From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life

by Arthur C. Brooks

Looking at a massive jade carving of the Buddha from the Qing dynasty, my guide offhandedly remarked that this was a good illustration of how the Eastern view of art differs from the Western view. “How so?” I asked. Elliptically, he answered my question with a question: “What do you think of when I ask you to imagine a work of art yet to be started?” “An empty canvas, I guess,” I responded. “Right. That’s because you Westerners see art as being created from nothing. In the East, we believe the art already exists, and our job is simply to reveal it. It is not visible because we add something, but because we take away the parts that are not the art.” While my image of unstarted art was an empty canvas, my guide told me that his was an uncarved block of jade, like the one that ultimately became the Buddha in front of us. My work of art doesn’t exist until I add images and paint. His already exists but is not visible until he takes away the stone that is not part of the sculpture within the block. That metaphor is pretty straightforward in the case of sculpture. It is harder for, say, music. But it’s not impossible. A musician from India once asked me how I could “hear the music” during a Brahms symphony. I asked what he meant; after all, with an eighty-five-piece orchestra cranking away at 100 decibels, it’s pretty hard not to hear the music. He replied that the music, in his brain, was obscured by too many people playing at the same time. This is the essential difference bet...