Creative Education

The heart is cooking a pot of food for you. Be patient until it is cooked. – Rumi

Cooking needs your attention in present. Quality developed will be spontaneity, quick decision.

Let me share with you one anecdote:

Cooking class was on. Masterchef said to participants you can be creative with cooking also. One participant stood and asked how he can be creative with cooking. Masterchef did not utter a word and signaled him to sit down. Masterchef then took out a paper and distributed it to all participants and said this is the recipe of tea. All ingredients and cooking instruments are provided. You have to prepare the tea.

All participants started preparing tea. Within minutes tea was prepared. Now everybody is requested to taste the tea of all the participants. Everybody tasted the tea of all participants and shouted in unison, “different taste”. How Come taste is different when the method and ingredients are the same? MasterChef asked. Nobody was able to answer this question. There was pin drop silence. The difference comes from the maker of the tea. He is also one of the ingredients. He is a catalyst. He does not take part in chemical reaction but indirectly affects the reaction. What you are, will be added to the taste of the dish. If you are happy, irritated, cool, loving, sad, playful, whatever you are will be added. Your being matters.

One participant raised his hand, “Sir can you give another example to make it more understandable”. Yes, food of the restaurants and hotels has more spices, variety, decorations yet you cannot eat it continuously for more than two or three days. Whereas the home food has less spice, less variety, only few dishes are repeated daily and you can relish it your whole life. How come this is possible? Again there was silence. Difference is in their inner motive and intention. Outside food is prepared with the profit in mind and home food is prepared out of love. That’s why you can relish home food your whole life. You cannot change the ingredients given to you but you can change yourself. This is creativity. Be happy, loving, playful and cheerful.

Then Masterchef explains to all the participants – What Is Creativity? – Creativity Is a Quality.

Creativity is at the core of building quality. People rarely innovate when they simply follow instructions. This led me to think more about creativity – the act of doing something in an unconventional way, the act of creating something meaningful that changes you and hence the world. Traditionally (in an industrial world), only artists were meant to be creative – painters, dancers, poets and so on. In the knowledge world, every professional has an opportunity (and a need) to be creative – to see patterns that others don’t see, to create and initiate.

Ego is the enemy of creativity. You are at your creative best when you do things because you find joy in doing it, because it has an intrinsic value to you. When you do things with a purpose of gaining recognition (and hence satisfy your ego), creativity is limited. Our need for external validation for our work stops us from being receptive, open and curious.

Creativity is a paradox. The more you try to be creative, the less creative you will be. Conscious effort to be creative comes in your way to be creative – that is because creativity flows. We think that constraints help us become creative – but being in a state flow, being with the work, being in the work is the key to be creative.

“It is not a question of what you do, it is the question of how you do it. And ultimately it is a question of whether you do it or you allow it to happen.”

Creativity means letting go of the past. Too much reliance on our past stops you from being creative. Creative person is the one who lives in the moment, understands the context and looks at possibilities.

“To bring intelligence into activity, you don’t need more information, you need more meditation. You need to become less mind and more heart.”

Creativity is an inner game. It stems from your love for the subject. It stems from your passion to practice, courage to try and learn by doing.

“If your act is your love affair then it becomes creative. Creativity is the quality you bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you look at things. Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, then it is creative”

Creativity demands a lot of courage. Because doing something unconventionally requires you take risks, be prepared for failure, and learn from it. If our focus on recognition and respect (external validation) keeps us from experimenting, because we are too afraid to fail.

Bottom line:

Creativity isn’t always about doing something that no one has done before – but in my view, it is always about executing your ideas with great love, great joy and a deep interest. If the world recognizes it, you will be grateful. If not, you will still find intrinsic joy and happiness. Being creative is a selfish act!

We need to be selfish. Let me repeat it, because the word “selfishness” has been condemned so much that there is every possibility you will misunderstand. But the word is really beautiful. To be selfish simply means to be yourself. I say to you: don’t consider anybody else in the world, just consider yourself; and in that very consideration you will have considered the whole world. In being selfish you will find all the altruism that you have been seeking and seeking and were not finding, because the whole thing was upside down. 

You are told to love your neighbour – but you have never loved yourself. And a person who has not loved himself, how can he love the neighbour? From where can he get love? First you have to have it. You are loving the neighbour – you who knows nothing of love because you have never loved yourself. The neighbour is loving you – he has never loved himself. Such insanity is happening in the world: people who know nothing of love are loving each other.

It is like beggars begging from each other, each thinking the other is the emperor. Both are thinking in the same way: the other is the emperor. Both are beggars. Sooner or later the reality manifests itself; then there is misery, suffering. Then you think you have been cheated, this beggar has been trying to prove himself an emperor. Now this is absolutely absurd – it is you who were thinking him an emperor. And the same is the situation from the other side: the other person thinks you have been cheating him, pretending to be an emperor and you are just a beggar. When both beggars find that they are beggars, what else can they do other than be angry, enraged, violent to each other, hating each other as deeply as possible? And the love…? It was nothing; they don’t know what love is.

To know anything, you have to begin with yourself.

You have been told to sacrifice yourself for some idiotic ideal. I want you just to be simply selfish. And you will be surprised that if you are selfish you discover so many treasures within yourself that soon you start sharing them – because finding a treasure is a lesser joy than sharing it. And the treasures that are within you don’t follow the ordinary economics and its laws. They are just the very opposite, diametrically opposite to the ordinary economic structure.

In the ordinary economics if you give something, you will have less. If you go on giving, soon you will be a beggar. In the ordinary economic world you have to snatch as much from everybody as possible then you have more and more and more. The treasures I am talking about to you, follow a different law: if you cling to them they shrink, if you cling too much you can even kill them. If you want to destroy them, then close all the windows and doors, become a grave so nothing can escape outside you – but you will be a dead man, with all your treasures also dead with you; your truth, your freedom, your love, your joy. Everything will be dead with you – securely dead, well-insured.

But if you want to grow your treasures, share them, share to all and sundry – don’t bother whether this is a friend or a foe. When you are sharing, the question is of sharing, it is not with whom. Whomsoever it may concern, you simply give. Don’t be concerned about the address, you simply go on sending love letters. Somebody will receive them somewhere.

And the more you go on sharing, the more goes on entering you from unknown sources. A man is just like a well.