Breaking Sets, Pattern Interrupts And The Wild Creativity of Buddhist Yogis
“As everything is the free play of mind, you might as well enjoy it!”
Karma Pakshi -13th Century Tibetan Yogi Lama
This longer article has been rattling around in my mind for over 15 years. I’m kind of glad it’s taken this long to evolve with life experience, and reflection. Insights are still evolving and I hope in the musings and connections I make, you find some intriguing think-jars and take aways to remix into your own understandings, systems change practices and creative mindset.
Don’t fall in
Essentially I’ve wanted to explore some interesting parallels between ancient Buddhist crazy wisdom traditions and the creative provocation practices in system innovation processes. One reason I wanted to create Think Jar Collective back in 2010 was because of how fascinating I found it when seeing how creative provocations could help link disparate ideas and reform them into fresh innovative views and possibilities. Seeking out unexpected creative collisions is often the heart of creativity and in the crazy wisdom traditions they can also spur waking up to new insights and transform stiff dehumanizing institutions. Honing and embracing these provocations that break open rigid thought patterns can be jarring, confrontational, exciting and fulfilling in the long run if we don’t take ourselves too seriously in both the systems change or mind work.
Now, as you hopefully will see, whether you want to free your mind for the benefit of all sentient beings like the crazy wisdom traditions of Buddhism, or you want to break sets(patterns and habits) in order to see new possibilities to wicked challenges you're working on, there is something to learn from these masters of jarring provocation. At the very least, they were astonishingly creative, hilarious and practiced living fully in the world with deeply flexible minds that could hold many paradoxes as they navigated complexity and strove to help others.
To make the links and connections between creativity practices and the crazy wisdom provocations, I have to do a bit of context setting for both sides before I bash them together. This is not your usual post on creativity and systems change. If you have a bit of attention deficit like myself, there is a succinct summary at the end. Buckle up and bear with!
“At all times, and in all circumstances may the wish to conform to conventional expectations not arise for even an instant. If, due to the power of strong habits, such deluded intentions occur, may they not succeed.” Rigdzin Jigme Lingpa- 18th century Tibetan Dzogchen Yogi and Nyingma Lineage Holder
Why am I into linking these two worlds?
First, I gotta say, this article isn't to convince you to be a Buddhist. I admit I do think there are some very unusual ideas baked into some forms of Buddhism that are pretty special and fascinating in how they can consciously upend rigid thought patterns.
Being an explorer, questioner, and passionate shit disturber from a young age, around the time I was 18 I found myself getting really inspired by and absorbed within one of four main lineages of Tibetan Buddhism that is known for the crazy wisdom traditions. At that time when I was searching for a teacher, and like most newbie westerners to an exotic tradition like Tibetan Buddhism, I really wanted one of those jovial little Tibetan Lamas(teachers) in red robes who just seemed to laugh all the time and would let me put them up on a pedestal. Even though those Lamas were around, I found myself unexpectedly drawn to an authentic Lama, who looked nothing like what I thought a Buddhist Teacher should look and act like at first. My main teacher and his wife(also a teacher of mine) were westerners, stamped and approved by authentic Tibetan lineage holders, not celibate, and the guy looked and sounded more like an army general and less like what I thought a Buddhist Lama was supposed to be. He did laugh a lot, was super kind to everyone and told lots of bad jokes, but no robes. His whole way of being was both fascinating and jarring to what I thought “real spirituality” meant. He was kind of like a Buddhist Loki in the way he played with expectations while remaining deeply authentic. Over 12 years, I studied with western and Tibetan teachers, traveled with my main teachers, shared intense experiences like jumping out of airplanes(with parachutes) and did hundreds of thousands of repetitions of traditional practices meant to ready the mind to see in fresh ways. From my experience, the path I chose challenged expectations of pretty much everything, was exciting, jarring, felt deeply meaningful, importantly uncomfortable at times and lots of growth and unravelling occurred. Unexpectedly, in 2006 I found myself being asked by my teachers to teach what I knew of Buddhism and the lineage I’m part of. Over a 5 year period I learned a ton from teaching around North America when asked and felt a big responsibility to accurately share while being honest.
Art by Nepalese artist Tsering Sherpa
Still with my head up my butt, I hold a paradox that I’m grateful for my teachers, their trust and what they generously shared with me about the mind, but the dead honesty I learned in practice came with a price. I had to face that I couldn’t really represent the superstitious cultural stuff, nor the all-too-common and not always healthy group think that can easily creep into spiritual organizations of any kind. So, in 2011 at the top of my game, I laid everything out, had my last mind-blowing meeting with my teacher, and left the formal institutions of Buddhism on good terms. Since that time, I keep my teachers close in mind and have striven to integrate practice in daily life while remaining unapologetic about my natural inclinations of being a skeptic, weirdo creative, and humanist.
It was my Buddhist Loki teacher who inspired and encouraged me to explore a master’s thesis on the links of serious play, and creativity to spark shifts and systems change. That opened a whole new dimension of creative collisions that I’m still blown away by and striving to integrate in order to help people, organizations and systems to find solutions to complex challenges that matter in our world.
In the tradition I’m from, you never really know who the real authentic ones are until way later, but the older I get, the more I realize that my teacher was probably an authentic wild wisdom Mahasiddha (explained later). He was unconventional, always teasing preconceived ideas, showing everyone inner strengths they didn’t know they had and being unexpectedly kind to everyone in all sorts of tough situations. So, these subjects go deep for me with lots of life experience in them, some tensions, joy and paradox.
The Serious Play & Creative Provocation Side of Problem Solving
"There is a close relationship between the “haha” of humour and the “aha” of discovery"
Roger Von Oech- Creativity researcher
What really is creativity?
Wild creativity is not just for artists or Buddhist Yogis. It’s in us, part of everyone and we need it more than ever to help come up with solutions to complex challenges we’re facing in the world. Creativity essentially is about noticing links between seemingly disparate things and then combining them in novel relevant ways.
