1.8 : What’s the Point of Being Calm When I Write?

Transcript

Welcome to the Immovable Wisdom Writing Podcast. I'm Karen A. Parker, a Black, queer, non-binary, and Buddhist layperson 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.

What is good, y'all? Welcome back to the Immovable Wisdom Writing Podcast. I am your host, Karen A. Parker, and I have something to share with y'all today. 

A little tidbit, a little thing that I got in the mail yesterday. I got my Dharma name. I took refuge on November [9th] under the Venerable Guo Yuan Fashi of the Dharma Drum Retreat Center online via Zoom. 

No shame. And my Dharma name is 寬縁 (Kuān Yuán), which translates to “broad affinity” or “wide margin” or “leniency”. And for those who don't know what a Dharma name is, it is an aspirational name rather than a descriptive name that is given to people who have taken the precepts under them and are doing their best to live a Buddhist life in a formal context. 

So, yes, I am officially a Buddhist layperson, and it feels so great. And I will be talking about my whole Buddhist journey and even, like, what it was like to take refuge on Zoom in the next episode of my podcast. So please make sure you're subscribed. 

In the meantime—Well, before that, in the meantime—Last time, I talked about how writers can be in community and the Sangha being one of the main pillars of my Immovable Wisdom Writing Framework. And in a prior episode where I was talking about like non-self or impermanence, I pronounced the word wrong. So my apologies. It is not ah-NEE-kah, but ah-NEE-chuh. Anicca. I am learning that as part of being in Sangha with a couple of folks at the Dharma Gates community. 

I will put that in the show notes, too. I will put so much in the show notes this episode. Probably a little bit more than usual, but it might be that I put these, I put it in the show notes for the next episode as well. 

Because on this episode, we are talking about the last pillar, or the last principle of my Immovable Wisdom Writing Framework (trademark pending). I don't know if I'll ever get a trademark at this point, but just in case I might and just to have a laugh in the future of whether I do or I don't, I'm gonna keep saying trademark pending. 

And that pillar is calm, or how I'm translating the Pali term nirvana as calm. Now, I'm not talking about the music band of the same name. I'm talking about this, the end goal of what most Buddhist monastic or lay people otherwise tend to want to achieve. Nirvana, as defined in the Nichiren Buddhism library, or the Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism library online, is enlightenment. It is “the ultimate goal of Buddhist practice. Quote, the Sanskrit word nirvana means blown out, and is variously translated as extinction, emancipation, cessation, quiescence, or non-rebirth. Nirvana was originally regarded as the state in which all illusions and desires as well as the cycle of birth and death are extinguished.”

So to back up a little bit, Buddhists generally believe that human beings and sentient creatures and all creatures are just stuck in this cycle of samsara. They are stuck in this cycle of reincarnation of life, birth, and death, and they are basically doomed to a life of suffering, or that the world that they are born into is one of suffering, and they can't seem to break out of that cycle. 

And nirvana is when you break out of that cycle and achieve enlightenment and become a Buddha. In Mahayana Buddhism, you kind of become enlightened when you recognize your Buddha nature and realize your own Buddha nature. In Theravada, you become a Buddha. You know, it's a difference of like, are you a Buddha already and you just have a lot of programming on top of you? Or if you're Theravadan, your whole kind of life goal is to be a Buddha just as your life goal. A little semantic difference there, but that's the general gist of it. 

And the three main reasons that human beings and sentient creatures are stuck in nirvana are what Mahayana Buddhism calls the three poisons, or Theravadan Buddhism calls the three unwholesome states. 

So what are these poisons? What are these three thorns in our sides? Well, they have different translations, and I'm going to be just using the English translations here because we're going to be talking about a lot of terminology, and I just wanted to focus on nirvana here for this episode. The three main poisons are greed (or attachment), delusion (or ignorance), and hatred (or aversion). So I got the order a little mixed up here. So greed, delusion, and hatred, or attachment, ignorance, and aversion. And I'm also using definitions here from Namchak.org, which is another Buddhist organization (link in the Show Notes!). 

So attachment refers to feelings of greed, lust, passion. A very kind of extreme example that Namchak puts on their website is disregarding the needs of others or even endangering others to get the object of one's desires, basically stabbing someone in the back so you can rise to the top, or just clinging to your money a little bit tighter than you should be for what is considered appropriate or what is considered beneficial to society. Ignorance or delusion refers to feelings of confusion, dullness, lies, being in a state of—you don't know what the world is, and you don't really care. And aversion or hatred is the feeling of wanting to push things away or to just snap at people.

