On Not Writing

A few weeks, two posts.  It would seem I don’t care too much about the blog, but this is not true.  Tonight, listening to falls first rain, just having fully healed from a week of illness, I reflect on why I haven’t written.  It goes deep.  What is it that keeps me from doing?  Something keeps me from everything from zazen to cooking nice meals for myself and others to working on school projects.  All that I know is that I have trouble doing, in general, and that I have not written because of this more general problem.

I also know this:  When I do succeed at sitting zazen regularly, then it becomes easy to do, to act.  I am curious about why I have trouble acting when I do not sit zazen, and why actions flow effortlessly from me when I do sit zazen. 

I also know that, for me, there is some important relationship between my writing and zazen.  I would like to explore that.  I feel as if writing helps me let go.  Writing actually helps me not be intellectual.  I find that I only feel intellectual when I have not given something my full consideration.  When I give something my full consideration, I just enjoy it and am present with it, I don’t want anything from it.  What I take the time to consider will find a peaceful place in my body, what I do not consider will stay thrashing around on the surface of my mind – in that intellectual place.   So the intellectual feeling, for me, is actually a state of not thinking well, of chatter but not of consideration.  Writing helps me let go of being intellectual, and gives me the freedom to be calm…

Writing and zazen: both help me to process and make peace with the enormous amount of activity in my mind. I think I have trouble acting when loads of unprocessed material pile up, so that is why I have not written!