The Dharma of Writing

This cartoon may not seem all that funny, but it is a lesson I need to keep reminding myself of, so I keep in on my desktop.

You see, when I started writing, it was all about me. I wanted to be a good writer. Then I became really egocentric and wanted to be a great writer. It took a few years before my Buddhist training kicked in and I understood my error.

Writing stories is not about me becoming anything! It is about crafting the best stories possible. The focus is on the stories, the characters, and the craft of writing. The focus is on the day-to-day process of creating, which becomes a form of meditation.

That process, that meditation, is not about becoming a better, wiser, holier person. It’s not about becoming anything. It is all about the joy in experiencing the process.

So every once in a while I need a little nudge to help me focus on simply writing stories, without worrying about how good I am.

The Desiderata by Max Erhmann

These words have given me great inner strength and peace since the first time I read them. Now, more than thirty years later, they still resonate with me for their simple meaning yet profound message which they deliver.

 Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

Was Einstein a Buddhist?

Albert Einstein said:

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

This idea of freeing ourselves from our limited self-point-of-view and embracing the whole of nature is the cornerstone of Buddhism, at least as I understand it.

Buddhism teaches that if we observe the law of karma and awaken in ourselves the good heart of love and compassion for all things living, if we purify our mindstream and gradually awaken the wisdom of the nature of our mind through this compassion, then we can become a truly human being which is connected to all that is, and ultimately become enlightened.

Thank you for your insights, Albert.

★★★★★ Author Edward C. Patterson reviews Surviving Immortality

Surviving Immortality by Alan Chin

Edward C. Patterson, Reviewer

★★★★★

Powerfully fast-moving with now-relevancy

I know I can rely on a good read whenever I open a book by Alan Chin; and Surviving Immortalityis no exception, except it isexceptional. With a believable spark, Mr. Chin presents us with a world devouring itself when promise has given it its greatest loss for hope. All the inchoate faults of humanity, ready today to strike our civilization to the core, leeches out when confronted by a mind shattering development and a simple, lethal condition. Surviving Immortality is masterfully rendered into a work long lingering after the last pages.

The characters are complex, each with their own demon, but honest to their convictions; so much so, there are no heroes, and those who appear villainous can be redeemed by their good intentions. The main thread of the story his told through Matt Reece’s point of view, although all the characters get their turn; but it is Matt’s intense purity, a purity despoiled by circumstances, which unfolds like a night flower in moonlight. Alan Chin crafts an action adventure and psychological political philosophical tale, if there could be such a genre, keeping the pages turning until those pages disappear and time is lost. The elements in the work, and those effecting Matt Reece, are all about us today just waiting for the spark to ignite them. Mr. Chin strikes that spark.

I am a fan of Alan Chin’s other works, but this one combines all the signature touches of them all — ranch life, storms at sea, tropical islands, police procedural, Buddhism, sexuality and a lust for travel. He even includes doffs to his latest wanderlust — Machu Picchu. The world he presents is hisworld as much as ourworld. The arguments are current ones, and I’ll not spoil your read by mentioning them, but whatever opinions you have on those topics, Surviving Immortalitywill not fail to engage you, even if you wind up talking to your night light at midnight in bed. 

Needless to say (but I will say it), I highly recommend this book if you enjoy a powerful fast-moving work with now-relevancy from a major author who contributes to our contemporary literary legacy.

Gay Authors/Books that Inspire Me: Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

In autumn 1943, the unnamed narrator (a gay writer, so we assume it’s Capote himself) befriends Holly Golightly. The two are tenants in a brownstone apartment in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Holly (age 18–19) is a country girl turned New York café society girl. As such, she has no job and lives by socializing with wealthy men, who take her to clubs and restaurants, and give her money and expensive presents; she hopes to marry one of them. According to Capote, Golightly is not a prostitute but an "American geisha”. 

Holly likes to shock people with carefully selected tidbits from her personal life or her outspoken viewpoints on various topics (patterned after Christopher Isherwood’s Sally Bowles in The Berlin Stories). Over the course of a year, she slowly reveals herself to the narrator, who finds himself fascinated by her curious lifestyle.

No writer creates more interesting characters than Capote. He strikes the notes between quirky, uncommon people and their actions and simple touching stories. His characters aren't quite lovable (not people you would want to invite over to dinner with the folks) but they are nevertheless very human and often touching, not off-putting. Breakfast At Tiffany's is much grittier than the rather sanitized Audrey Hepburn-George Peppard film version.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

While reading a volume of The Story of Civilization by Durant, I’ve spent the last few days reading about the life of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, perhaps the greatest poet of the eighteen and nineteenth century. I’ve found most of his writing quoted by Durant as fascinating as any I’ve read. And I also was taken with the following poem:

Let man be noble,

Helpful and good.

For that alone

Marks him off

From all beings

That we know. . . .

Quite unfeeling 

Is Nature:

The sun shines

Upon the base and the good;

And upon the lawbreaker

Gleam, as upon the best,

The moon and the stars.

Winds and streams,

Thunder and hail,

Roar on their way,

And snatch up

And sweep before them

One after another. . . .

By eternal, ironclad

Great laws

Must we all,

Of our existence,

Fulfill the round.

But man alone

Can do the impossible;

He distinguishes,

Chooses, and judges;

He can to the fleeting moment

Give duration.

He alone can

Reward the good,

Punish the bad,

Heal and save.

And to the erring and straying

Bring wise counsel.

Let the noble man

Be helpful and good.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

While reading a volume of The Story of Civilization by Durant, I’ve spent the last few days reading about the life of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, perhaps the greatest poet of the eighteen and nineteenth century. I’ve found most of his writing quoted by Durant as fascinating as any I’ve read.

At his death he left a confused mass of writings which were published as his Opus postumumin 1882-84. In one of these he described the “thing-in-itself”—the unknowable substratum behind phenomena and ideas—as “not a real thing . . . not an existing reality, but merely a principle . . . of the synthetic a priori knowledge of the manifold sense-intuition. He named it Gedankending, a thing existing only in our thoughts. And he applied the same skepticism to the idea of God:

God is not a substance existing outside me, but merely a moral relation within me. . . . The categorical imperative does not assume a substance issuing its commands from on hight, conceived therefore as outside me, but is a commandment or a prohibition of my own reason. . . . The categorical imperative represents human duties as divine commandments not in the historical sense, as if [a divine being] had given commands to men, but in the sense that reason . . . has power to command with the authority and in the guise of a divine person . . . The idea of such being, before whom all bend the knee, etc., arises out of the categorical imperative, and not vice versa. . . . The Ens Summum [Supreme Being] is an ens rationis [a creation of reason], . . . not a substance outside me.