Writing and Meditation

I’m one of those people who’s been interested in meditation for a long time. But I’ve been mostly interested from a distance–because I also find it really, really hard. I find it hard to hold a thought—or my breath—in my mind, to concentrate on that thought, or to try and work with it. I’m one of those people who finds it easier to focus on a thought—and hold it—work with it—if my fingers are moving on a keyboard, or across a page.

I suspect this has everything to do with practice. If I were to graph the hours I’ve logged writing in my life—starting with the alphabet—and compare it to a graph of the minutes I’ve logged meditating, the meditation minutes would be powerfully dwarfed—they would literally disappear.

I’ve been interested for a while now in how writing can become a kind of meditation—perhaps a bridge to meditation—or a boat—for those of us who have trouble diving into the deep pool of meditation.

In 2014, I had the idea to explore connections between writing and meditation and I feel like I only began to scratch the surface. I also made a decision late in the year to let this thread go for a while. I may pick it up again at some point. I continue to think there may be something fruitful in this connection between writing and meditation . . . Maybe . . .

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Photo is of a painting by Leon Wyczotkowski, a Polish realist, from Wikimedia Commons

5 Conditions for Writing and Meditation, Part Two

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 1, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Meditation

4. Enthusiasm. The first three conditions (that I wrote about last week) are tangible. This one is a bit more abstract. I like that Ricard includes 2 possible sources for enthusiasm: thinking about the benefits and then getting a taste of them. For me, with writing, the latter happened first. I wrote and I tasted the benefits and that motivated me to want to continue. I only learned about possible benefits in a theoretical sense much later. But with meditation, for me, it’s been the other way around. I’ve been hearing about the benefits for years—and it was hearing about this—from many different people—that eventually gave me some enthusiasm to want to try it—and then to begin to taste the benefits. To me one of the appealing benefits of meditation is to develop a more stable mind, to become less blown by the winds of this day and that. As a high school teacher now, I find the wind is often blowing this way and that—both inside the classroom and outside—and I’ve gradually come to realize I need a more stable mind in order to handle the wind better. Yes, I think now that it’s teaching that has been one of the things propelling me towards meditation—to realize that when I have a bit more of a stable mind so does the classroom often become more stable. So I’ve been able to taste the benefits a little and this has motivated me further. 5. Practice & Perseverance. This is something I’ve thought a lot about when it comes to writing. It’s become integral to the way that I think about writing—and is beginning to become part of the way that I think about meditation. Ricard uses an analogy to keeping a plant alive and how important it is to water it regularly. “If you just pour a bucket of water on it once a month, it will most likely die between waterings.” He also talks about not waiting to be motivated by mood, or becoming too dependent on short-term results: “Whether your meditation session is enjoyable or irritating, easy or hard, the important thing is to persevere. . . . Moreover, it is when you don’t feel like meditating that it might have the most beneficial effects, because at those times meditation is working directly against some obstacle that stands in the way of your spiritual progress.” I find this last piece of advice especially useful—and a possible source of enthusiasm when I don’t feel like writing or meditating on a particular day. Ah, it might be even more beneficial because it’s working more directly against this resistance. At the end of the chapter, he reminds us again about thinking long-term rather than short-term: In the case of meditation, your goal is to transform yourself over the course of months and years. The progress you make is usually hardly noticeable from day to day, like the hands of a clock, which you barely see moving. You must be diligent but not impatient. I like to consider that something transformative might be happening slowly and surely even though we often might not be able to see any immediate results. ___________________________________________________________________________ The book, Why Meditate?, can be found here. You can learn more about Matthieu Ricard and his work at matthieuricard.org and...

Meditation as the Mind’s Own Physician?

Posted by Diane Morrow on May 18, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Meditation

