Birds

I have been too busy to post, busy making our holiday cards. This year the theme is birds.

berry
merry
holidays

Poetry Friday: Dear Writer,

This week, an old poem of mine.

Dear Writer,

Thank you for sending
your story
for our consideration
After careful review
we regret to say

we do all want most of all
to escape the
mere eventfulness
of our lives
the familiar ambiguity
of elevator doors opening
and day following night
of saved receipts
and national news updates
and the trace of a gull's flight
past the gray horizon

Thank you for casting your dread
upon the waters of these pages
We return them to you
mostly unread

The Editors

-- Lauren Thompson

I have a folder of rejection letters, some no more than an eighth of a sheet of typing paper, stating in a sentence or two, Thanks but no thanks.  I never did have a short story accepted. Eventually I had a total of three poems published; that is, before I started crafting them as children's books. I just needed to find the right format for my words.

Refuge: In Memory of John Daido Loori

I've learned that John Daido Loori, founder and abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper, New York, passed away on October 9, 2009. I never met him in person, but I've gained a lot from his writing about creativity and other themes.

Water Seeing Water, John Daido Loori

I often think about one of his commentaries of the idea of "refuge," which I read in the Winter 2007 issue of Tricycle magazine. In that piece, which was excerpted from one of his books, Loori looks deeply into the idea of "refuge." He begins by reminding us that in Zen training, one takes refuge in the Three Treasures by chanting, "Being one with the Buddha, being one with the Dharma, being one with the Sangha." So "refuge" means "being one with."  But what does it mean to "be one with"?

     The word we translate as “refuge” is taken from the Japanese term kie-ei. Kie-ei consists of two characters. Kie means “to unreservedly throw oneself into,” no holding back, no way out, no safety net, harness, or rope. That is the way a parent rescues a child who is in danger.... The second character, ei, literally means “to rely upon,” in the way that a child leaps into a parent’s arms, trusting unequivocally.

     I remember when my children were young. They were able to stand by themselves but couldn’t yet walk, and I would stand them up on the dresser and say, “Jump!” They would throw themselves into space, knowing I would be there. They had a complete sense of trust. It was total doing. “Unreservedly throwing oneself into and relying upon” differs from “a shelter or protection from danger or distress”—the more common definition of the word refuge.

Toward the end of this excerpt, he asks us to search ourselves:

Why do we practice? What is it that we seek? What is it that we want? What is it that we are prepared to do to get what we want? Are we willing to practice the edge, take a risk, unreservedly throw ourselves into practice?

I find a noble challenge in the contrast between refuge as "shelter from distress" and refuge as "throwing oneself into." Does the practice of taking refuge -- of taking refuge in practice -- play out as seeking shelter, playing it safe -- or just going for it? I mean in my life, in my everyday living. Unreservedly throwing myself into practice: to me, that means unreservedly being present to those around me. Unreservedly being present to myself. Unreservedly being present to what is, right now.

Every moment there is the choice: Jump! Or, wait and see. (Or, not now, I'm too busy.)

It comes back again to No Fear. Fearlessness, having no more fear. Just jump!

Like I said, this is a noble challenge for me. I'm not big on jumping. I'm used to fear; with fear I feel secure.

But I love that image of John Daido Loori's children jumping off the dresser into his arms. How wonderful that must have felt for them! Can I be next?

When I was little, my mother tells me, I loved to jump in my crib. I jumped so energetically that the crib would travel from one side of the room to the other. Here I am, jumping and smiling. Yes, it feels good.

Nice things happen

This is the painting I will enter for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Student/Teacher Art Show.

Plum Blossom Awakening by Lauren Thompson

Mr. Choey wet-mounted it for me so that all the wrinkles are gone, and it will be preserved. I still need to matte and frame it.

We have the option of listing a price for our paintings, not that very many of them sell. Last year, when I submitted for the first time, I had no idea how people price their work for a show like this, so I put $75, which would cover the cost of the frame and matte and some of the supplies I'd bought for the class. When I went to the show, I was amazed to see that prices ranged from $150 to $800, with $300 being about average. Some pieces looked very professional, and others, well, not so much. But most artists had listed a price; only a few went with "NFS." I thought, "Next year, I'm pricing up."

