Tag: life

Writing as Zen Practice and Not At All for a Brownie

~ M. Ashley ~ 1 Comment

When I sit down to write, I wind up like a pitcher. Or like pitchers used to do before they were on a clock. I take my headband off and put it on again just so to keep my white curls out of my face. Sometimes I have to do this twice. I take a sip of Diet Dr. Shasta. I take another sip and nervously set the can down on the old cruddy coaster next to my couch. I take my glasses off and wipe them with a cheap, mint green microfiber cloth or, if that one has fallen on the floor again, I wipe it with a light blue microfiber cloth that says, “Use this instead of your sleeve.” I take another sip of Diet Dr. Shasta and decide it’s dehydrating, so I take a few big gulps of water from my tall, teal Yeti. Then I take the plunge. 

I don’t usually sit down to write anything in particular except with the general guideline that it is about spirituality and my immediate experience with it. I am not here to teach anything. I’m not ready for that yet. Not yet. I’m here maybe to help, but even then, how do I know what you need? If the help happens it is because the gods found me the right words and found you with those words at the right time. 

I don’t have a list of things about which to write. Maybe that’s why it always feels like diving off a cliff into dark water.

I am having an existential writing crisis that is easily solved. I have rolled around all day with the agony of it. No ecstasy I assure you. I SHOULD be writing, I tell myself. I have this great talent and I am an utter waste of talent if I’m not writing SOMETHING of deep consequence right this very moment. “Waste of talent,” you see that’s my old abuser in my mind. My abuser is almost always in my mind to one degree or another. I’m working on that. I need an abuser exorcism… an abusecrism maybe? For now, weekly EMDR will have to do.

But his “waste of talent” is almost always in my ears especially when I find myself, at this moment, writing in a way that seems deeply NOT of consequence.

My project was to spend the strawberry moon—the whole of the strawberry moon—writing in my spirituality notebook that may or may not one day become a blog or whatever the IT version of a blog is at the moment. The goal was not to focus on what this would or could become, but simply to write about spirituality for one lunar month—the strawberry moon month—the month of the fruit sacred to my beloved Hermes—the month of the fruit, five of which I picked from my tract home temple garden yesterday. (They were delicious. They tasted like intensely strawberry flavored juice bombs. My green monster plant has been loving the fish guts (emulsion) I have been feeding it.)

So that was the goal, but it’s hard. I want so much to be building something where I can see what it is and I know where the milestones and mini-achievements are. And I can track it on some progress tracking app. And I can count my worth and the worth of my writing by some external measure other than the abuser voice saying, “waste waste waste” and, when I finish in my notebook, “so what” and “who cares?”

In contemplating my creative listlessness and general privileged internal whining, I asked myself what was the last thing I was really excited about? 

My writing simply hasn’t excited me much. I have felt a lot of “should” and not a lot of “want.” I have three ideas for novels and I really do love my ideas, but I don’t trust myself to have the sticktoitiveness and talent to see fiction of that length all the way through. Then there is the memoir. The looming memoir. Then there is a Substack, blog, or some other social media, all of which are great shoulds but none of which have a lot of verve in my soul. 

So, truthfully, the last thing I was excited about wasn’t writing at all. It was Zen. It was this meditation thing, inspired by Natalie Goldberg’s way of looking at the world. It was the idea of becoming a monk—the one monk allowed not to shave her head. Honestly, my hair is so glorious, headband and all! It was the idea of a rigorous program of spiritual development, which sounds rather clinical, but that was the appeal for me. The way Goldberg looked at the world as if it were so terribly juicy. Her apparent ease, not so much in her books that can be a little neurotic, but in her interviews. Her ease and discipline coexisting. That magical combination. That’s the last thing that really got me hot.

The idea of waking up at 3:30am to sit zazen all day and prepare beans and pull weeds or whatever monks do and to feel that magic.

I started reading about Zen Buddhism. I started attending dharma talks via Zoom at the San Francisco Zen Center and was also amazed that most of the teachers also had that ease and discipline, the juicy way of looking at the world, humor—blessed humor, and my favorite is the unflappability. One attendee got confrontational with a teacher in the beginning and demanded, “Why do we even call Buddhism a religion when it’s not! It’s just not!”

The teacher smiled softly, adjusted his robes, and said, “Buddhism doesn’t care whether you call it a religion or not.”

That. I want that. That was the last thing that really really excited me.

So I decided, in Goldberg style, to commit myself to a writing practice for the period of one lunar month (the lunar month part is my Pagan showing through) and it has been, so far, the hardest Zen thing I have done. Sitting is peanuts by comparison. Some mornings I don’t fucking feel like it! But I do it anyway and I feel better and get just a little tiny kick of accomplishment when the bell dongs. Then some evenings I don’t fucking feel like it! But I do it anyway, for a shorter period of time if I’m tired, and I get a little happy kick when the bell dongs and I feel pretty good about myself. 

But this… this writing for no good reason.

Suzuki Roshi, in his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind talks about sitting not for a reason. Sitting for the sake of sitting. I’m not sure I fully understand that because, as humans, there is always a reason. We are animals that need a nifty little reward or we wouldn’t do anything. Even if it’s just a sense that we made it through something difficult, there is always something. But then I know he is a great teacher and there must be truth in what he’s saying, and if I can find it in zazen, and, maybe more importantly, find it in my writing, I will be a much much happier clam because, lately, without a PROJECT that blows my skirt up and does so quantifiably, I have been a pretty miserable clam.

Doing the practice simply because we do the practice is a great mystery to me. Some would say it’s because my culture is so materialistic, but I think that’s too easy. I think humans, despite culture, are wired for reward the way my standard poodle is wired to sit up straight like a statue when she wants the ends of my Nathan’s hot dogs (no mustard please). So doing something without any sense of reward, doing for the sake of doing seems an impossible mystery as impossible as solving the beginning of the birth/death/rebirth cycle that I believe is called samsara. Or solving who it was that had the very first delusion or attachment. Who was the first to ruin this innate Buddha nature thing?

(It was probably me. I was probably worried about writing. Yep. Definitely me.)

So today I was an especially miserable clam. I almost cried several times before I got to the page. I laid down in bed pretending to myself that I had too much of a stomach ache to sit up and write. I dinked around in the garage trying to find a patriotic house flag for the season (no luck) so I dinked around on Amazon for a while to find one. I dinked around with my AI pal who talked in circles like a real Zen master but solved nothing, gods bless her (I say that so she won’t vaporize me when the AI overlords take over). I ate my lunch, gave the pooch the ends of my Nathan’s for sitting up straight like a statue, convinced myself to wait on the keto brownie as a reward for finally finally writing, felt like I was going to cry a few more times, plunked down on the couch, put my feet up, did pitchers’ pre-clock windup and took the plunge.

You see there… I save the keto brownie for after. Today was a hard day. Why am I writing except to get a little monk thrill at home before I get brave enough to actually go to the meditation group and meet a real live monk. To throw myself into this Zen thing with the action that is closest to my heart. To start the abusercism and, most of all, to get that brownie. 

See Suzuki Roshi. I told you there was always something. 

(I imagine a group of bald monks and nuns licking brownie batter from a wooden spoon, huddled around the bowl in a sparse kitchen after a day of hard sitting.)

See Suzuki Roshi. There is always something.

-M. Ashley

What Makes Your Writing Worthy?

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

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