The Diver’s Clothes Lying Empty

A week ago I attended a writing workshop at the Omega Institute with Lynda Barry, called “Writing the Unthinkable.” It was a powerful and transformative five days. Her approach to writing is emotional, psychological, spiritual, rather than intellectual. I think this method saved her life; at any rate, it has helped her to pass on what it is about any kind of art that makes life worth living.

For instance, she emphasizes the experience of capturing an image over the product of that experience. We are not to look at what we create for at least a week, preferably a month, because we will not be able to look at it without undue, unfair judgment before then. She likens art-making to the serious, fully-engaged play of children. The structure of her workshop was to guide us on a journey back to that open state of mind, in which the drawbridge can come down and images like ponies can cross over onto the field to play. These are Lynda’s words, Lynda’s metaphors; but I love them. I feel they could have been mine.

Every morning and every afternoon, we wrote three short pieces. Part of our preparation for each was to draw a tight spiral, or some other doodle, while she recited the same poem to us from memory. I heard this poem about twenty times. I came to love it. It is a poem by Rumi.

The Diver’s Clothes Lying Empty

You are sitting here with us,
but you are also out walking in a field at dawn.

You are yourself the animal we hunt
when you come with us on the hunt.

You are in your body
like a plant is solid in the ground,
yet you are wind.

You are the diver’s clothes
lying empty on the beach.
You are the fish.

In the ocean are many bright strands
and many dark strands like veins that are seen
when a wing is lifted up.

Your hidden self is blood in those,
those veins that are lute strings
that make ocean music,
not the sad edge of surf
but the sound of no shore.

Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

For me, the work was to ride the current, even as it pulled me through rough, dark waters, beyond the “sad edge of surf” to “the sound of no shore.” What is the sound of no shore? I think it is the experience of the world beyond the hurts and upheavals of my own personal history, my own self as I have known myself. It is the experience of story beyond “my story.” One of the promises of the workshop was to move from memory into fiction, which is why I was drawn to it. She took us there – it was an exhilarating journey.

I chose not to write down the poem during that week – I wanted to experience it only as something heard while in an open state of mind. Once I got home, I looked it up on-line (my own Rumi collection has gone missing) and found another translation of the poem. It seems so different, to me, it almost seems like a different poem. Or at least a different poet. I wonder which is closer to the original Persian.

Clothes Abandoned on the Shore

Your body is here with us,
but your heart is in the meadow.
You travel with the hunters
though you yourself are what they hunt.

Like a reed flute,
you are encased by your body,
with a restless breathy sound inside.

You are a diver;
your body is just clothing left at the shore.
You are a fish whose way is through water.

In this sea there are many bright veins
and some that are dark.
The heart receives its light
from those bright veins.

If you lift your wing
I can show them to you.
You are hidden like the blood within,
and you are shy to the touch.

Those same veins sing a melancholy tune
in the sweet-stringed lute,
music from a shoreless sea
whose waves roar out infinity.

Rumi, translated by Kabir Helminsky

Between the two translations, I have a preference. I suppose I can’t help but have a preference. I prefer the version that I heard Lynda recite to us. The second version has its moments, but that word “infinity” just ruins it for me.

About Rumi:

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (Persian: جلال الدین محمد بلخى), also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (Persian: جلال‌الدین محمد رومی), and popularly known as Mowlānā (Persian: مولانا) but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rūmī is a descriptive name meaning "the Roman" since he lived most of his life in an area called Rūm because it was once ruled by the Eastern Roman Empire. (from Wikipedia)

The Better Way

At a recent gathering of the Mindful Artists Collective, one member read aloud “The Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Live Alone,” as it is recorded in the Plum Village Chanting and Recitation Book.

The Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Live Alone

Bhaddekaratta Sutta : Translated from the Pali

I heard these words of the Buddha one time when the Lord was staying at the monastery in the Jeta Grove, in the town of Shravasti. He called all the monks to him and instructed them, “Bhikkhus!” And the bhikkhus replied, “We are here.” The Blessed One taught, “I will teach you what is meant by ‘knowing the better way to live alone.’ I will begin with an outline of the teaching, and then I will give a detailed explanation. Bhikkhus, please listen carefully.”

