"Creativity Attacks" during meditation Sometimes, during my meditation sessions, I have "creativity attacks" i.e. creative thoughts. It can be a piece of poetry or something I would write down in my diary. How should one engage this kind of thoughts? Just observe without reacting or writing them down? If yes, what about the different kinds of Buddhist poetry like Songs of Milarepa, Japanese Haiku or Thera/Theri Gatha. The problem is, on one hand I can see that there are a lot of examples of creativity and poetry in Buddhism, but on the other I also can see my own mind being destructed by these kind of thoughts during meditation.
This is the way the mind is, uncontrollable. Acknowledge their presence and gently try to return to your usual object of meditation. If this fails, acknowledge the failure and gently try to return to your usual object of meditation. If you get frustrated, acknowledge the frustration, et cetera.

Being gentle and acknowledging whatever comes are important. And if the thought is something you want to write down for creativity's sake, that's not a bad thing. It's also not a good thing. It just is what it is. Just leave it until meditation is finished. If you forget what the thought was, then you simply forget. It is what it is.

If you practice this way, you will become less and less invested with the content of these thoughts, causing two things to happen:


Creativity attacks will bother you less.
They will also become less common.


This is how I meditate on my own creative thoughts.

Source: My own experience meditating in the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition, and my teacher Yuttadhammo's advice.