Bringing the Work Out
As I engage the process of bringing my book out to the public, while simultaneously maintaining the view of Dzogchen, I discover that this process is going to be a major challenge and lesson for my practice. There is an ongoing dance on a very fine line between having intent for a certain degree of success and witnessing with openess and a willingness to fully rejoice in whatever comes. There is a great deal of trust involved.
Since the bookreading on Wednesday evening I have fluctuated between feelings of great success and great disappointment. You would think it would be one or the other, but really I don't seem to know what to make of it.
Sometimes I see, "wow, people were so deeply moved, and so many bought books, and there were some people there who I know will benefit tremendously from the book who I am so grateful to have reached - this was a huge success." Then I look from a different angle and I think, "I spent more on advertising the event than I made on author commissions and I did not earn as much for the bookstore as I had hoped I would, given all their support for my work. And even selling a dozen books at a time is still an awfully slow process. I had what it took to write the book, but do I have what it takes to successfully get it to the people it was written for?"
Dzogchen says, watch what happens and recognize it as the natural flow of both samsara and nirvana. There is always both beauty and horror, ecstasy and suffering, within this existence. The thing is not to get lost in believing any of it is absolutely real. It is all relative reality, hence the duality latent within it. But absolute reality is beyond dualism. The only lasting peace that can be found will be found within that.
As a Dzogchen practitioner, on a daily basis I am doing the practice of learning this by observing my own inner experience as I engage life. This high-stakes endeavor gives me yet another opportunity to see these dynamics at play - and once again I do see that it is so. I think of the people I had hoped would come to the reading, who couldn't make it; then I think of the young man who bought a book who was so traumatized because days before someone had randomly beat him up as he was walking down the street near his home, and yet he ventured out that night to attend the reading - and my heart fills with such compassion, as waves of love and comfort go flowing out towards him, and I know that the book will be something that can move him into a place of healing that will eventually leave him even more free, even more joyful, than before the attack.
And so I watch the play of duality within myself and keep reminding myself to relax, release and witness. This is my way of bringing the work out. It isn't driven and demanding or self-glorifying and I realize that is the idea espoused for effective marketing. Instead it is the fruit of the same process the book itself teaches, because this is a way of life, not just a way of thinking.
I am doing a presentation for a group called Swell-Women in another month and will be sending out lots of free review copies of the book to magazine editors over the next week. I stay busy with it all each day. And I trust that those the book was written for, will find it just in time.
Since the bookreading on Wednesday evening I have fluctuated between feelings of great success and great disappointment. You would think it would be one or the other, but really I don't seem to know what to make of it.
Sometimes I see, "wow, people were so deeply moved, and so many bought books, and there were some people there who I know will benefit tremendously from the book who I am so grateful to have reached - this was a huge success." Then I look from a different angle and I think, "I spent more on advertising the event than I made on author commissions and I did not earn as much for the bookstore as I had hoped I would, given all their support for my work. And even selling a dozen books at a time is still an awfully slow process. I had what it took to write the book, but do I have what it takes to successfully get it to the people it was written for?"
Dzogchen says, watch what happens and recognize it as the natural flow of both samsara and nirvana. There is always both beauty and horror, ecstasy and suffering, within this existence. The thing is not to get lost in believing any of it is absolutely real. It is all relative reality, hence the duality latent within it. But absolute reality is beyond dualism. The only lasting peace that can be found will be found within that.
As a Dzogchen practitioner, on a daily basis I am doing the practice of learning this by observing my own inner experience as I engage life. This high-stakes endeavor gives me yet another opportunity to see these dynamics at play - and once again I do see that it is so. I think of the people I had hoped would come to the reading, who couldn't make it; then I think of the young man who bought a book who was so traumatized because days before someone had randomly beat him up as he was walking down the street near his home, and yet he ventured out that night to attend the reading - and my heart fills with such compassion, as waves of love and comfort go flowing out towards him, and I know that the book will be something that can move him into a place of healing that will eventually leave him even more free, even more joyful, than before the attack.
And so I watch the play of duality within myself and keep reminding myself to relax, release and witness. This is my way of bringing the work out. It isn't driven and demanding or self-glorifying and I realize that is the idea espoused for effective marketing. Instead it is the fruit of the same process the book itself teaches, because this is a way of life, not just a way of thinking.
I am doing a presentation for a group called Swell-Women in another month and will be sending out lots of free review copies of the book to magazine editors over the next week. I stay busy with it all each day. And I trust that those the book was written for, will find it just in time.
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