I didn't expect that anyone would buy my painting, though of course I was a tiny bit hopeful. Over the month that the show was up, only about five works out of eighty were awarded with the red dot sticker: "sold."

The last day of the show was a Saturday, when I was at the Garden anyway for the Chinese brush painting class. I took a break from the class in order, I hoped, to pick up my painting, so that I wouldn't have to come back for it the next day. (This was in February, and I'm dependent on my bike for travel, so I was hoping to avoid another cold ride. And Sundays are always busy for me anyway.) The gallery and adjoining cafe were posted to closed at 4:00 pm, but when I arrived at the entrance at 3:20 pm or so, I was told by the guard that it was too late to go in. There were a number of us who wanted to visit that building, but she was firm -- NO. Soon they were going to start asking people to leave, and they didn't have enough guards, so no one new was allowed to enter.

Well, I started to get annoyed. It wasn't the first time that I had experienced the Garden as rigid and nonaccomodating; up came the memory and resentment of bringing my toddler son to the Garden and being scolded for serving him his sippy cup and a baggie's worth of Oatios -- no outside food allowed. And other memories, too. The garden is a beautiful place and there is so much I love about it, but I have found it hard to let go of these little grudges against it. Now, being denied access to my painting and being forced to return another day in the cold were felling blows.

I was able to walk away from that guard before I spoke in anger, but by the time I reached the guards at the entrance of the classroom building, I couldn't hold back. I complained to them about the other guard, and they jumped to her defense. The rules aren't up to them, there aren't enough guards, there's nothing any of them could do. I could see, in the eyes of one of the guards, a look that to me read, "Oh yes, another entitled Park Slope type, always wanting things exactly her way." Meanwhile, I'm saying, "I just want to pick up my painting!" To which one of the guards responded, "They probably wouldn't let you take it anyway." Which was probably true.

After venting a bit more, I went back down to class and tried to paint. I knew I had behaved badly.  Equanimity, I counseled myself. Let go. But I was still annoyed.

The next day, I arrived during the two hours designated as "pick up" time, cold and a little miffed. When I got down to the gallery, I saw a couple standing near my painting. It turns out that they had just decided to buy it. They were thrilled to meet me in person -- they treated me like a celebrity, and I blushed a lot. All I could say was, "Thank you. I feel so honored that you like my painting. I feel so honored."

I had with me the packing material for the frame, so I packed it up for them. They gave the exhibit director a check and then went off, hand in hand, taking my painting with them. I felt so full of joy, so grateful. As I climbed the stairs to leave, unexpectedly empty-handed, I felt an immense urge to bow. Along the stairway are planted soaring bamboo and palm trees, so I bowed to them. I bowed deeply, tears in my eyes. Then I thought, I have to apologize.

I went back to the education building -- fortunately, one of the guards from the day before was at the desk, the one with the eyes. I looked right into those eyes. I said, "I don't know if you remember me, I gave you a hard time yesterday about not being able to get my painting. Well, I'm here to apologize. I'm sorry that I took out my frustration on you. I shouldn't have done that."

He rocked back in his chair, smiling, and said, "Well, that's all right! Don't worry about it!" Then I told him how a couple had just bought it -- how if I had been able to take it home the day before, that wouldn't have happened. It wasn't so much that they bought my painting, but that they wanted it, and that they were so nice. The guard kept saying, "You see? Everything works out. You see?" Then he said to one of the other guards, "That's why I like working here. Nice things happen. You see?"

So I bundled up and put on my helmet, thanking him, thanking both of them, and giving them a little bow. Then I rode home, smiling and thinking about how I would tell my husband what had happened. Not just about the painting, but about the gratitude.

Nice things happen.

Birth of a star amid space dust 
[Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/P.S. Teixeira (Center for Astrophysics)]

P.S. That painting was of a wild orchid. It looked something like this:

My teacher, Mr. Choey, had seen it in the show. He never said, exactly, that my painting was incorrect, but he did say, "I will show you the right way to paint orchids." And he did, but his were cultivated orchids, not wild orchids. I'll keep working on them on my own. My goal is to paint something like this:

Orchid Dance by Cindy Pon. She is an up-and-coming children's book author and illustrator, as well as a dedicated Chinese brush artist.

