“Creations are Numberless” ~ Roshi Bernie Glassman

Roshi Bernie substituted “creations” for the traditional “sentient beings” in the first Great Bodhisattva Vow. I appreciated the idea of not discriminating against insentient beings – save the rainforest as well as the whales – but it was overwhelming. The more limited “sentient beings” was itself an impossible-to-achieve goal.

Bernie was pushing farther even than the trees, at least as I understand his teaching now. Creations encompass not just all the stuff created by God but the stuff created by you and me, all the stuff of our world. I think first of works of art, and not just the great stuff by the likes of Tolstoy and Mark Twain, but even my novel which is currently on its third rewrite.

Bernie’s other change – instead of “I vow to save them,” he chanted, “I vow to free them” – was easier for me, actually in my comfort zone. “Saving” sounded evangelical, got my back up. All those who wanted to “save” the Jews scared me. Freedom, on the other hand, freedom and liberation were ideals I embraced, intentions I brought with me to Zen.

All our own creativity, yours and mine, is struggling to be liberated, to be freed from the places where we hide it, and shared with the world. Where does this nurturing of our creativity fit in Zen practice? My first thought is that mostly it doesn’t. I remember that Katagiri Roshi told Natalie Goldberg that writing was her practice, but what about the rest of us? There’s a tradition in koan study in which Zen students compose a capping verse to express their experience of each koan, but capping verses were not part of my koan study experience as a student – except in the too-brief moment when I worked on The Five Ranks– or as a teacher. Capping phrases might have pushed me toward embracing a side of my creativity which wasn’t tapped by my social entrepreneurship practice and remained largely buried from the time I graduated from college until my retirement. It didn’t need to be.