Write Like the Buddha
By Carleen Brice | May 22, 2012 |
“That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. It is the ordinary state of affairs. Everything is in process. Everything—every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate—is always changing, moment to moment.” – Pema Chodron
This spring I planted zinnia and sunflower seeds in my front yard garden. The little shoots had been up for about week when we had our first hailstorm. I spent the minutes tiny balls of ice pelted the yard praying my little seedling babies would make it through. They did. That storm anyway. I live in Colorado, which has one of the highest rates of hail in the country. Chances are this was just the first hail of the year.
On my walks through the neighborhood I see yards that used to be beautiful gardens now gone to seed. You can tell the places that someone used to tend lovingly. Within the weeds there are still some hardy plants poking through. A splash of purple, blue, orange or red in a sea of brown and green. I also run across yards from time to time that used to be gardens, but have been replaced with sod by new owners. These yards were usually cottage gardens or wildflower meadows and looked hodgepodge-y (like my garden). No one loves the hodgepodge as much as the person who plants it.
Gardens don’t last.
What does this have to do with writing? Most of us will be lucky if something we writes stays in the public consciousness for a few years. If we’re really lucky, a few decades. E-books will make it so books stay “in print” indefinitely (maybe forever), but still most of what is written today will fade away. So why bother? If nothing lasts, why spend all the blood, sweat and tears and back-breaking labor on a garden or a novel…on anything?
Because that’s what gives the garden and the book meaning. It’s the very fact that we don’t have infinite moments that makes this moment matter.
I can’t lie. It breaks my heart to think of my yard bulldozed and replaced with lawn. It breaks my heart to think of our flowers strangled by weeds. I’m not like the Buddhist monks who purposefully make beautiful sand mandalas with the intent of destroying them.
But I’m trying to detach. That’s one of the big lessons with a garden. Let go. I am not in control.
That’s one of the lessons with writing too. I’m about to get edits from a beta reader for a manuscript. She read my first novel for me and was the one who told me I was done. I expect the same thing this time—“here are edits and ideas, make the changes as you see fit, then let go.” Then I will send it to my agent to read (again) and hear her edits, then let go while she sends it to publishers. Hopefully, one of them will buy it. And that editor will have edits, which I will make and let it go while readers read it. They will leave comments and reviews around the web and I will let go over and over and over again. Until….
Flowers, words, life itself, are fleeting. Maybe decades from now someone will stumble onto a corner of the internet where my books live and read one. Maybe long after I’m dead a sunflower will bloom in this yard. I’m far, far from writing like the buddha, but all I have right now is this moment: writing, editing, planting.
Image by Art, Love, and Joy at Flickr’s creative commons
Carleen Brice writes nonfiction and fiction. Her most recent books are the novels Orange Mint and Honey, which was made into a Lifetime television movie called “Sins of the Mother,” and Children of the Waters. She’s currently at work on a novel called Every Good Wish.
This is the perfect week for me to hear this message. Thanks, Carleen!
I’m so glad. Thanks for letting me know!
Beautiful, Carleen. Thank you for this.
I’m Christian, but my “mechanic” (i.e. my therapist) is a Zen Buddhist priest. There is SO much about Buddhism that can be applied to writing . . . both the process of writing and the cycle of writing.
I love the images you created here. I was just in Boulder a few weeks ago, and the hodgepodge-y wildflowery gardens are my favorite. Nothing like that scent of lavender!
Thank you.
How beautiful . . .
And, as well, people will plant gardens over other gardens, and someone will plant on top of that one, and on it goes, the layers and layers and layers, each one building on another . . . a foundation based on variety and beauty and hope
Lovely.
Carleen,
Thanks for this inspiring post. Writers have a lot in common with gardeners. We plant seeds, nurture them and let them grow. Our gardens are there for anyone to enjoy. Thanks again.
Thank you for reading!
Πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει
This phrase from Herakleitos (Heraclitus) has been translated in many ways. One of the most popular is The only constant is change. It’s a philosophy I often deal with in my writings. Yes, I certainly agree with the quote from Pema Chodron. Thanks, Carleen, for your post.
