How to get things done (I've said this before - and it's still true)

Kaspa writes: It would be lovely if I could just learn something once, and then have it learnt for good. However I find myself discovering the same things over and over again.

A few days ago Fiona and I were talking about moving house again. For a while we'd been toying with the idea of moving to a more rural, remote, location. A place where we could step out of the front door and into the countryside, instead of out into the street as we do now. In the end we decided to stay where we are, there are lots of good things about where we are now, and we hadn't seen anything that ticked all of our boxes.

The decision to stay motivated us to think about how we use the space here. Could we be more settled in this house?

We bought two new (pre-loved) sofas for the sitting room. We moved one of our old sofas up into the office, and got rid of the other one. We moved the uncomfortable cane sofa that was in the office out into the conservatory and set about making the office into a livable space. If this winter is as cold as last winter, we'll retreat up here away from the draughty single glazed sitting room...

The last big job was to sort though all the accumulated stuff on the shelves, and in the drawers of my desks... There were piles of papers I hadn't looked at since I'd heaped them on the shelves, over a year ago, back when we moved in.

Living through difficult times - three things

I'm living through difficult times right now. Don't worry, I'm OK. But I've been thinking about how we can approach the stuff that life throws at us that we'd rather not catch. Duck! Run away!

I'm thinking about three things this morning. The obstacle is the path. Today is a good day. And what comes is a gift.

Ezra Bayda reminds us in his books that we often get frustrated by the things that 'get in the way' of our path. This could be the tedium of doing the washing up, or a crisis that prevents us from getting on with what we think we SHOULD be doing. He tells us that these obstacles ARE the path. They are the things life is made of. They are the things we learn from, the things we can practice with. It's a matter of shifting our perspective.

The second thing is what my friend said to me at the weekend. She's also going through difficult times, and when I saw her she'd just had some bad news. I said something about how awful she must be feeling, and she said, 'Well, today is a good day'. How easily we forget to take one day (one minute) at a time.

The third thing is something I read in a Buddhist magazine - a quote by Reverend Master Daishin. He said, "What comes is a gift as it shows us what we need to offer." This last word wasn't what I expected, and it took me by suprise. What we need to OFFER? Isn't this about me?!

In the long run, the things we learn help us to help others. We're all in the same boat, after all. There's something about the idea of making an offering that gives me comfort.

These thoughts are still a little jumbled, but I hope you can find something in them. My small offering.

More about perseverence - hanging on by a thread

You MAY have noticed that this is a bit of a running theme at the moment ; )

I'm looking forward to reading Zen Heart by Ezra Bayda, which just arrived, but in emergencies it's OK to cheat and open new books at random and see what you can find.

Here's what I found - Bayda talking about perseverence:

At one point, when I was very involved at a Zen center in Northern California, I was hit, seemingly out of the blue, with a wall of resistance, and I didn't want to sit any more, nor did I want to go to the center. But even though I couldn't stand being there, something in me knew not to bolt. I forced myself to go to just one sitting a week, basically hanging by a thread. Then, after a few months, the resistance began to fade, and I reentered the practice wiht a deeper involvement than before, not only internally but also in the external activities at the center. The point is, sometimes simply persevering will allow us to move through even the worse resistance. Even when our practice efforts seem to produce very little in terms of tangible results, with the little mind seeing "failure" at every step, a part of us knows that we have no choice but to keep starting over. This is the only way we will ever go deeper into our life.

I was speaking to my artist friend on the phone yesterday. We were wondering if sometimes, when resistance really hits, what we should really do is allow ourselves to take a proper break, and to enjoy it, and to return to the work with more hunger.

Personally speaking, I'm not so sure. I think my current wall of resistance would still be there if I took a break for a fortnight (or a year) and it might even get a bit bigger in my absence.

Instead, I'll open my manuscript this morning (right now) and type a single sentence. Better to hang by a thread than to let go.