I’ve begun reading a second book on meditation: The Mind’s Own Physician. I chose it because it’s put out by the Mind & Life Institute, who also put out the book, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, an excellent book by Sharon Begley which came out of a series of conversations in October 2004 between the Dalai Lama and a small group of neuroscientists in Dharamsala on the science of neuroplasticity. The Mind’s Own Physician serves as a kind of sequel, coming out of a much larger conference in 2005 in Washington DC, jointly sponsored by the Mind-Life Institute, Georgetown University and John Hopkins. Here, scientists came together with experienced meditators and contemplatives, including the Dalai Lama, to look at “The Science and Clinical Applications of Meditation.” The book consists of a series of presentations and dialogues from the conference, and is edited by two of the presenters, John Kabat-Zinn and Richard Davidson. It was published several years after the conference, in 2011, and includes an epilogue with developments that have occurred since 2005. It’s another good book for a beginner (though it’s not only useful for beginners). It complements well my reading of Why Meditate? by looking at some early findings in the science of meditation. Interestingly, the moderator of the first session, and one of the contributors to the first chapter is Matthieu Ricard—who seems, now that I’ve learned about him, to be showing up everywhere. In his opening remarks, he offers a fairly succinct definition of meditation that I’m finding useful: Meditation is not just sitting and blissing out under a mango tree in order to have a better day, although it might help. If we look at the Eastern roots of the word for meditation, it truly means cultivation—cultivating new qualities, new ways of being. It also means familiarization: familiarization with a new way of seeing the world; for example, not grasping at permanence, and instead seeing the dynamic flow of interdependence. Meditation means familiarization with qualities that we have the potential to enhance like, like unconditional compassion, openness to others, and inner peace. It’s also familiarization with the very way the mind works. So often we are full of thoughts that ceaselessly go through our mind. We hardly notice what’s going on. What is behind the screen of thoughts? Can we relate to some kind of basic mindfulness and open presence? All of these sorts of inner exploration are considered meditation. Cultivating new qualities—like the qualities of compassion, openness, and inner peace. Familiarization with a new way of seeing the world—seeing, for instance, it’s interdependence. Familiarization with the way the mind works—looking behind the screen of thoughts. I find this definition useful, because it’s helping me, along with some of my other reading, to put aside some of the pre-conceived notions I’ve had in the past about meditation: that it’s primarily about relaxing—or relieving stress—or that it’s primarily about watching the breath. Or blissing out. As I’m beginning to understand it, watching the breath is a useful tool for concentrating, and reducing stress in the short-term is certainly a good thing, but the goal can go far beyond this. It’s as if it’s what we do with this focused and concentrated mind that matters. As I understand it, this has everything to do with...

Writing and Healing Prompt: Locating a Potential for Change

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 27, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Healing Prompts, Writing and Meditation

The idea here, coming out of Matthieu Ricard’s instructions in Why Meditate? is to establish a motivation—a why—right at the beginning. His first suggested meditation, “A Vow to Transform,” included in his preliminary instructions, brings together many of the early ideas from his book—especially this notion that change is both desirable and possible—for any of us—for all of us. Though he presents it as one paragraph in his book, I’m presenting it here in 5 pieces—2 questions and 3 pieces of advice. And, of course, you could adapt this in a way that makes sense to you. Here are the 5 pieces: Reflect on how you are now. Do you find patterns of behavior and habitual reactions in yourself that need to be improved or transformed? ** Look into the deepest part of yourself. Can you sense the presence of a potential for change there? ** Arouse the confidence to believe that change is possible through effort, determination, and wisdom. ** Take a vow to transform yourself not only for your own sake but also, and especially, for the sake of one day being able to dispel the suffering of others and contribute to their enduring happiness. ** Let this determination grow and take root in the deepest part of your being. Looking over the pieces now, I feel like the second piece is the core of this meditation—its seed: Look into the deepest part of yourself. Can you sense the presence of a potential for change there? What does this potential for change look like? Does it appear as an image? A feeling? A word? Where in yourself do you sense it? What might it look like and feel like if it began to grow and take root? What kind of attention does it need? What kind of nourishment? _______________________________________________ The book, Why Meditate?, can be found here. You can learn more about Matthieu Ricard and his work at matthieuricard.org and at karuna-shechen.org The picture above is from a time-lapse video of a crocus unfolding by Neil Bromhall. Because it is spring and because I love time-lapse photography and the way it makes change visible. You can learn more about Neil Bromhall and his work...

