Original.

Stumps and logs help me forget the world of achievement, disappointment, rewards, the illusion of being right, struggling to hold the world together, and help me shed many of the illusions that the very notion of “personality” is heir to; there is a frequent mistake here in equating personality with “ego,” which is a Freudian term and unfortunately rather Prussian. The point seems to be to rid yourself of vanities in order to understand your true character. In sitting, the host returns to the original mind while the guest dithers. Then the dithering stops.

For years I’ve had a quote by Deshimaru pinned above my desk: “You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.” What a ruthless statement. But maybe not. Both you and a piece of wood burn up, and at the end of the day you have ashes which don’t return to wood. This is wonderfully obvious but can be forgotten for years at a time. Sometimes the statement wears out and I put it away for a while to rest, though it doesn’t take long for it to refresh itself ...

There is a particular problem for the artist, writer, poet who begins early to separate himself for vision and lucidity, also to get the work done, and then this separation can easily become distorted, a “fiction” in itself, a personality egg you drown within juices of your own making. Thus, the artist’s Zen can become the arhat’s Zen, harsh, dry, attenuated, remote, somewhat selfish. Frequently he would be better off at an American Legion barn dance or sitting in a country bar talking to farmers.

Jim Harrison, from his essay, "Sitting Around"