“Creativity is the ability to solve problems with original, innovative, novel, and appropriate solutions” Amabile & Guildford
Sci-fi author Ray Bradbury on staying open to creative collisions of disparate ideas, domains and worlds
We all see a certain amount of creative connections everyday as we navigate the world. If we don’t see enough connections, our minds are usually stuck in a form of depression and neurosis. On the other hand, if we see too many disparate connections everywhere, we can stray into psychosis, or manic states where the connections are only seen by the manic individual and not by others we share the world with. Just the right amount of playful seeing of interconnections is where the minds of real creatives and Buddhist Yogis hang out.
“Creativity occurs when a person, using the symbols of a given domain, has a new idea or sees a new pattern, and when this novelty is selected by the appropriate field for inclusion into the relevant domain” Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi - Creativity Researcher
Studying what creativity is and how to harness it for solving wicked system challenges has consumed me for many years. Playful creativity can be one of the most beautiful expressions of the human mind and so often can lead to solving real challenges of both the mind and systems we’re interconnected with. In my graduate work, I studied a social services think tank harnessing humour and serious play to provoke relevant creativity in social service design and delivery. Ultimately, the aim of the think tank was to help marginalized folks have better lives. The playful explorations and weird creative collisions in the think tank were a vehicle for creativity to emerge to help people the group served. The group was trying to get their minds into new ways of seeing and unstuck from the usual status quo. From that learning and in tandem with experience from my Buddhist meditation teachers, I saw some interesting parallels between serious play sparking creativity and the playful provocations of crazy wisdom traditions.
What really is humour?
Khorlo Demchok or Chakrasamvara. Key meditation form in Mahasiddha traditions that represents a blissful, playful state of mind and expression
Humour as a provocation for creativity is interconnected with serious play creativity and is weird when you really explore what humour is in the mind and relationships that spark it. Some over simplified theories of humour are biologically grounded and suggest basically that when something is funny to us, it’s simply a stress release response from things not going the way we want. A little bit more interesting theory of humour says basically that we find something funny when a pattern we expect to flow a certain way doesn’t happen the way we expected and this sort of shocks our system and we laugh. A quick, humorous collision with the unexpected often feels good too as we release expectations into the void. Our brains do a lot of amazing pattern recognition and our experiences of the world are essentially complex interconnected webs of flowing familiar habits, and not so solid projections. Humour can break through habit patterns and open up new connections that can be novel, and helpful if we learn to let go a bit and embrace the uncertainty in it all.
"Laughter provides a train wreck for the mind, suspending thought and being in the moment, which opens the channels for innovative, creative thinking. You can't think while you are laughing. Try it. Try doing a calculus problem (or moving a couch) while in the throes of laughter. It can't be done. But what it does do is metaphorically open the cranial channels and allow for creative, innovative thinking to emerge." Lemons, G. 2005
What really is serious play?
Serious Play harnesses humour of the mind and is generally associated in the creativity, innovation and design worlds around sparking purposeful suspension of judgement and playing with ideas to see challenges in new ways. Serious Play is kind of about improvisation and letting ourselves express action intuitively without much judgment.
“Theories on serious play emphasize that the qualities of play entail a state of mind that is curious, exuberant, and spontaneous; is open to improvisation; does not inhibit thought; defers judgment; and creates the feeling that one is outside time and is acting from intuition. These states of a playful mind can free the imagination, diminish petty self-consciousness, and foster novel, relevant innovations.” Weinlick(yeah me again) 2010 thesis paraphrasing Brown & Vaughan, 2009; Palus & Horth, 2002; Weissman, 1990
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The think tank group I researched found that contrived over planned play fell flat and didn’t work. But when the group would let conversations flow in unexpected ways, follow divergent conversation paths, joke around and playfully tease each other a bit, sometimes unexpected creative collisions would emerge and a relevant insight to a problem they were working on would become clearer. In my research we learned that play led to trust, the trust led to ignoring our inner naysayers and judging parts of our minds and that let more fresh uninhibited expressions and ideas emerge.
“The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression”.
Psychologist and Game Theory expert Jane McGonigal
The wise ones all have a wicked sense of humour
The great playful yogi, His Holiness the 16th Karmapa (left) and the 3rd Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche messing around at Disneyland in the ‘70s.
In my explorations of mind and play thus far in life, one thing that has become clear is that the wisest, kindest and most creative humans-whether Lamas, Indigenous Elders, artists, designers, or creative policy wonks, all seem to have wicked senses of humour. The wise ones don’t seem to take themselves too seriously and my hunch is, it probably is a sign of having less adherence to rigid habits and more embracing of uncertainty and playfulness. Whether it was creativity that led to humour or humour that led to creative flexible minds in the wise ones, I’m not sure. Likely a both-and paradox.
In short, humour and serious play spark divergent, lateral thought patterns which can lead to new insights, new ways of seeing ourselves, seeing systems and often can lead to relevant creative ideas if we practice it. But don’t force humour as it will get cringey and soon your teams will run from “play”. You have to ride the tension and paradox.
You have to practice bringing a kind, playful spirit to everything you engage with and feel that everyone you’re collaborating with is really interesting and has something special they are just about to express. Work on the mindset more than the actions.
“I think what helps me keep creative is seeking out interactions with passionate, creative people. It’s hard to put into words what happens, but kinda like, weird, humorous, spontaneous interactions can “JAR” me out of habitual patterns of thinking.” Debbie Reid - Think Tank participant in my graduate work and a close mentor of mine
“If you go into a culture and there are a bunch of stiffs going around, I can guarantee they’re not going to invent anything” IDEO’s David Kelley.
An important discerning note with creativity
Relevant creativity is not randomness.
