ART (from ORANGE BOOK OF OSHO)

Art is meditation; any activity becomes meditation if you are lost
in it, so don’t just remain a technician. If you are just a technician
then painting will never become a meditation, you have to be crazily
into it, madly into it, completely lost, not knowing where you are
going, not knowing what you are doing, not knowing who you are.
This state of not knowing will be meditation; let it happen. The
painting should not be painted but only allowed to happen – and I
don’t mean that you just remain lazy, no, then it will never happen. It
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has to ride on you, you have to be very very active and yet not doing
it. That is the whole knack, that is the whole crux of it: you have to be
active and yet not a doer.
Go to the canvas. For a few minutes just meditate, just sit silently
there before the canvas. It has to be like automatic writing. You take
the pen in your hand and you sit silently and suddenly you find a jerk
in the hand and it is not that you have done it, you know that you
have not done it. You were simply waiting for it. The jerk comes and
the hand starts moving, something starts happening.
That way you should start your painting. A few minutes
meditation, just being available. Whatsoever is going to happen you
will allow to happen. You will bring all your expertise into letting it
happen.
Take the brush and start. Go slowly in the beginning, so that you
don’t bring yourself in. Just go slowly. Let the subject start flowing
through you on its own accord and then be lost in it. And don’t think
of anything else. Art has to be for art’s sake, then it is meditation. No
motive should be allowed to enter into it. And I’m not saying that you
are not going to sell your painting or you are not going to exhibit it;
that is perfectly OK but that is a by-product. That is not the motive.
One needs food so one sells the painting, but it hurts that one sells it;
it is almost like selling your child. But one needs to so it is OK. You
feel sad, but it was not the motive; you had not painted it to sell. It
has been sold – that is another thing – but the motive is not there,
otherwise you will remain a technician.