Last month, I was on vacation in Leavenworth, Washington with friends from college. One morning, we were packing up to drive out to a trailhead. A few of us were still in the cabin filling water bottles. The rest were standing outside on the gravel driveway. I went ahead and just got in the car, figuring everybody else would be piling in soon enough.
Sitting in the rental SUV, I got bored quickly. So I started searching for something to write about.
I saw—black leather seatback pouches, air-conditing buttons with red and blue arrows, floormats speckled with brown dirt from our hike the day before.
I heard—the guys standing behind the car saying, what’s takin’em so long, we’re runnin’ outta daylight, somebody go in there and say sumthin’ to ‘em.
I felt—the seat behind my back and below my legs, my feet on the floor, my clothes on my body, the morning chill on my skin, my breakfast digesting in my belly.
I smelled—nothing.
I tasted—nothing.
I wasn’t finding anything interesting enough to write about, so I looked out the window to continue my search, but then a question occurred to me: do I need to write?
Can I just sit here and have a sensory experience without translating it into words? Once I start writing, I’m no longer seeing, hearing, feeling. Sometimes I even close my eyes and plug my fingers in my ears to shut out the world so that I can focus on the words in my head.
Sitting in the car in Leavenworth, I realized that my writing might be disrupting my mindfulness.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness in Plain English was the first book I ever read about meditation. In “Chapter 13. Mindfulness (Sati),” Bhante Gunaratana writes:
“The meditation technique called vipassana (insight) that was introduced by the Buddha about twenty-five centuries ago is a set of mental activities specifically aimed at experiencing a state of uninterrupted mindfulness ... When you first become aware of something, there is a fleeting instant of pure awareness just before you conceptualize the thing, before you identify it ... It is that flashing split second just as you focus your eyes on the thing, just as you focus your mind on the thing, just before you objectify it, clamp down on it mentally, and segregate it from existence ... That flowing, soft-focused moment of pure awareness is mindfulness.”
For example, let’s say you’re in the park, you look up, and you see a kite. There is a moment when you actually see the kite, before you say to yourself, in your head, “Oh, it’s a kite.”
You see that it’s shaped like a diamond, but you don’t say “diamond.” You see that it’s red, but you don’t say “red.” You see it as if you’ve never seen a kite before, as if you don’t even know the word “kite.”
The moment that you actually see the kite, is the moment of mindfulness.
This applies to the other senses as well: the moment you hear your favorite song come on the radio, the moment you feel your back start to ache, the moment you smell Mom baking cookies upstairs, the moment you taste your first bite of breakfast.
However, as Gunaratana points out, these moments are fleeting. They are disrupted when we conceptualize and objectify, when we clamp down mentally.
How does writing disrupt mindfulness?
In the same chapter, Gunaratana continues:
“In the process of ordinary perception, the mindfulness step is so fleeting as to be unobservable. We have developed the habit of squandering our attention on all the remaining steps, focusing on the perception, cognizing the perception, labeling it, and most of all, getting involved in a long string of symbolic thought about it. That original moment of mindfulness is rapidly passed over. It is the purpose of vipassana meditation to train us to prolong that moment of awareness.”
Not only have I “developed the habit of squandering [my] attention,” as if by accident. I have dedicated myself passionately to forming the habit, ever since I decided to become a writer seven years ago (since even longer ago if we start counting from when I learned the alphabet in preschool or when I said my first words as a baby).
“Getting involved in a long string of symbolic thought” is exactly what I do every time I write. First, I perceive a sensory object. Next, I become consciously aware that I’ve perceived it, i.e., I form the thought of it in my head. Then, I begin to translate the thought into words. Once I have the words in my head, I ignore my sensory surroundings and enter into “editing” mode—replacing words, reordering them.
Perhaps my writing promotes mindfulness in the first place, as it encourages me to become aware of and pay attention to my sensory experiences. But then, as I conceptualize the experience and form it into thoughts and words, my writing prevents me from being mindful—of the experience about which I am writing and of other experiences I would have had if my mind were not preoccupied with writing.
Some questions that remain unanswered:
Could this be a contributing factor to the prevalence of mental illness among writers?
Could this apply to other artists, besides writers?
Could this apply to anyone who habitually “get[s] involved in a longer string of symbolic thought,” i.e., basically everyone in the modern world?
Is there a reason that one would sacrifice their mindfulness in order to write?
Should an artist continue to make art if it detriments their mental health?
Sources:
Gunaratana, Bhante. Mindfulness in Plain English. Wisdom Publications, 2011.
Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts on the unanswered questions.
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Is writing disrupting my mindfulness?
I can only write when I am in a good state of mind. Although I know some writers claim they write to improve their mental health. I am also a musician, and I know that making music can change, and does improve my mental state of mind. We are all individuals and unique. I don't think there is one answer for everyone.
This is a fascinating topic to consider. I find that since I write nonfiction, I'm constantly monitoring the world around me for would-be writing fodder. In a way, that can make me more mindful or present as I take in those inputs. Yet if I then proceed to form them into stories or ideas or even sentences for my writing in my mind, which I often do, then I'm taking myself out of the moment. Feeling the need to catalog every single thing that could be used in your writing could certainly drive you a bit crazy and I imagine it could impinge on your mental health if not balanced or managed properly.