and expressiveness with a minimum of brush strokes. This makes the few brush strokes more powerful. I focus as much creative energy on the “not-strokes,” that is the space around the strokes, as on the brush strokes themselves. Quality rules over quantity. It also makes me think: what is the most important, most characteristic, signature aspect of my subject matter? The outcome is a deeper understanding, and as a result—better representation, of the person or object I paint.
Similarly, in a frenetic world of economic crisis, you cannot do everything, fix everything, be everywhere. With the outside world in flux, look inside yourself and find what is most important, what matters most to you. Look at your busy schedule as an opportunity in disguise that will help you rediscover, and then focus on your priorities—family, friends, and health.
Then, practice the economy of brush-strokes of a Sumi-e artist– and eliminate.
2. Embrace the Empty Shikishi Board
The empty shikishi board in Sumi-e roughly corresponds to the empty canvas in Western painting. But it is much more meaningful—because Zen aesthetics and philosophy focus on the infinite possibilities that an empty shikishi board creates. Emptiness is freedom—the freedom to do things however you want. By contrast, clutter enslaves you, chaining you down.
In a world of financial crisis, emptiness liberates. Remove unneeded objects from your life that add anxiety. Unneeded items only add stress, demand your attention and scatter your creative energies.
Consider giving these things away or freecycling them. They don’t necessarily have to go straight to the landfill.
Similarly, eliminate unneeded emotions, attachments, relationships. Emptiness creates opportunities.
3. Reinvent Yourself
As a Sumi-e artist, I reinvent myself with every painting. During the creative process, I deeply research and understand my subject matter. I become one with the subject of my painting. If I paint a bird, I become the bird; if I paint an athlete, I become the athlete; if I paint a spiral, I become the spiral. Every painting has to be created like the first and only painting in the history of the world, originating from an empty shikishi board—a radical process of reinvention.
In a time of crisis, reinvent yourself! Take a fresh start, and build yourself, your career, your world from scratch. A crisis is an opportunity—grab on to it. From the devastation after the storm—rebuild your world however you want it to be.
-Drue Kataoka
A young crane flew – not to the moon, but over my roof, just before I read your words, Drue. Thank you for reminding us of the tenets of wise living at any time. It is liberating just to think of them. The field of all possibilities, before we choose. At this time especially, it seems even to the most reticent, we have to choose. To stand on the sidelines and watch the show, is not a choice any more, because the danger of the incompetent taking us into another tunnel of a myopic vision. We stretch our wings, take off and it feels good.