I had a question interrelating your practice of art and filmmaking with meditation. And I practice meditation. I’ve been to a retreat in which one individual was using a notepad, writing down ideas; I assume he was a writer. And the teacher sort of noted and asked him to get rid of that—you don’t need to carry the baggage of your idea of your profession of writing. And I was wondering: How do you compromise or negotiate your practice of being a seeker of true knowledge of the Self and being an artist that is intensely interested in capturing and creating image?

I always have a little notepad and a paper when I meditate. And Transcendental Meditation—some forms of meditation, you’ll want to go to the cave; you’ll want to leave activity and go to the cave. Transcendental Meditation, that Maharishi brought, is for the householder, where activity is just as important as the diving within. And the analogy is: You’ve got a whitecloth, and you want to make it pure gold. So you dip it into the pure gold. That’s transcending; that’s meditation. Hanging it on the line in the sun is activity.

And in the early days of meditating, you’ll see that activity overshadows most of the gold. There’s just a little bit of gold there—more gold than you had, but a little bit. You dip it in again. That’s transcending, meditation. Hang it on the line: activity. More and more, even activity—the sunlight—can’t bleach it out. Activity can’t overshadow it.

Pretty soon, one day, that thing is gold, no matter how much activity. Whereas some of those people in the caves: they think they’re there, and they come into the city, and “Uh-oh”—they are totally overshadowed.

 You’re a doer. We’re doers. And you just add this, go about your business, and things get better for you and the surroundings. And then you keep that pencil and paper handy.

If you get a good idea and you forget it, it’s a terrible, terrible thing.

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