« January 2010 | Main | March 2010 »
Du wirst nur mit der Tat erfaßt
Only in our doing can we grasp you.
Only with our hands can we illumine you.
The mind is but a visitor:
it thinks us out of our world.Each mind fabricates itself.
We sense its limits, for we have made them.
And just when we would flee them, you come
and make of yourself an offering.I don't want to think a place for you.
Speak to me from everywhere.
Your Gospel can be comprehended
without looking for its source.When I go toward you
it is with my whole life.
When I first went to Korea, I visited Su Dok Sah, an important temple deep in the mountains. Behind the main temple grounds, a set of granite stairs wound up the mountain to a smaller temple set high on a ridge. These stairs were hand constructed by a famous Zen master (whose name I no longer remember), an elder who chose the silent work of crafting stone as a way of illumining the world.
This old master went into the world with his whole life, stair by stair. He offered himself as a riser for those who would walk up the mountain. Perhaps someday I will walk his path again.
Rilke's Book of Hours, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
Ich bin nur einer deiner Ganzgeringen
No one lives his life.
Disguised since childhood,
haphazardly assembled
from voices and fears and little pleasures,We come of age as masks.
Our true face never speaks.Somewhere there must be storehouses
where all these lives are laid away
like suits of armor or old carriages
or clothes hanging limply on the walls.Maybe all paths lead there,
to the repository of unlived things.
When I first read this poem, I got hooked on the line, "we come of age as masks." It occurred to me that this coming-of-age-as-a-mask obscures the fact of the mask itself.
How then could we recognize the tight clinging of the false image?
And what of the cost - what price does the mask extract from our human life?
Rilke makes the price painfully clear - the hiding away our preciousness, our "unlived" selves.
At the same time, Rilke considers the possibility that all paths - all dharmas - might lead to the discovery of our true face, hidden since childhood.
Ahhh . . .
Rilke's Book of Hours, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
Lösch mir die Augen aus: ich kann dich sehen
Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.
Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.
And without feet I can make my way to you,
without a mouth I can swear your name.Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you
with my heart as with a hand.
Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.
And if you consume my brain with fire,
I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.
What does it take to love this world?
How do we open ourselves to reality?
Rilke shifts the focus of love away from the sense organs and the surface of experience, and into the life-force of existence: the heart that silently pulses blood.
Sitting quietly, can we feel this steady, intimate coursing of love?
Rilke's Book of Hours, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna MacyBeginning today, the Wednesday cartoon will move to Monday. There are probably deep and subtle reasons for this, but mostly I just wanted to return to the older format of running cartoons on Monday.
This week Ox Herding will focus on Ranier Maria Rilke, the German poet who died in 1926. Rilke's poetry consistently addressed the most profound human question: Who am I?
Most of the week's posts will draw from his Book of Hours, a collection of "love" poems addressed to God.
His lyrical, mystical writings have opened many hearts, both in pursuit of great questions and also in pursuit of more earthly delights. I hope you enjoy them!
The New Yorker magazine recently published an article on the Military History Museum now under construction in Dresden, Germany. The design, by Daniel Libeskind, slices a new structure through the center of an older building that once served as a military garrison.
The museum's scientific director, Gorch Pieken, has had to respond to many critics of the design:
People say, "The old building was nice." But I say, "German history isn't nice."
He goes on to say that the museum will focus on the effects of organized violence on the individual and society, an admirable goal in the face of Germany's history.
But . . .
Organized violence? Does this mean that there's something known as "disorganized violence?"
I don't think so. It seems to me that violence, by its very nature, arises from an organizing principle. This is true for individuals, as well as nation-states.
Although the Buddha didn't use the word "violence" to describe the harm we inflict on ourselves and others, he did look deeply into the organizing principles that produce this harm: the three poisons of anger, desire and ignorance.
When we reflect on our own lives, we can sometimes sense how these poisons create a heedless momentum to our actions. We might even see the poisons as the intentions behind our actions.
Given the great suffering in this world, I'm all for careful study of how we perpetuate violence.
A dramatic building might illuminate a society's organizing principles. A small cushion might illuminate our own.
Okay, I had to stare at this for a few moments before I got it.
Sometimes I can't see what's right in front of me.
I mean, I know there's a problem - that much is clear. Bricks are falling and the whole thing teeters on collapse.
But . . . why?
I'm confident that I've got the right plan. It was designed by the Buddha, after all.
So perhaps I'm not looking at things properly . . .
Dan Siegel, in his article "The Science of Mindfulness," (in the current issue of Shambhala Sun) refers to the natural tendency of mind to polarize around either rigidity or chaos. He writes of his patients:
They were stuck in repeating unhelpful patterns of thinking or behaving, or flooded by intrusive and unpredictable feelings and thoughts.
I suspect most of us recognize ourselves in this. We may oscillate between rigid and chaotic tendencies, or remain mostly at one of the poles. (Regular readers know where I fall on this continuum.)
Recently my friend Bob and I talked about rigidity and chaos, and it occurred to me that these traits map closely to the sources of dukkha.
Bob uses chaos to keep events or people from controlling him. He's skilled at aversion and avoidance. Of course, he's also deeply wise about his mind-habits and works responsibly with them; as a result, he can watch the arising, continuing and passing of these phenomena, without getting hooked.
As for me . . . who doesn't love control? My mind tends towards clinging and attachment, the emblems of a rigidly patterned life. When I'm aware of my rigidity, I can sing and dance freely with it. And, when I'm not clear, my face goes into a kind of rictus as I struggle to mold the world to my liking.
We may not like the rigid and chaotic aspects of our character. And perhaps we hope that practice will terminate our tendencies toward them.
Perhaps.
But what if practice only illuminates our tendencies towards these patterns of thinking and behaving?
Would that be enough?
On a whim, I picked up A Poetry Handbook (by Mary Oliver) at the library last week. Many of us have enjoyed her poems and thought it would be interesting to read her guide to "understanding and writing poetry."
Two pages into the introduction, in a passage on the craft of writing, I came across this:
It is craft, after all, that carries an individual's ideas to the far edge of familiar territory.
I immediately thought about the craft of meditation practice. It also carries us to the far edge of the familiar. And if we're already teetering at that edge . . . then we might take one more step. Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha!
At the beginning of the first chapter, "Getting Ready," Oliver describes what occurs when we commit to daily practice of our craft:
The part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies the necessary part of the poem - the heat of a star as opposed to the shape of a star, let us say - exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious. It learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be.
Say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine. It waits, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself - soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all.
Why should it? It can wait. It can stay silent for a lifetime. Who knows anyway what it is, that wild silky part of ourselves . . .
Has there ever been a better description of diligent practice, of showing up to the truth of life?
Without our intent to show up, the "mysterious, unmapped" aspect of ourselves - our "wild silky" Buddha-nature - may remain silent and hidden.
And all of us know the suffering that comes from its absence.
But we may not know (or not believe) that our diligence might reveal it fully.
All we have to do is ask, How is it, just now?
From this craft, we might ease the world's suffering.