I’m curious: do you mean change is a theme in your stories? Or that you’re constantly changing your writing…or both?
Beautiful, Carleen. We share the garden bug…and the heartbreak of Colorado hail.
Your post gives me courage and relief. It all is fleeting. I can just be here now.
Barbara, I often think of you just a few hundred miles south doing the same things. Hope our paths cross this summer! :)
Great piece, Carleen.
Several years ago, I started to pay attention to the “weeds” in my yard. I noticed what attracted bees and butterflies and which ones were quite pretty despite the label they’d been given. Now I have a sea of frog fruit–a perennial groundcover that I once pulled up without mercy–along with other wildflowers (shift in perspective) that share the space with more conventional garden choices.
The challenge for me to apply that same observation to writing. There are far too many days filled with words that appear to be weeds. But as you pointed out, everything changes–revision is change–what’s there one moment, one season, can be gone the next, replaced with something new and lovely.
Must look up what frog fruit looks like! I like your phrase “sharing the space with more conventional choices.” Sounds like something that can also be applied to writing. We have wild geraniums in our yard. Technically weeds, but I like them. Hubby pulls some. I leave some. I have a feeling I have a lot of weeding in front of me when I get my edits back from my friend. Good luck with your revisions!
Ah, to do our best, accept all things of the earth are ephemeral, and to let go of the outcome. Perfect lesson and reminder. So glad I came by and read this, Carleen. Thank you.
“Do our best and let go of the outcome.” Amen.
This is a fabulous post. And writing is so much like a garden – it’s a cycle. You create something, you fight so hard to give it life, then it goes away out of your hands and you start anew. I think the recent successes of writers being wildly over-the-top have changed people’s expectations.
How do you think people’s expectations have changed? Do you mean writers expect to be 50-Shades-of-Gray successful or that society thinks you’re successful only if you sell a gazillion copies?
Carleen-
It’s rare for me to disagree with a WU post, but respectfully I disagree.
> Flowers, words, life itself, are fleeting.
Words? Mr. Shakespeare and Ms. Austen deserve more respect. I can quote whole passages they wrote. I may not remember a single line of Farenheit 451 but it’s effect on me has lasted.
I agree, though, in this respect: One is more likely to write for the ages by planting a garden than by trying to build a Pantheon. It’s a paradox: plant this summer’s passions on your pages and they may last through the winter. Ask Harper Lee.
Your post is misted with futility. Gardens will be gone, so will your stories. Then why write? Then again, embracing the perishable nature of the garden is essential to cultivating it. Plant not at all, or surrender too easily to the lawn, and there will be no zinnias.
Hey, come to think of it that’s kind of Zen. Maybe I agree after all.
My point was that I don’t expect to be Shakespeare, but I will still write. Futile, yes. Worthwhile, yes.
Gotcha. Agree, yes. Zen humililty helps you. I probably should make a manala. It might improve my pitches.
BTW, I must confess admiration for your gardening. I kill plants by looking at them.
Ha! I have killed a whole lot of plants getting to this point. Another way gardening is like writing.
Thanks for that reminder. I went outside to get the paper this morning. It rained during the night and my neighbor’s peonies lay battered on the ground. Being an ex gardener, I confess I had a moment of “what’s the point.” I’d enjoyed them so much in their brief bloom. Actually sometimes I feel like those peonies in my writing, when it seems I’m moving through the process like the turtle to everyone else’s hare. Sometimes it’s difficult to just to let it go.
Your post came at the perfect moment.
Shelley I think it was Gloria Steinem who said something like “we teach what we need to learn.” I too feel like a tortoise to most writers being hares. Let’s try to let that go together? (Of course, we’ll have to let go of it slowly, right? We are tortoises after all. :))
It is funny you should say this about the tortoise – I literally posted a picture of a tortoise in my writing area this week to remind myself that it is okay to be a tortoise. What matters is that you are doing the best writing that you know how and that it meets your standards for publication.