*

PS I found this very beautiful painting, called 'Hanging By A Thread', on Gail Bourgeois' site. I hope she'll forgive me putting it up here if you promise to go and have a look around at her stunning work. I like this one and lots of others.

PPS Another interview is up at 100 Readers - meet Caroline. There are now 47 blogs with the widget and counting... got yours yet? And we have 14 Blogsplashers - do you want to play? Enough links yet?

Zen Therapy - the birds are singing

I enjoyed the opening paragraphs to this book so much that I thought I'd share them with you - I hope David Brazier forgives me if I put this link here so you can buy his book for yourself.

ONE COLD SPRING DAY

My first encounter with the therapeutic power of Zen occurred in my first interview with my first Zen teacher on the first Zen retreat I ever attended. This was some twenty-five years or so ago. It became a turning point in my life. For some years Buddhism had interested me, but this was the real test. Now I was exposing myself to the experience and a large part of me was prepared to be disappointed.

We had been in silent meditation for most of the day. Outside the weather was sharply cold. The snow which had fallen the day before had frozen, overnight, and crunched under our feet when we went outside for short breaks between periods of sitting.

When my turn came, I went upstairs to the little room above the meditation hall, knocked, was invited in, entered, and sat down. A few moments of silence passed. I imagine that she was giving me an opportunity to begin. I stayed silent. She must have sensed my embarrassment. I was shy.

She looked at me in a very direct way. It was impossible to divine her mood, but I sensed a kindness in her eyes. After what seemed like an age, but could only have been a minute or two, she helped me out:

'Is there anything to report?' she asked.

In the context, this was a very open question. I could have used it almost any way. It could have been a basis for talking about technicalities of meditation practice. I could have used it as a springboard for a report upon my life. However, I was now even more paralysed than before.

There was something about her whole way of being which prevented me from saying anything trivial, and in that moment everything seemed to fall into that category. All the things which had seemed so important about my life before I entered the room now no longer seemed consequential at all. This seemingly simple question, 'Is there anything to report?' somehow demanded more than a commonplace response. It seemed to demand: 'Can you say something which is ultimately true? Can you say it now?' Although a thousand things flashed through my mind, nothing in my life seemed to pass the test.

Then, it was as though the universe rescued me. My life dropping away, all that remained was the two of us sitting face to face, in a room on a cold day with the window open on to the frozen garden.

'The birds are singing,' I said.

She smiled.

It was an exchange of nine words in all, yet it contributed substantially to changing the direction of my life.

*

Ah, the birds are singing. And so are we.

Meditation and Galaxy Caramel

I have a modest meditation practice of 20 minutes every morning (although if you've tried sitting still then you'll know how long 20 minutes can be!)

The idea is that I sit in lotus position facing a wall, and pay attention to my breath. If I have any thoughts, I just notice them and then return to paying attention to my breath. Simple!

This morning I crossed my legs, started my timer, and started thinking about Galaxy Caramel. I'm going shopping this afternoon and I wanted to add some to my shopping list. Then I returned to my breath. Then I thought about an email I needed to send. Then I returned to my breath. Then I thought about Galaxy Caramels. Then I thought about writing this post, and wrote most of it in my head.

Then I returned to my breath.

You get the picture. What hope do I have of getting anything done, if my mind skips about like a child (or like a Fiona) in a sweetie shop?

The returning bit is the key. It's the same as being a writer. Life interrupts. Laptops break. Houses flood. It becomes necessary to go out for Galaxy Caramels. But I return to the writing. What else would I return to?

*

In other news....

Hello to my new readers - good to see you here!

I've set up a Questions and Answers group on Goodreads where you can ask me a question about anything you want. I won't say I'll answer them, but you can ask... click here.

The Blue Handbag has got even cheaper on The Book Depository (with free worldwide delivery) - here.

And the final stop of the Snowbooks blog tour was at How Publishing Really Works here.

