lord buddha food. chewing on my style.

i get this insight when i am making sweet rice. by the way, this dish of rice and milk brings to mind the scene where siddhartha is under the bodhi tree and realizes the truth. along comes sujata, a woman. she offers him rice and milk. he takes it. now is it because he realizes that torturing and depriving the body doesn't bring him closer to the truth? or he recognizes that he needs a body of strength in order to teach the truth to many? i don't care. all that matters is lord buddha as we know it, the teacher, is born. with this memory i just fall in love with this dish. milk. rice. just the sounds carry the vibe of calm and nourishment. besides it is super yum. more than yum. it is light and satisfying, a one pot meal for the season. i can see myself eating it breakfast, lunch and supper. so there i am stirring basmati rice in a little ghee, plenty of freshly ground cardamom and some milk. whole, not low fat or no fat. according to ayurveda, i need lubrication, meaning oil, to balance the dry heat of the season. besides, serious meditators do need a little bit of fat everyday. the key word here is 'little bit' and it has to be quality oil. ghee is the best. i think i am way off track here. where am i going? o, that's right, i have an insight. the thing is i have been chewing on something my editor says, now it reads like two separate books, one in the immortals world, one in the human world, you've got to make it one book. gee. what does that mean? i thought i worked so hard to bring the two together. meanwhile time goes by. cut to the learned brahmin. he says to me, what you say, don't change, the style, change. by the way i really resonate with his english. we hong kong chinese speak english kind of like that. especially cantonese chinese. which i am.

i digress. hmmm, yes, style. now this is really fascinating. the recurring thought that has been haunting me is this. what's wrong with my style? i don't get it. not yet. until this morning. i am meditating away. the breath is flowing in deep and long, refined like a lotus stalk. i watch thought waves ebb and flow. suddenly and quietly this appears. one is lyrical and sublime, the other is down-to-earth and funny. i have to confess. the urge to go with this and pile on more thoughts is huge. i barely manage to jot the key words down when another insight comes. there's nothing wrong with your style. now, isn't it something that the mind would default to the habitual tendency that something is wrong with me. something is wrong with my style. nothing's wrong with my style. but i do have to work the 'voice' to a certain way so it can be sublime, lyrical, down-to-earth and funny, all of those.

gee, i can already hear the thought shooting straight out of the state of poverty consciousness. this is so difficult.

to be continued.

i listen. i show up.

there i am preparing for a meeting with my editor and i get this recurring inner message. be there earlier. the first couple of times i dismiss it as a tendril of worrying. really. i am making sure i will be on time. at the time when we made the appointment time she made clear that she had a lot of phone calls to make before seeing me. so i am ready to disregard this prompting as just a recurring thought. but it keeps returning. stronger and stronger. not a shouting voice. no snowballing, i mean, i don't see the mind get caught up in reacting thoughts like if i don't go there earlier this and that would happen or not happen. here's what i finally decide. i'll go into her neighborhood half an hour earlier and take a swirl through a favorite grocery store and see how i feel at that point. so i do. i even get a cup of coffee and sip as slow as i can. but this thought is relentless. it steps up intensity. so i think to myself. okay, what the heck, i'll be outside her house a few minutes earlier. check this out. when i am a couple of houses from my editor's i see these two women getting into a car. i immediately recognize the one getting on the passenger's side is my editor. the first thought i have is this. she has forgotten my appointment. i wave and pace up at the same time. it turns out that a friend is taking my editor to the hospital. it's an emergency. the bottom line is this. if i didn't show up a few minutes earlier i would have been left on the doorstep. i would have been waiting and waiting and outraged. instead i show up and offer her healing blessings. thank you, my innermost and highest self.

let the fun begin.

here i am making breakfast and my cell rings upstairs. so for the next while i am bilateral tasking. talking with my editor and keeping an eye on my food. by the way i am having a new thing for the morning meal. an egg in a little rice milk lightly sweetened with jaggery. it fills me up the whole morning in a light way. back to my editor. she has these ideas come to her during the night. and, o, yes, we know those are usually the best stuff. the night energy is without the busy-ness of the day. very little mundane static. flashes and sparks from pure consciousness are less likely to be masked over. not that there aren't creative pulses during the day. it's just that our attention tend to be drawn outward in all kinds of ways. anyway by the end of our conversation i am so ecstatic. i feel like i am at the stage of examining the house of the book. the architecture is there. the bones are good. now i can, with my editor's help, plays with the flow of rooms, think of what furniture to put in which room, how to arrange them, what to do to make sure the purpose of the room is shining through beautifully, and so on and so forth. this is great. let the fun begin.

