Rosie Rosenzweig

In Emergence – The Role of Mindfulness in Creativity, Rosie Rosenzweig provides a condensed introduction to the psychological forces driving art. She passes this psychology through a filter of Buddhist philosophy in a refreshing (though sometimes hard to follow) manner. She does not expound on works of art but rather on artists and their thought processes. Near the close of this brief work, she also delves into the neurology of art, introducing a variety of scholars.

Mindfulness, as Rosenzweig uses the term, comes from Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. The first truth is that suffering or angst, Dukkha, permeates life. The second is that “Dukkha is exacerbated by clinging and attachment.” The third is that letting go is the solution. Finally, the fourth truth is right view which, in my own uneducated terminology, is something of a personal paradigm deriving from a synthesis of memory and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd truths. Rosenzweig takes this complex notion of mindfulness and discusses how this Buddhist way of thought can serve as a secular method of fostering creativity. She then discusses how various people have defined themselves as artists in manners which can best be understood in terms of right mindfulness.… (altro)