This engaging and visually striking book is filled with artwork; the author’s award-winning photographs alone will still the heart and stir the imagination.
The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life
by John Daido Loori —
This groundbreaking book introduces readers to a long overlooked but essential aspect of the Zen tradition — the creative spirit.
It shares the story of the author’s own life and the spiritual path that brought him to Zen through the arts, providing compelling lessons for integrating the Eastern and Western minds.
Loori offers practical exercises and visual tools to guide readers to recognize and cultivate their own creativity using the ancient practices of calligraphy, poetry, brush painting and the tea ceremony.
He also describes the seven qualities present in the Zen aesthetic, illustrating how our spiritual and creative lives spring from the same source. He provides exercises at the end of each chapter that help awaken the creative spirit.
Along the way, readers will learn from Loori’s own spiritual journey of corporate executive to Buddhist monk, as well as his growth as an artist.
This engaging and visually striking book is filled with artwork; the author’s award-winning photographs alone will still the heart and stir the imagination.
$15.95 — Ballantine Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 24, Number 4, August/September 2005.
September 17, 2015
August/September 2005, Book review