Self “Denial” and the Creative Process in Japanese Zen

Japanese Zen thought leads to the idea that the act of creation is meditative, that is to say, a “negative way”. The meditation practiced in Zen – zazen – and the relationship to time, to the interior and exterior of oneself that it conveys, allows for the development of a critical and reflective approach to creative “doing” based on the notions of Field and Nothingness: the latter is, in the Japanese philosophical sense, the opposite of a sterile void, but the very source from which speech originates.