KEEP LOOKING

I was challenged by a couple of readers on my entry, "Goodbye, Writer," (see December 23, and comments) as to the authenticity of my resolve to say goodbye to that identity in which I have so much invested, and for so long; and to be content to go ahead and write without all the attendant attachments--to readership, return, admiration, and all other forms of gratification. So I began to watch, and dig a little deeper than I might have done without the challenges. They're good to have.

So I need to ask myself, first, whether there's not an element of spite in my declaration. Perhaps spite is too strong a word for that feeling, long familiar to me and to many artists and writers that I know, that comes with the judgment that others have done far better than me (critically, financially, you name the ways) and far less deservingly. I have often mentioned, in these pages, that feeling of nausea on entering a bookstore and finding piles of books by... John Grisham! Dan Brown! Let alone Sarah Palin (!) and all those who, in my judgment, trade on their celebrity to publish books that sell a million copies...

The bottom line to that feeling is: what's the point? Might as well give up. And if that's where my "resolve" comes from, it's an act of surrender, not of strength. I've thought long and hard about this. I recognize the feeling, acknowledge that it's there. I see it come up, still, from time to time. But I think I've reached a point where I'm pretty good at catching it before I get attached to it and allow it to take over at some level beneath consciousness--the place where it does the harm by causing suffering.

But is there still, as one reader challenged me to ask myself, an "ounce of regret"?  Is my mind, in his words, "still playing tricks with me"?  And I did notice, yesterday, that my finger strayed to the button on my blog that leads to information about statistics: how many readers have I had on The Buddha Diaries in the past month?   The past week?  The past hour?  And that my finger strayed on, to the Cluster map at the bottom of my home page, enlarging it to see where in the world there might be people reading what I write--the small dots indicating clusters of tens or readers, the larger ones, hundreds, and the largest, thousands.  And I did notice the pleasure rising as I surveyed the world map and found readers throughout the globe...

So, yes, the mind is a sneaky thing sometimes.  I found traces of that last "ounce of regret," that small indication that I still attach to the "writer" that I fancy I have left behind.   Do not, I remind myself, congratulate yourself too soon on your purported liberation.  It's important to keep looking...