Is it possible to write what the body “sees,” what it tells us, despite our projections upon it?
Eros. Does the body have its own passions? Intellect? Does it have ethnicity? Histories? Irony? Power? Or vulnerability? Does it laugh at itself? Questions. I want to listen, for a change. What does the body, the flesh, want to write?
Some claim there is a tendency for western Buddhists to limit their practice to the western sense of “mind” (reading “mindfulness” wrongly) in order to escape from the body. When in fact the body is our prime tool for awareness.
In Buddhism, pleasure, pain, discomfort, emotions etc. arising from body sensations and flavors are supposed to be considered primary (or as it is described, the first arrow). What one thinks about it, projects, emotes, intellectualizes or dramatizes is the second arrow, which we are advised to observe, even as those thoughts and feelings carry on their drama. I want to know and to translate, or transliterate, what information is carried in the first arrow. Perhaps it’s impossible because — isn’t writing already secondary, something “extra” after experience? But maybe not….
I’m willing to bet that writing can be primary, and that the body can show me the way.