Happy weekend!

A continual turning towards the genuine (and a free book and a thankyou)

My new mystery novel The Blue Handbag has just gone down to £5.99 on Amazon UK - or if you're not in the UK you can get it for £6.20 with free worldwide delivery from those jolly people The Book Depository. Again, it's not officially released yet, so shhhh! Leonard and his dog Pickles would very much like to meet you.

I'm interviewed with the rest of the Snowbooks crew on Strictly Writing today - everyone else's answers were much funnier.

Also I have a signed copy of John Tarrant's 'bring me the rhinoceros' now (very kindly sent to me by the man himself, as a swap for my small stones) and so I'd like to give my unsigned copy away to a good home.

It's about koans, which are a kind of Zen riddle, but it's pretty accesible and I don't think you'd have to know anything about Zen to enjoy it. It's very wise and I know I'll be returning to my copy again and again. There's an extract below to whet your appetite. If you're in the UK just send me an email and I'll pick someone out of the hat at the end of the week. If you're in the US or elsewhere feel free to enter if you're happy to pay the postage, but then frankly you might as well buy yourself a shiny new copy of the book - sorry!

What makes a human life real and beautiful is available in every place. An insubstantial and alienated life - eating a hearty breakfast of a cardboard photo of corn flakes - is always on offer but its consolations are not consoling. In order to embrace a handmade life, you do have to be willing to deal with [...] awe and fear. But you have to deal with awe and fear anyway, and when you pay attention, a continual turning towards the genuine just happens.

I love that last bit. Pay attention, and a continual turning towards the genuine just happens. Here's to that, and here's to giving us the strength to turn towards all the messy and difficult bits too. John blogs at Zenosaurus.

I'm feeling grateful for this blog today, and to you, for reading. We're in this big old boat together, after all. Thank you.

Shabby old Essential Zen

I'm a person who likes shiny new things, as evidenced by my love of Rosie, and my excitement every time I get a new mobile phone.

I was disappointed when my second hand copy of Essential Zen arrived yesterday. It is an ex-library book from Wiltshire. It has a battered plastic cover and the pages are yellowing.
And then I read this paragraph, in the introduction.

We all tend to possess, accumulate, store, and consume, trying to have as much influence and control as possible in our daily lives. This produces a great deal of anxiety, which in turn creates a longing for freedom from such a mode of clinging. Sooner or later we may come to understand that we are free when we are not preoccupied, that we receive more by letting go, and that we achieve more by being selfless. This is the dynamics of nonpossession, which is an essential part of the creative process in the Zen world. (by Kazuaki Tanahashi)


Clever old Zen book, turning up in a battered form to give me another lesson.

My book has passed through at least forty hands - I counted the date stamps. Everything wears out. We can love things as they are.

Let it go. Let it come to you.

Buddhism is a great tradition for me to have found, because it speaks so much of letting go.

I'm not the world's greatest letting go-er. In fact you could call me a teensy bit controlling.

I also love the way Buddhists talk about everything being 'an opportunity to practice'. It's another way to look at all the messy stuff - the things that piss us off, the ways in which we feel we're failing...

This morning I felt a bit panicky about my 100 Readers project [where I handed 10 copies of my next novel The Blue Handbag to 10 friends, who each handed their copy on to another friend, who will each...etc until I have 100 interviews].

I haven't had a completed interview from anyone for a couple of weeks. I started thinking I ought to be finding out who has the books, chasing people up...

And then I let go. They will come to me. I don't need to get my hands on these things so quickly. It's like telling the dough to hurry up and rise.

Whilst we're on the subject, here's a good article about letting go at Tricycle.

*

PS Talking of bread, I pinched the whiskery bits from 2lbs of blackcurrants at the weekend and made 5 and a half jars of jam - labelled with my own coloured-in-with-felt-tip labels. This really is the life! Happy Monday x

Write for the sake of writing

Another pearl of wisdom from Daily Dharma (sign up here).

