Thoughts on Vigilance Chapter of Dhammapada

“... the guard [their vigilance] as their greatest treasure.”

Dhammapada, vs. 26, trans. Eknath Easwaran

Diligence comes from the Latin verb diligere, meaning to love, to take delight in.  That isn’t the usual feeling I’ve had when thinking of diligence; my own thinking, and that of many people I have discussed this concept with, is of drudgery, hardship, sacrifice, etc…  But, thinking of diligence with its Latin etymology helps when it comes to cultivating Right Diligence (yes, that is one of the parts of the Noble Eight-Fold Path).  

It’s not a drudgery or a chore; it’s something delighted in.  This line of thought reminds me of Jesus’ “My yoke is easy, my burden in light” (Matt. 11.30).  In the Dhammapada chapter on vigilance, I see the connection between the two concepts: vigilance means to keep awake; diligence means to be careful and persistent, or assiduous.  They are brought together in earnestness (i.e. showing sincere and intense conviction).

The delight gives one conviction to stay awake.  This all leads to one guarding their conquest of the mind, of the four kinds of Mara1.  Without Right Diligence we will lack the earnestness to be vigilant.  

We awaken a little to realize that we need to awaken.  We have an instant of enlightenment to show us we are sitting in darkness.  This is beginner’s mind.  Without that “small” awakening we will not be aware that we are asleep.  Once we have that beginner’s mind we will delight in practice: we will fall in love with the Buddha we are to become.  Love will keep us on the path.  This is why last time I talked about love as being the only thing that will put an end to hatred.  Love is what gave the five “wise” virgins, of the Gospels, their wisdom, i.e. their vigilance.

If what you’re doing feels like a chore, a burden, a drudgery, then it will not be Right Diligence.  There must be and ease and a joy involved in the doing.  Verse 26 of the Dhammapada says, “... the wise guard it [vigilance, heedfulness] as their greatest treasure” (trans. Easwaran).  Treasure is something people love, otherwise it’s not treasure.  If you have trouble with your faith or practice, if they are bothersome, like something you don’t want to do but must, then those are not your treasure--they are your burden.

Think about it like this: people don’t love, don’t take great care, and don’t keep awake and guard a thing they don’t want.  They do those things for things they treasure--for treasure!  This is the reason Jesus said in Luke 12.34, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The thing is: how do you change this?  How do you change what feels like a burden into a treasure?  Sometimes, you can’t, and in that case you have to accept the situation.  

You know the saying, “One person’s trash is another’s treasure”?  It has merit.  It may help to get a new perspective.  Try this: Make two columns on a piece of paper.  Then, write how you truly feel about the concept/practice that you consider a burden/a mere duty.  Then, in the second column, write down a different feeling--one you would rather have, would prefer to have.  Try something like: “I would prefer to see _________ as a splendid treasure instead of as a burden.”  Questions are powerful, so you can ask yourself, several times a day, something like: “Why is this belief/practice/concept/_______ a treasure to me?”  Have fun with it.  “Why is this _______ ‘my precious’?”  ;-)

It may be necessary to find a new practice--one that has ease, joy, peace and happiness in it.  It’s important to walk the Middle Way, i.e. not too tight, not too loose, but perfectly tuned to make the beautiful music of your life.

Once we have experienced the “small” awakening, we need vigilance to keep awake in order that we can walk the path to liberation, to freedom, to cessation of suffering.  Carry the treasure of vigilance with love and earnestness, with ease and joy, within your heart everywhere you go, every day of your life, every precious moment.

Peace! :-)


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1. The four kinds of Mara: unwholesome mental factors, the Five Skandhas, death, and distractions.  For more on this, see: Thich Nhat Hanh, Awakening the Heart, note 75.

In Shakespeare's Defense

Shakespeare is one of  the best writers of all time. Of course that is my opinion, but there are many who share it. He has inspired and influenced myriad writers, and his works have been re-done, made into movies, told in different ways, plots stolen, characters pilfered. Much as Shakespeare has done, has been done unto him.

Why are others from the late 1500 and early 1600's not adapted as much as Shakespeare?  D'uh! The reason nobody else from that time is being regularly adapted, is because they were too ordinary. Yes, they may have been popular at the time, but they did not also simultaneously reach a high character-driven level of literature.

Shakespeare is one of the most serious writers I have ever come across. He went away from his family, his home: to act, then to write. How many writers do that today? They usually read in one of the writing magazines about how they can balance their writing and personal life, then they try it until the next article comes out telling them they need to have their space. For Shakespeare there seems to be no difference between the personal and the writing life. He was a writer, first and foremost.

Shakespeare is still going because he was able to write many plays that (had they been written today) could be considered popular fiction, but at the same time he was able to write at a level of literary above any before or since.