Poetry Friday: Bamboo

In truth, Basho isn't my favorite haiku poet, but I like this one. It goes with my painting.

a cuckoo's cry --
moonlight seeping through
a large bamboo grove

[translation by Haruo Shirane]

“When composing a verse let there not be a hair’s breadth separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.” (Matsuo Basho)

Trust in Sangha

I want to post today, but I need to make it short and quick. I am a writer by profession as well as avocation and temperament, and today I have a deadline to meet. Revision as practice -- now that is an idea worth exploring. (Or, procrastination as practice, maybe?) But not today, not here.

So I am posting one of my favorite passages from Thay, about the role of Sangha. Thay has said that of the three jewels, the most important is Sangha. His is truly the bodhisatva vision -- I am within you, and you are within me. We go nowhere alone.

When we are in a Sangha,
we are like a drop of water in a river.
We allow the Sangha to hold us and transport us.
Don’t be like a drop of oil in the river,
not mixing with the other drops of water --
that way you arrive nowhere.
Allow yourself to be transported by the Sangha
so that your pain, sorrow, and suffering
are recognized and embraced.

You have to trust the Sangha.
Imagine you are a drop of water
that would like to go to the ocean.
If you go alone, you might evaporate,
but if you allow yourself to be
embraced and transported by the Sangha,
then you will get there.
You suffer only when you are a separate drop of water.

Please remember this.

 painting: River Run by Devon Featherstone

Devon Featherstone is an award-winning, self-taught artist based in British Columbia. Click here to contact her about works available for purchase. 

[Quotation from Peace Begins Here. The line breaks are mine.]

Why practice?

Why practice mindfulness? Why step, stride, stumble along this path marked out by Siddhārtha Gautama 2,500 years ago?

Different traditions seem to have different answers. Different individuals have different answers. Presumably, they are really all the same answer.

Why practice?

• To wake up. (I thought Suzuki Roshi might say this.)
  
• To develop Compassion. (I thought the Dalai Lama might say this.)
• To grasp ultimate reality. (Robert Thurman?)
• To live with ease. (Sharon Salzberg?)
• To become enlightened. (Whatever that means.)
• To become lighter.
• To be reborn in a happier form.
• To cease to be reborn.
• To suffer less from the slings and arrows of one's own arsenal.
• To suffer less from slings and arrows period.
• To be directed.
• To be free.
• To escape.
• To return.
• To crave less.
• To crave but react less.
  
• To relax.
• To sleep better.
• To sleep when one is asleep, to be awake when one is awake.
• To become a buddha.
• To be a buddha.
• To become a bodhisatva.
• To be a bodhisatva.

And why do I practice? All of the above.

But that answer is too easy. Sometimes I don't really know why I practice. But I think that Thay is on to something when he says, "Because I like it." Because it brings well-being. And that is the sum of the Buddha's way: if something increases well-being in you, keep doing it. If it increases ill-being in you, stop doing it (or at least do it less).

From a dharma talk given on June 11, 2009:

Why [do] you practice sitting meditation? The best answer is: Because I like it. Why do you practice walking meditation? Because I like it. . . . The practices of mindful walking, mindful breathing, smiling, bring well-being, happiness.

I like this. (Tee hee.) I guess in this instance, it is okay to have a preference. But this would be a deeply considered preference, not a conditioned preference. I guess.

Fodder for a future post ...

Poetry Friday: Three Haiku

Thanks to the storm formerly known as Hurricane Ida, we've had a very blustery day. I was out in it, riding to and from tai chi class. I watched the trees grow more bare with every gust. It was haiku, that is, bittersweet, to know that when the color and cover of the leaves are gone, they won't return for a long while.

Issa would know what I mean.





















Of his 9,300 poems, here are three.

blowing from the east
west south north...
autumn gale

vast sky
vast earth
autumn passes too

behind me
the autumn wind blows
me home

The translator, David G. Lanoue, suggests that on one level, "home" in the last poem means death, our final destination. Tradition probably supports that interpretation. But at the same time, having just been out in the wind and having it behind me only half of my journey, I think that "home" might indeed mean home -- the sense that having fought one's way to whatever errand one needed to run, one is now happy to be hurried home, no matter how humble "home" may be.

