One of the tools that has been supporting me most as my creativity and desire to write waxes and wanes amidst the current global crisis is a Buddhist mindfulness practice called tonglen.
Tonglen is something you can do on the spot, in the moment or as a longer, more intentional form of meditation. It’s so great because it’s there for you whenever you need it.
It’s a counter-intuitive process where you actually invite and breathe in all the bad stuff you or others are feeling—you really take it in. But that’s just the first step. Once you breathe in this negative, gnarly stuff, you breathe out something wonderful: relief, security, health, freshness.
What this does is both offer you some release of inner tension and emotional turmoil while reminding you that you're not alone. That writers all over the planet are feeling just as muddled as you. And this realization can, eventually, ease you out of that moment or even your season of creative doldrums.
In practice, it looks something like this:
You’re sitting at your desk or in your kitchen or your cramped apartment filled to bursting with your family, sheltering in place or trying to stay alive out there in the wild. You’re going a bit nuts. A feeling of despair spreads over you. You’ll never have creative flow again. You’ll never be published now that the economy has tanked. Everyone else is being productive while you’re sitting here in creative sludge.
Step One
As soon as you are mindful of this feeling, take a pause. Think about all the other writers around the world who almost certainly are feeling the same way you are right now. Thousands, millions, of writers who are desperate and scared and haven’t written in months and they are tearing their hair out and dying to write, but more afraid of dying from COVID-19.
Step Two
As crazy as it sounds, breathe all of that in. Your suffering and that of all the writers who feel just this way. You’re not alone! This suffering that feels so big and heavy, you can handle it because all these writers around the world are carrying this same suffering with you. So you do your part, you shoulder this collective burden alongside all your fellow writers and you breathe in the tightness in your chest and the coldness in your belly and the panic crawling up your throat. You invite it in and you let it fill you.
Step Three: (This is the yummy part)
When you’re full to bursting: plot twist! You breathe out what you wish for yourself and all these writers. On a long, delicious exhale, you breathe out flow, freshness, enchantment, lightness, health, book deals. You send this out to yourself and all these writers, your wishes on a breath of goodwill. GOOD particles, far enough away that they’re safe for all the writers everywhere to breathe in.
Step Four
You get back on with your life. Maybe you write that day. Maybe you don’t. Maybe the panic returns later (okay, so now you do tonglen again - this isn’t a one and done).
The thing about tonglen I love is that it reminds me that whatever I’m feeling, no matter how heavy it is, I’m not the only person feeling this way.
So often we get to thinking our pain is singular. That no one else feels as we do. We feel ashamed of our pain or confused by it. We don’t know how to work with it, so it just gets bigger and bigger.
This is what leads to seasons of feeling creatively stuck. And that sense of being trapped between wanting to write and actually writing lingers—we can’t seem to find our way out—because we don’t have the tools to get free.
Tonglen is a tool to get free when you’re creatively stuck and your flow is a trickle at best, a dry well at worse.
“Meditation and tonglen are well-tested methods for training in adaptability.”
The more you engage in practices like tonglen, the better able you are to go with the flow. To adapt to whatever challenging circumstances are keeping you from your ideal writing life, whether those circumstances are internal (Inner Critic and such) or external (pandemics, divorce, day job woes).
As writers, being fleet of foot is a make-or-break skill. When we get good at rolling with the punches—and there are many in the writing life—we’re better able to stay on our feet the next time a rejection or dry spell or terrible review comes in.
I don’t believe that all the writers in the world necessarily feel my goodwill as I’m doing tonglen. But I believe many of them feel after I do this practice. Case in point: you feel it now, as you’re reading this post, right? And you’ll be inspired if I can get through my own stuckness and back to the page during dry seasons to do some tonglen on your own too. Hey, you’ll take anything. And then you’ll get unstuck or less stuck, and this will inspire another writer and so on and so forth to get unstuck too. Maybe with tonglen or with some other tool.
But how does this practice get us unstuck? How can breathing in and out actually shift us out of creative dry spots?
We get unstuck because tonglen invites us to become a friend to what’s troubling us. To curiously and compassionately engage with it, instead of pushing it away, or self-medicating. With the latter, you know that stuff just rears its ugly head later. Maybe as a massive creative disappointment or an inability to stay aligned with your dreams. Resentment, fear, the Inner Critic having a heyday. With tonglen, we deal with what we’re feeling head on, but in a way that’s nourishing and gentle. It’s not time consuming or overwhelming as a practice. We don’t need to “learn” or “win” a new thing. It’s free. It’s as easy as, well, breathing.
The most beautiful part of tonglen, though, is that it reminds us that we are not alone. No matter how big your pain is, knowing you’re not the only person experiencing it is immeasurably comforting. And that comfort, it loosens some of those bands of panic and fear and self-doubt that are wrapped so tightly around us. We can breathe a bit easier. Sitting down to the page is a little less difficult. We take our fear less seriously. Silly fear. Tricks are for kids.
Eventually, we write.
Our collective suffering as writers can also be our collective liberation.
“Rather than beating ourselves up, we can use our personal stuckness as a stepping stone to understanding what people are up against all over the world.”
Watch me blow your mind: Isn’t that what our job is as writers? To be able to understand what people are up against and then write about it?
This means that tonglen doesn’t just help you get to the page—it helps you while you’re on it. It works the writing muscles you need to tell emotionally resonant stories.
Tonglen As Sanctuary
I always encourage the writers I work with to find ways for their writing to be the harbor, not the storm.
If you’re having trouble getting to the page right now, tonglen can be that harbor where you can safely dock your creativity until you’re ready to take it out on the open seas.
When feelings of panic, despair, overwhelm, etc. arise within you (whether you're writing or not), you're invited to breathe it all in. You breathe it in for you, for the writer in Japan and in Italy and in Russia and Kenya and Mexico and Australia. All writers everywhere. All the writers who are feeling exactly as you are. Because they are.
Then, you breathe out RELIEF. Freshness. Flow. Sanctuary. Not just for you, but for ALL writers who are in your same boat.
Sounds great, right?
There’s more where that came from:
To go deeper into this practice, you can read this short article by the queen of tonglen, Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön. She writes wonderfully about tonglen, so if this practice really resonates with you, I highly recommend getting her book When Things Fall Apart. It’s a must-have for all writers, anyway.
A similar practice and one more widely known is that of lovingkindness, or mētta. I created a Lovingkindness For Writers meditation in Insight Timer that you can check out too, if that’s of use.
Wherever you are right now, I’m breathing out sanctuary, flow, enchantment, rest, and love.
For all of us.
