We’ve all heard this old chestnut: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

We’ve also learned the importance of asking the right question instead of chasing red herrings.

I like what Alan Watts had to say in this regard: to paraphrase, maybe a chicken is an egg’s way of making more eggs. 

Society arranges for those jobs it requires to keep the ship of state afloat.

When it comes to art, we note that the overwhelming demand is for commercial art, which is not inherently evil—unless, of course, it corrupts the artist with his own complicity.

To this scenario we add a creator compelled by his dharma to make art that has a purpose beyond the commercial—unique work that enters the world stage as an artifact of truth. 

Things are, as poets and physicists remind us, not as they appear to be.

When things don’t seem to be going your way, you may get entangled in the maya and lose sight of awareness, which is the arbiter of meaning and value.

When you sense yourself drifting from seeing things as they are, this is an opportunity—as both a test of character and how well your philosophy holds up when confronting the density of the world. 

When you do hear the truth, there is nothing more to say.

The word chair, or a painting of a chair isnt the chair. The artist Mark Rothko painted his floating abstracts of vertically aligned rectangles large enough so the viewer could step in and feel engulfed, to have a transcendental moment.

Is art the truth itself or the doorway?

As the Japanese Zen priest, Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, said: “When I raise the hand thus, there is Zen. But when I assert that I have raised the hand, Zen is no more there.”

That moment is gone. When you call attention to the moment with thinking, the truth of it is already gone.

What relevance does this have to me? An insight leads to understanding, and understanding is the goal.

Don’t doubt your courage to feel the truth from wherever it might come.