Cyndi Lee on Applying Buddhist Wisdom to Writing

Read Cyndi's new essay "Beautifully Ordinary" about how her spiritual practice influences her writing practice.

I first met

Cyndi Lee

in the basement of World Gym in the East Village back in the eighties. She was teaching a yoga class that I had inexplicably (I did not like yoga) signed up for and always ended it with what I later learned was The Four Immeasurables.

May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all beings never be parted from freedom's true joy.
May all beings dwell in equanimity, free from attachment and aversion.

I was so moved by these words, I cornered Cyndi in the locker room one day to ask her more about them. She invited me to hear Gehlek Rimpoche, her lama, speak at The Open Center. I went. And my life was forever changed.

Cyndi went on to open the legendary OM Yoga Center in New York City (students included Nicole Kidman, Robert Downey, Jr., Parker Posey and sooo many more) and quickly became one of the most influential yoga and meditation teachers in America. She’s written five books including The New York Times critically acclaimed May I Be Happy: A Memoir of Love, Yoga, and Changing My Mind and the classic yoga text: Yoga Body Buddha Mind.

In 2023, Cyndi was one of twenty presenters invited to give a dharma talk at the Dalai Lama Global Vision Summit. She’s lead meditation teacher trainings around the world and her work has been integrated into the NYPD, NYFD, and the NY DOE, as well as hospitals, parole work, and college counseling centers. She’s a regular columnist for Lion’s Roar, Real Simple, Yoga Journal and Yoga International. In 2018 she was ordained as a Buddhist Chaplain, under the guidance of Roshi Joan Halifax. On top of all that, she writes the beautiful newsletter

DRIP, DRIP, DRIP

. You can see why I asked Cyndi to write an essay about how her spiritual practice impacts her writing practice!

I’m forever grateful to Cyndi for bringing Gehlek Rimpoche into my life. If you’re interested in learning more about Rimpoche, you might enjoy this profile I wrote about him for Tricycle.

Cyndi currently lives in Santa Fe with her husband, Brad, and their dog, Bailey.

I think you’re going to love this essay! Enjoy!

xJane

Beautifully Ordinary

When Jane invited me to write an essay about how my spiritual practice influences my writing practice, I had to stop and think. The word practice was not one I had associated with my writing. As a decades-long Buddhist, I am programmed that practice refers to meditation and yoga. These are my sadanas, my training commitments that have become not just a part of my life, but the filter through which I interact with the world.

What makes something a practice? Meditation can be defined as a practice because it has structure, boundary, purpose and requires commitment. Without that, meditation is just sitting quietly and that’s nice, but you won’t get anywhere. Same with writing.

Four or five times a week, every week of the month, I open up my computer and write. Like all my other practices, it is about getting to know myself. In fact, the word for practice in Tibetan is Gom, which translates as “a process of familiarization.” In both meditation and writing, I am getting more in touch with myself, my hopes and fears, my habits, and my basic goodness.

Recently, one of my private meditation students asked me, “What do you feel like when you meditate?” Right away I said, “Ordinary. Beautifully ordinary.”

I don’t expect to have a peak experience or any special kind of high when I meditate. I don’t consider it a failed meditation if my mind is busy and dense and I don’t consider it a success if my mind is spacious. I just do the work, the practice. I sit down as I am and it is a relief to be ordinary and honest.

Maybe this is the first way that my spiritual practice has influenced my writing. The stability and clarity I’ve gained from meditation practice supports my writing practice. So does my habit of not expecting a certain result from sitting meditation. I usually start with an idea but I am also curious to see what comes out on the page. Not every day is going to be great or even interesting.

I don’t meditate at the same time every day but I always meditate in the same room on the same cushion. It’s nothing fancy but over time, that spot has become imbued with a certain welcoming energy and that makes it easier to sit down and begin. Meditation practice is like stepping back into a river of awareness that was there all the time, and writing feels like this, too.

Despite all this, another thing that is similar about my two practices is that I drag my feet getting to the cushion or computer.

