Creative life

“The times when I feel most deeply that I have done something creative are the times when I have thrown myself wholeheartedly into a task and fought it through unstintingly to its conclusion.  At such times, I feel that I have won out in the struggle to enlarge myself.

It is a matter of sweat and tears.  The creative life, in short is achieved by a constant effort to improve one’s thoughts and actions, or perhaps we could say it is the dynamism involved in this effort.

You will pass through storms and heavy rains, and at times you may suffer defeat.  The essence of the creative life however is not to give up in the face of defeat, but to follow the rainbow that exists within your heart.  Indulgence and indolence are not creative.  Complaints and evasions are cowardly, and they corrupt life’s natural tendency toward creation.  The Person who gives up the fight for creativeness is headed ultimately for the hell that destroys all life.

You must not for one instant give up you effort to build yourself new lives.

Creativeness means to push open the heavy groaning doorway to life.  This is not an easy struggle.  Indeed, it maybe the most difficult task in the world.  For opening the door to your own life is in the end more difficult than opening the door to the mysteries of the universe

But to do so is to vindicate your existence as human beings.”

Daisaku Ikeda, President of Soka Gakkai International – Extract from speech 1974