A Quote by Toyin Odutola
It is hard to produce work in New York. You kind of have to center yourself - do some Zen meditation exercises and just focus. It is very distracting, and money, of course, is an issue.
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I love New York very much, and it was very important for me to spend my 20s in New York City. You're exposed to so much here, whether it's other people or just the grind of it and how hard you have to work. I think it forces you to define yourself: what kind of person do you want to be? What kind of woman do you want to be? And then inevitably, what kind of actress do you want to be?
Zen is a very quick path. Zen is the path of meditation. The word Zen means emptiness or fullness, meditation. Meditation is the quickest path to enlightenment.
If I keep going outside, I get distracted - and all these lunches and things I get invited to, I just don't care. I just want to make the work. New York is very distracting.
One of the great exercises you can do is to stop and acknowledge the colors around you... If you're constantly distracting yourself, then you're never really experiencing anything fully. It can cause you to feel like you have no center, like nothing is grounding you.
Cardinal Dolan, of course, has a very, very hard job: trying to hold up Catholic family values in sexually liberal New York City. I'm not saying New York is the Gay Mecca. But it's at least Gay-rusalem.
The science shows that the best way to use money is to take the issue of money off the people. Pay people enough so that money isn't an issue, and they can focus on doing great work.
What I term Zen, old Zen, the original face of Zen, new Zen, pure Zen, or Tantric Zen is - Zen in its essence.
Whatever you focus on during meditation, you psychically travel to and touch. In meditation, when you think of somebody, you actually go into their aura. That is the issue. Keep your meditation pristine, unalloyed.
I have friends in New York that won't leave New York, and they're really talented people, but they'd rather take an acting class in New York than do a play in Florida or Boston. That's just weird to me, but they get into that I've-got-to-be-in-the-center-of-the-universe mentality. I'm not that way.
New Jersey is to New York what Santo Domingo is to the United States. I always felt that those two landscapes, not only just the landscapes themselves but their relationships to what we would call 'a center' or 'the center of the universe,' has in some ways defined my artistic and critical vision.
When you are free of form and not confused, you are focused. To be free of form externally is 'Zen.' Not to be confused internally is 'meditation.' External Zen and internal meditation, this is what we mean by 'Zen meditation.
I moved to New York City in '92 and had no money. I had a lot of free time, as actors do. I would go to the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.
Meditation means you don't have anything, any object to think about. You are just in a state of absolute aloneness. You don't have anything on which you can focus yourself - not a sutra, not a mantra, not any great value of life, just pure space all around you. Then you are in meditation. Meditation is never about something. Meditation is a state.
I prefer Los Angeles just because I live there and my family's there. But I think New York is just kind of the center of the world.
The secret of this kind of climbing, is like Zen. Don't think. Just dance along. It's the easiest thing in the world, actually easier than walking on flat ground which is monotonous. The cute little problems present themselves at each step and yet you don't hesitate and you find yourself on some other boulder you picked out for no special reason at all, just like zen.~ Japhy
I've actually seen a good amount of the shows at Lincoln Center Theater. I went to school right across the street at Juilliard, so some of the first stuff I got to see here in New York was at the Lincoln Center Theater. I've always been inspired by the work that they do.
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