I had a big thought last night while I was sitting zazen. I know the point of zazen isn’t to have big thoughts, but it is to end up with “big mind,” so I feel justified. My big thought was: I associate meaning and worth in my writing with monetization potential and validation.
Huh.
I have been feeling so lost with my writing lately. I am bursting with ideas. I have a memoir I feel I should write… for the good of humanity you see… and then I have the idea for two novels… because I’m an overachiever like that… I have the idea for another memoir that may not save the world, but just might amuse it, and I have this idea for keeping a spirituality notebook and making it a blog as I progress into Zen study while holding firmly to my Pagan foundation… because that’s kind of weird and cool right? But I have been tossing and turning internally in agonizing debate over which one gets my attention NOW. None of them seem fully satisfying and/or they seem far too challenging.
With the memoir that might save the world and the memoir that may not save the world but might amuse it, there is some very dark stuff that must be written. I attempted it last year and it knocked me flat on my keister multiple times. In fact, every time I have tried it over the years, it has knocked me flat on my keister. It’s like I see something that could really help a lot of people on the other side of a 12 foot high electric fence, and I want to be the hero, grab it, and bring it to humanity, but every time I run toward it and fling myself up against that fence, ZAP! And I fall backward, stunned, half dead, full Einstein hair with singed tips, smoke coming out of my ears. And I walk away limping and saying to myself, “Too costly. Just too costly. Surely the wise thing is to step away,” which is probably true, but a week or so later, there I am staring at that revelatory thing on the other side of the fence like, “This time I’m sure I can take it.” I run for it again and, ZAP! Again.
Which seems sort of noble on the one hand, but on the other, it does get all tied up with validation, doesn’t it? In zazen, you are supposed to sit without a “gaining thought” which is to say, you sit because you sit, whether it’s good or bad, whether anyone congratulates you or not. You don’t have a good sit or bad sit, or good for you for sitting or shame on you for not sitting, you just… sit. So even if my goal is to save the world, and I did, in fact, save the world, that is still being validated by the reaction of others, which is something I never would have put together before, being so terribly distracted by the flapping of my big red hero’s cape and that shiny shiny thing on the other side of the electric fence.
Then there’s the novels. My story ideas are really fun and interesting, I think. But there are some problems: I worry I don’t have the stamina and sticktoitiveness to hang in there long enough to finish a whole novel. An old “friend” of mine once said I lacked the attention span to write a whole book and little did he know that was a wound that would ooze to this day. So I worry about that. I worry about trying and failing and having it be yet another abandoned project. I also worry that my fiction really isn’t that good. I worry about how hard it will be and do I have the mental muscle for it. I worry my stories are interesting to me but cartoony to everyone else. I worry about spending all this time and effort on something that may never get published and then, the internal validation/monetization gremlin says, “What’s the point? If you don’t end up with a vast audience and millions of dollars and that JK Rowling level scratch and applause, what’s the point of putting in the work?”
The point, Mr. Gremlin, would seem to be doing the work for the sake of the work. You sit because you sit. You write because you write. No one pays you to sit, and yet you sit. You should write whether anyone is paying you to write. Sitting can be hard. Writing can be harder. The harder, the more rewarding. The reward is in the doing, not the JK Rowling scratch and applause.
In Zen Buddhist monasteries, a work period is called “samu.” In my, admittedly very limited, understanding, this work, which is sometimes hard work like farm chores or cleaning every corner of a multi-paned Japanese screen, is also a form of zazen. The work is not separated from the practice and is meant to push your limits as much as 30-40-60 minutes of sitting is meant to push your limits. For me, the novel would be samu. It would be the work. It would be approaching a zendo the size of the Colosseum with only a dollar store toothbrush and a bar of Zest to clean it with and no one to tell me I did a great job after.
Which might, I suppose if we are looking at this from a proper zen perspective, be a really excellent use of my time.
Then there is the spirituality stuff. Writing in a notebook and on a blog on spirituality, my favorite topic of all topics, my favorite thing in this or any other of my thousand lifetimes. I will happily chat away at my husband for hours on spiritual topics while he politely listens and internally reruns the complete Metallica discography in his mind. Even when I have nothing to say when I show up and write, I always have something to say about spirituality, even if it’s something silly. I wrote a koan the other day about the fresh pan of brownies I made: my husband was asleep, who eats the brownies alone? I started a Substack for spiritual writing. I thought about revitalizing my WordPress. I got all jazzed about it but, here I sit, still wrestling with: Is this what I SHOULD be writing?
I sit zazen in a chair right now. I’m overweight and out of shape and sitting on the floor in half lotus is unthinkable for me right now. My groin aches just thinking about it. So I sit in a straight-backed Queen Anne chair, keep my chin tucked and my spine long, and let that be enough for now. Sitting is hard enough without getting into Olympic level pretzel twists that are simply beyond my body at this moment. Writing about spirituality is like that for me. It’s like zazen in a chair. Easier and a lot more pleasurable, but easy to shame myself for it being too easy. Easy to shame myself for, perhaps I am not trying hard enough. Perhaps I should be pushing my limits more. Maybe just ten minutes on a cushion? As if Suzuki Roshi is going to rise up from my suburban rose bed, float into the house, and say, “Yes yes! Now you are worthy zazen!”
You see… there’s the Validation Gremlin again. The spiritual writing is challenging at times, but I love it, and once it flows, it feels smooth and easy. But no hardcore grit influencer is going to stroke my ego over it, so how do I know I’m doing enough?
And in addition to that: Very few people are reading it, so the Validation Gremlin gets involved with his good pal Monetization Monkey and we’ve got a bloody mess of fruit and metaphorical feces throwing going on in my mind. If it isn’t HARD, is it enough? If no one praises you, who cares? If you’re not earning a handsome living by it, what is your life worth?
What a strange thing, I thought in my big thought last night during zazen, trying to keep my eyes on the floor but flicking them up occasionally to catch the little electric tea light in front of my sand colored Buddha statue. What an odd thing that humans in general, and this human in particular, have gotten to associate their personal worth with what people think of them and how much they are getting paid for it. Perhaps worth should be something internally defined. How rich is your experience? How full is your heart? How deep is your joy? Have you helped relieve the suffering of yourself and others?
Big mind and little sand colored Buddha seemed to whisper to me last night that these in writing, as in life, are the primary questions not “how much” and “who’s watching?”
So what are my answers?
My richest experiences are spiritual experiences. My exploration of spirituality is, besides the love of my family, that which fills my heart most fully. My greatest joy is exploring this topic which I find endlessly fascinating. Letting myself study it, practice it, experience it, and write about it relieves my suffering more than anything else.
Will writing about it relieve the suffering of others?
I really can’t know, but I can hope. If “brownie koan” and “Validation Gremlin and Monetization Monkey” ring true for just one person, or even gives them a smile, then yes. For one tiny moment, I might relieve the suffering of others.
So there you have it. That’s the worth that’s really worth it for me.
What’s yours?
-M. Ashley
M. N. Ashley 