Randomness alone is not real creativity. Randomness can help spark divergence, and divergent thinking can lead to creative ideas, but you have to know a domain’s rules before you break them or reassemble into a new paradigm. Just acting randomly in a domain of interest doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being creative. For relevant creativity there must be a dance and link between the tensions of the known and the unknown. Many who are trying to create better systems from old ones fail because they haven’t been disciplined enough to really study the domains of interest they want to create new paradigms in. Related to this, I love this quote from colleague and longtime Canadian social innovator Al Etmakski that sums up the essence of relevant creativity. Al says,
“Real Innovation(relevant creativity) is a mix of the old, the new and a dash of surprise”
So, that’s the creativity, humour and serious play contexts you need for this article.
Some context on the diversity of approaches in Buddhism
Unique 8 armed form of a female Buddha aspect called Tara. Representing swift active compassion of mind to protect others
Before you read further, it's important to know that within the “thing” often called Buddhism in the west, there is not one book of Buddhism, or one paradigm and approach like many religions. 2550 years ago, the historical Buddha(awakened one) taught for over 40 years and many schools and approaches developed and were codified for hundreds of years after the Buddha died. Like any set of ideas that get institutionalized by a group of followers, there were of course big debates, factions and evolutions of Buddhist ideas over time. Each form of Buddhism also changed with the culture it moved into. For example Tibetan Buddhism has very rich iconography that is partially based in Indian forms and partially influenced by the pre Buddhist shamanistic religion(Bön) of Tibet. You won't find the same Buddha forms in Thai Theravada Buddhism or Zen Buddhism and they might even be seen as heretical to "real" Buddhism in some approaches. If you learn about the Buddhist crazy wisdom adepts and think it doesn't align with the Theravada Buddhism you learned at a 10 day silent Vipassana retreat, you're right. Traditional teachers will say these are all good approaches, but very different. All authentic Buddhist traditions will say that Buddhist approaches are about the same outcome-awakening the mind to its own true nature and grounded in traditions going right back to the historical Buddha. Some will argue that how deep one goes to cut through stiff mental patterns varies with various traditions. One summary I learned from a Tibetan Buddhist context that is a decent approximation of 3 core approaches in Buddhism goes like this.
Hinayana Buddhism(Theravada) is mostly about gaining individual peace. There are many monk, and nun vows in this way and you essentially learn how to not take your disturbing emotions seriously and learn how to behave in a good way that reduces stressful outer and inner circumstances. This approach is important foundational golden-rule kind of stuff.
Math and proportion measuring of a beginning Tibetan Thangka painting of the Historical Buddha Shakyamuni
Mahayana Buddhism (Great way) focuses more on recognizing that getting free or peaceful circumstances just for yourself isn't that cool, as you realize how interdependent everyone is. The teachings here help the practitioner to see that everyone wants to be free and then works on developing compassion for all and ways to help others find their inner strengths. You work with your mind to balance the paradox of compassion and wisdom. Compassion for all beings(not just those you like), and wisdom to see nothing is as it seems- that our situation is more like a dream. Seeing the world as a dream, you learn to not take yourself and your thoughts so seriously, but at the same time take seriously beings who suffer from taking their thoughts too seriously. You surf this paradox, refuse to leave others behind and commit to staying around for countless lifetimes until all beings as limitless as space are free. There are mind blowing teachings in this tradition that there is no past, present or future in an absolute sense, and that you travel the path to realize your mind never left or really went anywhere, but at the same time you had to travel to realize it.
"The open mind of spacious freedom cannot be confined within the cage of ideas." Longchen Rabjam (12th century Tibetan Nyingma Lineage Master)
Vajrayana Buddhism (Tibetan Buddhism/ Tantric Buddhism) is the tradition the crazy wisdom masters came out of. It is built on Hinayana and Mahayana foundations and adds practices of trying to see that everything on an ultimate level is the free play of mind and amazing just because it can happen. There are a lot of paradoxes to hold in the Vajrayana traditions that came from India, Kashmir, and the Indus valley and then moved to Tibet and Bhutan mainly, but also to Cambodia, China and Japan a thousand years ago and the west about 50 years ago. If you're doing well in this approach, you see less faults in others over time, and have deepened uncontrived compassion for all beings. When without artifice you spontaneously start to sense that every being is already a Buddha who might not know it, your mind starts to really learn from every and any situation. Here you don’t need quiet peaceful places to practice as much, but strive to bring all experience onto the path and work on your inner clinging rather than arranging outer circumstances to stop causing disturbances. You also learn to train the creative story part of your mind with imagining yourself, others and the world around as colourful and awake with meaning. I’m sure you’ve seen the vibrant Thangka paintings depicting various Buddha forms and mandalas. These are not gods, but representations and symbols of qualities in all of our minds. Training in these types of meditations can short circuit our usual clinging to ourselves, our rigid ideas, our identity and can more quickly help us let go and be more flexible in our approach to the world. When we really let go, our view can be a bit unconventional- Kinda crazy to those stuck in conventional rigid norms. But the difference from a person with mental illness and crazy wisdom, is the one with crazy wisdom is fully aware and in control and hopefully just wants to be kind to others without expecting anything in return.
My Buddhist teacher used to say the following about the vibe and differences in some Buddhist approaches,
“All the approaches are good. But we can get confused if we mix the schools. Zen Buddhism is for more precise minds and everything but the essence stripped down. With Tibetan Buddhism(Vajrayana), the style is more like your uncle having a beer with you around a fire pit and telling you some interesting things about the world. It’s up to you what approach you like and what fits with your style.”
What’s a Buddhist Yogi or Yogini?
Male practitioners in the Vajrayana tradition were generally called Yogis and female practitioners Yoginis. The meaning of Buddhist Yogis and Yoginis is very different from your local community Yoga classes, where simply stretching and breathing you get called a Yogi by the instructor. Buddhist Yogis and Yoginis don’t escape anything or crave peace for themselves. They strive to embrace everything with awareness- the calm and the storms. In practice in the Vajrayana traditions, the “crazy “view that everyone is already expressing Buddha qualities and everything is the free play of mind, is generally kept secret in the mind of the practitioner, while having an outer lifestyle that lines up with most conventions and norms of a culture one lives in. But sometimes, a weird sense of humour, playfulness and maybe communication of being open to unconventional perspectives on typically black and white societal subjects, outs the secret view of a modern Yogini who’s trying to see and experience everything as the free play of space.
