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Creativity, Spirituality, & Making a Buck

Really is my pleasure to welcome david nick term back to creative life let me tell you I mean david still very well known composer guitarist he's a four time emmy winner he's a two time grammy nominee he's the founder of dharma moon on dh port five point record and he's worked with everybody is we're stevie wonder christopher guest jerry garcia lana del rey maria muldaur I'm sure you all remember his major hit midnight at the oasis he's worked with paul simon and many others he is the drug co director of the shambala center and he's the director of expansion for shambhala training international and his director of buddhist practice and study for om yoga he really is an incredible human being not only the vested in spirituality on buddhism he's an incredibly creative man as well with so many hits under his belt I'm pleased and thrilled to welcome back two creative life david nixon it's so good to see you again welcome back to creative life we've been so looking forward to having you bac...

k thank you I hope you're well feeling welcome and feeling ready to get going beyond welcome thie team here is unbelievable just want to thank you all in advance for the work that you do well we appreciate them with so throw you with this I'm gonna get out of your way because I've got a lot to get going okay take it away first I wanna welcome the brave people who are sitting here live, um, I probably should touch you to make sure you're not holograms, um, and also welcome to the virtual audience, so we're going to be having a look at kind of some major elements of life on earth here, um, what doesn't really mean to be a human being, um, what does it mean to look at the deeper purpose and meaning of one's life and then integrating that with the practical vicissitudes of daily existence? So we're going to have a bunch of slides that hopefully will get us oriented towards topics that we're going to discuss together? But then I'm hoping that we could have a very lively, engaged conversation that's the best s o that we can get to know each other, um, share our aspirations, and particularly in this workshop, there's a sense of also sharing obstacles like what's between us and our vision being fully manifested. So hopefully we'll have a look at that from a prismatic lee from a number of different angles, right? So that's, what these three topics coming together really represents three dimensions of our lives on going look at each one separately, you know, broken down, and then we're going to try to put it, put it all together, so that'll be our goal for this for this weekend, um creativity, spirituality and making a buck. Uh, I know a lot of people have taught this course, you know, around the world from time to time mixing with sort of a more traditional buddhist classes. And for me personally, it has special meaning because my own journey has involved sort of being able to integrate my livelihood and creative life as an artist with my buddhist practice. So that's ah, personal journey. But I find a lot of people, you know, resonate with this sort of combination of these elements that are spiritually practice is not something that's going to isolate it and off into the woods. And then our real life is something that's just overwhelming and kind of going nuts. So the idea of putting together some kind of full, full notion of who we are and how we can live is sort of what's behind it. Obviously, um creativity, spirituality and making a buck the thread that runs through these three is you that's uh, that's what ties them together. So, um what? You know, I'm going to try to get idea from you what you're looking for, you see, because that's, you know, we have some traditions what would call a vision quest? You know, you go into the sweat lodge periodically and you tryto come up with I think thomas you sort of indicating that in what you said earlier you know how to you how can you penetrate through on devise update your sense of your own journey as you go through life so roughly speaking these areas are broad topics you know they could be they could be very much uh each one could open up like a fucking accordion and become a very, very big topic of discussion and hopefully we'll do that we'll open the accordion and close it close it back up again um but e I think in terms of spirituality what I'm sort of indicating by that it's such a big topic and people means so many different things by but I'm talking about sort of balance insanity and vision that dimension of life so you could say everything comes and goes you know that's the sort of basic logic right impermanence all coming and going but while it's happening you know while we're experiencing our lives some sense of how much equanimity how much stability how much clarity do we have you know from from day to day so spirituality maybe the biggest arc of all of these of all these topics uh longest archy goes from day one to the end right? So of course everybody has their own unique approach to it and we're not going to really be sort of preaching or trying to come up with any sort of preferred approach the spirituality but we are going to approach it through the lens of a very very grounded meditation practice called mindfulness because that goes with everything you know I've been known to say mindfulness is the best mixer because it goes with walking it goes with talking it goes with artwork goes with working well with other people s o I considered kind of a universal dimension of the you know, off of the buddhist teachings but it really is transcended in the sense that it applies to everything that we do um and then creativity you know it's such a fundamental part of living so I guess my main point would be that it's just created just to be alive that's the original creative active is being born and then uh of course our first sound is well I don't really have to be you know and uh for those of you who've seen somebody being born you really that's what we're talking about that's what creativity is just coming into this world and then make