inspire (n.)
Middle English enspire, from Old French inspirer, from Latin inspirare ‘breathe or blow into’ from in- ‘into’ + spirare ‘breathe’. The word was originally used of a divine or supernatural being, in the sense ‘impart a truth or idea to someone’.
Winter is drawing us into hibernation, and forcing us to reassess what is truly important; or as Ocean Vuong put it so beautifully in this wonderful podcast ‘On Being’ — to ask, what makes our life ‘worthy of our breath’.
This search for truth, for the pure essence of existence, is what all creatives seek through this elusive thing we call inspiration. For Zen Buddhists it is the art of seeing into the nature of one’s own being to find freedom from bondage. The Romantics and Transcendentalists alike sought it by turning outward to nature, as Emerson wrote in his essay on the subject:
‘The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.’ — Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1836
The great expanse of nature that he alludes to is also prevalent in the work of one of my favourite abstract painters Agnes Martin. For Martin — her work very much rooted in Taoist and Zen Buddhist theory — the bare vastness of landscapes like the prairies, the outback of Vancouver and the plains of New Mexico created a kind of turn inward, inciting in her the necessity to live in her own imaginative universe.
Now more than ever as the breadth of our lives feels like it’s shrinking with increased isolation and limited experiences, we must seek to find the expansiveness within the solitary. In ‘Letters To A Young Poet’ Rilke urged that:
‘What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours — that is what you must be able to attain.’ — Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
This turning inwards to the great expanse that we carry inside of us is where we can access that truth, for buried deep in the emptiness within is the oneness that connects us with all that is. D. T. Suzuki in his ‘Essays on Zen Buddhism’ puts it like this:
‘…it is only after the release from every form of attachment that one’s inmost being gets purified and sees itself as it really is, not indeed as an ego standing in contrast to the not-ego, but as something transcending opposites and yet synthesising them in itself. What is destroyed is the dualism of things and not their oneness.’ — D.T. Suzuki, 1927
Thus only by relinquishing our grasp of this binary view of the world, and tuning into nothingness can we reach the purity behind the veil of this material world. Agnes Martin echoes this in her essay ‘The Untroubled Mind’:
‘I am constantly tempted to think that I can help save myself
by looking into my mind I can see what’s there
by bringing thoughts to the surface of my mind I can watch
them dissolve
I can see my ego and see its intentions
I can see that it is the same as all nature
I can see that it is myself and impotent
like all nature; impotent in the process of dissolution
of ego, of itself. I can see that its main intention is the
conquest and destruction of ego, of self; and can only go back
and forth in constant battle with itself; repeating itself.’ — Agnes Martin, 1972
This meditative, but oftentimes challenging, process of ego death is a discipline necessary to any artistic practice, in order to rid the mind of the the barriers that hold us back from being a vehicle for the divine, and reaching the stillness necessary to allow energy, breath and thus inspiration to flow.
‘I learned to lose myself so effortlessly in the breathing that I sometimes had the feeling that I myself was not breathing but — strange as this may sound — being breathed.’ ― Eugen Herrigel, ‘Zen in the Art of Archery’, 1948
The act of emptying the mind to reach this effortless state, however, paradoxically requires a degree of rigour and discipline. Afterall, Herrigal does state that it is a process that he had to learn. Zen Buddhism places an emphasis on repeated practice as the means of rendering an act unconscious and thus a pure expression of the soul unhindered by the mind or body. As Picasso famously said, ‘inspiration exists but it has to find you working’. However, despite this onus placed on discipline as the key to creating the optimum conditions in which the still waters of truth can flow, it is still important to remember that:
‘When you’re hitting a dead end, take it with you. Get away from the desk. It means something is not happening. It doesn’t mean you’re blocked. I don’t think writer’s block is real. I think it’s the mythos of capitalism, that you’re always supposed to be producing. This anxiety of being productive & quantifying your self-worth through page counts & words counts. You’re working, but you have to work differently now.’ — Ocean Vuong