Outer, Inner and Secret
Most Tibetan and Bhutanese masters today strive to practice all three levels simultaneously: Hinayana on the outside (Monk or Nun, or Lay vows) Mahayana motivation on the inside- to have compassion for all, and Vajrayana as the core secret view to see everyone and all situations as free play and full of possibilities. It’s a whole bunch of paradox holding to practice the outer, inner and secret ways. It’s advised that you can’t really think your way through Vajrayana approaches and need to experiment with your own direct experience, and have authentic teachers that have been around the block and can guide.
Nepalese artist Tsering Sherpa combining traditional Thangka painting and modern humour
Not about material gain
None of the authentic Buddhist approaches are in any way about aiming to be more materially successful in life, or more influential as much of the mindfulness and pop culture self-help books today have tended to co-opt some of these old traditions and misrepresent the intent. Ironically however, many traditional Tibetan teachers have noted that in the East, monks, nuns and lay practitioners don’t tend to meditate very much or be as interested in the special mind teachings. They tend to focus more on generosity and the generating of merit through action part of Buddhism. So that’s where you may see people offering to build and support monasteries, sponsor teachings and pay for printing of Dharma books etc… In the west, we tend to not be as interested in the generosity/merit parts of Buddhism popular in the east, but more interested in meditating and directly experiencing what the teachings on mind discuss. Many Tibetan Lamas have noted this tendency in the west is kind of unusual in the history of Buddhism moving into new lands where traditionally only a small percentage of people would really meditate and want to integrate experience with daily life. Due to this tendency in the west, some Tibetan teachers have said the west is ripe for the Vajrayana teachings and special direct mind teachings of Dzogchen and Mahamudra that were core to the crazy wisdom traditions.
How to tell if it’s a real Buddhist teaching?
This is kinda tricky, but usually it’s said there needs to be an authentic lineage going back to the Buddha. There is an interesting filter set called the four seals of Dharma that can also help you gauge. The four seals that signal a Buddhist teaching is authentic would point to the teaching having the following characteristics.
1. All compounded things are impermanent
2. All (ego rooted) emotions are painful
3. All phenomena are empty (nothing ultimately solid underpinning anything inside or outside)
4. Nirvana(awakening of the mind) is beyond extremes
So, that was some bare minimum Buddhist context you need for understanding a bit more about the playful crazy wisdom traditions.
Mahasiddhas- Buddhist Yogis: The “Crazy” or Wild Wisdom Masters
8th century Mahasiddha Saraha- the arrow maker in the center. Mahasiddhas Dombi Heruka and girlfriend riding a tiger at lower right and a Yogi turning a bit blue from practicing yogic breath control practices in a cave.
The late Tibetan Lama Chögyam Trungpa coined the term Crazy Wisdom in the ‘60s as he was bringing Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism to the west. Crazy wisdom was grounded in practices of wild female and male Buddhist Yogis of the 8th-15th centuries who did not leave their regular lives, but integrated meditation and practice with the mundane. The integration of the mundane was what was wild and usually only became apparent to others after their awakening. The greatest of these yogis and yoginis were called Mahasiddhas, which means great accomplishers. There were 84 Mahasiddhas of particular note from a thousand years ago. Most folks in those times didn’t know the Mahasiddhas were great practitioners of facing the mind, because on the surface they just looked like ordinary street sweepers, cobblers, arrow makers, potters, musicians, priests, bar tenders, courtesans, prostitutes, pimps, and farmers. But sometimes, when people would cross paths with them and their practices, weird creative collisions would ensue and break open deep unexpected insights. The wild Mahasiddhas trolled self-righteous ideas and stiff systems and were kind of the ultimate punk rockers a 1000 years before it was cool. But they also didn't create wild provocations to shake up stiff thinking simply for the sake of being contrarian. It's often told that the ultimate intent of these masters was kindness and to more quickly wake people up who were stuck in mental patterns that held them back from their own inherent freedom. Often through poetry about sex, beer, feasts, letting go, rigid mindsets, stiff institutions, and the dream like nature of reality, they didn't just act strangely to entertain, but to jar people into letting go of preconceived ideas to see differently. For them, the methods in their madness were about the mind and revealing the freedoms and joy in everyone.
“A sense of humor is not merely a matter of trying to tell jokes or make puns, trying to be funny in a deliberate fashion. It involves seeing the basic irony of the juxtaposition of extremes, so that one is not caught taking them seriously, so that one does not seriously play their game of hope and fear. Chögyam Trungpa in Cutting Through Spiritual materialism
"It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.”
Late 20th century Creativity researcher Mihali Csíkszentmihályi,
Creative Masters Of The “Jar”
In the 500 to 1000 year old stories of old Buddhist Mahasiddhas, you can see they were masters of jarring provocation to open up fresh ways of looking at challenges. The behaviour of these masters was unpredictable, often illogical and as a result they were often called crazy. Sometimes a master would move suddenly in unexpected ways to startle the rigid habits of a student, or say a series of illogical words. If the moment was right and the student was open, they would see new possibilities of the mind and the world. Similarly, there are many methods of creative provocation in the creativity and innovation spaces to shock habits and spark new seeing. If creativity is kind of about the defeat of stiff habitual ways of seeing the world like the creative madman(adman)George Lois suggests below, then much of the behavior of old Buddhist Yogis was quite creative.
