What good poetry is

Sculpture and photograph by Rowen Gillespie

I am periodically suffering keenly these days along with a dear friend who's in the worst of the chronic illnesses, profound depression.  I can be too empathic, having experienced that myself.  It was long ago, but it was a long trek out of that landscape.

And I hate not being able to help someone else much.  You aren't, you know.  I was taken aback when I read in Bernie Glassman's book, Instructions for the Cook, that a bodhissatva goes to the well for a teaspoon of water, climbs the hill, gives a thirsty person that water, goes back to the well.  What?  I thought surely one could do more than that for the world.  Glassman himself keeps trying to do grand things - he once vowed to end homelessness - but I'm not sure how much they work out.

I found myself remembering the last line of this poem.  I, of course, would revise the penultimate line to read, "It is the blight we were born for."  I really dislike the use of "man" to represent the species.  It's part of that invisible water of patriarchy we all swim in:  men are human, women, are - other.

Hopkins was a deeply spiritual man (who has been described as "gloomy.")  I imagine he would appreciate the correction.  They didn't know better back then.

But how the good Jesuit nailed it in this poem.  It is ourselves we mourn for.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Spring and Fall
     by Gerard Manley Hopkins

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

There is Work to be Done

Children being led past their dead friends, told to keep their eyes closed

 I woke up this morning with the Sandy Hook massacre on my mind, and ideas about how I can help push sensible gun laws through our political system. Opening my e-mail is a little more annoying than usual these days, with marketers in a frenzy to sell me cigars and mail-order cookies. But my stern mood was modified when my inbox led me to Smiling Mind, and I sat with the 5-minute body scan.

I have been impatient with the advice coming from ministers and Buddhist teachers that we all sit deeply with this grief, because I'm not hearing people say, "Now get to work."  To my mind came something I once read said by Zen Teacher Bernie Glassman.  He and his students were meditating every morning in the overgrown schoolyard of an abandoned school.  He said, as I recall, Meditation is a luxury; I could do it all day.  But there is work to be done.  So they just meditated for 20 or 30 minutes.  Then he and his students began cutting back the weeds that were shielding dealers selling drugs to children. 

This is the moment when something can happen in America that can prevent these tragedies.  Here is a link to an article with the headline "Gun Backlash Begins."  As well it might.  It is our job to remember, to insist that the backlash goes on.

I went to Michael's craft store today and bought black grosgrain ribbon and tiny safety pins.  I am making a black ribbon to wear until - I am not sure.  I am not putting it aside to celebrate.  I intend to wear it on my red-and-green plaid Christmas shirt at least until the turn of the year.  Then I'll think about it.  I'm very awkward with hand sewing, so I don't know how many more I'll make, but I'd like to have some to give away if somebody wants one. 

The poet William Blake - another madman, by the way - wrote this phrase:  "Joy and woe are woven fine."  One of Roshi Glassman's main teachings is Bearing Witness to the suffering in life. This is why he leads retreats at Auschwitz.  We need to keep remembering those 20 children and six adults who were murdered by an unhappy young man with his mother's guns, guns she had taught him to use.  We need to think about how far and wide the tragedy of these deaths spreads, how many lives are irrevocably stained by it.

I would be interested in hearing from some of you who don't live in America, how you see this, whether you see America as a violent nation.  May we be free from danger.

Stuck With It

My husband Tom had polio the year before the vaccine came out, and it changed his body in a number of ways, most seriously, diminished respiratory capacity.  Many surgeries were done on his hands and feet that allowed him to function well in the world, and to work.  But there is no getting around some of it, nerve damage, for instance, and he does not imagine that it will ever be possible to escape or control that; it's his body, and he's pretty content in this world.

It's hard for me to imagine being as accepting as he is, since I keep building fantasies of escaping from or controlling this bipolar disorder.  A new study of DNA comes out and I think, That's it.  This is going to lead to a cure for bipolar.  In my lifetime.  This disorder broke out to stay in my early thirties, so I've been dealing with these hopes and dreams for over three decades.  I modify them at times.  There has to be a way to medicate this that would leave me perfectly normal, without moodswings.  I mean, that could happen.

