"Devotion changes your perception"
Writer, teacher, and creative coach Sarah Kokernot on writing in the cracks of time and bringing a sense of devotion to your creativity and mindfulness practices 🌀✨
This is a Beginner’s Mind interview, a series that explores the intersection of mindfulness and creative practice. Zen master Shunryū Suzuki Roshi said, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.” This series shines a light on the practices that sustain people in their daily lives and open the path to new possibilities. If you know (or are) a writer, creative person, mindfulness teacher or practitioner with practices you’d like to share, just reply to this newsletter to be in touch with me. Subscribe below to make sure you don’t miss any future interviews. ✨
I was waiting for my kids at school pick-up when I read the first few lines of the “About” page of ’s newsletter, Your Wild and Radiant Mind, in which she shares what you can expect if you subscribe: “You’ll immediately start levitating in the air, rainbows in the sky will appear above you, and all the beings in your area will experience profound bliss. From now on, you’ll be able to subsist on only a handful of barley flour per day. You’ll never feel hangry again.”
I laughed out loud. I was hooked. Sarah’s writing takes an embodied, playful approach to exploring Buddhism and spirituality and creativity more broadly. Sarah’s essays feel rooted in a capacious curiosity, intellectual rigor, and a luminous sense of aliveness.
The wisdom Sarah shares in her interview landed with me just when I needed to hear it. She is so generous in her sharing of how she writes “in the cracks of time,” and how she approaches bringing devotion rather than discipline to her mindfulness and creative practices. Read on, friends.🌀✨
What are your writing/creative practices? Do you have any rituals or habits that help you?
I write a lot in the cracks of time. I make sure to notice my thoughts and my imagination, and I jot down ideas whenever they come up.
I’ve found that if I take notes each day, a new project can usually be built from that. When my youngest child was an infant I would take her out for walks in a baby sling. I took about thirty pages of notes for a novel on those walks. Those notes eventually turned into the novel manuscript which I recently revised and finished.
Writing is more about the consistency of the time that I put in, rather than the immediate quality of the work. It really is a practice. You suck at it at first and then you get better.
As far as rituals go, I find it helpful to tap into something that feels greater than myself as a source of energy. Whenever I start a new project, I write an aspiration prayer on top of my first page that my work benefits other beings and that I am open to receiving support from a power greater than myself. You can read more about the ritual here.
What are your mindfulness practices?
I usually meditate for an hour very early in the morning before everyone else is up, at around 5:00 am. Once you gain some endurance in meditation, it feels amazing. Both delightful and enjoyable. At first, meditating felt like how I used to feel when I started to run—I felt better after running, but during running it was hard. But now I just meditate because I love doing it.
There are also times when I’ve been so busy that I just meditate in short bursts—anything that involves waiting and boredom is a great opportunity to meditate. I just have to put down my phone! Car lines, waiting for my daughter’s bus, waiting for water to boil, the train commute. Waiting for anything, that sense of limbo, is a great time to tap into your own awareness.
My main practice is called “Dzogchen” or “Ati Yoga,” and mindfulness, in that tradition, is described as relaxing into what is sometimes called “awareness itself.” It’s more like a type of allowing than a type of doing, and it’s a deeply felt sense of presence, even when you feel stressed out or tired or in a bad mood. I’m not as good at it as I would like to be but Dzogchen is such a powerful practice that it’s effective even when you aren’t an expert.
Do you have a mantra or motto related to your creative/mindfulness practices/life? What piece of wisdom do you have on a post it note to help you remember it?
There’s a quote I often come back to by the opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, “People think I'm disciplined. It's not discipline. It's devotion.”
I love this because devotion is such a hugely underrated quality in both creative and mindfulness practices.
Devotion, in my mind, has to do with a kind of emotional fidelity and love of practice. You’re there for your creativity and mindfulness the same way you would be there for someone you love. As we all know, love isn’t always gooey emotions—it takes patience and labor. Sometimes love is boring. Sometimes love is hard. We keep loving anyway. True love is fierce.
What advice would you give someone who is trying to start or restart a creative or mindfulness practice?
Practice mindfulness so that you can feel in touch with your own aliveness and the aliveness of the world. It mostly takes openness and trust in the process.
I’d give the same piece of advice to someone who wants to start making art. It’s basically the same. We make art because we’re alive, we meditate because we’re alive. Trust the process, don’t give up, do it every day and in short bursts.
What helps you when you get stuck with your creative/writing or mindfulness practices?
I think of something the writer and poet Chris Abani told me many years ago: “The first draft is just notes.” When I get stuck writing it’s usually because my expectations are too high and I want to get absolutely everything down immediately. But when I approach writing as “note-taking,” or simply fucking around, I stop having such a high standard for myself. Spontaneity and authenticity are more likely to happen when I let writing be a form of play.
I find that rest is also very important when I’m stuck. Stuckness is usually a sign I’m burned out. It’s hard to pay attention to anything when you’re tired and cranky. I used to think I could push through fatigue but every time I talk to a dharma teacher about meditating while tired, their suggestion is to take a nap. But if you want to do both, nidra yoga is a really excellent way to both meditate and restore your body.
Are there any books / writers / teachers / approaches that have been transformative for you that you would recommend to readers?
I’ve talked some about Dzogchen, and I know it’s not as well-known as mindfulness, so I feel like I should mention resources here in case it sounds interesting to someone. Lama Lena and Lama Tasha both have Substacks and they are wonderful, dynamic, brilliant teachers. I also love the work of Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, whose writing about Dzogchen is lucid and direct. And Lama Justin von Bujdoss is an incredibly compassionate, profound teacher whose year-long classes on Dzogchen go very deep into the practice.
A Prompt from Sarah
Instead of writing about a place you love, write a love letter to a place you love. Write to praise the place you love—write even to seduce it or charm it. See how devotion changes your perception.
Sarah Kokernot is a fiction writer, essayist, teacher, and creator of the Substack Your Wild And Radiant Mind. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, Tricycle, EPOCH, Michigan Quarterly Review, Crazyhorse, Front Porch, West Branch, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and other publications. Sarah teaches creative writing at Northwestern University and also works as a creative coach and consultant. She’s revising her first novel and working on a book of essays on lived experience and Buddhist practice.
Here’s the link to Sarah’s creativity coaching and consulting website.
Sarah’s IG handle is @yes_like_coconut.
I highly recommend that you subscribe to Sarah’s substack newsletter, Your Wild and Radiant Mind if you don’t already! 🌀✨👇🏼
Upcoming Events with Sarah
I co-host a mini-salon with my friend and fellow writer Inés Bellina, creator of The Cranky Guide. On Thursday, May 8th at 12pm CST, we’re hosting a mini-salon on the search for meaning in our creative lives—Why Even Make This: Finding Spiritual and Practical Meaning In The Creative Process—and it feels like an especially relevant topic given everything that’s going on in the world. People have already asked us some great questions. You read more details and sign up for the mini-salon here.
I'm thrilled to be offering an hour-long class on Thursday, June 5th at 7pm CST, The Answer Is Already Here: Create Your Own Writing Oracle, on how to use collage and bibliomancy as oracles for creative writing. You can think of it as making your own, personalized Tarot card for a story or essay you’re stuck on. You can read more about the class and register here.
What You May have Missed on Be Where You Are
The next Ass in Chair Collective on Mon, April 28th is for paid subscribers. You can find all the details for spring in the post below.👇🏼
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