I think people want to stop reading Shakespeare simply because they are too lazy to learn to read the Elizabethan English.  They fail to see the variety of characters that come alive in Shakespeare's works.  I know no writer today who is able to achieve the high level of popularity, as he did in the theatre: and, at the same time, have such realistic characters and the ability to make his audience suspend disbelief in those situations where that is necessary.  And on top of all that, maintain his level of output.  It just isn't being done.

Shakespeare has plenty to say to us, if we will take the iGarbage away from our ears and faces for five minutes and actually pay attention.  This is the trouble: all the tech is causing brain rot.  Soon, we'll all be zombies who won't know how to piss without first consulting an app on our phone.  Jesus!  But that is for another blog post....

All hail the Bard!  Bardolatry for life!

WTF Is This Blog Even About?

I know, I know.  I have no rhyme or reason to my posts.  Well, I do to some of them... Right?
I have a tendency to blog about things that strike me at the moment, and thus require almost immediate comment or they will be lost to the archival darkness and my chance to have my voice heard will be gone.  I know this, because I have let these opportunities slip by uncommented upon too many times.  I'm ashamed, really.

Well ... anyway, often I read a news article or another blog post or hear someone say something while I'm out and about (which is rare, by the way--since I am something of a recluse), and it sparks ideas that I cannot get away from.  So, I start pounding away on this blog.  (That almost sounds naughty).

As you can tell, if you read enough of my posts, there is a sort-of thread or connection.  No, I don't know what it is, but it has to be there, right?  I mean, I'm not doing all this writing for nothing.... am I?  Am I?  Hmmm....  Good question.

The blog is a conglomeration of my thoughts spilled out into words and posted here for all the world to ignore, if they so wish.  Or to read and comment on, if that is more to their liking.  Or to take and make better, which I hope is what happens most.

I am a writer and I write about things that are important to me, about things that move me, about things that make me think or wonder or just shake my head in utter dismay....  For example, my last post about heeding warnings.  How many people ignore those?  Why do they do that?  If I was involved in preparing those warning systems and those people didn't listen and died, and lost their dogs and their homes and their belongings and everything else, it would eat me alive!  I would want to scream from the rooftops, "WHY????"  even if I am a reclusive introvert and don't want that kind of attention.  Lives are important, life is important.

Wow!  I have officially ranted and raved on and have basically said nothing.  If you've read this far, I'm not sure if I should congratulate you or be afraid of you.

Now, a point (which according to all the rules, I should have made much earlier, but, hey, I didn't wanna!): it is writing that ties this blog together.  I'm not published in the strict sense of the word.  Yes, I have this blog and that is a form of being published, but I would be hardpressed to use this as an example of my writing that would win me a book contract with a publisher of books.  That was a clunky sentence, huh?  O well.  This is my place to practice publicly.  You know you can practice writing all you want, but you have to let someone read it.  I mean, what else is the purpose of writing anything other than a diary/journal?

I write because I feel compelled to write.  It drives me.  Most of the time I am writing in a journal, or notebook or working on a novel (that is not in a state to be seen by anyone, yet) and so I have to write a blog post, to get that feeling that someone, anyone, is reading what I write.  It  may sound crazy, because I'm just writing about all kinds of things that are not closely related when I write here, and in my other writing, I am hopefully keeping a cohesion and a tightness in my writing.  But, this is a necessary part of my writing.

This blog is my way of discussing ideas that are important; some of those ideas will eventually end up in my other work, simply because I took the time to hammer out some of the kinks in my thinking right here, for all the world to see.

You have to be getting tired of all this by now, so, I'm shutting up.

Thanks for reading....

Music While Writing?

I mentioned a few posts ago about Stephen King's listening to music when he writes. I know people who listen to music while they study. Many arguments/debates have taken place between me and my children and between my college student peers and me on this subject.

They claim that they can concentrate BETTER with music or TV playing while they read and study. I have told them, and stick to this: the human brain is not capable of handling this efficiently. And this is especially true if there are vocals. Classical music may work for short periods, but the human voice is one of the most distracting sounds to other humans; so, if you are listening to music while reading, writing, or studying, you are in effect causing your brain undue stress by making it attempt to pay attention to two separate things at once. Not good.

Now, on to listening to music while writing. In some cases listening to hard and heavy music while writing is extremely helpful:

• When your inner critic refuses to shut the hell up
• When you are attempting to drown out other distractions
• To increase your feeling of energy while you work
• Because that Homeric Geek guy said I shouldn't

There are probably other reasons for listening to music while writing, but those are some that I have argued for.

On the other hand, it is a bad idea to listen to music when you are:

• trying to work your way through a difficult plotting issue
• trying to hear your characters' voices
• writing at 3:00am and everyone else in your house is sleeping

Seriously, it is nearly impossible to truly give your undivided attention to deep issues while Ozzy is cranking in your ears. Dr. John Medina in Brain Rules states that it is actually impossible to multitask, which is what thinking and listening to music amounts to.

