the joys and pains of writing and editing a novel

so I somehow managed, in the last 8 years or so, to write a rough draft of over 150K words, over 500 pp on word depending on how you slice it. big.

anyway, I have revised certain parts of it, like the first 2 or 3 hundred pages, several times. and I just started what I thought was going to be the last revision, I hoped, and got through 90 pp making significant changes. so...just realized the other day some basic changes I needed to make, starting again from the beginning. feeling that it is an endless, neverending process. endless and neverending.

the truth is that most of the changes I've made are still there so none of my ongoing efforts have been wasted. It is a better novel than it was a few months or years ago. and as I go through the first hundred pages I am establishing a baseline and better understanding for the characters and story then existed before.

writing a revising a novel is easy, just stick your hand in the fire. ow that hurts! good, now do it again. repeat.

meat puppets song

saw them last saturday. this song, like a couple others, I first heard covered by Nirvana on their great unplugged recording:

Oh me

If I had to lose a mile
If I had to touch feelings
I would lose my soul
The way I do

I don't have to think
I only have to do it
The results are always perfect
And that's old news

Would you like to hear my voice
Sprinkled with emotion
Invented at your birth?

I cannot see the end of me
My whole expanse I cannot see
I formulate infinity
Stored deep inside me

If I had to lose a mile
If I had to touch feelings
I would lose my soul
The way I do

I don't have to think
I only have to do it
The results are always perfect
And that's old news

Would you like to hear my voice
Sprinkled with emotion
Invented at your birth?

I can't see the end of me
My whole expanse I cannot see

I formulate infinity
I store it deep inside of me

books I am reading right now

No Time to Lose, Pema Chodron, her commentary on the Way of the Bodhisattva. I am well into this and it is very good. Lots to think about and practice, especially mindfulness, which PC really inspires me toward.

Karma-Yoga and Bhakti-Yoga by Swami Vivekenanda. Very interesting discourse on Bhakti which ties in with my novel and the next book....

Miracle of Life, stories about Neem Karoli Baba, compiled by Ram Dass. Stories about the guru of Ram Dass, who he describes in Be Here Now, which I actually read as a kid, maybe a teenager. Bhakti path. Good so far. Having met and had darshan with a real guru for the first time recently, Amma, her in NorCal, I am curious about gurus especially one like NKB who I "met" early in my life. I don't know if he is my guru or not but perhaps I will figure that out.

The image is of Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, originally called Avalokitesvara in Buddhist texts like the Heart Sutra. She was originally described as male and then became male and/or female.

updating my website

Web design itself is pretty difficult and hard to do well, so when I finally decided to update my website in style and content I chose to try Drupal again. It's kindof overkill maybe for a small site but it beats the headaches of trying to format using html or dreamweaver. It allows me to create content and keep things simple. I have a lot of respect for web designers and I know they know that few appreciate how tough their job is. This could help me if I end up managing web projects.

So check out my newly evolving website at www.charleskeatts.com and let me know what you think, how you think it could be better, and what works and doesn't work. Thanks!

Vipassana, "diluted" Buddhism and my teachers

One day many years ago, after I had been studying Eastern religions for many years, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and some other possible permutations, I had a friend at the time tell me that he had gone on a Vipassana retreat. He had done a week or ten day silent meditation retreat in what I assumed was a type of Buddhism similar to the Soto Zen I had studied. Oh no, he said, maniacally, this type of Buddhism was the only real, true Buddhism, what the Buddha really taught. This type of dogma always made me skeptical and he said it with such certainty that I was especially dubious.

That was about ten years ago and I have met many practitioners of Vipassana, or Insight meditation, over the years, and have attended a class and studied books such as "What the Buddha Taught" based on a recommendation from my Soto Zen Teacher, Tim McCarthy. I have not heard many claims over the years regarding purity or superiority like my crazy friend, obviously a "young" student of the practice. I have noticed what might be arrogance or a lack of beginners mind in some, and in myself, over the years, but I see that as part of the process and nothing lethal. I am a big fan of Zen myself and love the Blue Cliff Record and other teachings, as well as the words of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, who founded the San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara, and who worked with Kobin Chino Otokawa, Roshi who taught my teacher.

Recently the issue of Insight Meditation and other forms of Buddhism came up at my girlfriends' house and the discussion apparently got pretty heated. I was not there, thankfully, but heard enough to think of a way to poke fun at statement like "other forms of Buddhism are watered-down Vipassana". I don't know who told my friend Alan that, if anyone, but if that's true isn't Vipassana a diluted form or branch of Hinduism? I don't think so obviously but it's fun to imagine the reactions.

I prefer to think of these religions and philosophies evolving over time as they travel through different cultures. Maybe not better, or worse, but different. I don't know if it is necessary to complicate it much more than that. Or not at all. Suzuki Roshi talked about how we are just Buddhists, and Kobun says some interesting things here.