Happiness is possible when you are capable of doing the things and being the things you want to do and to be. When we walk for the sake of walking, when we sit for the sake of sitting, when we drink for the sake of drinking tea, we don’t do it for something or someone else. Awakening means to see that truth—that you want to know how to enjoy, how to live deeply, in a very simple way. You don’t want to waste your time anymore. Cherish the time that you are given.

–Thich Nhat Hanh, from Answers from the Heart

Walk for the sake of walking. Write for the sake of writing. Drink tea for the sake of drinking tea. Who'd have thought the secret to happiness would be so simple?

From my window I can see white foxgloves with deep scarlet stains in their throats, and campanula the colour of the prettiest lilac summer dress you've ever seen.

Look at flowers for the sake of looking at flowers.

Rosie, Mike Skinner and me

I've been thinking about Rosie, and how much I love her.

Buddhist thought suggests that clinging to stuff is the source of all suffering. Can I love her this much, and not set myself up for some suffering down the line?

For me, the key is to remember in my loving that I'm only ever borrowing her. I can love looking at her red dashboard, and driving her through town, without feeling that she is MINE.

It's the same with the cottage we rent from a country estate. We love living here, but it isn't ours. We just borrow it. Even when we have a mortgage, we're only borrowing our houses.

In the words of that wise old sage, Mike Skinner aka The Streets:

I came to this world with nothing
And I leave with nothing but love
Everything else is just borrowed

The way I see it, I can love Rosie as much as I like, as long as I don't start clinging. If someone drives into her, I'll love her with her battered sides. If someone steals her, I'll say goodbye and get a new car. There. Now I'm going to gaze at her shiny red dashboard again.

In other news, there's a charming book review of The Blue Handbag on a blog called Badelynge. I like the way the author slides from reviewing into his own personal musings and then back into reviewing again. And Leonard would DEFINITELY watch Springwatch.

(here are convenience links to pre-order the paperback from The Book Depository (£5.99 for the book and free worldwide delivery) / Amazon UK / Amazon US or to treat yourself to the hardback The Book Depository / Amazon UK ).

Me and Robbie Williams, and what to do when someone pushes your buttons

Last night I dreamt I was going out with Robbie Williams. My friend Jo was going out with his brother. I must admit I quite enjoyed the fame, and Robbie was lovely. We had a particularly memorable time in a swimming pool. I wonder if Robbie ever Googles himself? (oo-er) If so, then hello Robbie ; )

I've finished At Home in the Muddy Water by Ezra Bayda, although I'm certain I'll be reading it again. I particularly like this section at the moment, about being in relationships.

Ordinarily, we assume it's the other person's job to take our discomfort away. From a practice point of view, nothing could be further from the truth. Our discomfort is our job. For example, when we experience the fearful quality of jealousy, it's our job to tend to it, not someone else's job to take it away by changing their behaviour. When we experience the fear of insecurity around money issues, it's our job to rest there, not another's job to make our fears go away. What's so interesting about human dynamics is that once we attend to our job - seeing our beliefs and experiencing the fears from which they arise - it usually frees the other to move towards us. When the other no longer feels the need to defend, they become more willing to attend to their job.

Bayda isn't saying that we shouldn't have boundaries for ourselves, that 'anything goes'. But his message is pretty challenging. It means an end to being able to blame anyone for anything, in theory at least. If they are pushing our buttons, then all we can do is attend to our buttons. Telling them to never push them again doesn't work - someone else will come along and push them instead.

This concept has been very helpful to me over the past year or so. My experience is that once I get to the bottom of why someone is making me so angry, or disappointed, and feel the feeling, then suddenly I don't feel angry or disappointed with the other person any more. It's all about my stuff. OK, I get there SOME of the time. Well, every so often. Once or twice at least ; )

Finally (I always seem to have one of those) I've just spotted a lovely review of The Letters by Laura Wilkinson at the wonderful Hags, Harlots and Heroines - and an interview with me talking about my writing process etc. Go see if you fancy it.

