Writing as a Meditation and Spiritual Practice

     I am reading an interesting article by Donald Graves called “What I Learned From Teachers of Writing”. I like Graves’s observations, because he is someone who has researched the effects of teaching writing on children, as well as the relationships between reading and writing. Perhaps not surprisingly, Graves observes that children “want to write…if we let them” (p.32), citing heavy curriculum demands as one reason why children don’t find the time to write. Not only this, but Graves also suggests that children learn through writing, and even evolve the notion of ‘point of view’ particularly in the process of sharing writing. What I gather from Graves is that writing is a deeply social process, in that it first gets children to articulate their own perspective, after which there is room to compare or articulate other perspectives around the personal narrative itself.

     Can one even say that writing is a moral and spiritual process? I guess it can be, depending on how it really goes for students, as well as how writing is taught. I recall that especially when I was a teenager, much of my writing was ‘personal’ to say the least, and contained strong opinions. I found that, at times, the more I wrote, the more deeply I felt my own position as a writer. In my second year of university, I had a philosophy professor who suggested to the class not to present a personal argument at all, but to expound on other thinkers and let their views speak for themselves. At the time, I was worried about this approach, because I had felt that it would be taking too much from other thinkers’ ideas rather than coming up with my own ‘original’ thought. But I think the professor’s point was to deepen how a writer sees other perspectives. This professor also pointed out the valuable suggestion that one should look deeply at another thinker’s views, rather than rejecting them outright or assuming that the other is wrong. The assumption that there is something deeply important and nurturing about another writer or perspective actually seems to change the experience of the discovery process, and it might even lead to a different style of writing altogether, which delicately explores contours rather than suggesting dichotomies.

 

      There must be ways to encourage students to adopt multiple points of view when writing. But at the same time, Graves is really emphasizing on how much students benefit from writing personal narratives. It seems that the best way for young people to write is to write what they know. Teachers, in this vein, would attempt to encourage children to write about the everyday things I their lives, rather than venturing too far off into the worlds of television, drama, video games, etc. This is where a tricky balance starts to appear. Too much emphasis on ‘others’ perspectives or the ‘creations of others’ can sometimes lead to only summarizing what others have said, in fear that too much creativity in interpretation might be ‘off the mark’ of what the other really meant. This approach overlooks the reality that all reading is an interpretation made by a specific person in a very unique life-world. In addition, I am afraid that an overemphasis on ‘other perspectives’ can lead to passivity and failure to develop ways to reflect on how it relates to one’s own situation in this current moment. On the other hand, I can see where over-emphasizing self-reflection or personal narrative might over-privilege the notion of the autonomous writer. And this can lead to attachment to ‘my’ perspective, as opposed to ‘theirs’—when indeed, subjects are always shifting in terms of what they know and experience.

 I think that one way to understand the process of writing is: if one writes enough, one can begin to see that one’s perspectives are bound to change, even if the change is only a change in mood or energy, or personal resources, etc. In that way, one might start to attune to the fact that there are no solid ‘subjects’ that stay the same at all times. People change at every second of life, and daily (or regular) writing might just start to capture glimpses of that darting and fleeting unknown, where there is no permanence or fixedness anywhere. One writes in order to write ‘out of and beyond’ the character one thinks one is. But it’s tricky to know how writers shift from the personal opinion to the view that perspectives are shaped by many invisible conditions. It takes wisdom or some kind of understanding to see that what I write now is just the result of prior conditioning, and that conditioning is bound to change from one instance to the next. Writing, like breathing or chanting, can become a meditation on shifting selves and impermanence. In that way, writing can tap into principles of how the universe functions.

Graves, Donald (2004), "What I Have Learned from Teachers of Writing" Language Arts Volume 82 No 2.