ENGENDERING COMPASSION

On Tuesday I decide I need to be alone. I want to walk around and write. Everyone has a great fear in life. Mine is loneliness. Naturally our great fear is usually the one most important to overcome to reach our life's dreams. I am a writer. Writers spend a lot of time alone writing. Also, being an artist in our society makes us lonely. Everyone else leaves in the morning for work and structured jobs. Artists live outside that built-in social system.

So when we write and begin with an empty page and a heart unsure, a famine of thoughts, a fear of no feeling---just begin from there, from that electricity. This kind of writing is uncontrolled, is not sure where the outcome is, and it begins in ignorance and darkness. But facing those things, writing from that place, will eventually break us and open us to the world as it is. Out of this tornado of fear will come a genuine writing voice.

To begin writing from our pain eventually engenders compassion for our small and groping lives. Out of this broken state there comes a tenderness for the cement below our feet, the dried grass cracking in a terrible wind. We can touch the things around us we once thought ugly and see their special detail, the peeling paint and shadows of gray as they are---simply what they are: not bad, just part of the life around us---and love this life because it is ours and in the moment there is nothing better.

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DOUBT IS TORTURE

Don't listen to doubt . It leads no place but to pain and negativity. It is the same with your critic who picks at you while you are trying to write: "That's stupid. Don't say that. Who do you think you are anyway, trying to be a write?" Don't pay attention to those voices. There is nothing helpful there. Instead, have a tenderness and determination toward your writing, a sense of humor and a deep patience that you are doing the right thing. Avoid getting caught by that small gnawing mouse of doubt. See beyond it to the vastness of life and the belief in time and practice.

A LITTLE SWEET

In Judaism there is an old tradition that when a young boy first begins to study, the very first time, after he reads his first word in the Torah, he is given a taste of honey or sweet. This is so he will always associate learning with sweetness. It should be the same with writing. Right from the beginning, know it is good and pleasant. Don't battle with it. Make it your friend.

Gore Vidal has a wonderful quote: "As every author---and every reader---knows, writing well is the best trip of them all." Don't even worry about writing "well"; just writing is heaven.

A NEW MOMENT

Katagiri Roshi often used to say: "take one step off a hundred-foot pole." That's pretty scary, isn't it? Finally you arrive at the top, which is precarious enough, and now you can't stay there. You have to go ahead and step off the edge. In other words, you can't rest on your success. Or your failure. "I have written something wonderful." Good, but it is a new moment. Write something else. Do not be tossed away by your achievements or your fiascoes. Continue under all circumstances. It will keep you healthy and alive. Actually, you don't know for sure that you will fall when you step off the hundred-foot pole. You may fly instead. There are no guarantees one way or the other. Just keep writing.

Step through your resistances right now and write something great. Right now. This is a new moment.

WHY DO I WRITE

"Why do I write?" It's a good question. Ask it of yourself every once in a while. No answer will make you stop writing, and over time you will find that you have given every response.

Baker Roshi from San Francisco Zen Center said, "Why? isn't a good question." Things just are. Hemingway has said, "Not the why, but the what." Give the real detailed information. Leave the why for psychologists. It's enough to know you want to write. Write.

Writing has tremendous energy. If you find a reason for it, any reason, it seems that rather than negate the act of writing, it makes you burn deeper and glow clearer on the page. Ask yourself, "Why do I write?" or "Why do I want to write?," but don't think about it. Take pen and paper and answer it with clear, assertive statements. Every statement doesn't have to be one hundred percent true and each line can contradict the others. Even lie if you need to, to get going. If you don't know why you write, answer it as though you do know why.

EVERY MONDAY

I tell you this because it is important. We were willing to commit ourselves to a whole day of writing each week because writing, sharing, and friendship are important. And it happened on a Monday, the beginning of the work week. remember this. Remember Kate and me on Mondays when nothing in your life seems worthwhile but earning a living and you find yourself worried about it.

There are many realities. We should remember this when we get too caught in being concerned about the way the rest of the world lives or how we think they live. There is just our lives and how we want to write and how we want to touch the rain, the table, the music, paper cups and pine trees.

A good warmup or awakener is to write for ten minutes, beginning with "I am a friend to. . ." and only list inanimate objects. It helps to bring those things into the scope of our lives. The toaster, the highway, the mountains, the curb, live with us too. Doing this exercise and writing with a friend remind us to step outside ourselves when we are stuck too deep into ourselves.

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