i am as tough as the challenge.

my editor says, whether you like it or not, this book is a fantasy, sort of. immediately i can feel the tendencies to resist, argue and go on defensive. i can see the mind shouting, no, it's not, the characters from the chinese immortals world are to help and guide the heroine to reconnect with her own immortal world within, it is not fantasy. my editor says, suk wah, that's not what comes across to the reader. words cannot do justice to the cold, acidic disappointment that is fizzling all over me. the mind moans, i work so hard not to write a fantasy, this is terrible. so in the last few days i have been drawing on all the inner spiritual force that i have accumulated. i bring my attention back to the truth, again and again, it is what it is and it is not who you are, it's just a situation to take care of. a tough one. and that means i am tough enough for it. i am as tough as the challenge. not less. not more. just equal.

residual tendency is like bamboo roots

my editor says, i want you to feel really, really free, you don't have to be clear, you will eventually get there. her words shine a light on another of my deep-rooted habitual tendency. fear of getting lost.

really. i thought i already got over that one. so it is very frustrating to realize that there are still remnants hanging around the mind. then a true experience comes to me. when we bought the house there were bamboos in the yard. we knew nothing about bamboos. it looked nice as it was. so we let it be. then, one day, after several years, i was alarmed to notice some bamboo shoots above ground across the pebble path separating the bamboo pad and the flower bed in the back center of the yard. hwubby immediately called his buddy whose wife owned a bamboo nursery. she said, this kind of bamboo have roots that run, literally. we had a barrier put in exactly according to her instructions. when it was all done she said, suk wah, there will still be bamboo shoots appearing above ground in the coming seasons. i said, what can i do to stop it? she said, keep your eyes open, nib them as soon as you catch them. i said, how long will it go on like that? she said, it's going to be a while. well, it's been another several years. i am still spotting bamboo tendrils.

why am i remembering this right now? aaaah. because deeply-rooted habits and patterns are like bamboo roots. i have worked to eliminate the bulk of it but remnants remain. the only way to take care of them is to be vigilant and nib them in the bud as soon as i am aware of them. what does 'nib them in the bud' mean? for me it is returning attention to the sound and movement of the easy breath. that is the sure and guaranteed way for me to reconnect with the inner self which is pure and free, the source of all creative sparks.

learn by doing

in my own way i am freaking out. i ask my editor, am i being too ambitious for the first novel? she says, are you overreaching? i'd say yes if it's a lesser writer, but you are a very, very good writer. the challenge is, you don't know how to build a book. the first couple of drafts, you can just write and write creatively. and you write beautifully and poetically. but in the third, fourth drafts you have to be strategic.

i begin to see that i have to retrain the mind. i can write eating lox and bagels for forty pages but then i lose the story. i say, yeah, now it's about craftsmanship. she says, but then i don't want you to lose the poetry. aaaah. i have to learn how to do both things at the same time, to be strategic and poetic. how? i know only one way. learn by doing. the guru says, meditation shows you how to meditate. it's the same principle in writing a book, or anything in life for that matter. stay in the present. listen. keep at it.

eating and cooking are her meditations

i haven't started transcribing the session with my editor yet because i want to look at it from an open space of quiet, stillness and brightness. or else i'll be looking at the situation through the lens of i'll get lost, i can't hold it all. so, in the last several days, every meditation reveals, or shall i say illumine, one thing my editor says. today is this. suk wah, you write about food so beautifully, can you put it to a bigger use?

as i chew on this nugget i begin to see that this is where craftsmanship comes in. i really thought i had, through painting pictures of the heroine's relationship with food, that food is her spiritual path, eating and cooking are her spiritual practices. as my writing coach...and that happens to be hwubby...says, she is always hungry. hungry is a spot on descriptive for this character. she is consumed by hunger. the way she was raised and conditioned she understood this hunger as insatiable desires for food. it's how she soothes herself and calms the racing mind. so i thought i didn't have to spell it out in so many words to say that eating and cooking are her communions, her meditations. i say, i don't want to be preachy. editor says, you can do it in a sentence, even a phrase, very light-handed, but you must do it or else you lose the reader, nobody can endure pages after pages of eating lox and bagels and have no idea where you are going with it.

i see. i have to connect dots and i have to reduce.

can i hold both in awareness?

