I’ll be dipping into the archives from time to time as I work feverishly on my next novel, now tentatively called Turning Tides, book two of my Sea Within Trilogy; and as I work marketing my novels, speaking at events and planning them. But each morning I start my day trying to find that sense of balance and peace of mind I need so much as I juggle all this.

I was reading from Subtle Sound, the Zen Teachings of Maurine Stuart this morning. Well, not really reading, but revisiting all the bookmarked highlighted passages and annotations I wrote in the margins when reading it the first time. Here’s a passage I highlighted that helps me in times like these:

“There is nothing that is not sacred; nothing that is not spiritual practice . . .[This] practice is carried on in the midst of activity. When we are cooking, . . . when we are cleaning . . . . It is a deeply awake, alert, vividly present condition—and of course, it may be blissful.”

She continues: “Each of the activities we are engaged in, when we give it our it full attention, without any feeling of resentment or comparison, is an opportunity to experience something, to open our eyes more clearly. When we let go of our egocentric hold on things, we find something wonderful is there, something that has always been there; we have never been without it.”

I know this, of course. I’ve experienced it so many times. And yet, how forgetful I am in the meantime, in the busy-ness of all I am involved with. I have no problem bringing this practice into my writing practice–that’s why I love it so! I feel that bliss. But marketing, event planning, watching the news, worrying about the world? Not so much. How can I bring it there too?

I am listening to this as I write. You may enjoy it too as you continue reading.

One more quote from Subtle Sound: “. . . we are much wider and deeper than anything we can say.”

Which brings me back to the archives, something I wrote in August 2020. Something I need to remind myself of over and over again.

“Vast Emptiness, Vastly Full”

There are a few refrains that I turn to again and again when I want to get a clearer sense of who I am beyond what appears in a mirror or an ordinary, limited sense of self.

Some are from Buddhist or Taoist texts that I’ve written about or alluded to on these pages:

“Able to be the mother of the world”

“Not-two” Or “Not-I”

“Oh so delicious!”

Some are from poems I wrote to capture a particular state of mind where I was “there”–Not-I.

“I am clean, uncluttered space . . .”

“Drifting mindless round the bend, bursting out, bursting in.”

“Vast emptiness, vastly full” is another refrain I turn to that helps me to move beyond a constrictive sense of self to something that feels freer and truer.

It comes from the book On Having No Head, Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious by D. E. Harding. Some excerpts follow.

The best day of my life—my rebirthday, so to speak—was when I found I had no head. This is not a literary gambit, a witticism designed to arouse interest at any cost. I mean it in all seriousness: I have no head.

It was eighteen years ago, when I was thirty-three, that I made the discovery. Though it certainly came out of the blue, it did so in response to an urgent enquiry; I had for several months been absorbed in the question: what am I?

. . . . What actually happened was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking . . . . Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down. For once, words really failed me. Past and future dropped away. I forgot who and what I was, my name, manhood, animalhood, all that could be called mine. It was as if I had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories. There existed only the Now, that present moment and what was clearly given in it. To look was enough. And what I found was khaki trouser legs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in—absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head.

It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.

. . . .  I seemed to stop breathing altogether . . . .  alone and unsupported, mysteriously suspended in the void . . .  utterly free of “me”, unstained by any observer. Its total presence was my total absence, body and soul. Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.

. . . . [I]t felt like a sudden waking from the sleep of ordinary life, an end to dreaming. It was self-luminous reality for once swept clean of all obscuring mind. . . . . In short, it was all perfectly simple and plain and straightforward, beyond argument, thought, and words . . . . the sensation of having dropped an intolerable burden.

I’ve had that sensation of being “vast emptiness, vastly full” and it feels more real, more “me”, than my ordinary sense of self. The full-blown experience doesn’t last long, but the sense of it, the memory, the feel of it when I enter those words vast emptiness, vastly full is heady. It takes me somewhat out of myself and into a sense of being that is freer and fuller. And truer. It brings me home to myself.

Which is probably why I love that poem Love After Love by Derek Walcott so much.

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

. . . . Feast on your life.

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One way I “feast on my life” is by writing and sharing what I write with others, like you. I hope you will give these novels a taste.

This Sea Within, Book 1 of The Sea Within Trilogy – A sweeping, sensual love story and political thriller set against a revolution in 1970s Latin America. In the tradition of The Nightingale, Next Year in Havana, and Of Love and Shadows. Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Bookshop

When Things Go Missing: “Catnip for book club readers… a masterful exploration of loss, loyalty, and knotty, dysfunctional families.” — Dianne Emley, Los Angeles Times bestselling author Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble

In the meantime, a like and a comment make all the difference.