“What do we see when we look at the mind? Constant change. In the traditional scriptures the untrained and unconcentrated mind is referred to as a mad monkey. As we look for ourselves, we see that it is like a circus or a zoo in there. The parrot, the sloth, the mouse, the tiger, the bear, and the silent owl are all represented. It is like a flywheel of spinning thoughts, emotions, images, stories, likes, dislikes, and so forth. There is ceaseless movement, filled with plans, ideas, and memories. Seeing this previously unconscious stream of inner dialogue is for many people the first insight in practice. It is called seeing the waterfall. Already we begin to learn about the nature of mind. Its constant changes are like the weather; today it rains, tonight it may snow, earlier the sun was out. Sometimes it’s muddy in the spring, and then the summer comes and the winds come. In the fall the leaves go; in winter the ice forms.”
– Jack Kornfield, Meditation for Beginners
Category: Quote
“If you want to be a writer, do the writing. Chase the feeling …
If you want to be a writer, do the writing. Chase the feeling. Follow it faithfully wherever it leads. Don’t write to be admired. Don’t write for fame. Don’t write to get published. Don’t write because you have something to say. Don’t write to become immortal. Don’t write because you think you know the truth. Don’t write because you have an attitude. Don’t write to strike a pose in black clothing. Don’t write to be cool. Don’t write because you have an image of yourself as you see yourself squinting through the heavy burn of smoke motes rising in stage light from Gauloises cigarettes. Don’t write only because you are lonely or because you feel deeply, see clearly, know truly, and are one of those who has paid attention to world and to the inner life. Write for writing’s sake. Write because you write. Becoming a writer begins in the act of writing. Do the writing. All else is peripheral. All else is secondary. Write for the love of words as they appear upon the page. Write for the love of words as they pass your lips. Write for the love of language entering the ear. Write first and foremost for the pure celebration of dictionary music. It has been said that writers are those who have fallen in love with words and the world. And yet, if you would become the best writer that you can be, there is something beyond simply ‘chasing the feeling.’
– John B. Lee, from Building Bicycles in the Dark: a practical guide to writing
“Be patient toward all that is unresolved …
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet
For Jen
(updated to correct the link to Jen’s site at The Soberist Blog)
“Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare …
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. … We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show.
[ … ]
At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your fists, your back, your brain, and then – and only then -it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way. It is a parcel bound in ribbons and bows; it has two white wings. It flies directly at you; you can read your name on it. If it were a baseball, you would hit it out of the park. It is that one pitch in a thousand you see in slow motion; its wings beat slowly as a hawk’s.
– Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop,” a NY Times Books May 1989 article. Also from The Writing Life
Posted in parallel with Weekend Words: The Day the World Went Away – Vol. 16. This weekend’s volume features work by Cayman Thorn and C.K. Hope, who have generously opened their hearts–“beauty laid bare”–just for us. Their grace is anything but unmerited, and I am honored to stand with you in their light.
The Catcher in the Rye
“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.” ~Holden Caulfield
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye~
Words ... for the Time Being 