Writing to enlightnment
The more perceptive readers amongst you may have noticed that there is a constant theme running through pretty much everything I write. Characters reach dead ends when following the promises of capitalism, traumatised individuals realise the limitations of relying on a permanence of ‘self,’ cyclists muse spiritually about the transcendent nature of riding up a hill, yep, this is all very much born out of the ideals of the Buddhist religion. However, I’d like to make myself perfectly clear – writing came first. I’m not here to sermonise. It was only recently that I came to these ideas, which I thought were fantastic and original, and realised that a portly man under a tree had thought of them thousands of years ago.
Rather than feeling aghast at my lack of originality, I took great solace in knowing that so many others had the same feelings about the world as I did. There were certain questions that had been playing on my mind almost every day and which i had previously thought that I was the only one in sunny suburbia who thought this way.
‘Why does everyone care about a career so much? When did money and status become so important?’
‘I don’t believe in God anymore. In fact, I don’t believe in anything, because nothing is ‘true’ in the way I had previously thought.’
‘Who is that person in the mirror? Why do I feel like I don’t recognise him anymore?’
I thought there was something wrong with having these thoughts. I thought that I was insecure, unambitious, depressed or psychotic, whatever, in this world this was not the right way to think; it made me a failure, it made me a lesser person to those who didn’t have such doubts.
So in my mind these concerns grew and grew. Every day I’d walk to work and hate myself for who I was and each evening I’d walk home and have no idea who I was, to the point where I’d be scared to speak because I didn’t know what my mind would tell me to say. I became paranoid. I started to panic. I thought that everyone I met could see who I was and how I felt. Little did I know it was probably how they felt too.
With no outlet for these thoughts, I started to write. I may not have been able to define myself in a world of confident, successful individuals, but I was able to put a pen to paper and create something tangible and something that I thought was true – a world where the doubts in my mind made sense. It became a way of removing all that troubled me and putting it in a place where I could look at it objectively, and rationalise what it meant rather than letting it bottle up inside me like a neurotic tumour.
After a good period of writing I’d feel an intense calm, a great understanding about who I was and what the world was, a wonderful feeling of emptiness where I could pick things up and consider them without the trappings of self-conception and ego. All I was, was a creative entity, who opened up his mind and let his ideas flow onto the page.
It was at this point that I happened to pick up a Beginners Guide to Buddhism and was able to give my new perception a name.
Buddhists would describe my experience of existential dread as an emptying of the mind and my solace in writing as an excellent form of meditation, enabling me to begin to understand the ‘Dharma’ – the way things truly are. My sense that there was something wrong with a world where everyone strived for riches and success was absolutely right. The first act the Buddha had taken was to leave all these behind – his palace, his clothes and his luxuries – and walk away so these would burden him no longer. In trying to create a perfect ‘self’ based on possessions and achievements would never lead to happiness – nothing in the world is permanent and no matter what we did we would always be left wanting more. Buddhists know this as ‘Samsara’ – the immediate, sensory world, and an understanding of its impermanence and futility is one of the of the founding principle goals in reaching the ultimate goal of Nirvana.
I don’t think it is any coincidence that the periods where Buddhism has thrived most, were also the ones in which art and culture experiences their greatest levels of creativity. As a religion it encourages us to open up to a world away from the one that lies immediately in front of us in the Western world and think outside of the comforts of possessions to something more positive instead – for me this was writing. Consider this from a Tibetan Buddhist:
‘Since all things are naked, clear
And free from obscurations, there
Is nothing to attain or realise.
The everyday practice is simply to
Develop a complete acceptance
And openness to all situations and emotions
And to all people – experiencing
Everything totally without reservations and
Blockages so that one never withdraws or centralises into oneself.’
The self then, a very Western Christian idea, is to be set free from its traditional definitions. I should never restrict my experience by what it is to be ‘Ben’ because such a thing does not exist – I only place this moniker upon me to maintain arrogance and ego and escape my doubts and insecurities. However, if I can recognise this, by looking into the emotions that define me and taking them out and placing them onto a page, then I can reach the emptiness that will lead me towards enlightenment. Indeed, I have found that it is when I ‘lose myself’ in writing that my mind becomes most creative and expressionate, and haven’t we all felt something similar when deeply engrossed in a film or a book. This is when feelings are most pure, untainted by the self the artwork has taken us from.
Herein lies the reason why the Buddhist mindset permeates my writing. Our lives, and the lives of my characters, are all about trying to understand the complications and frustrations of who we are and who we think others to be and how so much of the time this is just an illusion that prevents us from understanding what is true of what is real. The quest to find this is, I think, the most important thing to all of us but so much of the time the answer doesn’t seem to be there – the material world seems wrong, God seems wrong – so what else is there? Well I like to think the answer is nothing. We are here, we are thinking things – we think therefore we are – but what we think isn’t WHO we are, because there isn’t a who. It is not an easy concept to grasp but once you have the word can become a much freer and happier place.
