RAINING QUINCES

Several years ago, while searching the internet for information on long-distance walking, I discovered The Solitary Walker, a wonderful, multifaceted blog published by Robert Wilkinson.  As the title of the blog reveals, Robert is a passionate walker. He has walked thousands of miles in the U.K. and the rest of Europe.  According to my last count, he has completed five caminos on the network of pilgrim paths that lead from various parts of Europe to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.  However, as any reader of The Solitary Walker will soon discover, walking is not Robert's only passion.  He is also a gifted poet, and he has just published his first collection of poems under the title of Raining Quinces.

The new collection contains over eighty poems which are organized under three sections: Camino (poems inspired by Robert's wanderings on the French and Spanish pilgrim routes to Santiago); Lightness of Being (light verse and humorous poems); and Blue Fruit (poems on love, life, nature, landscape, art, and family relationships).  Underpinning all of the poems, however, is a spiritual quest, an ongoing journey to pierce through the veneer of the material world and discover something of eternal value.  

In "Deep Blue," one the last poems in the book, the poet is engaged in an imaginary conversation with Deep Blue, the name of the chess-playing computer which beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a famous 1997 match.  When Deep Blue questions the value of poetry in modern times, the poet reminds it of how difficult it is to compose poems —

                                         In words direct as sunlight,

                                         Subtle as moonbeams

                                         And real as seeds and stones.

Readers of Robert's new poetry collection will discover that the poet's own standards have been clearly achieved with both grace and beauty.  These poems are "direct as sunlight, subtle as moonbeams, and real as seeds and stones."  In ways that are both unexpected and pleasurable, they open our eyes and hearts to the realities of life; they allow us to see our own questing hearts in the hearts of others; and they remind us that a fearless creative life is itself a path to understanding — perhaps even redemption. 

Raining Quinces can be purchased through both Amazon US and Amazon UK.  I heartily recommend it.  I also highly recommend Robert's excellent new online poetry magazine, The Passionate Transitory, which features poetry from contemporary poets throughout the world.  The magazine also features interviews with these poets.

THE SILENCE OF SNOW

The zen master and I opened the front door this morning and discovered that our little corner of world was under a pleasing blanket of fine white powder, notwithstanding the old adage that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.  Actually, I'm quite fond of snow, provided it does its handiwork quickly and then moves on to other venues.  As the environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy has observed, "snow provokes responses that reach back to childhood."  I also love the way that snow dissolves color and forces the eye to appreciate natural shapes and forms that might have otherwise been overlooked.  Finally, I love the silence that comes with snowfall — silence that stills the heart and allows it to listen to different things.

My small offering today is a few photos taken early this morning around my yard and neighborhood, plus a lovely poem by Miguel de Unamuno (translated by Robert Bly).  

                                        THE SNOWFALL IS SO SILENT

                                                  By Miguel de Unamuno

                                                  translated by Robert Bly

                                             The snowfall is so silent,

                                             so slow,

                                             bit by bit, with delicacy

                                             it settles down on the earth

                                             and covers over the fields.

                                             The silent snow comes down

                                             white and weightless;

                                             snowfall makes no noise,

                                             falls as forgetting falls,

                                             flake after flake.

                                             It covers the fields gently

                                             while frost attacks them

                                             with its sudden flashes of white;

                                             covers everything with its pure

                                             and silent covering;

                                             not one thing on the ground

                                             anywhere escapes it.

                                             And wherever it falls it stays,

                                             content and gay,

                                             for snow does not slip off as rain does

                                             but it stays and sinks in.

                                             The flakes are skyflowers,

                                             pale lilies from the clouds,

                                             that wither on earth. 

                                             They come down blossoming

                                             but then so quickly

                                             they are gone;

                                             they bloom only on the peak,

                                             above the mountains,

                                             and make the earth feel heavier

                                             when they die inside.

                                             Snow, delicate snow,

                                             that falls with such lightness

                                             on the head,

                                             on the feelings,

                                             come and cover over the sadness

                                             that lies always in my reason.

THE CRITIC VERSUS THE MAN IN THE ARENA

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt,

the 26th President of the United States

(photo above is of Roosevelt dressed in full expedition attire

as he led a 1909 expedition to Africa on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution) 

ON NOT PACKAGING THE SKY

Bamboo Grove, Hasedera Buddhist Temple, Kamakura, Japan
Photo by Urashimataro

Imagine a world in which you are liberated from all of the labels that have been imposed on you throughout your life.  Imagine a world in which that elusive experience we call "enlightenment," "awakening," or "higher consciousness" is not to be found in another time and place, but, instead, is to be found right under your nose — in this moment, this place, with all of your imperfections.  

