Instead of trying to be an artist, the Buddha took on the role of a master craftsman. He had mastered this very focused skill, focusing in on your mind and seeing what in the mind causes you to create suffering.

"The idea that anything goes in spiritual life actually dates back to the Romantics. Their idea was that you’re trying to embrace the whole world, the infinitude of the world, and that that requires you to step back and look at yourself from an infinite perspective. From that perspective, you realize that whatever you might think — no matter how sincerely you might think it — can be only one small possibility among all the infinite possibilities in the world. This is supposed to open you up to being more creative in your expression of your spiritual feelings and not being bound by things that you or anyone else has expressed in the past.

Religious truths, for them, were simply works of art, expressive art, expressing your feelings on the subject of infinity. And, as when you’re making any new work of art, you don’t have to be consistent with the works of art you did before. After all, you’re not expected to give a true description of infinity, because no finite being can do such a thing. The only truth that’s asked of you is that you’re true in how you express your feelings about infinity as you feel them right here and now.

It all sounds very large-minded: an art expressing infinity. And because it’s art, it sounds like it’s something higher than a craft. But what the Buddha taught was a craft. Instead of trying to be an artist, he took on the role of a master craftsman. He had mastered this skill and he wanted to pass it on to us. It’s a very focused skill, focusing in on your mind and seeing what in the mind causes you to create suffering.

It’s also a battle. There’s winning and losing. There’s doing the skill well and there’s doing it poorly.

Now, there’s a frame of mind that thinks that this sort of dualistic thinking is narrow. A craft focused on the issue of suffering sounds less exalted than an art focused on infinity. But when you look at the results, you realize, in this case, that the craft is better than the art. Instead of leaving you to wallow around in the expression of your feelings, it actually accomplishes something. It takes you out of suffering entirely, to a dimension beyond the world. And it honors you by saying that you’re capable of doing this."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Adult Dhamma" (Meditations8)

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