Yugen – Creativity and the feeling

Well, this is a topic most people won’t like it and might come as a devil to most of the teachers. We know all our universities and schools are trying to teach creativity through workshops and creative programs and it’s a big thing these days.

However, the trouble is, if we found out a method to teach creativity and everybody could just know the formula for creating a beautiful object, it would no longer be of interest. What always is an essential element of creativity is the ‘Mysterious’.

It’s when Yugen comes into play, Yugen – a Japanese word comprising of two kanji characters meaning ‘mysterious’ and ‘deep’ roughly translates into – ‘an awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and mysterious for the words’.

There’s a Japanese Haiku poem that says:

“When the bird calls, the mountain becomes more mysterious”

With this kind of poem you see, you get a feeling, which might mean nothing, but that nothing is everything. Creativity is that experience when the thought wanders into that nothingness (void) and this is Yugen.    

Yugen is the sensation of life that keeps you going, without the thought of a specific destination. It’s when the space is used to keep your imagination flowing into it without being specific. Creativity is an experienced and cannot be learnt.

To further elaborate, lets talk about humour, a joke as we know is funny as it hints at something, but you never explain to yourself why you laughed, because that will spoil the joke. In the same way, there is this mystery, which is never defined, and which you understand and see the beauty, just as the humour of the joke. Thus, there is no philosophy of humour nor any for creativity and discussing more about it is futile.