"The creative act: the defeat of habit by originality overcomes everything" - George Lois (Legendary Graphic Designer)
When I began my graduate studies around what fosters creativity in organizations I noticed similarities between the old meditation masters playful methods and the way creative problem solving practices focused on serious play and crazy exercises to rattle loose a fresh viewpoint. One creativity provocation method developed by Roger Von Oech who developed a creative problem solving tool called the "Whack Pack" described the method as a way to help with the following,
"The Whack pack provocations are to whack you out of habitual thought patterns to allow you to look at what you're doing in a fresh way." Roger Von Oech
Some of the provocations in these creativity methods offer metaphors and symbols to link with a challenge, or guide the problem solver to ask “why” like a child a bunch of times until ulterior motives for the problem solving collapse and new insights emerge. There are many such tools that have been developed for creative problem solving, but all that I've come across seem to have a key quality of playfully cajoling people out of rigid views. The similarities I’ve noticed in both the wild yogini’s provocations and the creative problem solver’s “whacks”, is that they both playfully poke at what we cling to, which helps us let go and see something new.
The great 20th century Yogi and Nyingma Lineage Leader, His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche. P.S. these great yogis never ask to be called holy and they often shunned it. The honorific titles come from others.
When crossing paths with a Yogi or Yogini, often the provocation would reveal to a person that the freedom and joy they were seeking was right in front of them in their awareness all along and so simple that they kept missing it.
Maybe the vibe in these realizations of mind is kind of like that laugh and recognition we all know, when we realize that the car keys or phone we’ve been running around the house looking for, was in our hand or pocket the whole time.
“When the teacher’s words enter your heart, it is like discovering a treasure in the palm of your hand.”
Saraha - 8th century Indian Mahasiddha
Mahasiddhas Naropa and Tilopa
A wild real one. The great 9th or 10th century Mahasiddha Tilopa wearing a sweet moustache and some skulls way before the hipsters made it cool. The skulls mean he’s faced his own ego clinging of ignorance, attachment and aversion and wears them as kind of a playful ironic crown. Art by modern Thangka Painter Ben Christian
One story of importance to the Tibetan Kagyu Lineages is how the 10th century Indian Mahasiddha Naropa started his real path. Naropa was the most learned and famous Buddhist scholar at Nalanda University in Northern India before meeting his main teacher Tilopa in mid-life. He was the main authority on all of Buddhism at that time and where Buddhism was still mostly contained within India. The story goes that one day Naropa was studying some old texts in the courtyard of his University and all of a sudden a dark shadow blocked the light on his Dharma books. He looked up and a woman was staring at him intensely and said, “Hey, do you understand the words of the Buddha that you’re reading? Naropa replied, “yes, mostly”. From this response, the woman got really happy and said to him it was nice to see him being honest. With that praise, Naropa felt a bit proud and maybe to show off, then said, “I also know the experience the Buddha’s words are talking about!” On hearing that, the woman switched into a wild state and said she couldn’t believe a great scholar would be so dishonest and inauthentic. Naropa was shocked as no one would be that direct and honest with him. She got up in his business next, and continued that the only real person she knew that was truly authentic and knows the experience of the Buddha mind is her brother Tilopa.
Work by Modern Nepalese artist Tsering Sherpa
Naropa as the greatest scholar in India was supposed to know everything, but had never heard of Tilopa. The jarring provocation with the wild woman made him realize he was stuck in his head, not authentic, not truly free and he couldn’t stop thinking about this person named Tilopa. It caused him to leave everything- his institution and status and search out Tilopa.
Tilopa had been a Brahmin(high priest caste in India) but similarly to Naropa a wild female teacher had once teased him that he was stuck in intellectual concepts and that he needed to learn to really let go of his inner ego-clinging. To break some stiff black and white thinking habits his mind, one of his teachers shockingly advised Tilopa to be a servant pimp to a beautiful woman who worked in a brothel in the city. Over time he learned the games of his ego, let go and lived on the street as a sesame seed pounder by day to make a bit of money and a servant to the woman in the brothel in the evenings- integrating all experience with meditation. Both Tilopa and Naropa and their female teachers are considered some of the most important masters of a living Buddha state of mind and their transmission of mind is passed along until today in especially the Kagyu(oral transmission) lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. The jarring provocations they encountered with female wisdom broke open the insights and fresh seeing they needed.
To be clear, the stories are not about needing to be a sesame seed pounder or servant of a courtesan and replicating that as a practice into the future. No, it was about fearlessly facing ourselves, playfully facing our own mind games and learning how to really let go and be authentic. All the Mahasiddhas had their own unique way of integrating their practice of facing their minds with whatever mundane daily life adventures they were engaged in. If posers try to emulate by copying outer behaviour or attire of these wild ones they miss the point entirely.
If you’re wondering why the names and stories of the female teachers are not recounted as clearly as Tilopa and Naropa’s, one explanation from my teachers was that the stories were passed down mostly through male monastic institutions over a thousand years and they unfortunately had a strong bias towards men in detailed lineage story telling. But in initiations and transmissions there are more oral traditions shared about these powerful creative women who were full Buddha’s and lived outside the norms and conventions of society. Today, many women are full Lamas and holders of these unique transmissions of mind. Often way better than the men.
Female Mahasiddha dakini Niguma(possibly the secret girlfriend of Naropa) depicted by modern Thangka painter Ben Christian
“Tilopa asked the wisdom Ḍākinī (a female teacher of his): what is awakening (Buddha)? The wisdom Ḍākinī responded: Tilopa! When the mind looks at mind, the ‘looker’ is mind, the ‘looked at’ is also mind. Like space gazing at space, both the ‘gazer’ and the ‘gazed at’, are naturally dissolved. When thoughts are lucidly clear, that is spontaneously accomplished awakening-Buddha. Actual manifestation of realization is also awakening -Buddha. Abiding on the path is also awakening-Buddha.” Female Wild Dakini Teacher of Tilopa
“Obsessive use of meditative disciplines or perennial study of scripture and philosophy will never bring forth this simple and wonderful realization- this truth which is natural to awareness, because the mind that desperately desires to reach another realm or level of experience inadvertently ignores the basic radiance of awareness that constitutes all experience.”