Then there is Thay's sense of "home." The autumn wind nudging us, pushing us, back home, to the present moment. If you're not paying attention, you'll fall down.

Translations by David G. Lanoue. Visit his website to search through them all.

Discrimination: Sometimes You Gotta Choose

I want to enter a painting for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Student/Teacher Art Exhibit. I can only enter one. I could choose something that I have already done, or I could enter something that I paint over the next week. The paintings can be quite large -- the only real limitation is the cost of backing, matting, and framing. (We are responsible for all of that, including meeting the Exhibit's requirements.)

Two paintings I'm considering are small enough to fit on my scanner, so I thought I would post them here, in the M & L Student/Teacher Art Exhibit. (I would love to enter both, as a unit that look very much like two paintings but are really just one painting, as Required.)

Brush Sweeps Mind

In Chinese Brush Painting class, we always start with calligraphy, as is traditional. One practices the strokes in calligraphy, then applies them in painting.

Our teacher, Mr. Kwok Kay Choey, explains the composition and origin of the characters. Some are a teaching in themselves.

Awakening

The radical on the left means "heart/mind"; the character on the right means "my." Together, it means "awakening." If you know your own heart and mind, you have awakened.


Enlightenment














The top portion depicts reeds or branches and means "broom" or "sweep." In the middle, we see dust in a dustpan. At the bottom, "heart/mind." Your heart and mind swept clean of dust: that describes the state of enlightenment.

This reminds me always of a saying by Jakusho Kwong Roshi, a successor of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi: "breath sweeps mind." I have a CD set of talks by Jakusho Kwong which I am slowly making my way through. "Breath sweeps mind" is an often helpful gatha for me as I try to settle into meditation.


No Fear














I think of this concept now as "no more fear," because of Mr. Choey's explanation of the character. The top portion, "No," depicts a person carrying wood. All of the timber has been carried away from the hillside, there is "no more," it has been taken away. The bottom portion means "Fear": on the left, the heart/mind radical; on the left, the character for an owl with its two big eyes. I have to admit I'm not clear on this last part, so I will ask Mr. Choey for clarification and update this post later.

84,000 Dharma Doors

And one of them is Calvin and Hobbes. At least in this strip.

[Click on image to enlarge.]

Doesn't this perfectly capture the mystery of Interbeing? (With a pinch of humor, which I think Thay would appreciate.)

I have tried to explain the idea of the interbeing of people, animals, plants, and minerals to my son. When he was younger, he grasped the concept fairly well. Now that he is twelve, it sounds kinda weird to him. Well, he's growing up.

"We humans are made entirely of non-human elements, such as plants, minerals, earth, clouds, and sunshine. ... The Diamond Sutra teaches us that it is impossible to distinguish between sentient and non-sentient beings. ... Minerals have their own lives, too. In Buddhist monasteries, we chant, 'Both sentient and non- sentient beings will realize full enlightenment.'" -- Thay on the First Mindfulness Training, Protection of Life.

Gasho to onions everywhere.

Poetry Friday: Autumn Dusk

This time, something from me.

Autumn dusk
bats and oak leaves rush about
sliver of moon above

-- Lauren Thompson

[photo by Chris Caselli]

I composed this little haiku exactly three years ago, on my way home from having tea with a friend of mine who had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. She'd already had to stop working and had moved into an assisted living residence, but she was still out and about, meeting people in coffee shops and visiting friends. She was still traveling to her doctors' offices, rather than they traveling to her. But all of that was soon to change. Perhaps she sensed that. The day before, she had finished drawing up a do-not-resuscitate letter. In fact, five months later, at the age of forty-two, she would be dead. 

But this day, she was very much alive. Up to the very last moment she was very much alive.

I have written elsewhere about the experience of being with her through her dying. I am still working on a book about the experience. I have to call it a memoir, as everything I have to say about it is much more about me than about her. I really hardly knew her. But in some ways my relationship with her was -- is? -- my deepest friendship.

On the same notebook page on whch I recorded the haiku, I later jotted down another haiku, this time written at a retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery. That was one year ago. The two haiku don't really belong together, but they do.

The monastery cat
stalks the unmowed grass
as if he is wild.

-- L. T.

