Doodles of Inspiration:Lynette Genju Monteiro

Lynette Genju Monteiro blogs at 108zenbooks and Ottawa Mindfulness Clinic's Blog. Some of the things that drew me to Lynette and her writings are her knowledge in the area of Buddhist Psychology , the kindness in her writing, her Shodo strokes, her love for her garden and finally her commitment to practice. She is the co-founder of the Ottawa Mindfulness Center. Lynette is trained in Buddhist Chaplaincy at the Upaya Institue and Zen Center in Santa Fe NM. She is also trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Cognitive Processing Therapy. I am so grateful for her to contribute to this series. Thank you Genju!


1. Your favorite doodle of all time:

Its hard to pick one! [There are three doodles throughout this post]

 

2. How do you stay creative and mindful in your day-to-day life?

When I was in a deep depression, I tried a practice taught by Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh.  It is a little gatha or verse recited upon waking up each morning.

Waking up, I smile.
Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
May I meet each one and everyone with the eyes of compassion.

For the first few months, I just recited them and became discouraged because it didn't seem to be working.Then I realized I actually had to practice what I was reciting.  I had to smile.  It felt really silly and stupid but I made the commitment to do it because I was really so desperate to get better.  The early attempts at smiling were quite awful (I checked in a mirror).  Then over time, I felt this tiny smile begin in my chest as I came to consciousness each morning.  Now, I try to hold that sensation in my heart as I go through the day.  When I meet the difficult and unwanted feelings in a day, I remind myself that there is this space in my heart I can come into just for a moment, just for that moment when things seem beyond my understanding.

Creativity arises from that respect for my capacity.  I also practice writing everyday.  Not journalling or anything with an intent to produce.  Simply writing.  I aim to have a blog post each day.  Although I actually write it all in one afternoon, I revisit each post the day before and consider if I still feel good about what I wrote.  "Good" is in the sense of the question: Have I been true to my understanding of the dharma?  Creativity is a fickle guest.  It needs to be entertained by visible effort or it leaves as quickly as it shows up.

3.Your favorite quote

Oh gosh... I love Dag Hammarskjold.

Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and give back. It must be held out empty—for the past must only be reflected in its polish, its shape, its capacity.Dag Hammarskjold

I also love Nellie McClung, a Canadian pioneer feminist politician - though I doubt she would have liked to be called a feminist.


Never apologize.
Never retract.
Never explain.
Get the job done and let them howl.

4.How do you deal with overwhelming emotions (intense joy, sorrow, anger, indignation, etc)?

I try to treat them like guests.  They have arrived and taken a seat at the hearth.  I can hear what they have to say but I don't have to entertain them beyond my resources to house them.  Every emotional state is a compilation of sensations; I meet them at that level.  Drop into practice.  Bear witness to them.  Sit with the unknowing aspects of their presence; this is the toughest because their message seems to predict very real consequences of failure and shame.  This is the "not knowing" of practice.  Then, if I can be patient, the appropriate action emerges.  A process like this can take a split second or days.  That's also tough.  I'm by nature impatient and like high-tempo solutions to what seems a high-tempo demand.  It's what I call "working on progress."

5.Tips for readers to stay creative and mindful in the face of stress on one hand and boredom on the other

Strangely, "stress" is our way of trying to be creative.  In that sense, we're already there.  We lose that connection with being creative when we try to make something else happen.  "Boredom" is the assumption that there is something better that's supposed to happen.  It's a belief that I'm meant to be doing something more important than what is happening right now.  

I get a bit tentative about the idea of "being creative" because it runs us past the reality that every moment is ordinary and extraordinary.  My work, my practice is to step into each moment holding both.  When I see the ordinary in the extraordinary, I can let go of each experience and allow the next to emerge.  It's a powerful feeling to know that I don't have to do anything special to create that moment.  It will simply present itself again and again, completely available to me.  When I can see the extraordinary in the ordinary, I can touch that wonder that I am here at all!  

If we look at our lives as an intricate, interconnected web of self, others, and a continuum of past, present and future, it is amazing that each of us is right here, just as we are, given all the possible outcomes of a myriad interactions.  We could not be more special if we had planned it.  

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