On Writing

This morning the sky is clear again, but not my head. As I lay in bed, my fuzzy eyes didn’t want to open. There’s no grand rush today. This is the last day of our vacation/stay-cation and I’m not even going to morning Zoom Zen meditation. Yet still, I do my best to get out of bed in time for this quiet writing.

I often wonder what I am doing in this daily writing and sharing. Certainly part of this practice is simply to help me clarify my own life. There are all these wonderful teachings that I know, but the process of living and integrating these teachings is a life-long venture. Writing helps me see what I see and know what I know. Writing helps me appreciate where I am, even if it’s some place I would rather not be.

I also write for the small group of friends, family and students that faithfully or occasionally read these posts. A couple times a week I’ll hear from someone who reports that something I’ve written has helped them feel more at home in their lives. I am especially gratified when something I write validates some wisdom or struggle in someone else’s life. My highest dream for my writing (and for my life) is that it might be of use to others.

Writing is a way of giving back what I have learned. Each of us has a particular wisdom that we gather and uncover through our lives. We seem to be born with some way of being in the world. For some it’s a natural sensitivity to the moods and struggles of others. For other people, it’s the capacity to see the positive side of difficult situations. For still others, it’s the ability to bear the darkness of human pain and survive to tell the story. We each have some truth or capacity that is so obvious to us, it’s hard to understand others don’t have this and that sharing this deep and evident perspective might be the gift we have to give the world.

As I write, I try to be as honest as I can. This is not an easy thing for a religious teacher and writer. The sound of my own voice can easily carry me into realms that sound quite lovely but are not so useful. This is a professional hazard. We fall in love with our own words and lose the essential connection to our life itself. It’s easy to say the right things, but saying the right things is not enough. There’s a wonderful saying in Zen that the teachings are so simple that an eight-year-old can say them, but even an eighty-year-old cannot live them. I’m only sixty-seven and a half and still working on this.

I’m much more interested in living the teachings than in proclaiming the teachings. Though the wisdom teachings of all traditions have a beauty and elegance that touches me deeply, they are merely pointing to a way of being that is more than any words can capture. The words themselves—though necessary, useful and part of the path—are also one of the places along the way we can (and will) get lost.

I’m trying to follow some emerging aliveness of life itself. This is what I love and what delights me—in the garden, in meditation, in playing with my grandson, and in this daily writing. When I write what I already know, it feels like hard work and I get bored. When I’m following something that is arising in the moment—something I don’t yet fully understand—I’m interested and educated myself by what emerges. I trust that if I am genuinely learning and moving deeper into my life, then what I have to say and share may encourage others to do the same.