Fortunately I studied for 35 years with Gelek Rimpoche, a high lama from Tibet, who lived in the US for decades and figured out how to impart the great teachings of the Buddhadharma in ways that related to our every day lives.

Rimpoche and Cyndi

Here is some Buddhist wisdom that I learned from him - directions for how to practice dharma - that help me with my practice of writing.

1. Take your resistance by the hand and gently, but firmly, bring it onto the mat with you.

The swamis of Hindu yoga tradition wear saffron robes, the bright color symbolizing their burning passion for practice. When I was coming up as a young yogini, I was taught that a real yogi wakes up in the morning and runs to their mat, full of heat and ardor for their practice.

I used to feel like a bad yogi or maybe a fake yogi because when I wake up in the morning I crave coffee, not yoga. And as the day goes on, I have to give myself pep talks about how glad I will be that I did my yoga practice when what I really wanted to do was anything and everything else.

When I finally make it to the mat, usually around 5 pm, it is not with a heart full of joyful dedication, but a rather stolid sense of duty. That kind of heavy energy is called resistance and I know it well.

The dharma instruction to invite that feeling to come along with you is so brilliant. I can’t wait for the mood to hit. I bring my whole self with me onto the mat. I bring my boredom, sluggishness, bad mood - all of it.

This works for me because I know that after about five deep breaths, in and out, I will feel differently. The resistance will be forgotten. I will have arrived.

This approach works for me with writing, too. Instead of a yoga mat, I have a favorite coffee shop. Resistance is strongest when I am trying to start a new piece, so the first thing I do is write a title. In big font. Then I write the first things that come up. It doesn’t matter if it is good or bad. It’s a start and the momentum of that is stronger than the resistance.

2. Quit while you are still hungry.

Did you ever eat way too much of something and then you never ate it again for the rest of your life? When I was 12, my dad and I gorged on a whole box of maple bars and I haven’t had one since.

In a similar way, Rimpoche wanted to make sure that his students didn’t sabotage their practice by overindulging. So he cautioned against this by emphasizing the fact that enlightenment doesn’t happen overnight. Even burning enthusiasm needs to be doled out in bite-sized portions.

Meditation is like anything else that requires stamina. After growing my meditation sessions from 25 - 60 minutes, I began attending deep, silent retreats. Sitting on my cushion for 18 hours a day offered me many life-enhancing insights but it doesn’t work as a daily diet.

Now I know I have the capacity to meditate for long periods but on a regular basis it is more realistic to sit for 10-25 minute sessions. And I don’t even do that every day. As long as I practice often enough to maintain a connection to that river of awareness, it’s fine.

I decide on a period of time for meditating and, no matter what, I stop at that time. I can come back tomorrow. And if I quit while I am still hungry, I won’t feel as much resistance.

Quitting while you are still hungry does not mean you are putting yourself on a diet. Every day you get to decide what length of time or how much effort will make you feel over-stretched or nicely satisfied, eager to pick it up again tomorrow.

My years of mindfulness meditation help me figure this out. Mindfulness means “placing the mind” and mindfulness meditation means “consciously placing the mind.” When I am writing I am consciously placing my mind on the words and images that I am using to convey an idea or a story.

Just as in formal meditation practice, my mind will float away. But unlike formal meditation practice, when I realize that my mind has been floating I don’t bring my mind back to the feeling of my breath.

Instead I touch into what I was thinking about because it is usually moving the story forward. Then, just like pulling on a rope to haul a drifting dingy back to the dock, I pull my attention back to the words on the page.

A floating mind is part of meditation and, as all writers know, it is an essential part of the writing process, too.

But when I try to write for too long, my mind will float and not come back.

If I’m full, I will find that I am just rewriting the same sentence over and over. This kind of spinning can often trip over into negative self-talk and when I notice that, I know I need to take a break.

Weeks after I had turned in the manuscript for my first book, Yoga Body, Buddha Mind, my editor told me I needed to write one more last chapter. My heart sunk because, well, I didn’t have another chapter to write. I was written out. I had said what I had to say. But no matter, she said the book needed another chapter and she needed it in a week’s time.

