The point of writing is not the writing. It is the contemplation coached within. It is the hint of discovering 'truth,' that which is ultimately behind existence and day-to-day reality. Writing is not a profession. That would be a trap. Buddhism is the profession.

My statue of Buddha, I thought he was just sort of resting his right hand on his knee, his left hand pointing upward, holding something that looks like a seven-tiered pine cone. But the right hand, facing inward, is the Buddha's pose of Calling the Earth to Witness. Mara is tempting him as Buddha sits under the tree, telling Buddha that he has no right to even the ground he is meditating upon. Buddha calls upon the Earth Goddess for help, and She knows that Buddha has been through millions of incarnations, that he has come out of sympathy to every living creature to show them all the way to Enlightenment. And so Mara is defeated, and Buddha attains Nirvana.

A writer goes in places where neither he nor anyone else is particularly enlightened. Only the wish to save is there with him, some vague but persistent and somehow meaningful sense of good. It's like Jesus going amongst publicans and sinners. It's like going to tend bar or anywhere people are significantly blinded by the illusory, even when you are not at all immune to these temptations yourself.

Hopefully one day you begin to put away childish things. You remember maybe the vastness of previous incarnations, all with the same tone, wanting to be like Buddha.

The young people next door are having a loud party. To them the fun they're having sounds to another like a nervous breakdown nightmare. But you say to yourself, I was once like that, I participated in the very same thing.