The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

PART TWO | THE CREATIVE INSTINCT
openness will suffer. Too much openness, and there is a lack of
focus. Looking at a flower is a good way to practice being open. If
you find you are too concentrated, allow the looking to come from
your whole body. Can you look at the flower with an open body?
What about being open to other, more mysterious phenomena,
such as the night sky? What about being open to learning from a
dream, or perhaps the symptoms from your body? We want to get
to know the feeling of being open so that we can learn how to use
our inner and outer circumstances to support our creativity.
Students of art, architecture, and design may work in a studio,
but having a creative attitude means looking at the entire world as
your studio. Everything you encounter–the taste of jam, the way
shadows mark a wall, the chance remark of a friend, your curiosity
about bicycles–everything you are open to has the potential to
become part of your creative transformation. The ability to be open
means you have enrolled in the classroom of life and are willing to
learn from the way the phenomena of the world affect your body
and mind.
Kyoto
In Japan the instructions about our relationship to space are not
transmitted in public piazzas but in gardens. The Japanese are less
concerned with the lessons of being in space than they are with the
lessons of being present, less concerned with our position in the
external world than with our relationship to our inner world.
Japanese gardens are filled with objects such as gates, trees, plants,
and stones, but rarely are you encouraged to move along a path. All
points seem equal, as though it is more important to be present
than to get somewhere. The hierarchy of external things is undone
and you feel guided to observe your own mind. To be in the middle
of things is to be centered in your own body and mind. A garden
devoted to reflecting the nature of the mind, the expecting, rejecting,
assuming, rejoicing, and starting-again mind. It must be
spacious to be able to hold so much conflict, so many memories
and opinions. There is nothing to do in these gardens. Nothing is
being sold. Nothing is blinking the latest stock market quotes. This
is empty-space instruction. Not being encouraged to move subtly
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