Have you read that story title the "The Window" ? "In that hospital story, two men share a room. One’s bed is next to the window; the other is confined to his bed away from it. Each day, the man by the window vividly describes what he sees — children playing, lovers strolling, swans gliding on a lake, the beauty of changing seasons. His words become the other patient’s lifeline, lifting his spirits and giving him something to look forward to. One day, the man by the window dies. When the surviving patient asks to be moved to the window, he discovers that the “view” is actually a blank wall. The scenes had all been imagined — a gift of hope and beauty from one human being to another."
Now, at Kanzeon Zendo, I write in a room without windows, where the sky itself is the roof and the mountains stand as steadfast walls. Here, there is no need to invent and imagine the view — the horizon is already an open page, and the still mind rolls on like the wheel. What was once a story of vision born in absence becomes, in this boundless chamber, vision born in presence. The same generosity of spirit flows, but now the world itself is the storyteller.
When the mind frees itself from the shackles and botheration of likes, reposts, eyeballs, and LinkedIn’s restless algorithms, it settles into stillness. In that quiet, there is no striving, no audience to please — only the open space where the pen moves of its own accord, writing what needs to be written.
And in the same moment, seeds of ideas are sown, sprouts are tended, branches are pruned, and the harvest is gathered — the entire cycle of creation unfolding in a single breath.
And that is the gist of Zen teacher Natalie Goldberg’s. “Writing to the bones, freeing the writer within. “.
All the modern wants and greed dictated by the social media are really shackles. Only when one becomes aware of it, only then the writer within frees himself. Almost all the great literary works , they wrote for themselves.
Every writer must choose where they sit: by the imagined window, in the room with a view, or beneath the sky‑roof with mountain walls. The choice is never about scenery, but about freedom. Free yourself from the shackles of metrics, and the work will grow — seed to sprout, branch to harvest — without needing permission from the world.
The window is a wall. The wall is a window. The horizon is neither. When the mind stops looking for a view, the view appears. When the pen stops trying to write, the writing is already done.