Sometimes I think I must be mad

I have chosen several threads to run through my life.

I am a therapist. I am a writer. I am interested in Buddhism. I grow things.

Sometimes I think I must be mad.

I have a private practice - I'm on my own. There's no sick or holiday pay, and sometimes I don't have enough clients. The work is hard - it's always challenging me. I've written for more than a decade, and have had more than a decade of rejections and self-doubt. It's hard work. I'm on my own. I haven't made a penny from it so far. My interest in Zen encourages me to dissolve my ego. I sit and look at a wall and become aware of my breath. It's hard work. I'm on my own. I grow things. Slugs eat my seedlings. Deer eat my tulips. It's hard work. I'm on my own.

Other times, I feel blessed.

Like last night, driving home after two amazing sessions with long term clients. What a privelige to be there with them for a part of their journey. Like this morning, writing this blog, and working on my novel, and getting emails from people who appreciate what I do. Like after my meditation, when my mind begins to settle and I can see everything just a little bit more clearly. Like the days I slice courgettes from their plants with a sharp knife and fry them in butter with my own garlic.

The threads are really golden threads.

This is one of my favourite quotes, which I plucked from Sally Basile's eclectic garden. Another thank you to the author of the quote - I've carried these words around with me for a long time now. Their edges have been worn down by my reading them - they are even more beautiful.

When you're hanging on by a thread, identify that thread and do all you can to strengthen it. Gardening is my thread, consistently providing therapy through years of ups and downs. If this blink in time seems a bit crazier, well, perhaps it is. Gardening serves as a gentle reminder that the wheel turns and seasons come and go, each filled with its own impossibly tender beauty. So maybe it's time to go outside and look for tulip noses poking through the damp earth and reaching into the winter mist.

When you're hanging on by a thread, identify that thread and do all you can to strengthen it. I wish you luck in finding your own threads. I'm supported by so many, I could lift up both my feet up and I still wouldn't fall over.

Juice, new cars, and annoying cats

I was surprised to get an email this week telling me I was 30 days into my meditation challenge - where has the time gone?

I have sat on my zafu for twenty minutes every morning, but Fatty has been a bit of a problem of late. I sit in lotus position and stare at the wall, and he keeps sitting between me and the wall and looking up at me, occasionally batting me gently with a paw to encourage me to shift my focus. What ARE you doing? he seems to be wondering. Stroke me instead - it's not as if you've got anything better to do....

The paw-patting is endearing, and he knows it. I usually take a short break from paying attention to my breath to pay attention to my cat.

Another little quote via Daily Dharma today.

You Can Live Without It

The phenomenal world is much more fascinating and juicy when we stop grasping…wanting…craving. This is because the mind is present, the sense wide open, and the conceptual mind relaxed. We make tremendous space in our mind when we let go of this “can’t live without” desperation. And, when we discover the richness and contentment within our own mind, we find an answer to the lifelong question, “Where do I find satisfaction and contentment?”

––Dzigar Kongtrul, from Light Comes Through (Shambhala Publications)

I love that word, juicy. In other news, The Letters has been reviewed by Lori Tiron-Pandit here, and I've just updated my blog tour page.

Hope you all have fascinating, juicy weekends.

How to meditate/how to write

I know, more Zen stuff. But this is about writing, really. Or anything else that is important to you.

If meditation is a priority, then it's helpful to take that word literally and put meditation first. An example would be my rule of not turning on the computer before I've meditated. Simple, but effective.

Probably the most trenchant advice I've ever heard, was in eight words by Suzuki Roshi: Organize your life so you can sit well."

- David Schneider

It took me ten years to organise my life so I get the time and space to write, as well as enough money from my 'day job' to pay my rent.

