When I think about the core argument made by Eckhart Tolle (and Buddhism in general), I think it would break down to this: you are insignificant. You are a meaningless pee stain in a moldy corner of the universe and your life will ultimately be flushed down the toilet of history. You are nothing.

Tolle and many Buddhists would probably disagree with my framing of their views but I think that’s it in a nutshell. You might ask, “How could such a philosophy hope to have legs? How could that ever appeal to people?” But I get it – in essence this philosophy says, “None of my problems really ‘matter.’ The fact that I might get fired for spilling coffee on my bosses suit? Meaningless! My general sense of dissatisfaction with where I have ended up in life? Not worth worrying about. Even something heavy like my wife dying of cancer – ultimately insignificant and simply how life is meant to roll out. I might as well go to the park and smell the flowers.” I can certainly see many burdens being lightened by subscribing to such a viewpoint.

It’s a very difficult viewpoint to take of course, because we want to feel that we matter. We want to feel that our toils and tribulations serve some greater purpose. I see this a lot related to art. As I’ve mentioned I’ve been doing some exploration into the world of using social media to promote art projects, be they novel writing, music, film etc. And I see a lot of people constantly tweeting about how they are working on their novel, or how they wrote a song, or some weird new short film. People really tie their identities – their egos – to their artistic output; believe me, I did it for years, hell, I’m still doing it. It’s nice to think that after whatever shit you’ve dealt with in life you can point to something you’re proud of and say, “I did that. Fuck off world!”

But, if you’re going to take Tolle’s advice, you have to release your pride in those accomplishments. You have to give credit for them to “the universe” or some such. And that’s not an easy thing to do.

Of course, it is clearly true that you can’t take total credit for any art project. Take a painting. Obviously you didn’t create the paint or canvas from scratch. And your abilities to paint are derived from the years of development in painting which other humans have contributed to. You’re, at best, taking an established technique and putting your little spin on it.

I actually find thinking this that way makes me want to get more radical and experimental in art (in my case music.) After all, if this music isn’t “me” (e.g. if my ego’s attachment to the music is limited), why not get crazy? Why not get wild? Why not throw it up in the air and see where it lands?

This actually might explain the influence this kind of thought had on mid 20th century artist types who seemed to place the creative process into the hands of chance – Jackson Pollack and John Cage come to mind.