your way through it so the question is is whether that journey is going to be painful or have some kind of joy and excitement to it on a cz a friend of mine becky says if you don't enjoy the journey you're not enjoy the destination so this this worship maybe maybe in its own way a little less goal oriented than some of the others or let little less uh about you know details about how to do this but maybe broader strokes in terms of the whole view that we hold on then we're going to get very, very specific so we're going to be connecting kind of ah sort of a big view with very practical elements of the details of everyday life and then making about hey I mean, what a strange topic um a lot a lot of the uh a lot of the quote unquote spiritual centers and things they don't really like to talk about this aspect of life all that much so it's interesting you have the two spectrums that kind of spiritual people and then the materialists you know and then you know, these days though I think it may be san francisco is a really good example of how this is happening thie integration of those two has become almost a new kind of approach towards living, so we'll be we'll be looking at making a buck but maybe also the state of mind that we have in relation to making a buck it's very important you know, eso thie idea of right livelihood or, you know, having integrity with your livelihood and having prosperity you know, rich outer riches that reflects an intern in a richness so that's the notion of making a buck there and those are the three things that were going to be weaving weaving together here today um so you can see that we're heaven for those of you, her thinking about signing up for this, uh I put together an entire e book with kind of let's put it this way, you know, kind of sum in the sense of my life's experiences in these three areas and it's very personal, but I I found myself reducing it to, like, really core principles, you know? And the idea of working with principles is that they they take you through different circumstances in situations it's not just you know, how to do one thing, but what's going to take you through variety of circumstances as they change and evolve and so, you know, we can always apply the same remedy as the circumstances change, but if you understand the underlying principle, you said, you know, and so then you have consistency if that's happening, if we just sort of learning method of some kind, you know, and we apply and then the circumstances change, uh, you know, we're flat footed, so we really, really talking about howto developed fluidity with change that's really that's the that's, the really powerful kind of wisdom and principals don't change like gravity doesn't change, right? But if you're up in space, you experience it differently, you see that movie gravity, you know, and, uh so here on earth gravity has a certain meaning to us you know nobody's going to be flying around like that so if you understand the principle then you can apply to very specific situations of life as life comes up to um thie idea there is to be able to create as we say, sustainable and reproducible results in ever changing circumstances, right? So that's that's the idea of why we're going to be looking at principles rather than just only like method? So um the next slide is some uh let's just read it together joining heaven on earth heaven is your vision your ideal your dream earth is your reality your ground your actual situation and your job is to bring those two together so here we're borrowing from a very ancient uh metaphysical construction not just asian but maybe primarily primarily asian but in europe also thie idea of heaven not so much like, you know, white clouds and people with beards and things like that, you know, but actually the lofty or sort of open visionary aspect of experience unobstructed so in the asian cultures heaven is sort of the notion of no obstacles at all it's completely open maybe like if you look at the sky you know and even more than that space you know, it's just like there's nothing in the way so we don't know never live like that do we you know we have a glimpse of that and then we kind of are overwhelmed with details so the details part is called the earth in this in this formulations heaven and earth are sort of characterized as the visionary dimension of life and earth is the sort of practical level of details and managing you know, specific situations. So in this system the idea is to connect us that's what the role in ancient times over the human being is this on and particularly of leadership if you're in a leadership position you're responsible like in ancient china you'd be responsible for joining heaven on earth and if there's not harmony and if there's not sort of feeling that people are happy and kind of prospering it's the leader's fault and like in some ancient towns in china they would have a big bell and you any citizen could go there even though it's a high hierarchical situations and ring the bell and say we got a problem here so that's earth talking see now heaven doesn't listen then it floats away so you can see this for example practically speaking companies like like this one you know any other company you might work with what kind of leadership is in place what's the vision how clear is the vision of what's going on? And then how well is that being connected to the sort of uh daily life of the employees you know, and in the company where you have clear heaven and sort of very skillful practical application to earth, you have harmony, you have a good a good vibe, you know? You have people happy people, prosperous people, people are being able to rise to their level of, um to their potential so this is a very beautiful way of looking at things just heaven on earth and I'm going to be asking you here and you in the audience really were asking what is your heaven and what is your worth and how you how you has it working for you to connect them how you're doing well are you, um we say that if you have too much heaven like that would be a leader who's very visionary, but they're not connecting to the details