These are two of the matters discussed by Alan Watts in his introduction to Zen: The Supreme Experience.  Having just reread that portion of the book, I am providing a few quotes that I find extremely liberating.  

I must begin with a word of explanation.  Some time ago I was in a radio station as a participant in a panel discussion on man and religion.  Before we went on air, the moderator asked all the participants around the table to introduce themselves.  I was sitting on his left, and the man on his right began: Rabbi So-and-so, Jewish; Reverend So-and-so, Protestant minister; Father So-and-so, Catholic priest; Doctor So-and-so, logical positivist and so on.  When it was my turn, I said, 'Alan Watts, no label." Immediately, there was an outcry: "You aren't being fair."

     I say 'No label' sincerely, because although I speak a great deal about Zen, I never refer to myself as a 'Zen-ist" or as a Buddhist because that seems to me like packaging the sky.

     There is an excellent reason for the absence of a definition of Zen.  All systems that have preconceived views of what the human being is and what the world ought to be categorize existence under labels.  People who have Jehovah-like ideas of an order that they wish to impose on reality also use labels.  But when one's concern is not to order the world around but to understand it, to experience it and to find out about it, you give up this superior attitude and become receptive.

     Then, instead of knowing all about it, you come to know it directly.  But this 'knowing' is difficult to talk about because it has to be felt.  It is the difference between eating dinner and eating the menu.

•  •  •  •  •

We may in the past have had marvelous spiritual experiences — almost everyone in this world is lucky enough to experience satori once in their life . . . Ever afterwords, you search for that experience again: 'I want it that way.'  You once had a wonderful girlfriend, and now you want another just like her.  That way of thinking blocks the possibility of meeting with life.  This is why meditation for Zen practitioners and Taoists means affirming that your everyday mind is the way — not the mind you ought to have or the mind you might have if you practiced acceptance or concentration.  We want you to look at it just the way it is right now — that's Buddha.  Just like that.

     Of course, many will say this is nonsense.  'The way I am now is degraded, ordinary, unevolved, not spiritual, decadent.'  Yet remember this phrase from the Zenrin poem:  'At midnight, the sun brightly shines.' All right, it is midnight now.  This, at this moment, is the awful dark thing we think we are.  Yet the poem also says, 'This is Buddha.' 

     A monk once asked a Zen master, 'What is Zen?'  The master replied, 'I don't feel like answering now.  Wait until there is nobody else around and I'll tell you.'  Some time later the monk returned to the master and said, 'There is nobody around now, Master.  Please tell me about Zen.' The master took him into the garden and said, 'What a long bamboo this is!  What a short bamboo that is!'

     So you may be a long bamboo, you may be a short bamboo.  You may be a giraffe with a long neck or a giraffe with a short neck.. What you are now is the very point.  There is no goal because all goals are in the future. There is only the question of what is.  Look and see; see how, of its own accord, it comes to your eye. 

Alan Watts, No Label 

                      

                         

THE BEGINNING, THE MIDDLE, AND THE END

Looking at my last post, Things That Slip Away in Time, I can see that I'm rather preoccupied these days with the subject of time — its nature, how it defines us at various stages of life, how the past shapes the future, how the past appears from the vantage point of the present.  Perhaps these are just idle thoughts on an idle Sunday afternoon, but they are the kind of thoughts that send me to the poetry of Billy Collins, for whom time seems to be a constant theme.

In particular, I have just reread the fine poem, Aristotle.  According to Collins, the inspiration for this poem arose upon reading Aristotle's Poetics, wherein the philosopher first articulated a principle that is now taken from granted by virtually everyone, specifically, that every literary work has three parts:  a beginning, a middle, and an ending.  As I read the poem, however, Collins is speaking not only of literary works, but also of life itself.  Indeed, what is life if not a beginning, where "almost anything can happen," followed by a middle, where "nothing is simple anymore," followed by an end, "where everything comes down to the destination we cannot help imagining . . . "? 