my editor says, suk wah, you write so beautifully, i've never seen anyone writing about food as beautiful as you do, the metaphors, the way you write about it, are just...i can't write better than you do. sometimes a writer says to me, i write this way because it's my 'voice.' i would say, you don't have a 'voice.' anyway, my editor goes on to say, you write best when you just write, paragraph after paragraph, but you can't write forty pages of 'eating lox and bagels.' i really can't bring myself to say, one of the reasons i end up having forty pages of 'eating lox and bagels' is this. marquez writes eighty pages about a couple moving around each other in the night. well, all i can say is it is not working out for me. not yet. marquez is marquez. suk wah is suk wah. i have to deal with suk wah's reality as it is. don't compare, suk wah.

so, what's the point i am trying to get at? let me see. o yes. this morning, in meditation, it comes to me that i get lost, in a good way, when i just write and write. but then i lose the narrative, pacing, rhythm. i am very good at writing scenes, dialogues. i love it. i get so much joy doing it. but i want to get the book done in a proper way. so i have to be able to hold the scene and the story together in my awareness while dialogues and details are flowing out from the inner self. my editor says, can your mind work that way? right now, i don't know. not yet.

feeling daunted.

this morning's meditation is sweetness tossed in with spurts of feeling daunted. not heavy spurts. light spurts. i know exactly how it is triggered. from the session with my editor yesterday. we are now dealing with structural issues. roles and purposes of characters, goal of a scene, what need to go into which third of the book...all that good stuff. yet, as she says, you write so beautifully and you are at your best when you just write and write, so we don't want to make you write like you are doing a job, have to follow a checklist of things to put in.

i really don't know how to resolve this right now. i guess i'll just do the only thing i know how. let the feeling be there, and ask, you are a flash of supreme consciousness, what are you showing me? quickly a couple of things come up. inadequacy. smallness. unworthiness. okay, enough for now. and really, they are all variants of forgetting that i hold within me the source of that which creates the entire physical universe that ever existed, is existing and will exist. obviously this truth is still something in the head and mind, not in the heart and blood. what ought i do? please show me, my innermost and highest self.

so happy to be with my spiritual study buddies

great to be back. it's so easy to experience the oneness in all when i chant and meditate with committed yogis, surrounded by gorgeous roses that are from shivaa's gardens. while chanting the vedic hymn i see the sweet and mischievous play of dusk lights on the roses and statues on shivaa's magnificent altar.

this is a fiery hymn. sure enough i sense the presence of a vibrant blaze surging in waves within me. i am not afraid of it. this is beneficial fire. quickly i see what's in the fire. anger. anger triggered in the earlier interaction with my editor. i gaze into it. it becomes clear that the fire is burning away impatience and something else is revealed. what is it? in the meditation immediately following the chant i get it. i am filled with the courage and strength to stand up to the challenge in front of me: i'm walking a path of light, i'm writing the book i want to write and who says it's easy? the only way to do it is to intensify what i'm doing with sustained discipline. have no doubt. i am equal to the challenge.

when i open my eyes coming out of meditation what do i see? a spread of divine food prepared by shivaa. as i grate nutmeg into the soup i have to be careful not to drool into it. it's hard because it's yummy and aromatic beyond measure. the mushroom stock brings everything together into a beautiful, harmonious whole. you can't see the onion paste and minced garlic but you can taste the complexity and purity in the soup. the blended carrot and turnip ground it. the baby lima beans, sweet corn add an extra dimension of richness. add a dollop of sesame pesto...the huge pot of soup is gone in no time with everybody having seconds.

what about the salad? just when we think shivaa's salads couldn't get better she breaks her own glass ceiling. slices of fresh fig, sparkles of pomegranate, roasted peanuts and blood orange bits turn a pile of green leaves into a one-dish sumptuous meal. i don't eat cold and raw but this i can't resist.

dessert is the generous and abundant shares of insights and understandings from our own experiences and reflections. i gobble them all up.

thanks everybody. lucky me indeed.

i am unconventional. period.

basking in the early afternoon sunshine under the clear sky in the lovely hotel courtyard i am so proud of myself and settled in the shade of the inner sky. i have reconstructed the lost recordings. along the way i pick up a few fresh sparks that, in my editor's words, are out-of-the-box, unconventional and beautiful in the way only i can make it work. in fact, on more than one occasions as we go through the pages, she says, i never thought this could work but it works. one time she points to a specific thing and says, i love this, is this a chinese literature thing? or your thing? not missing a beat i say, it's my thing.

i am unconventional. period. hwubby, one of a kind, that's for sure. now that i know it i have to write it and live it.

this morning's meditation is a simple and clear experience of inner quiet and clarity. that's who i am. that's my inner self. that's the source of all fresh things. writer's block? what's that?

