As I head out to our annual Desert Writers trip this week I’m also packing my bag for Bali. But I will be going the long way round – over-nighting in Beijing so I can visit the Great Wall (which I missed out on last time), on to Rome, then by train to the village of Arcidosso in southern Tuscany where I will take part in a three day festival celebrating 30 years of Merigar, a Tibetan Buddhist Retreat centre built near Mt Amiata. I was last there in 1990 when HH The Dalai Lama visited to inaugurate the gonpa (meeting hall). Merigar was the first centre of the Dzogchen Community which has centres world wide following the teachings of Tibetan master Chögyal Namkhai Norbu. I have been a student of Dzogchen since 1988 and while I don’t use any specific Dzogchen practices on my writing retreats, I do notice that as writers we are already observers and whether we use the writing to bring us into the present moment, or the present moment to bring us into the writing without knowing it we might just be on the road to enlightenment.
Here is a simple observation exercise you can use. Find a place to sit, could be quiet or noisy and focus on an object or a patch close by. Examine it in great detail as if through a zoom lens, noticing everything you can about it – colour, shape, tone, texture, the play of light etc. When you feel the impulse, start to write, describing what you see. Keep writing for ten minutes at least without stopping, allowing yourself to go where ever the writing wants to take you but bringing it back in the end to your original observation.
Writing from the present moment is always powerful. We will be doing a lot of exercises like this in Bali in July as we follow the map of Balinese cosmology clockwise around the points of the compass, linking the senses and elements with essential aspects of writing craft. Based in Bali’s mountain village Kintamani, on the rim of a volcanic caldera, we will venture into the local landscape to immerse ourselves in the everyday creative and spiritual practice of the Balinese people.
There’s still a couple of places left if you would like to join us.
Find more info about Backstage Bali ( July 24 -30) on my Journeys page.
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