Does ten years sound too long to wait? You'll either be waiting ten years to give your priority space, or ten years to have it in the same place it was before. Start today. And don't forget to enjoy the scenery along the way.

Having a tantrum, and another way of looking at discipline

I'm near the beginning of a 90 day challenge to meditate for twenty minutes every day.

As you know, my brother got married at the weekend. I took my zafu with me to the hotel, and sat on Saturday morning, but on Sunday morning I went straight downstairs for my free fat-laden fried breakfast and vowed to do it when I got home.

I got home tired and hungry, and proceeded to have a tantrum about not wanting to do my meditation. I wanted to watch the telly instead. I was too tired. I wanted to enjoy my Sunday evening. My back hurt. I needed to cook something to eat.

I waited for myself to finish, and managed to drag myself to my cushion anyway. After sitting for twenty minutes, I felt much better. I had a different evening - calmer, less mushy-headed. A very little bit smug.

It reminded me again of this wonderful quote by Henepola Gunaratana from his very good book 'Mindfulness in Plain English'. (I can NEVER get his name right when I'm trying to find the quote online again...)

"Discipline" is a difficult word for most of us. It conjures up images of somebody standing over you with a stick, telling you that you're wrong. But self-discipline is different. It's the skill of seeing through the hollow shouting of your own impulses and piercing their secret. They have no power over you. It's all a show, a deception. Your urges scream and bluster at you; they cajole; they coax; they threaten; but they really carry no stick at all. You give in out of habit. You give in because you never really bother to look beyond the threat. It is all empty back there. There is only one way to learn this lesson, though. The words on this page won't do it. But look within and watch the stuff coming up - restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain - just watch it come up and don't get involved. Much to your surprise, it will simply go away. It rises, it passes away. As simple as that. There is another word for self-discipline. It is patience.

I wish you patience.

The Zen of Cinnamon Bagels

Yesterday I had a craving for cinnamon bagels.

I went to the shop on the way home from work, hoping to buy some for breakfast. I thought about the smell of toasting bagels. I thought about the melted butter dripping onto my fingers.

I got to the bread section. I scanned the shelves. French stick. Croissants. Malted brown rolls. Where are my bagels? MY bagels - I WANT bagels. I should HAVE them.

No bagels.

After a strong 'gah' feeling, I recovered my balance. I don't need bagels, I told myself. I'll have bagels another day. It's OK. I went on with my business, heading off to look for sugar.

Just round the corner, on the end of the aisle, there they were. There was one bag of cinnamon bagels left.

What a gift.

If I hadn't recovered myself, finding the bagels would have felt like turning a negative into a neutral. I had a sense of entitlement. I might have even felt annoyed that they hadn't been put where I thought they should have been.

Because I'd accepted that I couldn't have them, I became content with what I already had. Getting the bagels was pure gravy.

Imagine if we could accept EVERYTHING that comes to us as a gift. The sound of traffic outside my window. This orange scented candle burning on my desk. This sip of hot tea. This breath. This one.

PS I had one for breakfast. Cinnamon smell wafted through the kitchen. The melted butter dripped onto my fingers. Yum.

On keeping your mouth shut

Jon Kabat-Zinn says the following about meditation:

If you do decide to start meditating, there's no need to tell other people about it, or talk about why you are doing it or what it's doing for you. In fact, there is no better way to waste your nascent energy and enthusiasm for practice and thwart your efforts so they will be unable to gather momentum. Best to meditate without advertising it.

Every time you get a strong impulse to talk about meditation and how wonderful it is, or how hard it is, or what it's doing for you these days, or what it's not, or you want to convince someone else how wonderful it would be for them, just look at it as more thinking and go meditate some more. The impulse will pass and everybody will be better off--especially you.

This gives me one of those wry-recognition smiles, and also reminds me very much of how much I talk about my writing.

