Buddhism & Writing - Lesson 555

In Buddhism they teach you to treat all dharmas as dreams – which is really just a fancy way of saying whatever you experience in life, it is not solid.  It is fleeting.  

Too often we don’t see it that way.  When will this rain ever stop?  Why can’t I get rid of this pain in my knee? Will I ever be happy? I mean, long continuous everlastingly happiness (is there such a thing)? Who is this person I keep recognizing as myself all these many years?

If life consists of any one consistent ingredient, it is its potential for constant change. Hold onto any one pain or happiness for too long, and it will slip away soon enough. Sometimes long before we’re even willing to let go.  Sometimes long before we even know it’s gone.

Isn’t that like writing? Real writing, good writing is the ability to imbue one single moment, a scene, one single bit of action with the breadth and sweep of the entire story. Sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter, we create these little bon mots (with due respect to poet J Diego Frey) that serve as summary for the entire sweep of the tale being told.  Just as a single chromosome tells of the larger being. Or the way an acorn holds the entire secret of the oak tree it has inside it.

Buddhism tells us all things that originate – hate, love, heroism, guilt, and all the rest of it - originate in our minds. And although these thoughts are vivid, they are not solid. They each hold the potential to flitter away. To change for better or worse, grabbing onto the grand sweep of life.

And that is the promise of good writing.  The promise that nothing is ever stuck, everything changes, and we’ve been invited on the read-along ride to see and anticipate how it all works out.

Horror Writing, Buddhism, and Facing the Unknown

In Buddhism, they teach you to stay open to fear.

In order to practice what he preached, the Buddha sat under a Bodhi tree for forty nine days watching hour upon hour of horror movies, and reading classic horror stories, until finally he emerged from the darkness into enlightenment.

I wasn’t there, but I think that’s how it went.

Because Buddhism, like horror stories, is all about staying open to the unexpected.

Horror is a willing submission to the unknown. Buddhism tells you to approach life without any preconceptions.  Both are a seduction to which we surrender.  We go into them selflessly – without self – learning we do not survive this world by controlling it, but better by adapting to how we naturally ebb and flow with it.

Consider it like this.  In Buddhism we sit in meditation – our eyes open, our mind training to not label every little sound, smell or vision. In the next room we hear something bump, or some long-drawn creak. Do we listen to it, open to absorbing that sound without understanding it? Or in pursuit of mundane comfort do we label the sound – it’s the wood floor settling or a door closing. Do we name it in order not to hear it for what it is? Just an explained sound in the night.

With horror, we sit lonely in the dark – perhaps a candle lit, our minds empty (oh, so Buddhist) – as we wait for the unexpected to crawl up our skin. When we enjoy a good horror, we naturally surrender all reason and thought to our imaginations. That’s a Buddhist concept.

Because imagination is where we face the unspoken.  The hidden secrets and yearnings of our souls.

In his article “Saved from Freezing”, Norman Fischer writes it better.  And this is a lesson for all creators of horror to consider.  “Imagination confronts desire directly, in all its discomfort and intensity, deepening the world right where we are.  Fantasy and reality are opposing forces, but imagination and reality are not in opposition: Imagination goes toward reality, shapes and evokes it.”

Today We Remember

We should remember this.  Our minds and the world do not exist as opposites, because neither our minds nor the world truly exist. What does exist is vision, and vision arises when our mind and the world meet.

I use the word vision loosely here. Vision may be sight, or it may be hearing, smell, touch, taste or inspiration. Whichever of these it is, it is active, momentary, never lasting. It does not come back.

Remembering is a verb, not a moment we can recapture.

Today we remember. We remember veterans. We remember wars. We remember heroism and fear and survival.

Some think remembering is nostalgia – imbuing the present moment with a fogged image from long ago.

But remembering is no more than re-joining.  Remembering is when, in a present moment, we join our mind with the present world to see old thoughts in new ways.

Remembering is not a nostalgic satisfaction or fixation.  It is how we interact with the environment in which we live. It is about joining ourselves to the present moment, and having the courage to not look back.

That’s our tribute to the brave, and the fearful, and the survivors who came before us.

Why Mitt Romney will never choose Paul Ryan as his VP

For republicans, this year's presidential bid is a throwaway election.  

Romney’s not going to beat Obama, and republicans are not even sure they want him to.  The Bush recession isn't over, and the slow growth is likely to continue for at least another year or so.  Better for republicans to carp from the sidelines than risk  taking responsibility.

You can tell Romney’s going to lose because despite Obama's hard times, he's still better liked than  Mitt.  Republicans know this, for one very solid reason – they don’t like Mitt either.

You know it’s a throwaway election because no serious republican even considered getting in the race – no Chris Christie, no Jeb Bush, no Colin Powell or Condie Rice.

The question the republican party needs to ponder is - do they really want Romney’s November flameout to drag the Ryan budget down with him?