                                                    Aristotle

                                               by Billy Collins


                    This is the beginning.
                    Almost anything can happen.
                    This is where you find
                    the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
                    the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.
                    Think of an egg, the letter A,
                    a woman ironing on a bare stage
                    as the heavy curtain rises.
                    This is the very beginning.
                    The first-person narrator introduces himself,
                    tells us about his lineage.
                    The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.
                    Here the climbers are studying a map
                    or pulling on their long woolen socks.
                    This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.
                    The profile of an animal is being smeared
                    on the wall of a cave,
                    and you have not yet learned to crawl.
                    This is the opening, the gambit,
                    a pawn moving forward an inch.
                    This is your first night with her,
                    your first night without her.
                    This is the first part
                    where the wheels begin to turn,
                    where the elevator begins its ascent,
                    before the doors lurch apart.

                    This is the middle.
                    Things have had time to get complicated,
                    messy, really.  Nothing is simple anymore.
                    Cities have sprouted up along the rivers
                    teeming with people at cross-purposes—
                    a million schemes, a million wild looks.
                    Disappointment unshoulders its knapsack
                    here and pitches his ragged tent.
                    This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,
                    where the action suddenly reverses
                    or swerves off in an outrageous direction.
                    Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph
                    to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.
                    Someone hides a letter under a pillow.
                    Here the aria rises to a pitch,
                    a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.
                    And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge
                    halfway up the mountain.
                    This is the bridge, the painful modulation.
                    This is the thick of things.
                    So much is crowded into the middle—
                    the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,
                    Russian uniforms, noisy parties,
                    lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall—
                    too much to name, too much to think about.

                    And this is the end,
                    the car running out of road,
                    the river losing its name in an ocean,
                    the long nose of the photographed horse
                    touching the white electronic line.
                    This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,
                    the empty wheelchair,
                    and pigeons floating down in the evening.
                    Here the stage is littered with bodies,
                    the narrator leads the characters to their cells,
                    and the climbers are in their graves.
                    It is me hitting the period
                    and you closing the book.
                    It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen
                    and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.
                    This is the final bit
                    thinning away to nothing.
                    This is the end, according to Aristotle,
                    what we have all been waiting for,
                    what everything comes down to,
                    the destination we cannot help imagining,
                    a streak of light in the sky,
                    a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.


"Aristotle" from Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), by Billy Collins.

THINGS THAT SLIP AWAY IN TIME

It's been said that the two keys to happiness are a good appetite and a bad memory.  I have never failed to meet the first requirement, and as I proceed into my seventies, I am assured that nature itself will take care of the second.  Indeed, as I read the following poem by Billy Collins last night, I felt myself smiling in recognition of the man who is stirred emotionally by a moon that seems to have drifted out of a love poem that he once knew by heart.

                                        Forgetfulness

                 The name of the author is the first to go
                 followed obediently by the title, the plot,
                 the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
                 which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of.

                 It is as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
                 decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
                 to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

                 Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
                 and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
                 and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

                 something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
                 the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

                 Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
                 it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
                 not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

                 It has floated away down the dark mythological river
                 whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
                 well on your way to oblivion where you will join those
                 who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

                 No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
                 to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
                 No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
                 out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

There is no need to fret, of course; indeed, for most of us, there are many things that are perhaps best forgotten.  As for the other things, it's well to remember (if we can) what Nietzsche said:  "The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time."

THE CLEAR AND PRESENT EYE

We understand the specific attraction of Zen Buddhism when we realize the extent to which the contemporary West is animated by "prophetic faith," the sense of the holiness of the ought, the pull of the way things could be and should be but as yet are not.  Such faith has obvious virtues, but unless it is balanced by a companion sense of the holiness of the is, it becomes top-heavy.  If one's eyes are always on tomorrows, todays slip by unperceived.  To a West which in its concern to refashion heaven and earth is in danger of letting the presentness of life—the only life we really have—slip through its fingers, Zen comes as a reminder that if we do not learn to perceive the mystery and beauty of our present life, our present hour, we shall not perceive the worth of any life, of any hour.

From Huston Smith's "Foreword" to

The Three Pillars of Zen:

Teaching, Practice, and Enlightenment

by Philip Kapleau

One day a man of the people said to Zen Master Ikkyu: "Master, will

you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?"

 Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word "Attention."

"Is that all?" asked the man.  "Will you not add something more?"

Ikkyu then wrote twice running: "Attention.  Attention."

"Well," remarked the man rather irritably, "I really don't see much depth or subtlety in what you have just written."

Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times running: "Attention.  Attention. Attention."

Half angered, the man demanded: "What does that word 'Attention" mean anyway?"

And Ikkyu answered gently: "Attention means attention."

Anecdote shared by

Philip Kapleau in

The Three Pillars of Zen