1.1 : What the Heck Is Immovable Wisdom?

Transcript coming soon!

Transcript

Welcome to the Immovable Wisdom Writing Podcast. I'm Karen A. Parker, a Black, queer, non-binary, and neurodivergent Secular Buddhist who's certified in fiction book coaching and holds an MFA in creative writing. On this podcast, I’ll be talking about how BIPOC and QUILTBAG+ fiction writers can build sustainable, decolonial, dharmic writing practice while navigating the predominantly white, cis-hetero publishing industry. And if you don't identify as either BIPOC or QUILTBAG+, but you wanna support underrepresented writers, don't worry. This podcast is for you, too. Make sure you subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Thanks for tuning in, and let's get into it.

Hello! Hello, everybody, and welcome to the inaugural episode one of the Immovable Wisdom Writing Podcast.

I'm your host, Karen A. Parker, and on this very special episode, and perhaps all the episodes to come, we will be talking about Buddhism, we will be talking about decoloniality, we'll be talking about dharma, and we'll be talking about publishing. But for this episode in particular, I'll be answering two questions.

So, the first one, which you might have been wondering about is what the heck does QUILTBAG+ stand for? So, QUILTBAG+ is another acronym for the LGBTQ+ community, or as some might call it the LGBTQ+, two-spirit, intersex, questioning, undecided journeying community. I just like QUILTBAG+ because it rolls off the tongue for me a little bit easier, but that doesn't mean that I don't use LGBTQ+ in my everyday speech. So, in case y'all were wondering about that, that's what that means. 

The second question that I'll be answering in this episode is, what the heck is immovable wisdom, and why do I call this podcast the Immovable Wisdom Writing Podcast? 

So, that's going to take a little bit of, storytelling. So, I hope you don't have, somewhere to be in the next fifteen minutes. But, sit back, relax, and I will regale you of my reasons for why I titled the podcast in this way. 

So, to start, I am a Black, queer, non-binary speculative fiction writer, and I came across Buddhism when I was in high school. I was struggling with anxiety and just general, like, overwhelm from being in the world, and Buddhism seemed to be the thing that clicked, but I didn't get into Buddhism right away. I had actually met a, I believe a Nichiren or Zen practitioner by the name of Sharon Marshall when I was at the Fir Acres Writing Workshop. And she was just this—was? is? is!—She's still around as far as I know.

But she is this amazing Black woman, an amazing writing teacher, an amazing person that just helped me see that Buddhism could be a way to help with the thoughts that were racing in my head. And, you know, compounded on all of that with, you know, being in the publishing industry and having to navigate that, Buddhism just kind of worked. 

Also, Buddhism is really cool. Like, if you're a speculative fiction writer and you haven't, like, looked at Esoteric Buddhism at all, you're missing out because Esoteric Buddhism is wild. And again, for those who don't know what esoteric means, esoteric is kind of, like, on the fringes of what we consider to be spirituality or even, like, cult mentality.

You know, everyone knows about Buddhism, like, in terms of, like, the Tibetan Buddhists, you know, the Dalai Lama XIV, and, you know, shaved heads, wearing robes, going into a monastery and, just becoming completely immersed in Buddhist religion. But there are other branches of Buddhism that, that go into this. And one of those branches is Esoteric Buddhism, which is a little bit more on the spiritual side, more on the, kind of eclectic side. And in Esoteric Buddhism, there is a deity—sorry, not D-D-D—known as Acala. It's spelled A-C-A-L-A, for those who wanna Google it on your phone or something as you're listening, and Acala is a Wisdom King. He is a manifestation of Buddha that is wrathful, that is divine, and that just does not take any punches. He has a rope in one hand, a blade in the other, and flames just coming up from his back. And he's the most just awesome Buddha that I think there is. There are four other Wisdom Kings because he's the fifth, but, like, Acala is my boy. So, he is the Immovable Wisdom king that I am drawn to the most. And immovable sort of refers to the fact that he is immovable. He shall not be moved in the face of any obstacles that he comes to towards enlightenment. 

And so, as a Black, queer, non-binary, speculative fiction author and Secular Buddhist (I always got those words tongue tied), I just I I call upon his energy when I wanna just be firm and I wanna just, like, just cut down all these obstacles that are in my way. 

So, that is the first part of that question, and his wisdom obviously comes from enlightenment having lived a long and fruitful life or a tumultuous life, as it were. And with him in mind, I sat down and, you know, as a book coach, I wanted to be able to codify the values that I held dear as both a business person and as a teacher and as a writer and as just a human being. And the values that I happened to come up with are the seven that I call the Immovable Wisdom Writing Framework. It's probably gonna get trademarked at some point, if I have the time and legal knowledge to do so. But, yeah. That's where the name comes from, you guys. So when you think immovable wisdom, think of Acala, and think of his amazingness and his awesomeness. Even if you're not Buddhist, if you're Buddhist, you'll know. If you know, you know as the acronym goes. 

But, going back to the the framework and what, you know, this season will be based on is those seven values or seven principles that I bring to my coaching practice and my writing practice and just, my living practice as it were. So I will be talking about those values in more depth in the coming episodes, but just to give an overview of what they are and to, you know, kind of, you know, get your expectations in place about that, here are the seven. So the first is curiosity.

And oh, also, all the values have have C at the start, so they're easy to remember and because alliteration is my favorite literary device. 