If Paul Ryan’s on the ticket, November 6 will go down as the day America clearly rejected his much touted plan for returning America to the Days of Deep Depression.  It's one thing to have a bunch of nuns, labor unions, Democrats and Catholic bishops tell you your budget plan is unholy, but when Americans reject in an election, it's toast.  Fait accompli.  

 

If republicans want to go into the 113th congress with the continued hope of further confounding Obama, privatizing Medicare and Social Security, taxing the working person and returning to the Roaring 20’s, they need the pseudo-serious Ryan plan to rattle in their fists as they spew their fire and brimstone.

But when a Romney-Ryan ticket loses, what will they have, except foul temperament and the penchant to blame Obama for everything from the weather to their dog’s unfortunate bowel habits.  

A Romney-Ryan ticket is the death of the republican agenda.

So snooze up, America. It's going to be Portman or Pawlenty for VP.  Or, if Romney wants to suddenly go adventuresome, Marco Rubio to hustle up the Florida vote.  

What we can learn from Colorado Rockies pitcher Jamie Moyer and my buddy Tim Lyons

Slow is not necessarily better.  But it sure is a nice complement to fast.

Last night the Colorado Rockies beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 6-1 with Jamie Moyer pitching 6 1/3 innings, giving up one run and six hits.  Slow pitched, in that Jamie Moyer style.  The D-backs stood around waiting for his 74MPH fastballs and sinkers to catch up to their bats.

But that’s not the slowest accomplishment for the 49 year old veteran (2-3).

In the bottom of the 4th with Jordan Pacheco on 3rd and Dexter Fowler on 2nd, Moyer dribbles a roller down the 1st base line.

So slow a roller, D-backs pitcher Patrick Corbin just stood by in amazement, stunned by its timelessness.

Arizona 1st basement Paul Goldschmidt needed to abandon his post in pursuit of the dribble, and then two time it back to the bag to try and tag Moyer out in time.  Moyer ran slow, but Goldschmidt’s return was a tad slower.  Safe. Had the ball rolled any faster, things might have been different.

But like we said, slow complements speed.

While the play at 1st was creating its own freeze-frame replay, Dexter Fowler rocketed around 3rd and snuck in for a completely unseen score at the plate.   I was there.  I didn’t see it.  Jamie Moyer didn’t see it.    The in-house replay didn’t even catch it.

“I assumed he’d be on third base,” Moyer said after the game.  “Then I looked at the scoreboard, and realized he had scored.”

Sometimes time passes like that.  You don’t see it .  You just notice later on the scoreboard.

When I got home from the game, I saw my buddy Tim Lyons skulking the neighborhood.  He says he was out running, but it was slower than running.  More like skulking.

Then he told me about his latest You Tube video – him performing his own The Ballad of Dick Cheney.  It’s a nice slow waltz.  Slow enough even a guy like me or Jamie Moyer  can get up and dance to it.   Slow enough that you’re likely to notice.

Here it is here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YVlFUt1f-0

The Buddha wonders ...

Why meditate?

To know our mind.

Looking at our mind shows us the rhythm of stillness, of this very moment.  The Now.  Often we think of our mind as a continuum.  But the more we see of this very moment, absent of past grievances and future ambition, the more we lose anxiety and see the purity of the present mind.

Sometimes we mistake our mind for the thoughts that travel through it.  That’s like understanding the sky by studying the blueprints of airplanes.

In the Four Noble Truths the Buddha taught us that we suffer because of our attachments.

When we understand our mind as a thought it invokes, we attaching to that thought as if it is our mind.  We are getting stuck.

Meditation helps us see our mind empty of its thoughts.

How many hours should a novelist spend on their novel each day and why am I not doing it right now?

Aidan Donnelly Rowley got it exactly right (http://bit.ly/1pUZtH). There's an anxiety that creeps through all writers. All that wasted time in a day. Why am I not writing?

I read the blogs of other disciplined writers who comment they've "written their 3500 words for today", or managed to put in their 4 hours of writing time. These are writers. People driven by anxiety. Anxiety has forced them to prescribe a formula to tackle their anxiety and meet deadlines too. Man, that sounds so writerly.

I wish I had more anxiety in my life. More ways of getting stuff done.

I'm lucky if I lately I can sneak in a half hour or less on writing each day. Plus, it usually comes at the end of the day after work, dining, dog walking, cleaning and a snifter or two. I'm a novelist, but can only squeeze in a half hour per day (or less)! Could a surgeon say that thirty minutes really makes him a surgeon? A newsboy claim that thirty minutes a day makes him a truly gifted dispenser of newspapers.

Shouldn't I feel anxious about this?

The truth is, writing is a lot like meditation for me. It's not that it's got to be perfect or any specific period of time - there is no such thing as time when meditating. As long as it's exploratory, as long as it digs deep inside me and pulls out lessons I haven't yet learned, then it's worth each and every second, no matter how few.

That's meditation.

And that's efficient writing too.