Clarity for Teachers: Day 24
‘When you are clear, don’t focus on how clear you are. Seek to be inspired by everyone you meet.’
An image came to me of a lake. The water was so still, so clear it might be colourless; the depth of it didn’t seem to matter, the sun was shining all the way to the bottom. I could make out every stone on the lake floor and every spot on the skin of the trout that were swimming there.
There have been days when I wrote words that came through so clear they seemed to command attention. I’ve been responsible for pieces of work that travelled so far, the reception came as a shock and a thrill. To be a professional is to know that you can always show up with a baseline of competence, that’s part of knowing your craft, but then there are the times when something else comes through — a transmission.
The good stuff always seems to come from somewhere else, somewhere beyond the usual exercise of skill — deeper, or higher. We don’t have good language for this now, when there’s no common starting point of myth or metaphysics. Unwise to make a fanfare about it, in any case, but I’ve heard the same thing said quietly by writers, artists, storytellers and culture-makers of many kinds: the best of the work you do comes from beyond you, and your role is to be a receiver — an aerial pointed in the right direction — rather than an ex nihilo creator. You don’t have to have an answer as to where the signal comes from, you just have to learn to trust it.
But boy, on the days when something big comes through, when you see it reverberate out into the world, there’s a temptation to get giddy! It’s easy to enjoy the attention, I know I’ve done it, and I know it’s never done me any good. If you watch enough performers closely, over time, you’ll see that there are some who feed on the applause — and others who have found the knack of sending it onwards, directing it gently towards that underlying source. I know which of these I’d rather be.
Your job is to be the water. Some days the sun shines through you and picks out every curve and colour of each pebble on the lake floor. Some days the sky is grey and nothing shines at all. The weather is not your achievement. The best you can do is to work at being still and being clear. The rest will happen when it wants to.
Västerås, 31 March, 2020
This is the twenty-fourth in a series of commentaries on ‘A teacher’s advice on how to be clear’, Charlie Davies’s reworking of the 1000-year-old Buddhist text, ‘Advice from Atisha’s Heart’. I’m writing these as I take part in Clarity for Teachers, a course that Charlie is leading. You can find out more on the How To Be Clear website.
