What is Contemplative Writing, Again?

Recently I had an experience in an online class where I found myself going off in a way different direction, while writing, than I expected. Actually, I didn't know what to expect, and I ran into a trigger - a memory which carries trauma associated with it. I made the decision to *not* write about that, and came up with this piece. The prompt was "What are birds saying?"

It helped *me* clarify some things about how contemplative writing relates to formal contemplative practices. So here, for your exploration, is the piece as I wrote it, with very little alteration.

What are the birds saying when? Immediately my mind scatters in many directions. I could write part of this memoir or that project. I could use this time to write about writing. But can I just be here, in my weekly air conditioned second floor home office, with a huge fan blowing semi-cool air around the room?             

There are no birds in here.            

Oh. Fuck.             

The Importance of Unanswerable Questions

Recently, I've been wondering what makes something contemplative. Having just finished the second book on Nalanda Miksang Contemplative Photography with my teacher, John McQuade, and having just finished a round of contemplative writing weekly courses, I am poised at a spot of post-immersion and contemplating what it means to contemplate.

I get this question a lot: What is the contemplative aspect of these practices? Is it that we only write about or photograph content that "seems contemplative"? That's too restrictive a definition, and if people are hoping to illustrate a feeling of contemplative-ness in either words or pictures, they quickly find out that is a misconception in these two forms. Does it mean calligraphy, flower-arranging, in terms of forms? No, we can even do contemplative, angry, Jackson Pollock-like painting, if it is does from direct experience and perception.

So there is one answer, from my tradition(s): contemplative practices slow us down enough to connect with what is actually happening, and create from that place. In Shambhala Art teachings we call it "Square One" - the open unknown before we create ideas or concepts. Returning to that in writing, photography, calligraphy - or dance, painting - even in conversation, is essential for maintaining the open-minded and -hearted quality of contemplative practice.

My co-author, John McQuade, expressed it this way in our upcoming book, The Heart of Photography (due out July 1):

This direct contact with visual reality and the experience of harmonization of eye and mind is the first contemplative connection: to be there, with the “there,” through the there. This sounds abstract, but it could not be more sensuous and direct. You actually experience what you experience as you experience it. 

In addition to this open state, or in complement to it, is the importance of unanswered - and unanswerable - questions. Often newer writing students think contemplative writing must be "philosophical" - e.g. ask a lot of questions, ponder big things. In some ways, that is off - you could be following your mind and writing down a lot of purported answers and opinions, and that would be very contemplative, in the first sense of the word described above in these traditions. But in other senses, that is right on. The key is being with not knowing. Being contemplative doesn't just mean asking, "Does God exist?" - it means being willing to not have an answer. Being contemplative doesn't just mean wondering about the meaning of life, it means knowing it is likely not fully knowable. It turns out the way in to these big questions is through little questions, at least as one of my teachers, John McQuade, and my co-author, also expressed:

(C)ontemplative practices are meant to help us find ways into these big questions. Contemplative practices are little ways, like rocks in the stream, crossing from one side to the other. Rock by rock, step by step, we cross over. These little ways do not provide direct answers to these questions, but they do provide a path for us to engage them...            Generally, contemplatives do not ask big questions such as “What is the meaning of life?” Instead, they investigate little inquiries, such as “What is color as color?” through felt experiences that explore questions like “How does color as color feel? How does it manifest? How is our experience of color? What difference does color make to a situation?” and so forth.

How is it that engaging the small leads to a felt understanding of the large? We cannot answer huge questions with our tiny minds - it turns out the color of things, the shape, the texture - whether expressed in words or images, movements or touch - actually is a drop from the larger, an excerpt with all the full meaning of the large questions:

This contemplative engagement is not religious or philosophical. It is working directly with your ordinary, everyday experience, to release you from stress and help you open to everyday appreciation. Bit by bit, on the rock path through the river, we cross over from claustrophobic habit to natural freshness, from stress to delight, from the thing world to the phenomenal world, from conventional world to ordinary magic, from confusion to insight and wisdom.

Keep an eye on our website for updates on how to pre-order/order your own copy of our new book, Heart of Photography. And in the meantime, you can find copies of our first book Looking and Seeing on Amazon, or, even better, buy direct from us on CreateSpace.

Keep asking questions you don't have answers for, by connecting with the daily details while keeping your heart and mind wide open to the unknown.

Doing Nothing Versus Not Doing Something

The other day, consoling a struggling Ilana, I fought off a part of me that said, as per usual, "Do something!"

It didn't say this directly, it said it via the ideas and judgments and assessments that flooded my mind, facing the space of her sadness. They take the common critic line of things like:

-you should have done something to prevent this

-she should have done something to prevent this

-she is going to feel this way forever

-you need to get her out of this...

When, if, I follow these and more, I am "doing something". But it is often the something she does not need. She needs something, but she needs space. Warmth. Trust. Holding. Silence without recrimination, even if it is me simply judging myself.

                         🌀

Meditation is like this for me, too, like it is for so many people. Though I have plenty of personal and direct evidence with some fifteen years of sitting that it is "not doing nothing", I still believe that's the case at times.

How do I know that? Because thoughts flood my mind and I follow them pretty far before dropping them and coming back to the space of now. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with thoughts. But on the frequent occasions where my meditation is more focusing on thinking than letting it co-exist with space, I get evidence of how little I trust yet that meditation is in fact doing something. 

Even that practice, just seeing how much I am not trusting space, that it is something and not nothing, is worth it. I know that. No judgments here. Just curiousity about the beliefs that underlie my relationship to doing and being.

I know that it takes a lot of space to even see how I struggle with space. And still, even writing this, part of me wants to say: "Wrap it up with wisdom. Fix it."

And I refuse. I refuse to do that to you or to me. Instead I will do a something that seems like nothing: I will leave this contemplation open-ended, knowing I will return to it again and again, and hoping you will, too.

How Was Your Trip?

side of a truck that's been graffitied, paris, june 2013

It's the first question I get upon returning from Europe each summer.
Sometimes I get it when I take smaller teaching trips - Toronto, Chicago, even.
But there's nothing quite like being gone for five weeks to Europe.

It's a fair question to ask. A kind one. And one I often don't want to answer. Here's why.

New Year's Intention

A few years ago, friends of ours introduced us to, or co-invented with us (none of us can seem to recall which happened) a practice of coming up with a single word for the upcoming year, on New Year's Eve. The word, we decided, should have many possible meanings, and not be stated as any kind of affirmation (I will play more in the coming year/I am playing more in the coming year) or resolution (I need to play more in the upcoming year). Instead, it would allow for word play - for exploration, for change in meaning, throughout the year.

The first one Dylan and I chose, and we chose the same, was "consume." We tried to gently explore our food consumption (going on a diet, eventually, but really focusing more on watching/noticing consumption than losing weight, which was a helpful change in perspective), and also financial consumption, consumption of goods, of energy, of social interactions.

Luckily, neither of us developed consumption.

Busy V Full

Dallas, TX

"I know you are busier than busy," the student/friend/comadre wrote to me in an email. She was seeking some feedback on an idea she had - an offshoot inspired by my Contemplative Writing courses. A combination of a request/approval/looking for insight/feedback/brainstorming session. I was excited to read it, but then it fell into the "mid-range priority" pile - things I am interested in but that don't have a deadline. If it's not a fire, I am likely to not try and put it out.

But I'm not busy, actually. I am full.