So this morning when I was reading an article by Bernie Glassman, I was struck by his words.  First, a photo to suggest one reason I like Roshi Glassman.  He clowns around, lest students take themselves too seriously. (That student is Jeff Bridges, BTW.)

And here's another photo of him leading a street retreat, a plunge into living homeless.

This is quite a person and teacher. 

In the article he says -

All of us have some degree of realization and, moment after moment, are manifesting our understanding of the oneness of life. Obviously, the greater the realization, the greater the clarity, the greater the confidence.
      And with all that, even while possessing great realization, we still have our conditioning, our own particular characteristics, our own particular paths. Little of that changes overnight. In fact, there is a great deal that remains unchanged throughout one's lifetime. We acquire from a very early age strong patterns of behavior; we have physical characteristics that we and others sometimes call limitations; we have traits embedded in our DNA that we are powerless to change in this lifetime. It is like drinking from a glass and then washing it of all trace. The washing itself leaves traces. So we wash some more, try different ways of cleaning and drying, yet no matter what we do, some trace is always left......

So you can see why that speaks to me, with my inherited mental condition.  Because if I'm not careful, I get into thinking I can beat this thing, that there is a perfect point between overmedicated and undermedicated that I could sustain day after day and be, you know, normal.  This is a 70-year-old woman who has yet to perfect the art of picking up after herself.  (I work on it, though.........)

The Dude Abides

A frivolous poem from my journal -

pro-gress
e-gress
di-gress
un-gress

 Maybe ungress is "not a word," meaning only that no one has written it down until now, but maybe it should be.  Sounds Zen to me -
ungress: to not go forward.  Just to stand there.

frivolous: not serious in content, attitude, or behavior

serious: concerned with work or important matters rather than play or trivialities.  Work is . . . what is work? you reap something from it.

progress: movement as toward a goal, advancement.  gress is from ancient languages - to advance, to go, to walk. (The opposite of progress is Congress.)

If you must walk purposefully, at least digress - turn aside, stray, wander.A form of play.

So many people work so hard to get somewhere.  But somewhere doesn't exist. When you get there, there's no there there.  What is somewhere?  A better place, materially, one that feels secure.  A time when you can ah-ha be frivolous, have fun.

If you must do serious things, do them in ruffles. Do them with a clown nose on.  Like Bernie Glassman, above on the right.  That's him doing dokusan (private spiritual interview) with Jeff Bridges, famous for The Big Lebowski, an unserious movie in which a spirit of play has the last word. (The title of this post.)  Glassman has accomplished big, serious things, a mandala of services for the homeless, retreats at Auschwitz.  You can read an interview with him here on Tricycle, I hope.  (Like everyone else, Tricycle is starting to limit content to those who pay for it - gasp. I find being a subscriber worth it.)

If you must work, play at it. Oh, don't make me get started on What is play? It is anything done with a play-full attitude.  Which is an attitude of getting nowhere, of exploring - how high can a sand castle go?
Where does this trail go?  What would I do if I don't get a damn thing done today?

Instructions for the Cook

Tonight we watched a documentary about Bernie Glassman that Tom got off the web. A simple film that goes through the five stages of making the meal of your life, it is titled after Glassman's book, Instructions for the Cook, one of the first Zen books that deeply engaged us.

He came to the point about looking at your ingredients. Using the metaphor of cooking an omelet, he opened the refrigerator and said, "You just look. Observe." He said we confine ourselves, we think much too small. He talked about how we think there's such a limited amount of money, but there isn't, and I recalled how he got Greyston Mandala funded. It is a huge endeavor, and seemed amazing in the book. But in the documentary it did not seem so amazing when you saw him sitting there quietly (in outrageous suspenders) explaining how he thought. We have much more to give than we think, and there is much more out there for us than we realize.

Out of nowhere I was struck with a personal realization: "I'll never get published in Poetry Magazine if I don't send them anything." (Poetry being the highest peak of that particular world.) I realized I've had a very small vision, an idea that there was a tortuously long, steep path that led to a basketball hoop way too high for little me. So, mind clarified a bit, and without even a real dokusan. [The image of Glassman Roshi above is said to be of him doing dokusan at the Yonkers zendo.]