The Western Idea of practice is to acquire a skill. It is very much related to your work ethic, which enjoins us to endure struggle or boredom now in return for future rewards. The Eastern idea of practice, on the other hand, is to create the person, or rather to actualize or reveal the complete person who is already there.... Not only is practice necessary to art, it is art.

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.

Whispered words can be devastatingly effective.

Writing, playing, composing, painting, reading, listening, looking-all require that we submit to being swept away by Eros, to a transformation of self of the kind that happens when we fall in love.

If a creative person has a sense of humor, a sense of style and a certain amount of stubbornness, he finds a way to do what he needs to in spite of the obstacles.

Here the artist is, as it were, an archaeologist, uncovering deeper and deeper strata as he works, recovering not an ancient civilization, but something as yet unborn, unseen, unheard, except by the inner eye, the inner ear. He is not just removing apparent surfaces from some external object, he is removing apparent surface from the Self, revealing his original nature.

Play, creativity, art, spontaneity, all these experiences are their own rewards and are blocked when we perform for reward or punishment, profit or loss.