Accepting Nothing To Write

Really, what do I have to say this morning?

I don't want to talk about my weight, this headache, or the urge to take today off from work. I've no interest in rehashing last night's SU Women's Basketball loss, politics, or the pandemic. None of my ideas interest me.

A voice in me suggests, accept what you're feeling.

Accept this? I resist that idea. It sounds like moping. Yet, I can't recall a time when acceptance hasn't been a good move, when it has done me wrong.

But what even does acceptance look like? I sip coffee, thinking this over, tasting warm richness. I sip without expectation, a moment's break between paragraphs, and it becomes a model of acceptance.

The act of acceptance for me is a letting go of mind-clutter, being present to the moment, feeling my breath, my beating heart, the turning gears of my mind. Acceptance is a sip of coffee, warming and soothing.

I say this while also accepting that I'm unsure what acceptance is or how to go about it. The best I can do is tell stories of acceptance: a sip of coffee or the filling of pages with ink.

This morning's pages began with me complaining that I had nothing to write, rejecting each idea, putting a resistor on the wire running from my mind to the pen in my hand. My mind said, no, no, no. Still, I was committed to filling three Morning Pages and have experience enough to know that moving the pen, even just to list things unworthy of writing, overcomes resistance and turns on the lights.

Acceptances are at work in this. I accept the task of filling three Morning Pages. I accept my complaints and anxieties rather than arguing against them. I accept that moving the pen will take me somewhere.

But acceptance is hard. This morning I struggled to accept feeling lousy, but trying to recall that feeling now is delightfully difficult. It's like trying to recall a dream. Acceptance, like waking, has turned my anxiety to smoke onto which I have no hold.

I accept this moment and the next as it comes. I accept this word and the next as the pen on the page tells them to me. I accept that the line of ink on the page will lead me forward into whatever it is that may come next.

Just One

Most mornings, after writing Morning Pages, I read one passage from Daily Doses of Wisdom, underlining passages that speak to me, noting the date on the page, replacing the bookmark, and placing the book back on the shelf. I've been working for years to develop this as a daily practice but am still a beginner falling down often, missing days, learning only in the last few months to do this each and every morning.

Regular practice shows me things and invites more regular practice. I'm learning that there is time every morning to read a passage, no need to skip or rush through. The time to read one passage is well spent and does not keep me from my appointed rounds. Often, it augments what I do and how I feel that day. However, some mornings, such as today, I can't recall what I've just read. Going back to it now I see that passage 268 says:

The wonder I feel at there being something rather than nothing is so large it goes beyond my calculation, beyond the possibility of my making an explanation, far beyond my understanding. That a parcel of vain strivings should appear in this world and be able to experience love, life, loss, beauty, growth — it is beyond my ability to ever fully comprehend. And that it should be embraced by infinite wisdom and compassion beyond the self and delivered to awakening and bliss — it is truly wondrous.

My only hope of expressing these feelings is through the nembutsu, the voice of buddha-nature itself.

— Jeff Wilson, _Buddhism of the Heart

Rereading hasn't brought me much closer to understanding. Sometimes that's just how it goes, and I'm trying to learn to accept that some lessons don't land and advance my life as I might expect. My growing faith is that these things accrue mysteriously if I just keep practicing.

I sound like Thomas Merton's prayer about not knowing how to please God but believing that the desire to please Him does in fact please Him. Accepting mystery seems a good path and teaches some of the humility I sorely need.

Tomorrow, I'll take a single Daily Dose of Wisdom again, trying to open myself to both the immediate benefits and the mysterious consequences. I'll likely feel inclined to read another but resist that urge, trying to trust the power of doing something once daily every day I'm fortunate enough to live in this world.

Coffee With Buddha

Everything is Buddha, so I'm told. Buddha is this spectacular coffee I'm sipping. Buddha is the aromatic steam rising from the mug. Buddha is the warmth of the coffee inside me. And Buddha is the music I'm hearing, the light shining down onto the desk, the scratch of the pen on the page, the blue of ink shaped into letters, words, and ideas as great as the Buddha. Eating well amid calm, that is Buddha. But so too is overeating and lying in bed with heartburn and pain in the stomach. The late night trucks are Buddha, even their beeping in reverse is Buddha, and so are the leaves scraped off the pavement and lifted into dump trucks that slam through the darkness. Being kept awake by the noise is Buddha as are the paws of the cat kneading painfully on my groin. The alarm clock is Buddha as is the grey morning sun and the first thin blanket of snow on the lawn. It is all Buddha, which is to say it is all this life and this living, it is all opportunity, and it is all part of me.

Should I be angry with Buddha, protest against Buddha, wish Buddha were something else when Buddha is everything and everything is Buddha? Should I fall in love with Buddha and forget myself, forget the people and things around me? Better I think to bow to Buddha, bow to you, and bow to myself. Better still to invite all of us in and make more coffee, put on a new record, and pass a plate of cookies. The crumbs of which fall like snow in a garden in which sits a small round statue amidst all the plants gone dormant, accepting the seasons as they come.

Prose Poem: You're Not A Bird

In the dream you are at the top of a tall building. Sitting on a wet ledge. Not exactly perched. You’re no bird. Birds don’t read. And there you are, on a ledge at the top of a tall building, reading a book. You hold the ledge tightly with one hand. Birds aren’t afraid of falling. But you’re no bird. Wind doesn’t lift your wings. It pushes your heavy body. Your solid bones. It catches at your book. You need to hang onto the ledge with both hands, you think inside your brain. The one that’s bigger than a bird’s. But the book. You treasure books. Even in dreams. You can’t surrender it to the wind and gravity. The ground so far below is wet with yesterday’s rain. How you see that from this high up, you don’t know. Neither do the birds. The wind gusts again. Maybe it makes a sound, but your dream is silent. You only feel the wind and your hand slipping from the ledge. You will fall. Even when you let the book go and your reading hand clutches the ledge it’s no good. That wind. It flings you from the top of a tall building, from a wet ledge on which you werne’t exactly perched. You soar through the air. Not like a bird. Like a stone. You’re overtaking the book, its pages flapping like wings, letters and punctuation black against the off-white pages and come down at the end of a sentence on the bottom of a paragraph that ends a chapter. You come to rest wondering if the book can fly with you inside. Like a bird in a dream coming rising into morning’s first light.