Long Quiet Highway by Natalie Goldberg

Author:Natalie Goldberg [Goldberg, Natalie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-2460-1
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2011-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

What? “These words do not mean mountains are mountains; they mean mountains are mountains.” We aren’t going to understand this with our brains. The moment we hear it, we think, yes, yes, I’ve got it, and then it fades. The only way to understand it is with our whole body, to enter it, live it.

There are koans in Zen that are actually meant to trick the mind, to crack it open, to break it from its habitual way of understanding the world. We’ve all heard them: What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is your original face before you were born? a Zen master might ask you. These cannot be answered in some usual way, because the question is not usual. One person might answer, “A dog was my original face,” and have passed the koan, and another person might say, “A dog,” and the roshi would tell him to go sit some more. One person might pick up a stick and throw it into the air and pass the same koan that another person who barks like a dog fails. But this “passing” of a koan does not mean, “Great, I passed third grade. I’m on to fourth.” There’s no getting ahead. To pass a koan is to receive another koan, is to practice being in the present moment, to settle into it, to deepen your experience of here and now.

It is the presence of our minds when we answer the koan that matters, and our minds are not just our brains trying to figure out the right answer, our minds are all of us: our muscles, teeth, past, present, future, feet, stars, and earth. One with all of it. Then any way we respond is the answer. And answers and questions melt away. Dissolve. Just you. Here. And who are you? When we stop, really stop, who knows? I can tell you I’m Natalie. I can tell you all sorts of things about myself. That is not me, here, now. Me, here, now, I can’t catch. Here, now, I’m nothing.

This Zen business from Japan is a very different way of being taught from the way Mr. Doskow, or even my beloved Mr. Clemente or Mr. Gates taught. My formal education in school and in society was to build me up, to teach me about culture, to give me a past, hopes for the future, to show me how to add ten and two dollars together to see if I have enough money to purchase a baseball bat. It was to give me identity, solidarity, meaning. Death, that obliteration we all must face, was never mentioned; sickness was not addressed.

Zen teaching tears our identity down, but it is not mean. It’s tough. It asks us to slow down and examine who we are. Who is that “I” we walk around with, have developed, that has a body capable of contracting disease and is impermanent?

This, too, is helpful for writing. A writer needs to know death is at her back; otherwise, the writing becomes brittle, full of fear.

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