i'm in shock. i will remember what i need to remember

on the other end of  the cell, my editor says, suk wah, this is tsunami. i say, it's katrina. i just told her about the recording catastrophe. 3 hours of editing on the pages are gone. she says, suk wah, you sound like you are drugged. i say, no, i'm in shock. and yet, in the midst of the numbing shock, i see myself watching the tendency to blame and get worked up hovering far away in the mental horizon. what's really close to me is the rhythmic movement of the breath. on top of all this i'm sitting in the airport on the way to portland, oregon. i discovered the loss about an hour prior. and hwubby and i are traveling with two full suitcases that hold a mini ayurveda kitchen.

back to the loss. i am amazed to see how quiet and calm the inner world is. only one prompting fills inner being: stay in the present. what does that mean? only one thing. how to take care of the situation as it is. i notice how easy and easeful it is for me to hold on to this guiding instruction. i reach out to my editor. she is so great. as we are going back and forth i see the old tendency to get paralyzed and stuck attempting to come back again and again. right then and there i experience what the sages mean when they say, you have a choice in every instant. i can stay with it as it is or i can give up. which way do i want to go? it is in a moment like this that i truly appreciate the value of all my spiritual practices and study. there is no doubt in my whole being that i refuse to go back to the old way. i'm going down the road of transformation. does getting worked up take me closer to full-realization? no. so easy to choose.

after journaling this i'm going to go through the pages and write down in capital letters all that my editor want me to. in this morning's meditation, in supine position on a hotel bed, i keep receiving this message: i will remember what i need to remember.

challenges are bigger. i am bigger

this morning's meditation brings up the tendency of contracting, daunted by the challenges we are facing, including we may have to sell the house. meanwhile the back and forth with my editor is accelerating. she says, you are a very unconventional writer, most of the time it works, but sometimes it doesn't. i get it. i say, i'm open to using 'conventional' things. i can find ways to make them work for me. so as i journal this i realize i have never been following a conventional path and i have always been great at staying with a challenge and finding unconventional ways that work. with that i feel a sense of centering spreading all over me. a house is a house is a temporary configuration of consciousness. we are going to do what is necessary to see we can keep it but whatever the outcome is it has nothing to do with our inner selves. they are always pure and strong. ahhh. that's it. i am always pure and strong and centered unless i choose to be thrown off balance by some temporary configuration of consciousness. this is great. i see that i am more and more grounded in my own highest and innermost self. the reality that the challenges are getting bigger and bigger is a reflection of my progress on the path towards full-realization.

try whatever. play. see where it takes you.

i'm having an experience of the law of inertia. it takes a lot to get the action started. i need to do rewrites on the manuscript. i see resistance, fear, frustration, i'm way over my head, this is too much to handle, what am i thinking, the world doesn't need another novel, blah blah blah, popping up like whack-a-mole.

i confide in hwubby. he says, god is with you, i love you, you are great, keep breathing deep into your belly, feel your feet planted into the floor, the chair supporting you, then, this is important, set the timer to a session of 20 to 40 min, dive in, then get up for a 5 min pause, go out into the garden every so often.

so here i am in the beginning of the first session, sipping tea (yum cha), asking my inner self, where should i begin? open a new doc? or make a copy of the first chapter and use the 'tracking changes' feature? response comes quickly. try 'tracking changes'. try whatever. play. see where it takes you.

right away i realize i don't trust myself. in the words of my editor, lacking confidence. it's part and parcel of the old tendency of unworthiness, afraid of making mistakes, fear of getting lost.

enough of this. i've gotta move on. get out of my head and into the body. i know what to do. i'm not starting from a blank slate. i've already got plenty of good stuff. i am a wonderful writer. i'm building on what i have. dig in, suk wah.

wish i could stay there forever.

i'm going to meditate without the timer for a while. let me see how it plays out. actually i think today i sit for over one and a half hours. there's no doubt that i go to a deeper and higher place. quiet. tranquil. throbbing with simple joy. and it is within myself. the sensation of returning to the awareness of the body is gradual. i'm just traveling with the steady humming of the moving breath. i feel somewhat sad that i have to leave and i see the thought, i wish i could stay there forever.

i say to hwubby, i've had enough of that inner critic telling me, this is not the right word, this is not enough, this is not good enough. i want to stay open, stay focused, stay present. he says, isn't it part of the process to get the word, sentence, whatever, right? i say, you're right. i agree. except for timing. this is the time to up the forward momentum, sketch contours of scenes. so i tend to get stuck while digging for the right word, metaphor, phrase and so on. at this point it is disruptive. it doesn't serve the purpose towards making the book i want to make.