And the opposites of those things are what help us achieve nirvana or at least get us to that extinguished or blown-out state. So instead of feeling greedy, we feel or we strive to practice generosity through acts of volunteering or dana or just giving up material possessions. Instead of being ignorant, we cultivate wisdom through meditation, through recitations of sutras, through being in sangha and talking about all of these things. And instead of being averse to people or hating people or just hating things in general, we come at them with loving-kindness, which gets translated to metta. 

So three bad things, three good things. Just to recap again, greed, delusion and hatred, generosity, wisdom, kindness. 

Buddhism is so efficient. I love it so much for that reason alone. I just love the systemic thinking and all of the things that went into it. My very neurodivergent systems brain just loves Buddhism even more because of it. 

But we can't just talk about Buddhism on this podcast. We got to talk about colonialism.

Because colonialism doesn't want you to be calm as a writer or as a person. Colonialism wants you to be angry. And for some people who've listened to prior episodes of this podcast, I had a whole episode talking about candor and divine rage and, you know, being authentic and living in your truth and having flaming, you know, just flames on the back of your head. 

But what I mean here is not a complete sense of like calm where nothing is stirring or nothing is happening. When we become generous, we don't have that greed riling us up. When we become wise, we don't have that ignorance riling us up and keeping us down. When we, you know, cast aside our hatred and pick up loving-kindness instead, we generate those feelings of calmness. We are no longer subject to the cycles of samsara and suffering and un-enlightenment as it were. 

So to put that in perspective as a writer, how can we go from greed to generosity, delusion to wisdom, and hatred to loving-kindness? Well, for one thing, colonialism wants you to be greedy and wants you to have like all the advances and all of the money and to keep you in a consumeristic state. That is, you know, capitalism is the arm of colonialism in that sense. And for writing, it can look like being very curmudgeonly and not giving other writers writing advice. You know, being a non-literary citizen and not giving book reviews, not giving advice, not engaging in the community that you're just a part of being a writer and having readers for. 

What it can look like in generating wisdom is, you know, generating personal wisdom about how you write, your writing practice, the writing communities. Again, communities keep coming up. Listening to podcasts like this or other podcasts. Reading books and just generating wisdom and actually looking at the world as it is and sort of keeping the truth and keeping reality in the back of your mind. And again, loving kindness, I mean, it seems simple on principle, but I think all of those, all three of them kind of fit together, and there's a lot of overlap with generosity and loving-kindness. Loving kindness being, you know, as I talked about in my episode on compassion, being kind to yourself, being kind to readers and other writers along the way. 

It's just these three things, I would say, are the building blocks of interdependence. And it's not just about being calm and doing nothing and achieving that enlightenment, in my humble opinion. Like, as a more socially-engaged Buddhist that tries to put Buddhist philosophy into politics and into the realm of decoloniality and all of that, I want to, I want to stay awake. I want to stay woke. Literally, the Buddha, like, Buddha translates to the “awakened one”. And, you know, being awake is kind of what enlightenment is. 

Like, when you're calm, you're not thrashing about. You're awake. You see clearly. 

Like, that's the thing we're going after. Like, you're not a flaming candle. You're not too bright to see. 

You're extinguished. You're providing, like, if, kind of like incense. We don't burn incense. 

We light it on fire for just a little bit, and then we blow it out and then we have, like, the gentle smoke that doesn't, uh, quite harm us the way a harsh sort of flame would. Unless, you know, you're like me and have asthma and smoke just irritates you, like, like nobody's business. But that's kind of what we're going at here when we talk about nirvana and talk about writing for, um, systemically oppressed storytellers. 

Because as you've probably seen by now, colonialism will try you. Colonialism will, uh, put you in the ground and extract you for all it's worth. Colonialism doesn't want you to be enlightened. It wants you to be, it wants you to stay greedy and angry and ignorant and just lost in the machine that it has built. 

And so my homework for you, just to put my teacher hat on, um, is to not only think of the other, uh, principles that I've talked about in this season, um, but also see if you can practice, uh, you know, the, the three antidotes to these three poisons. What are some areas where you can be generous in your writing and in your daily life? What are some areas that you would like to be wiser about in your writing and daily life? What are some places where you can show some love and kindness to a fellow writer in your community, whether that's online or offline, whether you need to take a break from your writing and give love and kindness to yourself? 

Um, find one thing, write it down, implement it, do what you need to do. 

And, um, you know, you don't have to report back to me. I'm not your teacher. Um, I could be your teacher if you join my book coaching program, but that's a whole ‘nother, uh, another story. 

And I'm still kind of working on it behind the scenes, but until then I will see you or hear you in the next one. And that is the final principle, y'all, until next episode. See you then.

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.