I was already at the beach with a few friends. While I reluctantly sat down at my desk, they were sleeping in, bike riding to the beach during the day and lounging by the pool drinking Seabreezes in the evening. I remember staring into space trying to think of something to write, feeling like I was chained to my desk with a sweaty forehead.

This was before I had begun attending those 18-hour meditation retreats. Otherwise, I might have been able to manage better. In the 13th century, Zen master Dogen began organizing long retreats into alternating periods of sitting (25 minutes) and walking (10 minutes) meditation.

Now I know that if I am up against a deadline and I can’t just quit when I am still hungry, I do the same thing we do in deep retreats. I walk around the block and pay attention to what I see and feel. In this way, my mind gets ventilated, my stuck energy is released and my appetite for writing returns.

Pushing hard to finish my book felt like I was stretching my brain far beyond its capacity. Turns out it wasn’t and I got the book done on time. But just like overdoing it at the gym, I felt wrung out. Almost like straining your calves in spin class, I didn’t want to exercise my writing muscles for a time long afterwards.

3. Drip, drip, drip, the bucket fills.

This advice builds on the first two. Get yourself to the cushion no matter what. Don’t stay too long. Every little bit adds up.

Rimpoche frequently dispensed this pithy little morsel, which is now implanted in me. At different times it sounded like he was saying:

Don’t be aggressive

Don’t be greedy

Be patient

Be consistent

Never ever give up

But…if you do lapse, you can always take a fresh start.

Giving up has been tempting at times, but somehow Rimpoche installed in me a kind of faith in the practice; an assurance that if I stick with it something worthwhile will happen. It’s not so easy to say what that something is. We can go big and think about total liberation from suffering. Or we can go more immediate - being kinder to oneself and others. Less frazzled, more patient, less craving, more contentment.

At first I didn’t necessarily buy into these end results because I didn’t even recognize my dis-ease, impatience, underlying anxiety. I was painfully self-critical and unaware of that, too. But I trusted Rimpoche, and the people around him seemed kind and good. So I thought, “I’ll have what they’re having.”

The Sanskrit word for this is Saddha, which means faith, trust or confidence. Confidence starts with your teacher, then it grows as you experience results from your practice.

Over time, I began to recognize interactions where I was able to create a gap between stimuli and a response that I chose, rather than an unconscious reaction. That was my practice showing up in real life.

The sadhanas - the practices that help us develop saddha - have gently and gradually worked on me. Old habitual patterns of self-judgement, anger and wanting have been eroded, making way for new neural pathways of mindfulness, compassion, clarity.

This kind of patience is built on curiosity and that been so helpful for my writing practice, especially with my Substack.

I have been writing newsletters to my yoga and meditation students for many years. But I only did it when the mood struck or if I had a retreat to promote. Most of the time it was fun to write and if it wasn’t fun, I didn’t do it. But committing to a weekly Substack six months ago changed all that.

Fortunately, my work ethic supports this kind of commitment, but I still felt daunted by having to get a new idea every week and write about it in a way that connected to thousands of people who may or may not already be my loyal students.

One time a meditation student who felt pressured to meet her sadhana requirements, asked her guru, the great meditation master, Chogyam Trungpa, “How can I find the time to meditate?” With his Oxford accent he stated the obvious, “It’s all about scheduling, my dear.”

Over the last several months I have created a loose schedule for writing based on the notion of drip, drip, drip. I know that my current capacity for writing is no more than 2 hours and so I enter 3-4 sessions into my weekly calendar. Each writing sessions produces a drip and I don’t expect more.

This system works for me and I have come to trust it. Which really means that I trust myself, I have confidence that I will keep my commitment and that removes a lot of anxiety and self-doubt. Drip, drip, drip, the bucket fills and the Substack goes out.

Writing, like meditation, happens breath by breath, moment by moment, drip by drip. Jane, who also studied with Gelek Rimpoche, was right. I do have a writing practice, after all.

Thank you for being here, dear Beyonders! ❤️ Your comments mean so much to me. I read each and every one.