September 3, 2025
“Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.”
“Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome.”
“What you produce is not necessarily always sacred, I realized, just because you think it’s sacred. What is sacred is the time that you spend working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Dear Friends,
How are you? Can you believe Labor Day has already passed and the fall breeze is here? According to the Chinese lunar calendar, fall began in early August. I’m always amazed at how accurately the temperature shifts mirror that ancient rhythm.
Lately I have been thinking about what creativity and authenticity mean. We often associate creativity with the arts, but life itself is a creative act. That means we are often confronted with exhilaration and fear at the same time when we make daily decisions. For me, teaching meditation is one space where I’ve felt this creative edge most vividly. My friend Sebene Selassie has always encouraged me to teach what feels alive. That advice stayed with me—and led me to teach about midlife. It turned out to be one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had. A beautiful and supportive community emerged from that offering.
This fall, I’m excited and happy to be co-creating a new space: an AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Sangha at New York Insight, alongside my colleagues Tim Hwang and Joanna Williams. This has been a dream in the making for a few years. Since my father’s passing in 2020, I’ve felt a strong pull to reconnect with my Chinese roots. It’s been deeply nourishing—like reclaiming a part of myself I had long overlooked. The process reminds me of the term soul retrieval, used by shamans to describe the return of lost parts of ourselves through healing. Reconnecting to ancestry, family, and cultural identity has made me feel more whole.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to better understand both the beauty and the pain within the immigrant experience—and the wide spectrum of Asian American stories. Listening to others in our community, I hear echoes of our experiences and culture, even when our stories differ. There’s something powerful about gathering to share these truths. I remember a Lunar New Year sit three years ago when six women came. We built a circle of trust within an hour, as we recognized each other and shared deeply.
Yet as I was preparing to launch this new community, a nagging voice would pop in, “Who are you to teach an AAPI Sangha? You only know a sliver of this experience. You are going to say things that offend or hurt people, unintentionally but nonetheless.” And yet, how could we be in New York City and not have a meditation community that processes our Asian American experiences? It takes a village to raise a child — and a village to build a community. I feel really fortunate that this village is coming together at the right moment.
Another seed I’ve carried for years is finally beginning to sprout: a class on classical Chinese poetry and Buddhist philosophy. Classical Chinese poetry has been my love since I was a young girl, and it is one way my father and our family express their love. On my grandfather’s 70th birthday back in the 1980s, every family member, including the youngest, would write a poem to celebrate his birthday. Parents would write on behalf of young children, capturing their voices in the poems. Those poems were handmade into a book, and everyone in the family got a copy. In the decade before my father passed, he wrote a classical poem every morning and shared it in WeChat groups. To me, poetry is an expression of love—for life, for language, for lineage.
Sharing the beauty and wisdom from classical Chinese poetry would bring such joy, and yet it’s scary – the voice of imposter syndrome is loud, “Who are you to offer a class on classical Chinese poetry and Buddhist philosophy? You are not an authority on either. Can you do it justice? The real scholars would call you a fraud.” Yet, I keep thinking about what Elizabeth Gilbert says regarding creativity and creative living. It’s about choosing curiosity over fear, again and again. Between curiosity and fear, it’s a fork in the road – what do we choose? We give fear a voice, have it as a companion on our travel to keep us safe from real dangers, but also ask it to be in the backseat of our car when there is no real danger. We make these choices as a daily practice, so that it becomes a habit. And our life will be richer because we choose curiosity over fear. We can take small steps. So this spring, I’ll be offering a two-hour evening class. A small step. A beginning. Let’s see how it feels.
My third recent experiment in choosing curiosity over fear is moving my newsletter to Substack. I have been putting it off due to lack of time in the past year, but also because part of me feels like, “Substack is for real writers and thinkers. Who am I to have a Substack, especially now, when everyone is on Substack? Do I have anything meaningful to say? Anything that could actually help people?”
Living without thinking about outcomes and risk-taking is not my default operating mode. My younger self longed for stability and certainty. But through meditation, I’ve learned that we can rewire our habits by pausing and choosing differently. I am making choosing curiosity over fear a practice. At this life stage, I may not have time for the creative arts but my life is my canvas and each choice is a brushstroke.
May the fall bring you creative energy. Shedding leaves is a brilliant process in nature, letting go of what we no longer need each year. It prepares us for future renewal. May you enjoy the brilliance that this shedding process brings.
Love and blessings,
Lin
P.S. I am so excited to collaborate with my friend Lisa Freedman with her Breathe/Read/Write work again. Watch the sunset, meditate and freewrite, and enjoy potluck snacks with us at Brighton Beach. Lisa makes writing embodied and magical.
Photo: A hummingbird moth, Catskills, New York, August 2025.
GoFundMe: 2025 -2027 Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leadership Training
Pay it forward: I’ll be joining the next Community Dharma Leadership (CDL7) training at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. This program includes five retreats over two years and costs ~$14,000. Your contribution will help me cover these expenses. No contribution is too small—every donation is deeply appreciated. Thank you for your support!