“What makes us blind? Aggression makes us blind, so we can’t create visual dharma. What makes us deaf? Aggression creates deafness, therefore, auditory dharma cannot be produced. And because of aggression, dharma touch, dharma smell, or dharma taste also cannot be produced. To use an American idiom, when we are uptight, we are being aggressive.

“We are so dissatisfied with ourselves, our world, and our work that we begin to feel that everything is worthless. Or at the least, we feel that some things are worthless, while other things might have some worth. We pay more attention and take things so personally that when any negativity occurs in our lives, we get aggressive and uptight. On the whole, we could say quite confidently that aggression makes us blind and deaf, so we cannot produce a work of art, let alone anything else. We cannot run our lives.”

“Aggression makes us dumb mutes, so we become like vegetables. Aggression might produce a so-called extraordinary work of art, but art produced in such a way pollutes the world, rather than producing something refreshing and healthful.”

~ From, “True Perceptions—The Path of Dharma Art” by Chogyam Trungpa