“Blessed One, we are listening.”

The Buddha taught:

Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is
In the very here and now,
The practitioner dwells in stability and freedom.
We must be diligent today.
To wait until tomorrow is too late.
Death comes unexpectedly.
How can we bargain with it?
The sage calls a person who knows how
to dwell in mindfulness night and day
“one who knows the better way to live alone.”

“Do not pursue the past. / Do not lose yourself in the future.” These lines have always puzzled me. I am more prone to losing myself in the past, and pursuing the future, than the other way around. I constantly catch myself reliving an event or conversation from the past, rather than living in the present moment. And the future is pursued in the form of plans, hopes, and worries. As if to pre-live the future would be to avoid the pain of surprises. Still, I have no argument with the view that re-living and pre-living are not the way to stability and freedom.

“Bhikkhus, what do we mean by ‘pursuing the past’? When someone thinks about the way his body was in the past, the way his feelings were in the past, the way his perceptions were in the past, the way his mental factors were in the past, the way his consciousness was in the past; when he thinks about these things and his mind is burdened by and attached to these things which belong to the past, then that person is pursuing the past.

It happens that lately I have been thinking a lot about the way my body was in the past, as signs and symptoms of middle age make themselves known with increasing frequency. The Buddha was speaking of the body as one of the five skandas, or aspects of our experience of being, and not of “the body of my youth” necessarily. But this is the association that arose for me. When I think about the way my body was in the past, is my mind “burdened by and attached to these things which belong to past”? Oh, yes.

There must be a better way.

“Bhikkhus, what is meant by ‘not pursuing the past’? When someone thinks about the way his body was in the past, the way his feelings were in the past, the way his perceptions were in the past, the way his mental factors were in the past, the way his consciousness was in the past; when he thinks about these things but his mind is neither enslaved by nor attached to these things which belong to the past, then that person is not pursuing the past.

To think about these things and be “neither enslaved by nor attached to” them, neither approving nor condemning those past conditions, nor present conditions – that sounds exactly like freedom.

“Bhikkhus, what is meant by ‘losing yourself in the future’? When someone thinks about the way his body will be in the future, the way his feelings will be in the future, the way his perceptions will be in the future, the way his mental factors will be in the future, the way his consciousness will be in the future; when he thinks about these things and his mind is burdened by and daydreaming about these things which belong to the future, then that person is losing himself in the future.

Mostly, these days, I feel burdened by my imaginings of the future. My body will be even less capable and even less responsive to my wishes. Farther out in time, my body, as well as my feelings, perceptions, mental factors, and consciousness will not “be” at all, in the way that they “be” right now. I used to feel much more neutral about these facts, but increasingly I am disturbed by them. I have miles to go before even coming near acceptance.

I notice that the teaching is clear that it is expected, and acceptable, that we would think about these things, both the past, which is gone, and the future, which is still to come. We’re not meant to stop thinking about these things, only to think about them without attachment.

“Bhikkhus, what is meant by ‘not losing yourself in the future’? When someone thinks about the way his body will be in the future, the way his feelings will be in the future, the way his perceptions will be in the future, the way his mental factors will be in the future, the way his consciousness will be in the future; when he thinks about these things but his mind is not burdened by or daydreaming about these things which belong to the future, then he is not losing himself in the future.

In the next two passages, I find myself doing some mental editing, as you’ll see:

“Bhikkhus, what is meant by ‘being swept away by the present’? When someone does not study or learn anything about the Awakened One [within oneself], or the teachings of love and understanding, or the community that lives in harmony and awareness; when that person knows nothing about the noble teachers and their teachings, and does not practice these teachings, and thinks, ‘This body is myself; I am this body. These feelings are myself; I am these feelings. This perception is myself; I am this perception. This mental factor is myself; I am this mental factor. This consciousness is myself; I am this consciousness,’ then that person is being swept away by the present.

