Buddhist creativity
Generally, I practice two kinds of writing. The first is the writing I do each morning in my journal, just after I practice yoga and the rest of my family is still enjoying deep sleep. It's personal, intuitive, regular, and feels liminal, because it's so early the sun has not risen and my body and mind are still in the process of opening up. The second kind of writing is built and honed over long periods of time, the work flow often feels sporadic - usually essays or translations and occasionally poems, which I intend for the outside world. This is writing that is worked over, polished, and takes a very long time.
Lately, I've started to feel an intense pull to begin a third kind of writing practice - something between the privacy of my journal and the carefully architectured pieces intended for publication. I would like to write regular/occasional pieces that live beyond the pages of my journal, in the starry ether of the universe (we understand this ether as the internet, but I would like to think of it as spiritual planes). I say "lately," but in fact, I've been feeling this call for more than a year.
The barrier has been one of ego. I am afraid to share writing that has not been edited, writing I have not sat with for a long enough period of time before its time in the intimacies of my care has matured and is ready to be let go. Why allow "in-between" writing to be unfurled into the public? Especially at a time when there is an overabundance, an overwhelm of careless content. Content, which feels like filler, stuff - matter, which doesn't matter. Content, which feels like it lacks intent. Is my writing worth sharing if it isn't my best work? What's the point and to whom am I writing?
But the truth is, none of my writing matters - even when it is at its "best." Everything I write is but a meager translation of emotions and ideas that cannot be whittled down to words. And yet I can't help but try. That is the work, the daily practice, of being a writer. Nobody cares whether I write a single word, and yet, it is one of the most important creative outlets I have.
My morning reading has been Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki and in a lecture on the fundamental activity of creation, he shares, "we cannot create and own what we create for ourselves since everything was created by God." "God," which is what in Zen is understood as the "big I," the universal I that reminds us of our egoless interconnectedness. In this sense, I am but a conduit - how I feel especially when I am doing the work of literary translation - a vessel through which the creation of our collective big I is transmitted. And when I can fully appreciate my role as such, I can let go of the ego that is clawing onto the notions of work that comes from me, and that I assign values of good/bad and decide whether it is worthy of being out there in the world.
It isn't up to me.
It isn't my writing.
