Natalie Goldberg

Katagiri Roshi used to say: 'Have kind consideration for all sentient beings.' Once I asked him, 'What are sentient beings anyway? Are they things that feel?' He told me that we have to be kind even to the chair, the air, the paper, and the street. That's how big and accepting our minds have to become.
— Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

We have a responsibility to treat ourselves kindly; then we will treat the world in the same way. This understanding is how we should come to writing. Then we can handle details not as individual, material objects alone but as reflections of everything. Katagiri Roshi said: 'It is very deep to have a cup of tea.' Understand that when we write about a cup or a mesa or the sky or a bobby pin, we must give them good attention and penetrate into their heart. Doing this, we will naturally make those leaps that poetry talks about, because we are aware of the interconnection of all things. We can also write prose that moves from paragraph to paragraph without having to worry about those transitions we were taught about in high school. They will happen naturally, because we will be in touch with the hugeness of movement.
— Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within