Writing As Daily Meditation

Some Not-So-Final Thoughts

For six weeks I’ve been writing about my meditation practice, asking myself how the act of writing alters or perhaps enhances my meditation.

I did not simply jot down what I was thinking and then post it. I worked through the writing process: rough draft, revision, revision, revision…, proofreading, right up to when I had to meet my Wednesday, 1 a.m., deadline each week, remembering that a  piece of writing is never finished, but only abandoned.

My thoughts in each of these installments are incomplete. Some are terribly vague and haphazardly organized, but writing is a thinking-out process and thinking can be messy. I’ve said to myself, “How do I know what I think until I see what I’ve written?” And once we see what we’ve written, then maybe we see that what we thought doesn’t make much sense—and so we revise. All of that has gone on here. I began with an article of faith: The writing process should take us to a place of higher understanding than where we began. But the reality is that sometimes that place is a ledge with no clear route to the summit.

And so it has been with this.

If I were to immediately repeat this exercise/experiment, I’d start by reorganizing my contemplation/meditation itself, which I’ve in fact now done when I sit down in the morning. Mindfulness meditation comes first, counting breaths to 10 a couple of times to begin emptying the mind. After that, I go on to the contemplation of first Rabbi Hillel, then the 4 Reminders and the 6 Paramitas. I do not put off the Flaws of Samsara to the end, but leave it with the 4 Reminders. I mention these small changes, but there are deeper ones I don’t have time or enough clarity to go into here. It’s enough to say, I’d do this differently each time I attempted it.

I am humbled by how difficult it has been to express what I feel spiritually. Though the psychology and solid life advice of the reminders I’ve written about are clear and totally accessible, why is this a spiritual practice? Have I expressed what I believe is so profound, or have I only shown myself the fool?

In a sense, this exercise has been my reflections on my story in a private journal hidden in plain sight. Only I know the events, places, and people lurking like ghosts behind my generalizations and hypotheticals. You learned something of my social anxiety, but you can’t know with whom I’ve feuded, how I came to Buddhism, or the details of any of my terrible choices or questionable behavior. The framework I’ve built is revealing only up to my carefully constructed, protective boundaries.

Meditation is a struggle. We struggle to clear the mind, to stay on track, to consider some question (like a koan in Zen), to discipline the mind in any number of exercises growing out of various traditions and cultures. These brief pieces give a clue to my struggle and may help someone else on a similar path.

Much the same can be said of fiction. As you see if you click on Monthly: Fiction at the top of the page, I am primarily a short story writer. Both a discussion of someone’s spiritual practice and a piece of fiction speak to that world of Samsara, that flawed world of the human condition, and the characters and situations found in fiction are disguised ghosts visiting from a hidden life.  

In the next few weeks, I will be writing a few brief pieces on storywriting. In the back of my mind, I’ll be implicitly trying to connect what I take from my meditation practice to sitting alone in a room writing stories. How is my writing process—for me, the short story—like meditating? What rules and realities do I have to contemplate as I work?

Visit this site next Wednesday for the first installment of that conversation. I have no idea what I may be thinking, so let’s see what I say.