George Orwell and Writing as Spiritual Practice

While I have a core spiritual practice in zazen that means the whole world to me, I’m also aware that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Nor, even for those who embrace zazen need it be the only way one pushes to the heart of the matter.

Here I’d like to reflect briefly on writing as a spiritual practice. I have lots of friends who use journaling and other forms of writing as an important part of their interior lives. While I think one need be careful about any spiritual discipline that doesn’t include a significant way to check one’s ego, and writing can be a narcissistic enterprise, I do think writing has much merit as both an adjunct and as a principal spiritual discipline.

Mostly checking is done by having another human being whom one trusts deeply to speak with on a regular basis. Someone walking the path, and is a tad farther along the way. Someone who has made tons of mistakes, and has learned from them, and ideally has been herself or himself guided. And, hopefully, one who has tasted the fruits of victory, or in Zen’s terminology seen into the heart of the matter. Of course we’re each of us, ultimately, responsible for our path, we must come to taste, to see for ourselves. So, we should try, whatever our disciplines might be, to start out strong. And, to be open to course changes, as we encounter sound seeming advice.

The other day I caught a bit of an essay by someone on NPR lamenting how George Orwell has been relegated to classroom reading and pretty much exclusively there Animal Farm & 1984. The speaker, I think based upon just those fragmentary moments I had with the story, was extolling the virtues of George Orwell’s thinking in many areas and wishing people were paying closer attention to his cajoling and pushing. In particular the speaker appears to have been pointing to a 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.”

The speaker said Orwell offered six points on clear writing and out of that on clear thinking. Ah, clear thinking! Like cultivating a clear heart, important stuff on the spiritual path… He, the speaker, then went on to mention one, “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” He said if one wanted the others read the essay.

I was tantalized enough to do so. And I thought I found a hint of a way to enhance writing as a spiritual discipline. Without a doubt Orwell was one of the signal intellectual figures of his day and I believe does have something to say to us beyond what one gets out of Animal Farm or 1984. Even for us spiritual types.

For instance those six points.
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
I have to admit they seem a lot more useful than Strunk & White, who have been justifiably dragged over the coals of late.

I know this advice would be good for me in my writing. And probably for those who have to hear me hold forth. Me, I plan on contemplating these rules, then, hopefully, throw them away. Which, of course, is an important part of any spiritual enterprise; if it’s a spiritual practice it’s about liberation not slavishly following some set of rules.

So, study and throw away. Out of that perhaps my writing, and who knows, maybe my thinking might benefit. And, out of that, maybe my spiritual eye, as well.

It might be useful for you, too.

Try it, you might like it…