From the category archives:

mindfulness

What Albert Einstein and the 14th Dalai Lama Have In Common

Two quotes. The first from Einstein, the second from the Dalai Lama. A human being is part of the whole called by us “universe,” a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a [...]

Examples of Season-Tone in Literature (part two)

In the previous article, I wrote about the use of season-words in haiku and the possibility of conveying season through tone rather than the use of weighted words. The subject of tone relates to all writing, not exclusively haiku, so I thought I would provide some useful examples of the use of tone in works [...]

A Tonal Approach to Season Words in Haiku (part one)

The tradition of haiku is historically a Japanese one, and the tradition in English is so formally different it might be best to simply use a different term. I have heard that Gary Snyder calls this form simply ‘short poems.’ It is marvelous that the spirit of haiku is not exclusively a Japanese one; it [...]

Learning from the environment

I don’t know a single creative writer who doesn’t love to travel. Every creative writer I know benefits from a change of scenery. It’s the creative thing to do. A writer really has two important environments of which to be mindful: the wild nature of the written page their external environment Both of these deserve [...]

Coming to a Feeling of Oneness in Artistic Creation

The world loves to produce. We all love to build things. On Process Creation happens in those instants when you have everything at stake and you risk it all. After creation, something else begins. Something to be regarded, experienced–an object. Something external with its own life and consequences. Maybe there are three steps to creative [...]

Keep a Captain’s Log – Stave off “What Thousand Things Did I Do Today?”

Here is a “What You Can Do About It” post for those of you suffering from compulsive multitask syndrome or entrepreneurial ADD. Let me begin by saying multitasking is one thing and false multitasking is another. The former means efficiency and the latter means entering a cloud of unfulfilling task-doom. The first kind of multitasking [...]