So, next time think about what you are attempting, then make an informed decision about cranking up the Metallica while writing....

Attention Spans Are a Terrible Thing to ... to Something ... I Can't Remember

We should use technology to push our minds to new breadth and new depth. Don't simply give up on the old technology (such as books), especially at the expense of the attention span. Technology should be used to learn about new areas in which to spend more time thinking deeply. But, online reading, online browsing will change our brains to the point that we will have trouble thinking deeply; our attention spans will be incapable of handling that sort of pressure.

What will happen as fewer and fewer books are read; what will happen as fewer and fewer teachers and professors actually require students to read the books assigned? Nicholas Carr interviewed several people for his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains; people who were students, teachers, etc. One philosophy major stands out. He no longer reads actual books. How is that possible? Another interviewee states that he is no longer able to read War and Peace. (That may not be a fair example, because I know plenty of people who make that claim and it has nothing to do with attention span). For that person, Tolstoy's novel is too long and complex. That is disheartening. People are allowing themselves to be changed to such a degree, by reading online -- only online -- that they can no longer enjoy complex and tedious tasks. Their brains are changed. Literally.

Already, people are more impatient than they used to be, in general. (No, I don't have any statistics for that, it is a personal observation). Is that the kind of world we want to live in? A world filled with impatient people who are incapable of thinking deeply?

Think about it.... if you still can.

Attention Contention

Publishers and editors seem to suffer from what appears to be adult ADHD (Disclaimer: I am not a psych doctor, so I can't make this diagnosis for real).  They press new writers to maintain constant tension for their potential readers; keep the pressure on, keep them turning pages; in other words, don't bore them with anything that might strain their weak, failing, meager attention spans.

It won't be long that novels will have to be the length of short stories and short stories will have to be one word that captures the entire emotional and psychological life of a character: e.g. Jesus wept.

I contend that we, as humans, as readers, as writers, have the responsibility to rebel against the publishers and editors, for the sake of our children and their children.  Attention spans are quickly becoming endangered and if something drastic is not done, will follow the Dodo into extinction.

Reading Genius

"The genius of our brain's construction is not that it contains 

a lot of hardwiring but that it doesn't." 

- Nicholas Carr, The Shallows, 31.

It's not bad enough that television kicked our attention spans' collective asses, but it prepared the way for an all out annihilation to it, which has come in the form of the internet.  Email, social media, IM: these all play a part in distracting our minds from whatever productive task we have on our TO DO lists.  Cory Doctorow, as quoted by Carr, writes that "leaving your IM running is like sitting down to work after hanging a giant 'DISTRACT ME' sign over your desk, one that shines brightly enough to be seen by the entire world."  When I think of the telephone ringing, the doorbell sounding, the dogs barking at something only they can hear, the thought of having another potential distraction is more than irksome.

I'm going to say that Carr, in The Shallows, makes some rather sobering points regarding the internet's changing of the human brain.  And, as he passingly mentions, the answer is obviously not to stop using the internet at all costs.  Luddites have a difficult time uniting, with their lack of technology, which is the reason their way of thinking is an exception to actual social acceptance of the  technology they fear and loathe. But I, for one, don't want my brain to be changed in such a way that I am unable to read long, difficult works of literature, and I hope you don't want that for your brain, either.

A good idea, then, is to follow the Buddha; i.e. follow the middle path.  Use the internet to skim information, to grasp the main points of knowledge and to share our own knowledge with others; but, use books and other less distraction prone media for developing depth.  Old fashioned books for depth; new fangled internet for breadth.

Otherwise subsequent generations' attention spans won't be as long as their eye-blinks.

LINKS: Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction

Reading and Writing to Write

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut."
- Stephen King

I agree with this very simple-seeming piece of advice; there are no magic spells, no secret buttons, no fairy dust—unless you want them in your stories; but they will not arrive serendipitously to give you the edge to write.  King, it has been belabored by many writing teachers, points out that reading provides the tools for writing.

Thinking about this in connection with Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, I believe this advice needs to be modified with the following caveats:

• Online reading does NOT equal deep reading of actual books
• Reading like a reader must be changed to reading like a writer
• Both reading and writing should be done in distraction free environment, if and when possible

In following posts we’ll look at these in turn, with an eye toward distraction, the changes to our brains from online reading, and reading like a writer.

There will be many that will disagree with me on one or more of these points: that’s understandable, because everyone is different.  The area that I have received the most debate in is that of distraction free reading and writing.  Even Stephen King states in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft that he writes while listening to music (usually hard rock or heavy metal).  I will say that there are times when doing this can be helpful and I will go into that, also.

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Please feel free to comment, but be nice to me and to other commenters.  This is meant to be a discussion on writing and reading and comments should reflect that.  Thanks.

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