Thank you for writing this Carleen. So much of the writing advice focuses on struggling, getting ahead, doing more, more, more… but there is wisdom in learning to let go and accepting that the only constant is change. The only part of the writing process we have some control over is our writing (and notice I said some because there is a lot of the writing process that is constantly changing and we are better off if we learn to flow with those changes). At some point, we have to learn to let go and have faith that our writing will reach the the right people – the people who need to hear it and who will appreciate it. Best of luck with your newest manuscript.
Thank you and best of luck to you with your work too!
Beautifully done, Carleen. Thank you.
Thanks for the inspiring post. Over the years, I’ve tossed so many seeds, plants and bulbs into pots and flower beds I’m always pleasantly surprised at what pops up when and in what combination. I’m hoping my writing efforts will take root and surprise me in the same way.
I echo so many here who have commented how lovely this post is and how well the garden works as writing metaphor. My garden in all its shifting glory pops up in my work all the time. Along with the shifts, images linger, make an impression. But, yes, everything shifts. How lucky we are to witness some of it.
>I’m curious: do you mean change is a theme in your stories? Or that you’re constantly changing your writing…or both?<
I would have to say that change is always an "element" in my stories. There are some writers who have a number of "voices," unfortunately I'm not one of them.
There are also plenty (very successful) writers who write on the same theme. Go with it!
I found much to relate to in your post.
Writing that brings beauty, joy, thoughtfulness, fear, anger or sorrow; no matter how ephemeral it may ultimately be is worthwhile. If for no other reason than for the simple pleasure of the moment in time in which the writing does exist. That moment in time moves, as each new person reads the work; a wave of experience.
Love this line:
“It’s the very fact that we don’t have infinite moments that makes this moment matter.”
Thank you, Carleen! What a lovely post, and a great reinforcement of the lesson I’m trying to teach myself (and blogged about here on WU yesterday): writing is its own reward.
Delighted to see so many gardeners!
Lovely post, Carleen. I garden in New England, so our season here is fleeting as well. I’ll think of your words when our next cold snap or drought hits.
Yes, short seasons and droughts! Ugh. Usually, it can snow or freeze between September and May, so the reliable growing season is very short. But spring and summer came very early here this year. Because of water issues almost everything in our yard is drought-tolerant.
This is from the Tao Te Ching:
“Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.”
Serenity . . . and sanity! Your beautiful post is like a breath of fresh air (okay that’s a cliche but I can’t think of another phrase). And I garden in north China, where it is truly survival of the fittest for my poor flowers!
Thanks so much for these reflections. Pema Chodron’s works help me live my life better, and it’s lovely to hear them applied to writing.
Carleen,
Pema Chodron and you are right. Everything is fleeting.
You wrote: “So why bother? If nothing lasts, why spend all the blood, sweat and tears and back-breaking labor on a garden or a novel…on anything?
Because that’s what gives the garden and the book meaning. It’s the very fact that we don’t have infinite moments that makes this moment matter.”
You’ve struck the heart of Buddhist thought and practice as well as yoga practice: the importance of the moment.
For me, practicing yoga, meditating, and writing are all times when I am closest to the extraordinary state of being fully present in the moment. Sometimes it takes blood, sweat, and tears to get to that presence. At those times, there is no worry about the fleeting nature of words.
Thanks for the post.
Inspiring one out here! Be yourself and look the world in a way that you want it to be! Life will be as easy as you want it! As peaceful as it could be! Cheers
The Buddha spoke the Four Noble Truths and many other teachings, but at the heart they all stress the same thing. An ancient story explains this well..
“Once a very old king went to see an old hermit who lived in a bird’s nest in the top of a tree, “What is the most important Buddhist teaching?” The hermit answered, “Do no evil, do only good. Purify your heart.” The king had expected to hear a very long explanation. He protested, “But even a five-year old child can understand that!” “Yes,” replied the wise sage, “but even an 80-year-old man cannot do it.”
Really an inspiring post ..
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