Why Meditate? by Matthieu Ricard: Preliminary Instructions

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 20, 2014 in Blog, Motivation, Writing and Meditation

My copy of Why Meditate? has arrived and I am reading it slowly, trying to become at least a beginning student of meditation, and at the same time think about what writing and meditation might have to do with each other. After a chapter on the why of meditation—with much of the material similar to his video on the art of meditation that I’ve been writing about—Ricard begins the much longer “How to Meditate” section with preliminary instructions and offers six pieces of advice. I’m going to write about the first one briefly here: Establishing motivation. He argues that we must become very clear about our motivation before we begin to meditate: “For it is our motivation—altruistic or self-centered, vast or limited—that will give the journey we are about to take a positive or negative direction and thus determine its results.” I think this is something that I haven’t thought about enough when it comes to writing and healing. When I was first working as a doctor, the motivation for people coming to see me seemed obvious and assumed—they want to get better. They want to feel better and be more healthy and live longer if possible. They want to be able to work and be with their families and pursue the things they love and get a good night’s sleep and get up the next morning ready to face the next day and to contribute to the world in whatever way they can. This seemed like plenty. And in a sense it is a lot. But Matthieu Ricard is suggesting we can think much bigger from the beginning: . . . just getting rid of our own suffering is not enough. Each of us is only one person, while there is an infinite number of other beings—human and non-human who want to avoid suffering as much as we do. Moreover, all beings are interdependent, so we are intimately connected with every other living thing. So the ultimate goal of meditation is to acquire the ability to liberate all beings from suffering and contribute to their well-being. This is so vast. So huge. To even consider this is huge: that the ultimate goal might be to train and train (no matter how long it takes) and acquire this kind of ability. Not just for our own well-being; not just for that of our families or our friends or our co-workers, but so incredibly far beyond this—for all beings. It reminds me of a quote I came across a while back by the Dalai Lama: I decided that my being should be dedicated to something useful for others. One of my favorite prayers says, ‘So long as space remains. . . So long as sentient beings remain. . . I will remain in order to serve.’ This gives me a lot of comfort. This is the meaning of my life. I love this idea that such a vast motivation could bring comfort—and meaning. And I love this idea that setting this kind of motivation at the beginning of one’s work could make a difference. It’s so outrageously far beyond where we are now–at least beyond where I am now. But I do kind of love the notion that just setting our sights on this—heading in this direction—could make a difference....

The Art of Meditation, Part 4: The Mind as Translator

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 13, 2014 in Blog, Happiness, Writing and Meditation

I’m returning to “The Art of Meditation,” and to a quote from the video that I wrote about last week. But now I’m looking at a metaphor that Matthieu Ricard uses: the mind as translator. We aspire to be free from suffering and to find some happiness. There are outer and inner conditions to that. The outer conditions—we ought to improve them as much as possible. But if we know that the way our mind experiences that, the way our mind translates the outer condition as happiness or misery [then] we know the fact that our state of mind can very easily eclipse the outer condition. We can be miserable in a seemingly perfect paradise. We can have strength of mind, joy of being alive, even [when] the conditions seem to be difficult. We know all that. The metaphor of mind as a translator has me thinking about my math book in grade school and how, at least for a while, we were working with math as if it were happening in a machine: with inputs and outputs. Something like this picture, which accompanies something called “The Function Machine Game”: Or something like this (the picture above): If the mind can be thought of as a translator, as Ricard suggests, then we’re not experiencing input purely—but as something altered and translated. We’re altering it according to rules. Instead of the rule “add 4” we’re interpreting our experiences with other rules. Say the input is a snow forecast. We might have a rule inside our head that says: “Snow is good because I get to miss school.” Or we might have a different rule: “Snow is frustrating because I’m going to have to worry about the roads and missing school.” Or: “Snow means getting up earlier and shoveling the driveway.” Same input. Different rules. Different experiences of happiness or misery. We know all this. I know all this. But at the same time I don’t. Or I forget. I forget that my mind is altering experiences and making interpretations all the time, and doing so according to rules that I sometimes don’t pay much attention to. I think Ricard is suggesting that meditation can change the rules inside our minds. And I think he’s suggesting that we can change the rules so that they increasingly lead to happiness. Here’s his quote from the Independent article again: If you allow exterior circumstances to determine your state of mind, then of course you will suffer; you become like a sponge, or like a chameleon. I have lived in difficult areas. I lived in Old Delhi for almost a year. That really is a miserable place. And yet sometimes I felt so light there. It was like—how can I put this—different weather. Old Delhi can be, apparently, a miserable place—but the experience of it doesn’t have to be miserable. The mind can translate it differently. This is tricky. I know that 2 different people might experience it differently. And I know on 2 different days I might experience it differently. Ricard is implying something more than this though. He’s implying that we can use meditation to intentionally change our mind in some way so that we will experience a...

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