Before beginning to work;
let go of all of your desires and ideas.
Let go of all of your knowledge and ability.
Become inwardly silent and at peace.
Watch all your thoughts and feelings arise and
let them return to silence.
Remember that all music arises out of silence;
all forms out of formlessness,
all desires out of emptiness,
all activities out of stillness.
Remember that all things return
to that from which they arise. (1)

If you forget this
you will try to rely on knowledge and technique
and on your ideas and desires.
These things are too limited to rely on.
If you can let go into selfless abandon
the creative harmony  will rise up within you and
your truest nature will be expressed,
your most authentic desires fulfilled,
your finest ideas articulated,
your deepest knowledge exposed.
If you wish to live as a master,
lose yourself within the creative harmony. (2)
 
 

 (1)   “... I find that my greatest difficulty and the really most painful and difficult part of my work is draining and ridding my mind of that burden of meanings which I’ve absorbed through the culture - things that seem to have something to do with art but don’t have anything to do with art at all... The duty of the artist is to rid himself of that burden. I think it’s an extremely difficult thing to do. I would not say that I have achieved it, because every time you work, you have to do it all over again, to rid yourself of this dross. I suppose for a person who is not an artist or not attempting art, it is not dross, because it is the common exchange of everyday life. But I think art is quite apart from that and you have to really rid yourself of those securities and certainties and assumptions and get down to something which is closer and resembles some kind of blankness. Then one must construct again out of this reduced circumstance. That’s another way, perhaps, of an art poverty; one has to impoverish one’s mind. This is not a repudiation of the past or such things, but it is really getting rid of what I call dross.”

   “"It is the same with a composer.  He must acquire by laborious study and application the technical mastery of his craft, but he will never write anything of lasting value unless he has Divine aid also.  There is a vast amount of good music paper wasted by composers who don't know this great truth. . . . Dante, Raphael, Stradivarius all drew on that same Omnipotent power. . .Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements."