Writing

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Read any Buddhist novels lately?

Gone on any mindful writing retreats?

Written any haiku today?



-- Gary Gach (gary@word.to), August 24, 2001

Answers

Like they say, if there were no non-Buddhists, there'd be no Buddhists!

By the way, the current issue of Inquiring mind has an interesting article on Buddhism & Fiction which I'll crib and post ... one of these days soon ...

-- gary (gary@word.to), April 21, 2002.


well, i tried making an active anthology of poetry that IS mindful.

What Book!? ~ Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop.

(The exmplary poem, for the book, of 325, i feel, is Please, Call Me By My True Names

, but The Frog I Saved from a Snake is too.

The whole process took five years, and it helped clarify the issues and upshots, for me at least. (Constructing an anthology is a critical act.

But I confess I omitted typical anthology commentary Jane Hirshfield is certainly included; and I'd be very interested if you'd care to encapsulate (as it were) your conversation w/ her on this. (others might well too)

Extra credit: please feel free too to post some mindful poetry, yours and others


after you do -- here's 1 point to consider, maybe: writing, in and of itself, requires an author in some way becoming one with a subject (a leaf a rock a cloud, a man a plan a canal, etc.) yet this does not necessarily imply calm, clear, compassionate equanimity. dig?

i have a neighbor who is a famous author (novelist) for whom art is manners.

"art always has been a record of human manners, which will always be the mirror of the human soul" -- something like that.

i can't swallow it myself.

it's like witty journalism or imaginative journalism (even heartfelt): not "a mirror of truth"

Phrased another way, there's poetry (as in books) and Poetry (as in life). RH Blyth is my favorite guru about this.

Back to you -----------



-- gary (
gary@word.to), September 07, 2002.


Wrote the Buddhist novel and the haiku.

There is no retreat from samsara until all sentient beings are free from attachment and samasara is no more.

-- Warren C. Norwood (wcnorwood@worldnet.att.net), September 13, 2001.


Writing: Who will be left to know that Samsara is no more?

-- Brent Flora (brentflora@venicebeach.com), April 21, 2002.

Isn't all poetry really an exercise in deep mindfulness? I mean POETRY, that which is written and rewritten and focused on like a koan? I've corresponded a little with Buddhist poet Jane Hirshfield on this point. My question is: can writing poetry be practice or is it too self-conscious?

-- Greg Byrd (greg.byrd@verizon.net), September 07, 2002.


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