ABSTRACT
This chapter adapts Zen master Shunryu Suzuki’s concepts of mind waves and mind weeds to propose a nondualist understanding of the affective dimension in writing, one that does not rigidly differentiate between logos and pathos, reason and emotion, as part of a Right Effort for composing. Mind waves and mind weeds are mental formations that momentarily disturb the calmness of the mind without being separate from the mind. Mind waves resemble a wordless pulse or sensation, a ripple across the surface of emptiness, and they remain nonverbal because of their brevity. Mind weeds are more discursive and evoke a detail-laden storyline that draws a practitioner away from the moment. Essentially, the concepts of mind waves and mind weeds provide a spectrum of non-discursive to more discursive affective experiences based in the present for composition theory. These are experiences omitted from conventional theories of writing, deemed irrelevant to the work at hand, all the while exerting influence on students’ writing. The Buddhist practices of metta or equanimity (calm, non-reactive mindset to internal developments) and maitri (calm, non-reactive mindset to external developments) are methods to encounter weeds and waves and better manage a rhetorical situation.
