Enlightenment & Duality: Not Black & White
The world can be a very funny place when you allow it to be. This should go for art as well, for I think that many people who are aspiring artists take themselves much too seriously (I know I did). This doesn't mean you have to be a clown, but it does mean that you shouldn't lose too much sleep over not being able to finish your "masterpiece." Lester Bangs, the wonderful rock critic and writer, wrote something that I think would be a good quote for lost souls everywhere: "The first mistake people make with art is to assume that it's serious." And the first mistake people make with life, I think, is to assume that it's serious also.
After all, I don't think stars take themselves seriously, or trees, or atoms. Why should we? Attaching importance and meaning to our lives isn't always a good thing. We shouldn't feel like we have to live up to any sort of standard, or fulfill any certain purpose. In a universe as vast as ours the only thing important about people is that we are alive, that we exist. All else is incidental, the meaning we create for ourselves. Why should we continually accept traditional meanings for our lives? As creative people, we should be able to invent ourselves much like we do a play, a story, a painting, or a song. We should play at life like it is a game, instead of brooding over lost goals, which even if they had been attained would have been part of the game anyway.
This isn't just a Zen or Buddhist idea. Western philosophers—especially the existentialists—argued for implicit being as well...that is, we exist to serve no purpose other than that we exist, and must create our own meanings. Nietzsche, too (though he has been continuously misinterpreted), argued that once we transcend our traditional ideas of life and meaning and morality we would be able to emerge better people, able to live for the sake of living. Art for art's sake; life for life's sake. This is important for all lost souls...you are doing something just as important when you are brooding in your house as when you are creating your work. There is no difference but the difference that you create in your mind. All parts of your life are equally important, because they are interdependent. Scientists say that intelligence is nothing but the ability of a life form to distinguish between itself and the outside world. Enlightenment, I would argue, is being able to lose that distinction without losing your mind.
Which brings me (finally) to the concept of duality. In a world where no meanings exist except for the ones we as humans create, why do we distinguish between good and bad? This is not to say that killing people or stealing is good; after all, life is about individuality and we must be careful not to impose our reality on others if we want them to be able to live. We must, however, be able to offer real choices to ourselves and to others, if we want true freedom.
Nothing is black and white. Opposites aren't what they seem. They aren't contradictory, but rather complementary. Black could not exist without white, and white could not exist without black. Success could not exist except in relation to failure, and failure could not exist except in relation to success. These ideas are mutually dependent—they require each other in order to exist. An old Zen saying goes, "Even the opposite side of a coin has its opposite side," and this is true. And in fact, aren't they both sides of the same coin? Aren't black and white variations of the same basic concept? Success and failure really the same intangible entity, only to varying degrees? Who determines these variations and degrees, anyway? You do. I do. We do. We are the ones who classify things in order to survive, and we are the ones who must realize that we are doing the classification. For when we stop to take ourselves seriously, we must also cease to take seriously the ideas of reality that we have created. They are a game, created in order to help us survive, a tool, really. Don't let it become anything other than a tool for you as the Creator of your own world. Don't let life overtake you, rather let yourself overtake life. For life is yours to have, and no one else's.