The Poles of Writing and Zazen

I have a feeling this evening, a somewhat mystical feeling, that what I need to do right now is to start writing, and just keep writing – about my practice, my life, my academic inclinations.  Like zazen, when I begin to write, everything opens up.  And when I stop writing, like when I stop zazen, everything closes. 

I was thinking of my parents earlier today, because I shared my blog with them.  I wasn’t sure that it would make sense outside of a Buddhist context, but I figured I would share myself.  Thinking of my parents, and thinking about writing, something special happened: I remembered writing as a child, and how much it meant to me, how freeing it was.  I remembered writing as a teenager, and what a powerful emotional outlet it was.  I thought of my late teenage years and my first intellectual explorations, fervently exploring philosophy and religion, filling notebooks with all manner of notes and quotes, mixed with poetry and sketches for performance art pieces and plays I fantasized about performing. 

Thinking of my parents and of myself writing brought me to this feeling of writing as a real home for me, like zazen is a home for me.  Anywhere on the planet, writing and zazen serve as home.  As different forms of home, of spaces of freedom and development, writing and zazen serve as two complementary poles for me.  The pole of writing is that space where I let myself chase down everything, where I pursue and develop all my thoughts.   The pole of zazen is the space, not necessarily of stillness, but of allowing myself not to pursue, not to develop, not to desire.  Zazen is the space where I need do nothing but be with what I already happen to be.  There’s a dialectic between these two poles; going back and forth between them feels like a good way for me to live. 

There’s more that I want to say about both opening and closing in relation to the poles of writing and zazen.  When I wrote my post on dukkha, I had a feeling of opening, of growth, of expansion.  Regardless of how it reads as a post… as a post perhaps it is trivial… that writing, re-written many times, meant for me a small step forward, and that small step was experienced as an expansion that I haven’t had from simply reading about dukkha, or even from talking about it.  Now I know it in some way, I’ve gained some closeness with dukkha via the intimate act of writing, of re-working certain thoughts over and over again. 

When I don’t engage in this process, there is a feeling of being closed, or better, of lacking a feeling of aliveness – like a flower closing when there is no sun.  This feeling of being closed, like my light has faded, is a powerful but also common experience for me – a definitive experience.  The feeling that my light is dim is a major part of how I experience life, a part that I accept, but that I also believe to be an essentially tragic part of life – but a tragedy that can most certainly be solved, although how to do so is not obvious.  My strongest desire in life is to alleviate this feeling and live with vitality – to have relationships, conversations, occupations, to act in ways that produce this growth and expansion that writing brings me.  I have rarely – personally – felt this kind of dynamic growth at the zen center, because I have not had sustained conversations or sustained studies geared towards really fleshing out an idea and making it one’s own.  Many good conversations, yes, and many people I care for… I truly honor the space as one fully dedicated to supporting all members of the sangha in their growth… but this is one thing the classes at the zen center have failed to bring me.  The pole of zazen is strong there, of the creative, intellectual pole exemplified here by writing, I am not so sure.  Both poles are utterly important in order to understand, for example, Dogen. 

It has been for me surrealistically difficult to grow in this way, in this world, regardless of all the institutions whose purpose it is to support us in vital growth and understanding.  Thinking back to all my academic experiences, in which I always passionately desired to learn, I have had only one experience of truly vital learning, and that was in the living room of my first philosophy teacher.  Yes, we drank and talked late into the night, but I have done that a thousand times with a thousand people – what stood out was that he was able to help us really play with, engage, and absorb thinkers like Heidegger.  I truly hope to find a way to learn in such a vital way about Buddhism.  I harbor a hope that, someday soon, I will be able to engage in vital pursuits of learning, with others, as a sangha, in the same way that I engage myself when I write… exploring the nuances over and over again, and thus coming to live and breath and embody an understanding. When people succeed in developing that way together, some form of love tends to occur.  

The complimentary pole of zazen is another variety of opening and expansion.  And the closing that occurs when I don’t sit zazen is another kind of closing.  But enough for now.