Ox Herding

Value

Thank you.

Yield

Sometimes the pressing matters of life require that I yield various interests and diversions. This is one of those times.

Thus I'm taking a short break from Ox Herding, with plans to return next Monday. Best wishes for the week!

On Drama

Sometimes our lives are filled with Sophoclean drama.

We often star as the complete diva in these tragedies - author, actor, stage hand, promoter and ticket taker.

Of course, these theatricals are wholly constructed affairs, dependent upon idea, opinion, boredom, blame, control and other aversions to reality.

Might we drop the histrionics, no matter how well performed, and simply relax with the truth of life?

Perhaps we could walk off the stage and join the audience - chat with folks, make some friends.

Of course, we'd have to give up being the center of attention . . .

On Ominous Music

Last week I heard a radio program about the role of "eyewitness" evidence in the judicial system. It seems that evidence based in sense perception, although given high credibility in many cases, often turns out to be erroneous.

I wasn't surprised, given what I know about my own credibility.

Although I'm sometimes curious (or even skeptical) about thoughts and feelings, I rarely extend this inquiry to sound, smell, taste, sight and touch.

Perhaps all of us give similar primacy to the senses. Perhaps that's why we have so many cliches based on sense data:  That's just the way I see it!

But the Buddha was cautious about perception, one of the five "aggregates" of phenomena. In fact, he offered the Eightfold Path as "the way leading to the cessation of perception."

Of course, the Buddha wasn't counseling us to become deaf and blind.

But he did ask us to cultivate a meticulous relationship to perception so that, upon hearing ominous music, we might pause before calling the police.

We might use that time to ask: What is this?

Rilke: Video

Here's a lovely video of the Rilke poem, "Nowhere my beloved will world be but within us," with music by Marcomé ("Memoria"). It's a nice way to cap off "Rilke Week."

Thank you for reading these posts on Rilke over the past few days. Your comments have been wonderful! Best wishes for the weekend.

Barry

Rilke: Only In Our Doing

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

Rilke: No One Lives His Life

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

Rilke: Extinguish My Eyes

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 Macy

Rilke: Cartoon

Beginning 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!

Organized Violence

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.