Zazen

I didn’t know about his wife. I really didn’t know anything about him either. I saw his book ‘Everyday Matters’ on Amazon when I was on a trail of drawing books. It intrigued me because it was a memoir and it had drawings. I had recently contracted a fever about drawing and had been hunting for inspiration and resources to help me along.

I ordered it used and anticipated delivery.

It’s a small book, nice size, colorful drawing on cover. I opened it up and was swallowed whole. When I emerged an hour or so later, I realized that it really had nothing to do with drawing and everything to do with living.

I’ve witnessed a great collision lately, my own big bang. The creation of my creation. Or the further clarity of my creative efforts.

Danny Gregory. Natalie Goldberg. Frederick Franck. They have the same message. No matter if you draw, write, or whatever your craft, use it as a practice. Use it as a meditation. Allow it to take you through yourself and beyond, to a place where you really are connected with the world – not the world around you, the world that envelops you. And there, you will create.

I liken it to Betty Edward’s exercise in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain – turn the picture upside down so that your brain doesn’t put logical parameters on what you see. This way, it won’t know.

Danny Gregory used drawing to help him reach a painful and pained inner part of himself after his wife’s accident. He began to connect the lines of his life and the lines of his surroundings, and he used them to heal and grown and live.

He lived by drawing.

Natalie Goldberg wrote down the bones twenty years ago. And she kept going. She writes without lifting her pen off of the page, allowing her words and her thoughts to flow through her and onto the page. She does it every day. She has mounds of writing journals. She lives by writing. She learns about her life and her self by writing. She practices through writing.

She sits zazen through writing.

Frederick Franck also meditates through drawing, openly admitting that he can’t sit still for long in a lotus pose and instead chooses to practice through illustration. His book, The Zen of Seeing, is hand written and illustrated. It’s the second of his books that I’ve enjoyed as much for the subject matter as for the illustrations.

He creates through his pen.

When I was in high school, I took Mrs. Hutchison’s creative writing class. She instructed us to write about how things tasted, what things smelled like, and how we felt. She asked us to write about the scary events of our lives. I wrote about my family, wracked by mental illness and a lack of coping skills. I remember that it was freeing. I wrote through the pain. I let it flow from my pen.

They call it a practice for a reason, and like everything else in life, it requires that you attend to it daily. What I like about writing and drawing is that there is a visible result – words on a page, a sketch of a mockingbird.

Freeing yourself of your thoughts and emotions and allowing yourself to follow the curve of a leaf, smell the cumin in the stew, articulate the emotion of regret, and connect. Wow, that’s powerful. As Kung Fu Panda would say, it’s about recognizing your awesomeness.

And I mean that.

I continue to browse through Everyday Matters because it does. His story matters to me. His drawings matter to me. Every day matters to me. I also continue to draw and am practicing writing in a way that I haven’t before. I have tried to sit and meditate before, and I will again. For now, I am letting my creativity flow through me. Unencumbered. My hand open.

What I hear, I do not name

I began my day on Friday with some quiet time, and I read from The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton. Here's a passage:

XII

A certain brother went to Aboot Moses in Scete, 

and asked him for a good word. 

And the elder said to him: 

Go, sit in your cell, 

and your cell will teach you everything.

I have tried to meditate, to quiet my mind, to breath, and to let things come in and go out without judgement. This is excruciatingly difficult for me. My mind has gotten louder over the years. The conversations have risen to a din that is hard to silence, and my brain can multi-task and flit about from thing to thing.

Successful meditation is about focus. Some people focus on an object or a mantra or a prayer. I find that watching the birds out the window and trying to 'hear' their voices is a form of focus that works. To 'do it,' I have to quiet my mind so that I can hear them. It's like hearing the grandfather clock. Some days I only hear the half hour chime. A great exercise that I use periodically is to try to listen and determine how many different sounds I hear. The white noise of the day. What do I hear? The ticking of three clocks. My watch. The birds. The wind. Sometimes passing vehicles. House sounds.

On Saturday morning, I read from the Tao. I'm reading Wayne Dyer's book on the Tao. From the 2nd verse:

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty,

only because there is ugliness

All can know good only because there is evil.

--

Being and nonbeing produce each other.

The difficult is born in the easy.

Long is defined by short,

the high by the low

Before and after go along with each other

...

It goes back to naming things. Labeling them. Giving them parameters. The moment you do it, the thing becomes bound. It is no longer free. It is restricted. How many times a day do we restrict? How can I listen to a bird's song and not think 'beauty' and just hear it. That is my challenge.

Below are some notes from the April 1st Project: