How about a 7th Buddha Family?

Earlier this week, I made a case for a 6^th Buddha family. Remember? Bernie and Jishu showed me a way of using the Buddha families as a mirror, increasing my awareness of where my time and energy were going. To the five families as Bernie picked them up from the Vajrayana tradition, Buddha – spirituality, Vajra – study, Ratna – livelihood, Padma – community, and Karma – social action, I proposed adding Wellness. For me and for the people in my life, it’s important to make sure we’re taking care of ourselves, our own bodies, as well as earning a living.

Maybe I’m getting carried away with myself, but I’m thinking now of a 7^th family, art practice. Since I’ve retired, art practice has become an important aspect of my life, its own way of connecting to the Universe.  I’m recognizing how neglected that aspect was from the time I graduated from college until my second retirement. There was nothing in my work with the Buddha families that ever alerted me to this neglect.

It wasn’t that I was totally unaware that I was neglecting my creative self, but I was in denial. I told myself and anyone else who would listen that I was meeting my needs to create through my social enterprise work, that writing charters, stuff like that, was enough. I also told myself, had told myself all my adult life, that I had to make choices. Before I found my way to Bernie I was managed to balance earning a good living – that’s Ratna – and making a difference in the world – that’s Karma. That was a big deal for me. It was something that my father hadn’t managed to do. Making art was Dad’s third ambition. He kept at it. I gave it up, a price to be paid.   

When I found Bernie, I was struggling to fit a spiritual practice – the Buddha family – into my life.  Bernie pointed me towards a life which balanced spirituality and social action and livelihood, and although I managed somehow to include getting to the gym, art practice remained unnoticed. Since retirement, I’ve been making a place for art, for creating, calling it a spiritual practice, but lumped in with zazen, it’s too easy to overlook. Art practice wants its own seat at the family table. Maybe, when we are using the Buddha families as a tool for examining the imbalances in our lives, it’s important to call attention to our creative sides.

Maezumi always had his calligraphy practice, but it was not until rather late in his life that Bernie found his art, his creative outlet, in clowning. Bernie didn’t label it art. I wonder now how different my experience might have been if he had. Those years in which I had no time for fiction writing, there was no time for clown training either, although Bernie encouraged it. My neglect just didn’t show up when I reflected on where my time and energy were going.

Who am I to keep adding families to a Buddhist teaching which has a hallowed history? Do we need more? Spirituality, study, livelihood, community, and social action, and now wellness and art practice?