Baby Erases Masterpiece
The wisdom of starting from scratch
I hope everyone is doing ok these days. There is so much insanity around the world and in our back yards. It is important that we maintain our heart presence, and not turn away from the realities of strife and suffering. We must also live our lives as wholeheartedly as we can, with whatever compassion and wisdom we have managed to cultivate in ourselves.
For my part, I am practicing my dharma work in the context of my Zen Center, where members have direct connections to the violence in the Middle East, Ukraine and Maine. Zen Peacemakers International, led by my Dharma Holder Geoff Shoun O’Keeffe, is also doing great work. I invite you to check out these groups if you have an overtly spiritual aspiration.
I will continue to put out material through this newsletter, Zen@Work and the Game of Zen podcast, which applies the Zen dharma to modern work and life. I’ve had an uptick of subscribers the last month, and I will be increasing my newsletter frequency starting today. If you find it inspiring, I would love it if you can forward the newsletter to others, and subscribe to the podcast.
I am also much engaged with my 1:1 coaching clients, who are without exception finding empowerment through transition with Zen mind. Several are between jobs, some are recently promoted, and others are pursuing entrepreneurial possibilities. And of course, all have active families and relationships that need full attention. My coaching aligns all aspects to help you thrive. Sign up for a free 45-minute Discovery session if you think I might help (no strings attached.)
Finally, my e-book “The Bardo of Work: Five Keys to Navigating the ‘In-Between’ of Work Transitions to Manifest Your Most Fulfilling Life” is available on my website, and is especially focused on those who have been laid off or recently quit. If you know of anyone in this situation, you may point them to the download.
Paul
OK, now to today’s newsletter…..
Baby Erases Masterpiece
“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.” - Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing (1916)
“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” - Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2010)
“Baby makes masterpiece…. baby erases masterpiece.” - Two-year old LC, in front of his easel.
A month ago one of my coaching clients shared a moment he had with his two-year old son that brought a glow to my heart. His son has been drawing — wildly inventive creations as many two-year olds do — and upon completing each one, had taken to announcing “baby makes masterpiece.” On this day, his father approached and asked what he was working on and noticed his son was in the process of erasing his recent drawing.
“Baby erases masterpiece!” his son proclaimed.
The Zen Master Bernie Glassman, my dharma uncle, was famous for bringing a Zen approach to social entrepreneurship. Often times at the beginning of a working session, he would announce to his staff that they were starting from scratch, articulating the problem anew and surfacing “first thought, best thoughts.” While this would often frustrate his teams, who may have been been working for weeks on a project, it would often yield a simple and direct solution.
It takes a lot of guts to operate this way (at least for adults!). We become immediately enamored of our great ideas, and tend to hold onto them.
Many writers have echoed the sentiment that the only way to create a great work is to “kill your darlings.” A sentence, paragraph, or chapter can be beautiful and expressive by itself, but unless it serves the overall vision of the work, it will detract from the whole. It may hold you back or divert you from where the work really wants to go.
This teaching has helped me keep my eye on the big picture and not get caught up in small, local “successes.” As disorienting as it can be to start anew, especially when I feel I have made some clever progress on a project, I usually move swiftly to the heart of the matter.
It turns out all my great ideas were just steps on the path.
This is a lesson we can put into practice everyday in many situations. If we are working on a multi-day or multi-week project, we can look at the matter afresh every time we turn our attention to it. We can hold all our previous conclusions lightly, and tune our antennae to a simple approach that might just be the perfect one.
In doing this, we are choosing to let go of our attachments to our idea of how things should or might or need to go.
Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki famously said, ““In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” Although we may not call ourselves an “expert,” our egoic consciousness loves to feel that way. It becomes very invested in small successes.
This investment ultimately slows us down, or even keeps us from completion. It’s like making progress up a mountain, but getting so enamored of one elevation that you just hang out there, going sideways instead of up.
Leave behind your ideas. They have served their purpose.
My teacher Shishin Roshi would tell of his time in the Physics Ph.D.program at Berkeley in the 60’s. There was a famous physicist there who was a Nobel Prize winner. Whenever a guest lecturer would come, this physicist would ask the most basic questions of the lecturer. They were so basic that all the students and many of the other faculty members were embarrassed. They thought he was not so smart and did not understand how he had won a Nobel Prize. But Shishin could tell that it was his very “beginner’s mind” that enabled him to make breakthroughs that other physicists missed, because they had overcomplicated things and not questioned “first principles.”
There is a thing in science called “the tyranny of the first successful solution.” When you’ve solved a problem with a certain method, you think it’s the answer to all problems. The history of science is filled with such mistakes.
We all do this every day. We have our “go to” responses and solutions. If one is especially clever or “works,” we will hold onto it, even when it is not applicable. This is another way we must “kill our darlings.”
One of the blessings of being in a transition is that our “expert” minds are temporarily neutralized. We really don’t know what will happen next so we are forced into a kind of humility with respect to the future.
If we are between jobs, we might be anxious, and start to doubt ourselves. The anxiety is driven because our “expertise” has been questioned. This can be a great, even liberating thing. We want to honor our past accomplishments while not feeling they define us.
Meeting the question of your future anew each day is a beautiful way to live your life. You may feel that “yesterday’s conclusions” are still valid and inspiring, or you may find that they no longer feel right. In either case, if you meet the matter with a clear mind facing a clear ground, you will feel lighter and more potent.
How about you? Are you holding onto any “darlings”? Is it time to start from scratch?
Image by tigerlily713 from Pixabay.