Meditating, it makes sense, the morning writing session, the attempt to find bits and pieces of what the subtle mind is thinking.  Subtle mind, in the Buddhist sense.  Seat of wisdom, compassion, non-judgment,  concerned with the welfare of all sentient beings, aware of the unsatisfactory nature of the life unenlightened and its constant pursuits…

I should have figured that out years ago, how, for instance, it ties in to Chekhov's accomplishment of the sweet sad not un-beautiful complexities of life (as if he were an early physicist of laws of conservation and equality in the energy of personal lives.)

That's the accomplishment of a writer, and it, of course, includes the mysteries of his own freedom from the standard accomplishments of life-nailed-down, the job, the family-man life, the house, the investments…  Unconsciously he/she makes no such strivings, as if to see through them, sensing a greater good beyond it all, one that references the greater good of the monk, a Dalai Lama…  Few other accomplishments, even, happily, as a writer.  (No crime-ridden best-seller page turner a la whomever, not naming those I haven't read.)  Instead, the maintaining of ambiguity and the void behind all reality.

It makes one happy to read, via New York Times, and NPR, the search for the grave, the bones, of Cervantes.  His beautiful penniless last wish:  to be buried in the refuge of the Sisters who were kind enough to save him when he was a hostage, the Dominican Nuns without Footwear, something like that (Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians.)  Indeed, he created, if you think about it, a great portrait of humanity, the imbalanced (or balanced) play between the gross mind (of worldly achievement and conventional viewpoints) and that of the subtle mind (of beauty and noble wisdom--even as it is in a way, in Cervantes' presentation, somewhat laughable.)  You can't help but see that crystalizing inner force of a person's subtle inner life, portrayed in that odd way of being, of taking it upon one's own self, to be, something fine (though let's not get carried away--he still had to sell books, thus the humor of the situation of Don Quixote, not that it helped poor old Cervantes out much financially.)  Yes, as he was dying, of "the dropsy," (something unpleasant to do with bodily fluids) he wished to remember those selfless subtle nuns who hide away saying Mass and praying all day quite apart from the rest of the day to day practical cement-mixing real-estate grabbing world, as if in a large way he was aligned with them, and would find with them, as all along, a final resting place, a home.  Perhaps being wounded as he was, now the story is less the Turkish pirate axe and more the gunshot, to the left hand and chest, helped him attain a less deluded life.  Made funnier, richer, by the fact of his having written a book about a fellow who in ripe old age has his head go soft from reading too much of El Cid and tales other noble and storied knights (which, of course, in real actual life, he shall never be.)  Oh, the beautiful old straight face, Spanish and proper, of Miguel.

Easy to get carried away with.

If you take away the gross mind, and let the subtle mind meditate and do its work, from within, as if alighting some DNA-like spiritual structure within, the totality of being crystalizes, forms, becomes afresh something prone to do righteous and unselfish things.  And if anything can enable or help along a gross and humble being, as if to help find in the confusion of the present moment, a good way to be, well, maybe in the long run, that's a good thing.

And so, the practice becomes more and more about the practice of mediation, the great initial work one has to do before doing anything else...