“Bhikkhus, what is meant by ‘not being swept away by the present’? When someone studies and learns about the Awakened One [within oneself], the teachings of love and understanding, and the community that lives in harmony and awareness; when that person knows about noble teachers and their teachings, practices these teachings, and does not think, ‘This body is myself; I am this body. These feelings are myself; I am these feelings. This perception is myself; I am this perception. This mental factor is myself; I am this mental factor. This consciousness is myself; I am this consciousness’, then that person is not being swept away by the present.

What is striking about “not being swept away by the present” is what is not said about the better way to think. The teaching is that the person does not think, “This body is myself; I am this body.” The teaching is not that the person thinks, “This body is not myself; I am not this body.” We’re not told what the person thinks about themselves in relation to their body, just what they don’t think. Why would this be?

I suspect the right view is neither “This body is myself; I am this body” nor “This body is not myself; I am not this body.” Right view is not both, either. Right view is something beyond “is myself” and “is not myself.” Because right view about “myself” is neither “is” nor “is not.” We neither are nor are not: we inter-are.

These are insights drawn from Beyond the Self: Teachings on the Middle Way, one of Thầy’s new “little books” that fit into one’s pocket.

Thầy writes,

The Middle Way is not caught in pairs of opposites, such as being and nonbeing; coming and going; birth and death; same and different; exists and does not exist. These are ideas we need to go beyond. …

Relatively speaking, there are right views and there are wrong views. But if we look more deeply, we see that all views are wrong views. No view can ever be the truth. It is just the view from one point; that is why it is called a “point of view.” … Buddhism is not a collection of views. It is a practice that helps us eliminate wrong views. … From the viewpoint of the ultimate reality, Right View is the absence of all views. (pp. 9-10)

At a later point, Thầy pulls in the idea of touching the Dharma-nature or ultimate nature of all phenomena in order to go beyond the ideas of being born and dying. In the realm of “things as they are,” all things are interconnected, all things inter-are. This is the realm of no-birth and no-death, the realm of nirvana. (p.22)

From that point of view, then, “This body is myself; I am this body” is not correct, because if you say “this body,” you are distinguishing it from everything else that is, when in reality “this body” is everything that is. Even to say “Everything is myself; I am everything” is inadequate, because that still postulates a distinction between “everything” and “myself.” One could say, “Everything is everything,” but that refers to the cosmos as if it is a collection of “things,” separate and discrete, when it is not. Closer might be “Everything is no-thing; no-thing is everything”; which sounds a lot like “Form is emptiness; emptiness is form.” At this point, we may finally have arrived.

The sutra concludes:

“Bhikkhus, I have presented the outline and the detailed explanation of knowing the better way to live alone.” Thus the Buddha taught, and the bhikkhus were delighted to put his teachings into practice.

Bhaddekaratta Suttra (Majjhima Nikaya, Sutta no. 131)

What did the Buddha mean by “the better way to live alone”? In a dharma talk, Thầy explained:

“Knowing how to live alone” here does not mean to live in solitude, separated from other people, on a mountain or in a cave. "Living alone" here means living to have sovereignty of yourself, to have freedom, not to be dragged away by the past, not to be in fear of the future, not being pulled around by the circumstances of the present. We are always master of ourselves, we can grasp the situation as it is, and we are sovereign of the situation and of ourselves.

April 5, 1998, Plum Village

The past rushes away from us, the future rushes toward us, but the only place we ever are is in the present.

Every-Minute Meditation

I recently spent a day at a book publishing convention, and at the Wisdom Publications booth I picked up an advanced reader’s copy of Lin Jensen’s new book, Deep Down Things: The Earth in Celebration and Dismay. It will be published in October 2010, so this amounts to a sneak preview.

After the convention, I boarded a crowded M34 bus and began making my way, with it, across town in rush hour traffic. This seemed like a fine time to browse through all the catalogs and book galleys I’d picked up. I turned through this book and was stopped by one page.