A black cat has made the monastery his second home, and the monks and nuns call him Batman. The poem got a big laugh when I read it at the end of the retreat, during a public performance/share we call a "be-in." Later, someone told me that a brother had quipped, "The monastery monk / stalks the unmowed grass / as if he is wild." Yes, just so.

The Noble Way of No Path

During the one-day retreat with Sharon Salzberg and Cheri Maples, they both explored the danger of feeling that peace or happiness are down the road for us, once we have practiced more. We believe that what we need is outside of ourselves, to be given to us by someone else or to be earned as a prize after lots of hard spiritual work. We think, "I'm not there yet," or, "I don't deserve it yet."

This is not a helpful way of thinking about progress, about making progress with our practice. Whatever we think we don't have is actually already within us. Cheri recalled Suzuki Roshi's famous quip, "All of you are perfect just as you are and you could use a little improvement." Personally, I know I live out of the "improvement" part of that truth, but not the "perfect" part. I don't believe it, deep down; I'm not there yet. And yet on an even deeper level, I'm already there. Buddha-nature is no respecter of persons.*  If you exist, then you've got it.

Sharon Salzberg said that she's heard Sylvia Boorstein speak of the Noble Eightfold Path as the Noble Eightfold Moment. Because the idea of a path can be misleading. Paths lead somewhere; we follow a path in order to get from one place to another. And we do want to get somewhere -- we want to become freer of suffering -- but the way to get there is to be here, where we are. The path is ennobling every moment we are on it. Sort of like M. C. Escher's impossible staircases. Wherever you think this path is going, you're already there.

It occurs to me it may be helpful to think instead of a Noble Eightfold Way. A way is a path, and it is also a method. "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way," as Mahatma Gandhi said.

* Acts 10:34, spoken by the apostle Peter (about God, not Buddha-nature). I didn't know that was the source, did you?

Commentary

Ever feel that your experience of the world has this texture?

An overlay of language, cluttering up everything. Even brushing one's teeth. (One of Thay's favorite meditation activities.)

Commentary. Unceasing commentary.

For me, it's sometimes brooding, a figuring-out of how I feel about something; sometimes it's chatty, interested in every little thing about life. Always, it's a drive to say something about something, to find just the right way that language can describe something.

I would like to find a way to direct, or at least to view, this commentary impulse so that it is useful for my writing, but not detrimental to mindfulness. Insofar as the introspective commentary adds to insight, I would like to keep it. Insofar as it is an annoying repetition of past scenes and well-rehearsed, petty opinions, then I would like to be done with it.

I know there is old, old habit energy at work here, originating in my younger years, perhaps even in past generations of my family. The habit of feeling that there was so much I could say, if only someone were listening. So much I could explain, if only someone asked. So much I could share, if only someone were curious. It is an energy that scared me at times, wondering if the flood of words, tomes' worth, might drive me mad, or if it already had. It is an energy that fires my writing and has brought me success and connection and much happiness.

There is a lot to ponder here.

Writing this out has brought me a bit of clarity about it all. Words put to skillful use, in this case. (I hope.)

My thanks to Francois-Marie Banier, whose photographs I happened upon. They touched me deeply.

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.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* 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!

Mud and Loot-us

When I invited folks from my sangha to visit this blog, I mistakenly typed the functional link as "mud and lootus. blogspot. com." When a few intrepid friends clicked, they received the message,

"Sorry, the blog you were looking for does not exist. However, the name mudandlootus is available to register!"

"Mud & Lootus" -- that could be an interesting blog. It puts me in mind, for some reason, of The Iliad, which opens with a dispute over loot, war loot. The Greek hero Achilles falls into a sulking rage at having one of his war prizes, a young Trojan widow called Briseis, taken from him by Agamemnon, who had had to return his own war prize, Chryseis, to her father because he was a Trojan priest for Apollo, who in his divine annoyance had beset the Greeks with a plague of arrows raining from the sky. (It's complicated, epically so.)

Achilles responds the way many of us do (at least internally) when something is taken from us that we like: he taunts and withdraws from battle ("I quit!") and he complains to his mother ("It's not fair!"). His mother happens to be the goddess Thetis, and she, very unwisely (or perhaps with very subtle wisdom?) appeals to Zeus to turn the war against the Greeks until Achilles is properly respected again. This leads to the death of Patroklos, Achilles's dear friend, as well as thousands of Greeks, which leads to the death of Hector, as well as thousands of Trojans, which leads ... well, you get the idea.