When I first started submitting my work, I would share every tiny failure or success with all my friends. Look, a poem was accepted! Look, another agent rejected me! They were very lovely and nobody told me to shut up and just get on with the writing. I'm not sure I could have contained myself anyway - I was very wobbly.

Maybe this is why we talk so much about a new meditation practice - underneath the fervent evangelising is a small voice that is still unconvinced.

As my writing career has progressed, I've started to find less need to shout everything that happens to my books from the rooftops. I think I'm learning to get on with it more quietly, and to quietly accept the good stuff (and feeling good) and the bad stuff (and giving myself time to heal) as it comes along.

In what area of your life do you get 'a strong impulse to talk about it'?

Life is like a box of (zen) chocolates

I have a regular chocolate habit. I buy a few packs of six from Hotel Chocolat most weeks, and keep them in my tin chocolate box.

I like to have a variety of chocolates on the go so I can choose precisely what I fancy - zingy lemon, rich macadamia praline, very dark coffee.

After Christmas I hadn't managed to eat all of my (expensive) Hotel Chocolat advent calender chocolates, and so I added them to my chocolate box. However, they are still at the bottom. I eat the ones I like best first. The others sit patiently, and are not chosen.

I had the idea of making my box into a zen box of chocolates, by taking them all out of their packaging and shaking the box up. When I wanted a chocolate I could close my eyes and pick one out. The advent chocolates would get eaten up. I'd get whatever I got - just like life!

I had this thought a couple of weeks ago, but I still haven't done it. I like to cling on to the idea that I can get what I want. Of course, it doesn't really matter with chocolates - but learning to fully appreciate/engage with whatever life happens to throw at us starts with the little things.

Maybe I'll do it tomorrow. Right now I could just do with one of those macadamia ones...

And the puppy runs away over and over again

Once again courtesy of the Tricycle Daily Dharma emails (sign up here) -

For some, [the] task of coming back a thousand or ten thousand times in meditation may seem boring or even of questionable importance. But how many times have we gone away from the reality of our life?--perhaps a million or ten million times! If we wish to awaken, we have to find our way back here with our full being, our full attention. . . In this way, meditation is very much like training a puppy. You put the puppy down and say, "Stay." Does the puppy listen? It gets up and runs away. You sit the puppy back down again. "Stay." And the puppy runs away over and over again. Sometimes the puppy jumps up, runs over and pees in the corner, or makes some other mess. Our minds are much the same as the puppy, only they create even bigger messes. In training the mind, or the puppy, we have to start over and over again.--Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart

I don't know about you, but my puppy also appears when I sit down to write my novel. And when I try to respond to anything in a non-habitual way. And when I exercise (or it would if I ever got round to doing any).

Just look at that face. They can't help it. Be patient with your puppy.

The only pain that can be avoided

There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain. R. D. Laing

I found this Laing quote last night in a book I'd tried and failed to read ten years ago but that is now speaking to me as if it was written for me and me only (funny how that happens).

I first read Laing when I was about thirteen (I must have been an odd child) - Sanity, Madness and The Family. My memory of it is that it took case studies of schizophrenics and looked at their symptoms and their families. When their 'mad' symptoms were seen in the context of the madness of their families, they were suddenly seen as perfectly understandable and 'sane'.

This made a great deal of intuitive sense to me at the time, and I still hold to it in my work-as-a-therapist now. Some of our thoughts or behaviour patterns might seem crazy, but they have their own intrinsic logic - even if it might take a while to find it. It was once necessary for us to be this way, in order to survive in the world (i.e. to survive our families).

Laing's quote reminds me of the Zen teaching that we must try not to add anything 'extra' to our experience. If we are hungry, we are hungry - it's only when we try to avoid this suffering that it becomes a problem. This doesn't mean that we don't get food as soon as we can, but until we can, we are just hungry. No problem.

A song I love has just come onto the radio. I'm going to finish there so I can listen to it properly. Have wonderful Thursdays.