So, number one is curiosity. And we can see curiosity in Buddhism through a Sanskrit, I believe, term or a Pali term that, is Ehipassiko, which simply means “come and see for yourself”. So Buddhism is a, it's more a way of life than a religion. It doesn't really ask you to have faith in a deity, even though there are some aspects of it that, that kind of deal with the afterlife and where your soul goes and, you know, that esoteric stuff that I was mentioning earlier. But, the only way to experience Buddhism and experience enlightenment is to come see it for yourself, and so I believe that it's important for a writer to come see for themselves if a certain craft bit of knowledge, or if a certain methodology works for them. Like, don't take anything at face value. Really kind of weigh it in your hands and see how it feels and if it works for you. 

The next, value would be consciousness or awareness. And so Buddhism is all about mindfulness, awareness, being present in the moment, and writers should be present in the moment. We should be aware of how we're sitting in our chair, if we're hunched over, if we are writing in our journals and we're clutching our pens too tight, and we should also be aware of the world around us if things get out of whack and, you know, we have to kind of take a pivot in our work. That general awareness, I think I kind of hold, or attach to the value of sati in in Buddhism. 

Number three, we have compassion, which is metta or loving kindness as some people like to call it. And having self compassion, is super, super-duper important for for writers and not just BIPOC writers and not just QUILTBAG+ writers. You have to be compassionate with yourself, and you have to be compassionate towards others, especially writers on the same path as you who are struggling to get published or get a literary agent, or to just get past the slush pile. It is a long and arduous thing. 

And then number four, we have candor, or just absolute honesty and absolute authenticity in the face of a world that wants you to mask your symptoms and to lie. I actually pair candor with the term krohda, which translates to “fury” or “rage,” but it's a divine fury. It's not a mindless fury where you're just kind of thrashing about. It is intentional. It is driven. It is your power concentrated in one place. And as a writer, we can't hold back, we can't, you know, hide from the truth, and we can't hold back from ourselves when we're staring at the page. And so, that's number four.

Number five is creativity or anicca. Human beings are creators. We are tellers of tales, masters of crafts, breakers of chains. And Anika is also the principle of having a loose sense of self. So, we don't wanna get too attached to who we are. We are constantly changing from the cells in our bodies to the opinions we have, to the food we eat, to, you know, the guises that we adopt from day to day, we're always in constant flux. And so your writing is also gonna be in constant flux. 

And number six, we have community or sangha. There is no Buddhist monk out there that I know of that is doing it entirely by themselves. Maybe they, you know, they're about to go into enlightenment, and they're about to sit like Buddha next to the Bodhi tree and just, you know, go for it. And they've made that decision, but community is super important both in Buddhist cultures and in writing cultures. You cannot do it alone. You're gonna get stir crazy. You need to have feedback on your work if you wanna make it in the industry. That's just a given.

And then lastly, we have nirvana or calm. And nirvana usually gets equated with like, you know, reaching that state of enlightenment or reaching that state of bliss and just like, kind of reaching that heaven point. But I'm kind of using that concept here for the Immovable Wisdom Writing Framework as a way to say that a writer has to let go of their greed, their sensuality, their aversion to certain things, their hate, their ignorance, their delusion, and anything else that keeps them involved in the cycle of suffering that Buddhism kind of, talks about for the full Four Noble Truths. 

I'll be talking about the Four Noble Truths probably next season, in more depth like before. But, just to get you started with those seven, like, those seven basic toolkits or— not toolkits, but those seven concepts—that I kind of have collected in the Immovable Wisdom Writing Framework, that's where we're gonna be starting.

So, just to rattle them off again, we have curiosity, consciousness (or awareness), compassion, candor, creativity, community, and calm. And, yes, another thing that I wanted to point out is that, like, “How can I be divinely wrathful but also be calm, you know?” Those seem to be in in contradiction to one another, but really, it's not. The calm state and the candor state, you know, you can be absolutely candid and you can be divinely rageful and be calm at the same time. Because when you're calm, you are centered. So, I might change calm to centered, and I absolutely admit that, like, even as I'm kind of working through this framework, I might change certain terms. This might change over the years as I do this podcast or write blog posts about it or talk about it. But I want there to, for that particular term in case people are confused, if calm doesn't work for you, you can use centeredness, where you have that focus. You are not perturbed by what's in the outside world. You are enlightened and you understand reality as it is, and you're not fighting against that. 

But, yeah. That's, that's episode one y'all. And I hope what I have said, makes sense. And if it doesn't, let me know in in the comments or, just hit me up wherever you wanna wherever I happen to be in terms of social media.

But, that's  kind of it for for now. And, for next episode, we're gonna be talking, we're just gonna be going down the list. We're gonna be going from, I'm gonna go from all the way from curiosity to calm and then maybe back again. But, until then, I will see you or hear you in the next episode. 

Thanks for listening to the Immovable Wisdom Writing podcast.

You can find resources and links from this episode in the show notes at karenaparker.com/podcast. 

Special thanks to Pop Villains for the cool theme titled “The Usual Suspects” and to Amelia Hruby from Softer Sounds. 

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast via your favorite listening platform. Also, please consider donating to the Captured Phantoms Pay It Forward Scholarship Fund at karenaparker.com/forward. Every donation helps subsidize the cost of coaching and editorial services that I provide for BIPOC and QUILTBAG+ speculative fiction writers.

Anyway, that's it for me y'all. Stay cool out there and keep writing.