The story is full of gods and men (and goddesses and women) behaving badly. But also, at times, honorably. The best and worst of our nature. Worst of all is wrath -- wrath over loot. If that's not mud, I don't know what is.

(And as we all know, eventually Achilles, too, met his mortal fate.)
















The Wrath of Brad Pitt

Poetry Friday: Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis

Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis

by Philip Whalen

I praise those ancient Chinamen

Who left me a few words,

Usually a pointless joke or a silly question

A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin of a quick

                         splashed picture—bug, leaf,

                         caricature of Teacher

    on paper held together now by little more than ink

    & their own strength brushed momentarily over it

Their world & several others since

Gone to hell in a handbasket, they knew it—

Cheered as it whizzed by—

& conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars

Happy to have saved us all.

I admit that this is the only Philip Whalen poem I have read. I loved this poem when I saw it in the Shambhala Sun (thank you, Shambhala Sun, for the artwork, which I scanned from your magazine -- consider this my request for permission) and I thereupon bought the Collected Poems. The book is two inches thick and runs 871 pages.

I think I could have done with a Selected Poems.

After a respectful number of days/weeks/months/years have passed, I will give the book away. Maybe to my neighbor, a poet himself whose livingroom walls are laid in poetry books, since he greeted the book with, "Hey, Philip Whalen! Great!"  (My husband is a poet as well, but I won't allow our livingroom walls to be more than partially composed of poetry books; also, he greeted the book with a calm indifference.) For now, it sits on my "Buddhist/Writing" shelf, along with One Continuous Mistake and Momma Zen.

Once upon a time, I used to write poetry myself. Now, just the occasional haiku.  However, when I write my children's books, they often take form, in my mind and on the page, as poems. Particularly Polar Bear Night and my latest, The Christmas Magic. But more on that some other time.

Propers due:

Philip Whalen, "Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis" text and art from The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen copyright © 2007 by Brandeis University Press and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press. www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

Source: The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen (Wesleyan University Press, 2007) 

P.S. When my husband read this post, he exclaimed, "Don't give away the Philip Whalen! I do want to read it. I was waiting for you to be done with it." I've turned the book over to him.

Who knew how important blogging could be to marital harmony?

Attached to Tea

Or perhaps I should say, "attached to caffeine."

I've been thinking about the connection between Buddhism and tea, or caffeine. It goes way back. All the way back, it seems (i.e. according to Alan Watts and many web-sources which may all be pointing back to Watts, for all I can tell), to Bodhidharma, the monk from India who brought Buddhism to China.

Bodhidharma is traditionally portrayed with brooding seriousness, but without eyelids. According to legend, he spent nine years staring at the wall of a cave, intent on piercing his way through to enlightenment. At one point, frustrated that his tired eyes kept closing, he tore off his eyelids and tossed them to the ground. They sprouted into tea bushes. What he saw as the problem became the solution for his drowsiness.

The solution was caffeine.

I wonder how this fits in with the Five Precepts, in particular with the fifth precept, which translated from Pali reads: "I undertake the training rule to abstain from fermented drink that causes heedlessness." In Thay's tradition, the fifth "mindfulness training" expands the rule to avoiding the consumption of anything that contains "toxins," from alcohol and drugs to certain movies and conversations. This training has been very helpful for me, supporting me for instance in my decision to skip much of the current cinema, which I consider too violent, and current television, which I find completely vapid. I summarize the training for myself as avoiding the consumption of things that cloud the mind, one way or another. My aim is clarity of mind.

It just bothers me that in the morning, I don't have much clarity of mind before I have my tea. It used to be coffee -- over the years, I've cut back from two strong cups of coffee, to one cup, to three cups of black tea, to two, and now just one. I'm down to one cup of tea in order to combat anxiety and sleeplessness. But the idea of leaving behind that one cup makes me pretty unhappy. PLEEEEZE don't make me give up caffeine entirely!

(No, green tea in the morning just won't cut it. And don't even mention decaf. The pleasure is in the taste AND the kick together, don't you see?)

