"My job is to make you very dumb," [Katagiri Roshi] often said.
"Dumb" in Zen was a compliment. It meant you weren't running ahead of yourself, planning, organizing, strategizing. You were open to receive the world as it was.
I could relate to that. A writer needed a certain dumb quality. I often told my students that in a downpour people rush for cover. A writer stands unprotected near a puddle, fascinated by the ripples the drops make, bewitched by the way they bounce on the pavement, letting the rain hit her naked head. Both writers — and Zen students — needed to step into life fresh and experience it anew. Being smart was beside the point.
— Natalie Goldberg, The Great Failure