Tilopa
Harnessing natural inclinations rather than blocking them. The story of Thaganapa: The Master of the Lie
Mahasiddha Thaganapa by Modern Thangka painter Robert Beers
In most systems change making or personal growth work there is usually some kind of habit, or mental view that gets recognized as not good and energy expended to try to stop it or change value sets from one thing to another. This approach makes sense in most cases and is the safest and most logical for making a positive change. However, where the energy in our minds or a system is so strong that a direct binary change from one thing to another is not really feasible, then sometimes harnessing and redirecting the natural patterns and energy in the mind or a system can be transformative. But it’s risky, complex and not to be taken lightly. Many of the Crazy wisdom stories are of this kind of unique transformation where one doesn’t directly change outer circumstances, or block something unwanted, but works with whatever a person’s inclinations and circumstances are.
In systems innovation a similar set of ideas has sometimes been called Systems Aikido or nudge science. Aikido being a Japanese martial art where whatever comes at you, you don’t run from it, or block it, but redirect it onto itself until the challenge shifts or collapses in on itself. In systems innovation this might mean working more with harnessing natural inclinations like desires of human beings when designing a more humanized service.
Physical example showing ‘desire lines’ (the dirt path created by humans choosing the short cut) of human behaviour that should have been harnessed and designed for in this city park.
In design problem solving this is sometimes called looking for “desire lines”. Harnessing desire lines is about looking for natural patterns and redirecting them rather than blocking or abruptly stopping them. As an example in the crazy wisdom traditions, there is a story of harnessing neurotic inclinations until they collapse into wisdom with the 9th or 10th century master Thaganapa.
Thaganapa translates roughly as the Master of the Lie. Thaganapa was a master con man for most of his life. He lied about everything, lied to himself and was always cheating people. The habit was very strong in his mind. One day he ran into a crazy wisdom master who happened to practice as a monk as well. The monk could see Thaganapa was deeply entangled in his lies and was harming himself and others. The monk first tried to get Thaganapa to stop lying by telling him how it hurts himself and others, but there was no way it was going to work for Thaganapa’s disposition and strong habits. In conversation with the monk, Thaganapa even recognized he was such a liar he wouldn’t be able to stop by just intellectually trying to stop it. So, the monk devised a wild creative practice for Thaganapa that he called “removing water from the ear by putting more water in”. The instructions had some visualizations and mindsets where he was instructed to drop into a view where he imagined that, “All that you see, hear, touch, and think you perceive with the six senses, is nothing but a lie- like a dream”. Before leaving Thaganapa in this first jarring encounter, the monk said,
“In time, if you practice like I instructed you, you will discover that even your belief in deception itself is a lie and then you will see the truth”.
Thaganapa used these crazy provocations to harness and redirect his natural inclinations for lying. Eventually, the story goes that his deepest deception of illusory ego clinging collapsed in on itself and he had a good laugh at his own absurdity. From then on it’s said he spent the rest of his life being authentic and helping others free their own minds without expecting anything in return.
We need human mirrors sparking creativity and awakening
What is an interesting theme in most of the stories of these old masters is how a transformational insight rarely came through rational reasoning, but more often through some kind of relational provocation which would snap a person out of their habitual ways of seeing and spark a new perspective.
“The similarities I’ve noticed in both the wild yogini’s provocations and the creative problem solver’s “whacks”, is that they both playfully poke at what we cling to, help us let go and see something new.”
Modern Tibetan artist Purba Namgyal. Painting of a Monkey sending off what looks like a Saturn V rocket from a rainbow in his hand for the joy of his elephant buddy.
In the Vajrayana Buddhist traditions especially, it’s said that you need a teacher to be able to awaken one’s own inherent freedom in the mind. There is a paradox in that the teacher doesn’t give anything the student doesn’t have already, but there is a recognition that relationships, connections, and provocations unlock insights that can’t really be unlocked when alone.
We need relationships with others to really awaken insights that matter
Similarly, with deep system innovation and creativity, there is a recognition that we can’t get to real relevant breakthroughs alone. There is a need for relationships and interaction- for relating with others. In systems innovation it is also now more recognized that rarely is someone truly creative in isolation. We need others. We need relationships with others. We need creative collisions and mirroring to break open real relevant insights. It’s a paradox.
“No person is creative by him or herself. Somebody else is always involved in making creativity happen. You might be sitting there pouring forth an idea, but other people will have inspired you, directly or indirectly” Mihali Csíkszentmihályi -Creativity researcher
The crazy wisdom adepts as wild as they were, always espoused that they held their mentors, students, and beings around them as precious and the ultimate creative expressions of mind and insights.
Masters of Flow States
Super Grover Mandala Flow by the author
What's quite interesting to me from the stories of the old meditation masters is that they seemed to know a thing or two about effortlessly hanging out in what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi called a state of "flow". “Flow” was first coined by Csikszentmihalyi in 1975 after his research on creativity uncovered a common experience to artists, extreme sports explorers, musicians and creatives of all walks of life. Csikszentmihalyi said,
"Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.” Csíkszentmihályi
So that’s a creative flow state from modern research. Now, below is a pith instruction from a 12th century Mahasiddha on how Buddhist Yogis are advised to conduct themselves to help integrate their meditation experience with daily life.
"A meditation practitioner's way of acting in the world should be as relaxed as an old Ox taking a piss"
Phagmo Drupa- 12th Century Tibetan Kagyu Lineage Master and Yogi… and great sense of humour for the old times.
Pee Shiver- By modern artist Jason Murphy and owned by the author
All 12th century Tibetan pee jokes aside, the mind state of flow feels pretty amazing, and we've all experienced it at some point in our lives. The tricky thing with flow that both creativity researchers and Buddhist meditation masters agree on is that it can't really be forced into experience.