I think that I am a little attached (okay, addicted) to caffeine. And yet I feel justified in holding on to it, because caffeine seems to hold a sanctioned, if not sanctified, position in Buddhist practice. I've many times seen mention, in the American Buddhist magazines, of bringing oneself right to the cushion in the morning, after rising and making oneself a cup of coffee. I know that coffee is a daily ritual for many members of my sangha. I have heard that at least one monastic in our tradition starts the day with a cup of coffee, and another with tea. And there is the whole Zen tea ceremony thing.

Thay even has a gatha for drinking tea:

This cup of tea in my two hands -
Mindfulness held uprightly!
My mind and body dwell
in the very here and now.

But I suspect he is speaking of green or white tea, not strong English Breakfast tea, dark enough to need milk.

At least I try to be mindful as I make the tea, try to enact the ritual as just that, a sort of ceremony for starting the day, and not as merely a set of actions I find myself doing yet again, wishing someone else had already cleaned out the tea ball. Maybe mindfulness makes the attachment part okay. Or, at least makes it part of the path. But I don't think that awareness of attachment is the goal of the path. Mindfulness of addiction is not what the Buddha meant by freedom. Just being aware of an attachment is not enough to free yourself of the suffering caused by the attachment. Especially if you don't really want to free yourself of the suffering caused by the attachment.

Well, I do want to be free of the suffering (the pre-tea grumpiness, the headache). I just don't want to be free of the cause of the suffering. Because I really like my one cup of caffeine ... er, tea.

I'm reminded of a story I heard the year I attended Quaker meeting. William Penn, governor of Pennsylvania, had befriended George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, and had just become "convinced" -- that is, converted. Quakers, of course, were committed to plain dress and non-violence, in contrast to Penn, who, as befitted his rank and station, dressed finely and carried a ceremonial sword. Penn was loathe to give up his sword. He asked Fox what to do, and Fox answered, "Wear it as long as thee can, William."

As for my tea?

"Drink it as long as thee can, Lauren."

It's all part of the path, right?

(Please stop glaring at me, Mr. B.)

Poetry Friday: i once knew a man

One of my favorite blogs (by one of my favorite people) features "Poetry Friday." I'm following suit. Here is one by lucille clifton.

i once knew a man

i once knew a man who had wild horses killed.
when he told about it
the words came galloping out of his mouth
and shook themselves and headed off in
every damn direction. his tongue
was wild and wide and spinning when he talked
and the people he looked at closed their eyes
and tore the skins off their backs as they walked away
and stopped eating meat.
there was no holding him once he got started;
he had had wild horses killed one time and
they rode him to his grave.

Painting: "Wild Horses" by Chen Ming (this painting is for sale; click for info)

I taught this poem, many years ago, in first-year college composition classes as an example of complex use of metaphor. The students generally had a terrible time with it. So many wrote how awful it was that the horses came back to run him down. The poem to me is so clearly dream-like and mythopoetic, rooted in the literal world but branching extravagantly in the ether, as poetry will do. But my students were not very familiar with metaphor or ether. Of course, they were only seventeen or eighteen years old and more adept at being good students than at life.

I can't say, then, that I "taught them" this poem. I introduced them to it. Who knows, maybe some of them are haunted by its phrases and wish they could remember where they read it, or when.

Washing up

I missed Vesak at Blue Cliff Monastery, but I have this picture from the event. A sister is pouring water over the baby Buddha.














Vesak is the spring holiday that celebrates the birth of the Buddha. Our teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, teaches "no coming, no going, no birth, no death," which means, cosmically, that the man we call the Buddha was never born and never died, as all is in continuation. Less cosmically, the man was born about 2,500 years ago and died about 2,420 years ago. Either way, we're happy that he taught what he taught and so we say, "Happy Birthday." Or, as Thay would say, "Happy Continuation Day."

In this practice we also say,

Washing the dishes is like
bathing a baby Buddha.
The mundane is the sacred.
Everyday mind is Buddha mind.

Which is sort of like this old Gateless Gate koan:

A monk said to Joshu, "I have just entered this monastery. Please teach me."

"Have you eaten your rice porridge?" asked Joshu.

"Yes, I have," replied the monk.

"Then you had better wash your bowl," said Joshu.

With this the monk gained insight.

Happy continuation day yet again, dear dirty dishes.