You Are and Are Not the River: On Writing, Mindfully
The book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, a collection of teachings by Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, opens with a curious claim:
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.
How can this be true? We certainly don’t spend the better part of a decade pursuing a doctorate, in our chosen fields, to limit the number of possibilities available to us and to others. By becoming experts—experts with a lowercase “e,” since learning is an ongoing adventure—don’t we broaden our worlds instead of shrinking them?
Beginner’s mind refers to an enthusiasm and an open-mindedness unique to novices, but, unfortunately, less common among those with substantial training in a given subject. Zen comes from the Sanskrit word for “meditation,” and though there are two, at times overlapping, forms of Zen—Soto and Rinzai—its basic tenet is to, well, “Sit down and shut up,” as I’ve heard it playfully and frankly stated. I’ve mainly been trained in the Soto tradition, with teachers at two different sanghas in the Midwest. The goal is to observe our mind without holding onto its thoughts, impressions, emotions, easing our way, through this practice, away from suffering, toward a more full understanding of, and oneness with, all things.
I realize, as a creative scholar and Zen practitioner, there’s an inherent tension in my life: I regularly strive toward new and more meaningful ways of moving through the world, but I also work to accept things, myself and others, as they are. It’s a conundrum I don’t quite have an answer to, except to say that I try to embody what the Buddha referred to as the Middle Way—a sense of balance, equilibrium, a homeostasis of sorts—or at least a striving-toward this middle ground.
Writer and educator Maia Duerr, creator of the Tree of Contemplative Practices, which is available at the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education’s website, states that all mindfulness, or contemplative, practices—and there are many, spanning countries and centuries—are founded on two tandem values: awareness and connection. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines mindfulness as:
the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis.
For me, spending hours and hours, over the last twelve years, sitting, cross-legged, in silence, on my meditation cushions, my hands resting in my lap in the cosmic mudra position, a sort of anchoring diamond shape, has not always been fun. Despite the claim, in so much of pop culture, that mindfulness will bring near-immediate peace to practitioners, Zen hasn’t always resulted in a peace, though I do tend to experience a greater sense of calm. And it certainly hasn’t been easy, though it has gotten less difficult over time. But I will say this: it has always been interesting, even when it hasn’t, and the take-away continues to be worth it. For someone as steeped in words as I am on a daily basis, Zen comes as a challenging, quiet counterpart.
I don’t sit every day, but what I lack in cushion-time I make up for on the treadmill in the morning before work, on my afternoon walk to get the mail, as I’m doing dishes, showering, and as I’m waiting for my wife to pick me up for a night at the movies. Years ago, someone very wise told me that I both am and am not the river of my thoughts and feelings. Why not sit on the shore, he suggested, and watch them float by? Conundrum, I’m reminded, is part of the Zen tradition, as seen in koans, brief, pithy statements that challenge logical thinking.
According to Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh,
Our thoughts and feelings flow like a river. If we try to stop the flow of a river, we will meet the resistance of the water. It is better to flow with it, and then we may be able to guide it in ways that we want it to go.
And when I picked up creative non-fiction writer and professor Dinty W. Moore’s small, but mighty craft book The Mindful Writer a few years ago, I was surprised to find my own experience with writing and mindfulness reflected back to me. Moore writes:
It was not Buddhism that had influenced my writing, but quite the opposite. The river of influence, perhaps, ran in the other direction. Rather than seeing mindfulness and Buddhism as shaping my efforts on the page, what I’ve come to understand is that my lifelong pursuit of writing and creativity helped to open me to the path of Buddhism. The innumerable lessons learned in struggling with my writing over the years had made me aware (albeit in an inarticulate, subconscious way) of the simple wisdom of mindfulness
What practicing Zen has taught me, and, at least as importantly, what it continues to teach me, is mainly twofold. Zen reminds me that I can choose, daily, to make space for greater compassion and for responding over reacting. Specifically, I work—earnestly, at times, fumbling—to make space for:
- compassion, genuine compassion, both for others and myself
- responding to stimuli, external and internal alike, instead of simply reacting
Perhaps this choosing-to-make-space-for is what Lao Tzu had in mind when he wrote the following:
We mold clay into a cup,
but it is the emptiness inside
that makes it useful.
We construct wood into a house,
but it is the emptiness inside
that makes it livable.
We work with the solid,
but it is the emptiness that we use.
I admit, I don’t always want to pay attention, non-judgmentally, to the present moment. When I’m lying in the dentist’s chair, for example, smoothing my thumb over a river stone as a stay against the unsettling sound of the drill. Or when I witness a stranger hurl a slur at another person. But it’s in those moments, where I can feel myself clutched by fear or any of its unpleasant and terrifying relatives, that mindfulness is most necessary. Mindfulness, it seems, like flossing, is most essential when I resist it.
I want to move through the world with a cool head and a warm heart. The way I see it, mindfulness practice is a version of self-care. And self-care, in a way, is an indirect caring for others, creatures, human and not, as well as the environment. In his book Bring Peace, Thich Nhat Hanh writes:
Life is both dreadful and wonderful. To practice meditation is to be in touch with both aspects.
It’s not an easy concept to sit with, that each of us will experience both wonder and dread throughout our lives—that there’s no escaping it—simply by being alive. But Hanh is right, isn’t he? Perhaps this is one aspect of life that mindfulness can help us come to terms with.
Along with Zen meditation or using a worry stone as an anchor, having a mantra, I find, can also help buoy me in the present moment. I wish, when I was a doctoral student, I’d thought to invoke a mantra, namely when I was overwhelmed and afraid and doubting my abilities most. The mantra I’d have chosen is from multi-genre writer Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, a collection of 240 prose poems, or brief lyric essays, that explore the author’s relationship to the color blue. It was, and is still, one of my favorite books. Near the end, Nelson writes:
I am writing all this down in blue ink, so as to remember that all words, not just some, are written in water.
Had I thought, then, to make use of a mantra—as I have, previously, when I’ve found it particularly beneficial to be reminded, mainstayed, by others’ words—I’d have been able to draw comfort and strength from Nelson’s bewildering and gorgeous lyric prose. As a writer, ultimately, I want my words to be useful. And as a Zen practitioner, I want my silence to be useful as well.
—Dr. Erin