So, if you please, feel free to lose yourself in Substance Abuse or The Serpent’s Tongue and once you’ve finished, consider if there ever was a self to lose in the first place. I am hoping you may be slightly more enlightened for the experience.
Rather than feeling aghast at my lack of originality, I took great solace in knowing that so many others had the same feelings about the world as I did. There were certain questions that had been playing on my mind almost every day and which i had previously thought that I was the only one in sunny suburbia who thought this way.
‘Why does everyone care about a career so much? When did money and status become so important?’
‘I don’t believe in God anymore. In fact, I don’t believe in anything, because nothing is ‘true’ in the way I had previously thought.’
‘Who is that person in the mirror? Why do I feel like I don’t recognise him anymore?’
I thought there was something wrong with having these thoughts. I thought that I was insecure, unambitious, depressed or psychotic, whatever, in this world this was not the right way to think; it made me a failure, it made me a lesser person to those who didn’t have such doubts.
So in my mind these concerns grew and grew. Every day I’d walk to work and hate myself for who I was and each evening I’d walk home and have no idea who I was, to the point where I’d be scared to speak because I didn’t know what my mind would tell me to say. I became paranoid. I started to panic. I thought that everyone I met could see who I was and how I felt. Little did I know it was probably how they felt too.
With no outlet for these thoughts, I started to write. I may not have been able to define myself in a world of confident, successful individuals, but I was able to put a pen to paper and create something tangible and something that I thought was true – a world where the doubts in my mind made sense. It became a way of removing all that troubled me and putting it in a place where I could look at it objectively, and rationalise what it meant rather than letting it bottle up inside me like a neurotic tumour.
After a good period of writing I’d feel an intense calm, a great understanding about who I was and what the world was, a wonderful feeling of emptiness where I could pick things up and consider them without the trappings of self-conception and ego. All I was, was a creative entity, who opened up his mind and let his ideas flow onto the page.
It was at this point that I happened to pick up a Beginners Guide to Buddhism and was able to give my new perception a name.
Buddhists would describe my experience of existential dread as an emptying of the mind and my solace in writing as an excellent form of meditation, enabling me to begin to understand the ‘Dharma’ – the way things truly are. My sense that there was something wrong with a world where everyone strived for riches and success was absolutely right. The first act the Buddha had taken was to leave all these behind – his palace, his clothes and his luxuries – and walk away so these would burden him no longer. In trying to create a perfect ‘self’ based on possessions and achievements would never lead to happiness – nothing in the world is permanent and no matter what we did we would always be left wanting more. Buddhists know this as ‘Samsara’ – the immediate, sensory world, and an understanding of its impermanence and futility is one of the of the founding principle goals in reaching the ultimate goal of Nirvana.
I don’t think it is any coincidence that the periods where Buddhism has thrived most, were also the ones in which art and culture experiences their greatest levels of creativity. As a religion it encourages us to open up to a world away from the one that lies immediately in front of us in the Western world and think outside of the comforts of possessions to something more positive instead – for me this was writing. Consider this from a Tibetan Buddhist:
‘Since all things are naked, clear
And free from obscurations, there
Is nothing to attain or realise.
The everyday practice is simply to
Develop a complete acceptance
And openness to all situations and emotions
And to all people – experiencing
Everything totally without reservations and
Blockages so that one never withdraws or centralises into oneself.’
The self then, a very Western Christian idea, is to be set free from its traditional definitions. I should never restrict my experience by what it is to be ‘Ben’ because such a thing does not exist – I only place this moniker upon me to maintain arrogance and ego and escape my doubts and insecurities. However, if I can recognise this, by looking into the emotions that define me and taking them out and placing them onto a page, then I can reach the emptiness that will lead me towards enlightenment. Indeed, I have found that it is when I ‘lose myself’ in writing that my mind becomes most creative and expressionate, and haven’t we all felt something similar when deeply engrossed in a film or a book. This is when feelings are most pure, untainted by the self the artwork has taken us from.
Herein lies the reason why the Buddhist mindset permeates my writing. Our lives, and the lives of my characters, are all about trying to understand the complications and frustrations of who we are and who we think others to be and how so much of the time this is just an illusion that prevents us from understanding what is true of what is real. The quest to find this is, I think, the most important thing to all of us but so much of the time the answer doesn’t seem to be there – the material world seems wrong, God seems wrong – so what else is there? Well I like to think the answer is nothing. We are here, we are thinking things – we think therefore we are – but what we think isn’t WHO we are, because there isn’t a who. It is not an easy concept to grasp but once you have the word can become a much freer and happier place.
So, if you please, feel free to lose yourself in Substance Abuse or The Serpent’s Tongue and once you’ve finished, consider if there ever was a self to lose in the first place. I am hoping you may be slightly more enlightened for the experience.
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