Poetry Friday: Museum Vase

It all started with Suzuki Roshi.

At the Thursday morning zazen sit at the corner yoga studio yesterday, the facilitator, Linda, read a chapter from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. The passage started thusly:

We say our practice should be without gaining ideas, without any expectations, even of enlightenment. This does not mean, however, just to sit without any purpose. This practice free from gaining ideas is based on the Prajna Paramita Sutra. However, if you are not careful the sutra itself will give you a gaining idea. It says, "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form." But if you attach to that statement, you are liable to be involved in dualistic ideas: here is you, form, and here is emptiness, which you are trying to realize through your form. So "form is emptiness, and emptiness is form" is still dualistic. But fortunately, our teaching goes on to say, "Form is form and emptiness is emptiness." Here there is no dualism.

    When you find it difficult to stop your mind while you are sitting and when you are still trying to stop your mind, this is the stage of "form is emptiness and emptiness is form." But while you are practicing in this dualistic way, more and more you will have oneness with your goal. And when your practice becomes effortless, you can stop your mind. This is the stage of "form is form and emptiness is emptiness."

Wow. "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form" dualistic? Interesting. So interesting that I didn't even bother to try to stop my mind during the ensuing twenty minutes. Right away I knew I had my topic for this blog, and my typewriter mind got busy. The only thing that slowed it was my intense drowsiness. Eventually my focus was on keeping my eyes open and my body upright, and my mind faded in and out, meandering.

What persisted was an image of an urn or vase. A vessel, which had form, but also emptiness. Its emptiness is what gave it its form. As from the Tao Te Ching: "Pots are fashioned from clay/ but it's the hollow/ that makes a pot work ."*

Over the next twelve hours or so, phrases kept presenting themselves to me. "Wheat, oil, wine." "On old burdens." "Museum urn or vase or ..." "Still it dreams ... broods?" I knew it must be a poem that I had once memorized. Probably in high school: there was a certain sense-memory that came with the phrases, a chemical whiff of nervous excitement (boys) and a dim buzz (overhead fluorescent lights) that brought me back to that distant era. I kept thinking that the poem might be by Robert Graves, but Google proved that it wasn't.

Finally, finally, by searching on-line in a very particular way, I found the poem. It was "Museum Vase" by Robert Francis.

Museum Vase

It contains nothing.
We ask it
To contain nothing.

Having transcended use
It is endlessly
Content to be.

Still it broods
On old burdens --
Wheat, oil, wine.

Doing, being; form, emptiness. Interesting. (I wonder what I had to say about this poem when I was fifteen?)

Rising up from a depth of thirty-one years, a poem. A lotus in disguise? Maybe. Goodness knows that there is a lot of old muck down there.


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* From the translation by Red Pine. This word-by-word (or seal-by-word) diagram accompanied the passage where I found it on the website The Feminine Tao.

(1) mold (2) clay (3) thus (4) to create (5) a vessel

(6) as regards (7) its (8) not having

(9) has (10) a vessel (11) the same's (12) use

Poetry Friday: from Auguries of Innocence

Is a difficult truth beautifully expressed made less difficult? Or, hearing it expressed beautifully, can we begin to accept it as the truth that it is?

Thay says, "No mud, no lotus," with a beauty that makes us smile.

William Blake says, with a beauty that makes us sigh:

It is right it should be so:

Man was made for Joy & Woe;

And when this we rightly know

Thro' the World we safely go.

Joy & Woe are woven fine,

A Clothing for the Soul divine;

Under every grief & pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.

(from "Auguries of Innocence")

I attended a retreat last Saturday with Sharon Salzberg and Cheri Maples. Cheri is a dharma teacher in Thay's tradition. One thing she talked about was how we all have our suffering; no one goes through life without experiencing suffering. Which is hard enough; then, on top of it, we are unhappy with the suffering we get. "We got the chicken shit, when we'd rather have the pig shit. Or the cow shit." Later, as a kind of gesture of compassion, she asked someone, "What kind did you get, the goat shit or the chicken shit? Mine's the goat shit." We all laughed. It was a way of saying, "Darling, I care about this suffering." Except that it came out sounding like, "Darling, I care about this shit." In the laughter was the silken twine, binding us together.

But about William Blake. There is so much more to him than "The Tyger." There is so much more to "The Tyger" than what is usually assumed when the poem is read to young children. Blake was a visionary, and by that I mean that he had visions. He trusted them utterly and this gave him great confidence. He was wrathful in his compassion for all beings.

From A Vision of the Last Judgment:

"What," it will be Question'd, "When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?" Oh no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, 'Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty.'

May every sunrise greet you chanting, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Svaha!"

Poetry Friday: A Noiseless Patient Spider

This week, some lines from Walt Whitman.

A Noiseless Patient Spider
 
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

I've loved this poem for a long time, since before I could articulate how much of myself I saw in it. (Loving the poem was my way of articulating certain secret parts of myself.) Standing isolated, launching forth filament after filament into the seemingly "vacant vast surrounding." That was my sense of the universe -- vacant. And yet having an inkling that in fact, it is not all so vacant. An ocean is not a void -- it is a rich, life-giving substance. Seeking the spheres, emminating out like layers of consciousness, and seeking to connect them, and to connect myself to them. Seeking to build a bridge, to be a bridge, to something yet unseen, only mused about, but with faith that the venture will prove worthy.

This poem expresses a kind of courage that often remains hidden within myself, like a seed that needs much tender watering before it dares to venture forth a tendril. This poem waters that seed.

I see this poem as a bridge toward Right View. We (or I) start out feeling isolated, detached, surrounded yet alone; but as we (I) unreel ourselves outward, we (I) start to experience that which is "outward" as "inward" as well. Not so separate after all. "Till that bridge you will need is form'd" -- I love that phrase. Bridge or boat: either way I'll meet you on the other side.

 Hail Walt-Whitman-ishvara, Bodhisatva of Sphere Seekers!