If you chase flow states you miss ‘em
We can train in the conditions to set the stage for flow to emerge, but it usually hits when we least expect it and are not chasing it. I remember one time having a laugh when I realized I seemed to ease into a flow state while emptying the dishwasher. Everything just fit, flowed effortlessly, there seemed to be less boundary between subject/object and it felt unusually amazing to flow with something as banal as interacting with a home appliance. But, when I tried to recreate the experience the next time I had to empty the dishwasher, it was just a mundane slog-No flow state. Probably because I was clinging to an old experience and trying to recreate it. If one day I learn to be really authentic and as relaxed as an Ox taking a piss in everything I do, I think that would be a pretty stellar life accomplishment as Phagmo Drupa advised.
Were the Mahasiddhas just acting spontaneously in a flow state all the time? Or were they consciously doing specific things to be provocative and jarring?
One of the most important Mahasiddhas in recent times(1922-2005) Drukpa Kagyu Yogi- Tokden Amtrin. He summed it all up once when he said to a student, “Don't expect anything to be different from what it already is. Be kind to every being you meet.”
I’ve wondered about this question a lot and learned that it probably was a bit of both. Scientists have discovered that pretty much only with long time Buddhist Yogis they show unusual Gamma waves in their brains that last a long time. Check the video below. Gamma waves are associated with creative insight but in most people just show up for a fraction of a second when we have an ‘aha’ moment. In Buddhist Yogis they don’t go away and even continue for some during sleep.
“Gamma, the very fastest brain wave, occurs during moments when differing brain regions fire in harmony, like moments of insight when different elements of a mental puzzle “click” together…Ordinarily gamma waves from, say, a creative insight, last no longer than a fifth of a second. We can only conjecture about what state of consciousness this reflects: yogis like Mingyur seem to experience an ongoing state of open, rich awareness during their daily lives, not just when they meditate. The yogis themselves have described it as a spaciousness and vastness in their experience, as if all their senses were wide open to the full, rich panorama of experience.” Altered Traits: What Science Reveals About How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson
So, based on the science we now know about brain waves, we could speculate that for advanced crazy wisdom masters of history, they had sustained Gamma waves blowing up in their minds that likely helped cause spontaneous and free flowing activity that was less attached to stiff habits and expectations. When people crossed paths with them, spontaneous interactions would ensue and sometimes resonate and awaken. There was likely less preconceived planning of action from those veteran masters in states of flow and intense Gamma activity.
Deliberate Behaviour of Taming and Entering
There were however prescribed intentional actions for advanced Yogis and Yoginis to test the stability of their minds when not sitting in meditation, but out and about interacting in the world. In some traditions this was called learning the deliberate behaviour of taming and entering. The “taming” part was around taming stuck beings and the “entering” part related to entry into the behaviour of Buddhas. These planned and deliberate actions would first be practiced in secret and then if stability, tested in the world. A few different traditions developed this and they require a teacher to learn and usually involve retreat for periods of time. But part of the process would sometimes entail things like going to a public market, and behaving like a madman to get berated by the public so that one could test one’s mind to see how much one was still controlled by attachment to praise, hope, gain, pleasure and aversion to blame, fear, loss, and pain. So here, the wild behavior was a learning method for the yogi or yogini when still developing- not an outcome of mastering flow states. Of course, this type of activity was dangerous on many levels and not recommended or taught until after many years of practice and stability. Putting themselves in all kinds of extreme situations the yogis and yoginis could look into how much their minds were caught by rigid habits. Eventually the intent was to be of more use to others from the stability in their minds and not being swayed as much by ups and downs.
And as wild as this all sounds, one of my close female Buddhist teachers would often remind to never forget being down to earth. She said,
"Regardless of what meditation we practice, let's not forget what the goal of development is. The point is to maintain common sense, remain relaxed, not go to extremes, and stay natural in dealing with others while trying to help them." A real Dakini Lama
Final creative collision of two worlds
Uranus Halos and Rainbow Bodies, artwork by Weinlick from the ASS U ME series
In a way I've always had in my mind since starting Think Jar Collective that the "Think Jar" part was meant as a kind of easter-egg homage to the way the old Yoginis rattled rigid assumptions and shook loose new perspectives. I hope you might have found some provocative insights, inspiration and links between these ancient and new ideas. When striving to problem solve and innovate within our mind or out in the systems we are working with, we need mirrors to learn with, we need to study deeply, seek out and collide with unusual provocations then let go. That focusing, jarring collision and letting go of all pre-conceived ideas can elicit new seeing, insights, innovations and many laughs. Try to enjoy it and be kind.
The current patterns I see of these two systems is something like the following
o Start with a laugh at the absurdity of it all. Don’t be so serious
o Study a domain of interest passionately and learn all the rules
o After serious study, then playfully question the norms and rules of a system
o Playfully question yourself and everything you hope or fear to be true in a system
o Get your motivation straight. Seek to creatively make things better not just for yourself but others too
o Seek and allow collisions with unexpected domains, interesting people(mirrors) and ideas
o Get open- entertain unusual connections between disparate ideas
o Ahas, creative ideas, insights, innovations can emerge
o See if your insights and ideas are relevant and relatable in a system. Maybe even a relatable new paradigm if you’re brave enough, studied old systems hard enough and worked at connecting things playfully enough
o Be obsessed and go hard AND then be conscious to let go and not take things too seriously
o Alternate between focusing on a challenge and letting go to spark insights
o Don’t do things to fulfill other’s expectations or please their preconceived ideas
o Have another laugh. Be Bold. Be Kind.
You also likely need some teachers(mirrors) and practices that don’t just hit at an intellectual level but help you to experience those Gamma wave states. For some that may be meditation practices.