my editor says, fool around with it. maybe this happens. maybe that happens. so this part here is just playing with it, and see what happens, over and over. believe me, if you do it this way, if you just play, and be in the unknown. let yourself be in the unknown, it will all fall together. it really will.

i don't know. it sounds scary. but it sounds right too.

where structure and spontaneity rise and merge.

sleeping in 2 days in a row.

the mind is in some sort of suspension, in the middle of nowhere. i know why. the mind needs to get out of some old wiring and some new mental circuitry has to be put in place.

my editor says, your mind doesn't work in a cause and effect way, and it has to for the book to work. these heavenly creatures, monkey, pig, phoenix can't just keep popping out of nowhere. and what is quan yin's plan for her? these creatures' appearances must have a purpose in terms of quan yin's plan for suk wah in the book.

as i watch thoughts and reactions out of hurt pride and the tendency to defend ready to pounce i realize the cumulative power of my practices are lifting me out of the old way. i don't think i could have taken  the metaphor my editor lay out if i were not in a relatively quiet space within.

it's from einstein, my editor says as she draws a dog with its nose up against a wall. she keeps adding lines above and below the wall and the dog turns out to be on a step along a flight of stairs. the dog is trying hard to move forward, but the only way forward is up. einstein says, you can't solve a problem on its level, you must go up.

aaah. the mind has to go up. into the quiet space of the inner self, the source of all creativity, where structure and spontaneity rise and merge.

no wonder i feel drawn to sit down to sing aum and hum. seriously i am already seeing sparks popping up here and there. tiny but sparks nonetheless.

ease into it. ease into it. 45m + 22m

ease into it.

that's what comes to me as i glide into waking state at 2.45am. the inaudible sound of the message reaches beyond the physical ears. it reverberates in sync with the rhythmic movement of the chest being moved by the easy and deep breath. its vibration circulate in all corners of my consciousness.

what does it mean? in a way, the answer is in the three words of the message. but, equally important, what is it referring to?

this comes to me with the next inhalation. it is in connection with what my editor refers to as 'the frame of mind' that i need to have. my twin goals are pumping up forward momentum and guiding the characters to blossom. so it's not about how much of the book i can keep but, simply, what works.

how to ease into it? and, really, ease into what?

as i sit nice and tall in my easy lotus posture i watch the veil of restlessness and agitation dissolve into a resounding resonance that goes, in the end it has to come from within.

aaah. i have what it takes to get the job done. i know what to do. this is the opportunity to cultivate trust in the inner self.

the key is to play with it. 45m + 14m

i carry within me everything to work the book into what it ought to be. that is the message that permeates me as i allow the breath to flow a little more easier and deeper. thank you, my inner self.

my editor gives me good guidance and says, and i'm paraphrasing, the key is to play with it, not to be afraid of the unknown, not to get worked up if it doesn't work out the first shot.

i can see it is tough and it's also going to be a lot of fun.

Publish Post

editing my 598 page novel. 43 m + 26 m

today the pervading sense in meditation is what i've been getting on and off in recent days: make space and hold it clear.

i know what it is about. it's the response to my burning question: how should i prepare to start working with my editor on the 598 page manuscript?

what this illuminating insight means to me is that i need to hold the entire narrative in my consciousness while i am working on the sentence at hand.

my editor says, suk wah, you are a brilliant writer, you write all these beautiful scenes, turn of phrase and the way you write about food is poetic, but nobody is going to read about eating lox and bagel for 30 pages, you've got to have pacing.

and detachment too. whatever is not necessary has to go. whatever is holding up the forward momentum has to go. whatever the american mind doesn't get, because i write from a chinese mind, has to change.

all this comes down to one thing. i have to be able to see and hear the narrative landscape as i navigate through the twists and turns.

can i do that? yes, but not without meditation. the only way i know how to keep the inner world clear and quiet is meditating everyday. the only way i know how to sustain focus is returning, again and again, to the easy and long breath.

hwubby says, and your chai too. okay, okay, i do have my own addiction. what to do?!:)

meditating on chinese mind, american mind, calling mother. 38 m + 6 m

it's been a while since the residuals of guilt, suspicion, distrust, regrets appear in the mind. and here i am, while reveling in the nourishing sound of aum sweetly and kindly reverberating in the steady and easy breath that is irrigating everywhere in the strong and upright meditation posture, i watch these old habitual tendencies misting my consciousness.