then the heaven tends to float away and you see all kinds of chaos on earth when there's not good leadership, you know, the company be people just running around, they don't know what they're supposed to be doing there's a lot of scrambling for who's doing what to who a lot of gossip, a lot of a lot of miss functioning and the details are not could take care of and the leaders are kind of, you know, off in la la land, you know, with their vision and on the other hand, if we lose heaven and we have too much earth, too much practicality. Um, what you end up with is a kind of like lcd panel operation, you know, just all all details a ll the time, and nobody remembers why they're doing, you know what the point was, what the vision of it is. So this is a very ancient paradigm and something that we're going to look at, and I'm going to invite you here, especially because you're right here and you there, I can feel you out there just want you to know that if you send your thoughts this way, we'll be we'll be trying to tune into them, but even better than that, if you type them in, we'll have a better shot at it. Okay, so please, everybody in virtual land, um, I would like to invite you feel as I live and connected to this, uh, experience, as the people here are, and our wonderful hosts will be, like, sort of here your channel through to us, and they know how to do this. So it was a really great job of that. So at any point, if you're like, confused about anything that we're talking about, I want teo, you know, go further with directing, helping us find direction during these two days, please jump in okay, we'll have plenty of time for everybody to participate. You might be wondering uh those of you out there heard who are just trying to get through your day and, you know, get a raise from the boss to get a job, put your entrepreneurial situation together, you know, start a new business uh, figure out what the heck you doing on planet earth in the first place? You might, um, be wondering why is meditation part of this thing? I'm just on ly interesting getting my stuff together, you know, on dh having a practical uh, improvement over things that I'm working with. Why include meditation in this kind of workshop? Interestingly enough, the first workshop, it it was on ly about meditation. You know, we looked at it as a whole it's a three day workshop that's available online. If you want to go deeper into that that worship goes much deeper into practice, then we're going to go into it because we have three topics to cover. So um it's its on me really to be clear about why meditation would be part of this workshop and what the benefit of that could be so a zit says here through the practice of meditation weaken train our mind developing strength, clarity and focus our state of mind is the backbone of everything we do in life so that's an interesting premise I think that's the hidden premise that most of us you know I haven't really uh consciously maybe tapped into is that we've got the idea of training the body for example, right? Everybody gets that um especially in january, especially the east in january or you know they go okay, new year's has happened I pigged out at christmas and new year's celebrations now it's time to get in shape so that idea somewhere obviously, but the mind is, you know, such a strong component that's kind of less tangible, you could say in a way, but in terms of the meditation traditions, we accept the possibility we can train our minds. Calo zhang in tibetan mind training and the mind I just wanted to give you this sort of, like thought about what mind is and how how important our state of mind is like you woke up this morning, right? When you wake up this morning and you had a state of mind before anything happened, we don't even know where it comes from. We don't even remember how we got there, but we might be grouchy or depressed right away, you know, uh or we might feel like very busy in the mind, so our mind is something that has energy and direction to it and it's hidden it's really governing you know how how are how are activity is it's more fundamental than what we do so it generates what we do so working with the mind has a tremendous potency to it um that's why we're including the meditation peace we're going to be looking at meditation in a very general way s o that hopefully it's something that anybody regardless of your religious or spiritual orientation you could take this piece out of this almost thinking this is just a very practical way to train on dh so in the second segment we're going to get into that in some detail hey, um take for example I thought these two examples of state of mind potent power of it uh andi I don't know if this is, uh is just maybe my projection with stephen hawking's I think stephen hawking's and I look at that I think I see one of the happiest people on planet earth in terms ofthe, you know, the kind of energy enthusiasm obviously the physical situations very challenging and many of us were faced with that kind of circumstance might really, um, you know, feel overwhelmed, right? So and then another hand I thought of like, some I don't pick on anybody in particular but some, uh you know uh well to do, uh lady on park avenue you know, and not not not that there's, that we're talking about being prosperous, so don't worry about that. We're not undercutting that possibility, but then maybe she chips one nail and she's having a terrible day. So that's the mind, you know, that's, our mindset, our mindset is really governing our emotional life and our sense of optimism about, you know what we're doing. Our interpersonal relationships and our habits, so in meditation would look deeply into our state of mind, um, and in a sense, re synchronizing back with our activity in the world so that our mind and our activities are lined it's, a form of alignment. So our principle here is why include meditation is because a lot of confusion and suffering happens when we're out of alignment, in terms of how our mind in our body and our activity are working together, integrated. So that's, that's, sort of the general idea.