Did You Need to Skip to the Summary? I get it
Embrace it. Buddha didn't really say this. But it's kinda true
Buddhist Yogis and creative provocation processes have some peculiar similarities in generating fresh insights into human challenges
Embracing Humour and Serious Play often leads to novel creative solution finding
Creativity often comes from a collision between two disparate ideas that get linked in a new way and offer a relevant solution to a given domain. Serious play can be the facilitator of a creative collision
Real creativity is not randomness and requires knowing a domain of interest well, then breaking set and rules to uncover fresh and relevant innovations and discoveries
Buddhism has many unique approaches that can often seem contradictory. Buddhist Crazy Wisdom Yogis came out of a unique tradition of Buddhism that utilizes humour, our imagination and embraces all experiences as part of the path of insight to the mind and the world we’re interconnected with.
The wild crazy wisdom masters of a thousand years ago often played with taboos, rigid black and white ideas of a society, and playfully teased self-righteous people that took themselves and rigid ideas of their identities too seriously. This playful teasing and provocations grounded in compassion would sometimes accelerate those they interacted with to become more flexible, open and less egocentric. It can also be dangerous, requires guidance and is not to be taken too lightly.
In modern creative systems change processes, some promising ways forward are to not necessarily change one old system for a new one, but to harness the existing natural flows in a system, then redirect, nudge and transform into better directions. Sometimes called Systems Aikido, or Nudge Science, these have interesting parallels with Buddhist Yogi practice where natural inclinations of minds and systems are not given up, but harnessed and redirected until new insights emerge.
Both Creative explorers and Buddhist Yogi traditions seem to embrace humour and getting into flow states without forcing things. From those flow states, good ideas, insights, and innovation can emerge.
Modern Science has shown that unique to veteran Buddhist Yogis they show very intense Gamma brain waves that are associated with sustained ‘aha’ creative insights, and flow states, that control groups of non-meditators do not show.
“Ben, glad you finished your thesis and maybe one day you write a book saying neurosis becomes real by believing in it and can be deflated by having a good laugh. The final words may be: “It’s all a dream, you choose your own”
2010 note to me from my Buddhist Loki Lama- My wild wisdom teacher
Curiosity piqued?
Creativity and Innovation
On the creativity and serious play stuff we have tons of content on our Think Jar Collective website for free.
Also check out the work of colleagues and myself at our Action Lab. Lots of creative magic, and systems change for good comes out of our lab.
Buddhism and Meditation
Not promoting that you should get into this, but some will be interested and I feel a bit of responsibility to suggest some decent and authentic recommendations so you don’t waste your time or get into something that’s bad weird.
For a quick experiential test drive of your mind in meditation
Sam Harris’ Waking up App with his 30 day meditation course is actually a really great introduction you can do safely on your own. I’d recommend starting there. Sam was trained by some heavyweight Yogi Lamas and he makes complex ideas accessible. You can also get an intro feel for the more advanced Yogi views of Mahamudra and Dzogchen in his curated collection. Typical mindfulness meditations you learn in an HR health and wellness seminar are not really the same as Buddhist meditations. Subtle differences that are important.
Some decent books on Buddhism to explore
The Heroic Heart by female Lama Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. Really great and pithy
The Path to Awakening: How Buddhism's Seven Points of Mind Training Can Lead You to a Life of Enlightenment and Happiness by the late 14th Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche. One of my faves and succinct.
Boundless Wisdom: A Mahamudra Practice Manual by the late 14th Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche. Another fave. A little more advanced, but very succinct from a real modern Mahasiddha of the mind.
Mahamudra: Boundless joy and Freedom: By Lama Ole Nydahl. A mind blower. Legit authenticity. Will ruffle your expectations. enjoy.
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism: Classic intro to Buddhism by Chögyam Trungpa that outlines some hidden ego traps we can fall into with any form of spirituality.
For the deeper dive
If inspired and intrigued by the wilder teachings about the mind in the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions that the Mahasiddhas are based in, then you do need to find teachers with lineage transmission. Check out any center overseen by the 17th Karmapa Thrinley Thaye Dorje and the late 14th Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche like his Bodhi Path centers. They are safe and totally authentic. They may seem a bit subdued on the surface, but there are some secret yoginis and yogis in those places with authentic transmission emanating in their minds.
PS: Don’t underestimate the teachings on love and compassion that will be emphasized, they are deep and really what matters most and it took me way too long to recognize that.
References
Brown, S., & Vaughan, C. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. New York: Avery.
Cundall, M. K., Jr. (2007). Humor and the limits of incongruity. Creativity Research Journal, 19(2), 203-211.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity. New York: Harper Collins.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2012). TED Talk.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Dowman, K. (1998) Buddhist Masters of Enchantment: The Lives and Legends of the Mahasiddhas
Kraft, U. (2005). Unleashing creativity. Scientific America: Mind, 16(1), 17-23.
Lemons, G. (2005). When the horse drinks: Enhancing everyday creativity using elements of improvisation. Creativity Research Journal, 17(1), 25-36. doi: 10.1207/s15326934crj1701_3
Nydahl, O.(2008) The Way Things Are: A living approach to Buddhism
Nydahl, O. (2011) The Great Seal: Limitless Space & Joy: The Mahamudra View of Diamond Way Buddhism
Palmo, J.T. (2022) The Heroic Heart: awakening unbounded compassion
Palus, C., & Horth, D. (2002). The leaders edge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Rinpoche, Shamar (2019) Boundless Wisdom: A Mahamudra practice manual
Rangdrol, Tsele Natsok (1996 translation) The Heart of the Matter
Stearns, C.(2007) Life of Thangton Gyalpo: King of the Empty Plain
Trungpa, C. (1973). Cutting through spiritual materialism
Trungpa, C. (1972/2001). Crazy Wisdom
Von Oech, R. (1998). A whack on the side of the head: How you can be more creative. New York: Warner Books.
Weinlick, B.(2010) HUMOUR AND SERIOUS PLAY ENHANCING CREATIVE THINKING IN COMMUNITY DISABILITY SERVICE DESIGN
Weissman, H. (1990). Serious play: Creativity and innovation in social work. Silver Springs, MD: NASW.