Reverend Dazui, a monk of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives, encouraged the Buddhist practice of mindfulness as an antidote for a life frittered away by detail. Mindfulness as he taught it as essentially a matter of simplification. He called it “every-minute meditation” and it consisted of five steps, four of which I’ve repeated here:

1. Do one thing at a time.
2. Pay attention to what you are doing.
3. When your mind wanders to something else bring it back.
4. Repeat step number three a few hundred thousand times.

“That’s all there is to it,” Reverend Dazui explained. “It’s incredibly simple and requires nothing more than the willingness to do it.”

I think that Thich Nhat Hanh would agree with these four steps. I’m not sure Thầy would characterize the process as “incredibly simple.” For Thầy, the commentary might be, “Just this. Simple, but not easy. That is why we must practice.”

Lin Jensen continues,

The willingness to do it grows with the doing, because, until you’ve tried to simplify your life in this way, you can’t really know how joyful it is to live in the present moment without the distraction of alternatives. Simplicity, as I am speaking of it here, is synonymous with clarity. If I do one thing at a time, my life will be clear and present.

Sitting on that bus, I found myself responding as if the idea of present-moment mindfulness were completely new to me. My inner response was, “But I don’t want to think about or do only one thing at a time! I like living all the alternatives at once! No other way could possibly be interesting enough to my very clever self!” This was my urban professional multi-tasking mind operating in high gear. (And no wonder, having just left a convention floor swarming with urban professional multi-tasking minds.) In that mode, I need to be persuaded that simplifying really will bring more joy and satisfaction. And I spend more time in that mode than I’d like to admit.

I realized I need to spend more time in meditation, more hours in mindfulness, even as I pull up morning glory sprouts in the garden or cut up onions and carrots in the kitchen. Sitting on that crowded, noisy, stop-and-go bus, I vowed to do it.

Back to Lin Jensen (in the same paragraph – it is a long, rich paragraph):

Simplicity, as I am speaking of it here, is synonymous with clarity. If I do one thing at a time, my life will be clear and present. … The old Chinese masters sometimes distinguished between the enlightened and the unenlightened by saying that one who is enlightened sits when he sits, stands when he stands, walks when he walks, eats when he eats, and sleeps when he sleeps. In an important way, enlightenment is simply being present in whatever one happens to be doing at the moment.

Right now, then, I am practicing being present to my thinking, present to my memories of the M34 bus, present to my typing, present to my sitting, present to noting the tension in my shoulders, arms, and hands from typing, present to my mind weighing different ways of wording what I am typing, present to my efforts to touch what it is that I wanted to say, what brought me to the keyboard in the first place. And present to what I had no idea I would say.

I was curious about what Reverend Dazui’s fifth step was. At the website of an Order of Buddhist Contemplatives practice center, I found the five steps expressed this way:

1. Do one thing at a time.
2. Pay full attention to what you are doing.
3. When your mind wanders to something else, bring it back.
4. Repeat step number three a few hundred thousand times.
5. And, when your mind keeps wandering to the same thing over and over, stop for a minute and pay attention to the "distraction": maybe it is trying to tell you something.

Practicing with distraction – that requires a whole n’other post – or maybe a few hundred thousand posts.

From Wisdom Publications:

LIN JENSEN is the critically acclaimed author of the memoir Bad Dog! A Memoir of Love, Beauty, and Redemption in Dark Places and Pavement: Reflections on Mercy, Activism, and Doing "Nothing" for Peace, a fearless and funny account of curbside social action. He is also the author of Together Under One Roof: Making a Home of the Buddha’s Household. … He is the founding teacher and senior teacher emeritus of the Chico Zen Sangha, in Chico, California, where he lives with his wife.

Rev. Master Daizui MacPhillamy

1945 - 2003

He was the Head of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives, and also acted as Prior of a small mountain temple, the Fugen Forest Hermitage, in northwestern California.

“The Order of Buddhist Contemplatives is dedicated to the practice of the Serene Reflection Meditation tradition, known as Ts'ao-Tung Ch'an in China and Sōtō Zen in Japan. … The practice of the Order emphasizes serene reflection meditation, mindfulness in daily life, and adherence to the Buddhist Precepts.”