HAIKU BY BUSON
A Summer Haiku by the 18th century Japanese poet Buson from the collection Zen Haiku, selected and translated by Jonathan Clements. London: Frances Lincoln, 2000
Across the summer stream
With such joy
My sandals in my hand
Contemplative Inquiry
This blog is about contemplative inquiry
Tag: Contemplative poetry
June 11, 2015
POEM: THE BREATH OF NATURE
When great Nature sighs, we hear the winds
Which, noiseless in themselves,
Awaken voices from other beings,
Blowing on them.
From every opening
Loud voices sound. Have you not heard
This rush of tones?
There stands the overhanging wood
On the steep mountain:
Oak trees with holes and cracks
Like snouts maws and ears,
Like beam-sockets, like goblets,
Grooves in the wood, hollows full of water.
You hear mooing and roaring, whistling,
Shouts of command, grumblings,
Deep drones, sad flutes.
One call awakens another in dialogue.
Gentle winds sing timidly,
Strong ones blast on without restraint.
Then the wind dies down. The openings
Empty out their last sound.
Have you not observed how all then trembles and subsides?
Yu replied: I understand:
The music of earth sings through a thousand holes.
The music of man is made on flutes and instruments.
What makes the music of heaven?
Master Ki said:
Something is blowing on a thousand different holes.
Some power stands behind all this and makes the sounds die down.
What is this power?
From: Thomas Merton The Way of Chuang Tzu Boston & London: Shambhala, 2004
Chuang Tzu, one of the great figures of early Taoism, lived around 300 BCE. The frontispiece of this edition says: “He used parables and anecdotes, allegory and paradox, to illustrate that real happiness and freedom are found only in understanding Tao or Way of nature, and dwelling in its unity. The respected Trappist monk Thomas Merton spent several years reading and reflecting on four different translations of the Chinese classic that bears Chuang Tzu’s name. The result is this collection of poetic renderings of the great sage’s work.
June 3, 2015
ORPHIC HYMN TO NEMESIS
This Orphic hymn to the goddess Nemesis comes from a collection likely to have been compiled in the third century CE, and offers a glimpse of Greek-inspired pagan religion in what turned out to be its last phase.
ORPHIC HYMN TO NEMESIS
Nemesis, I call upon you,
O goddess, O great queen,
Your all-seeing eye looks upon
The lives of man’s many races.
Eternal and revered,
You alone rejoice in the just,
You change and vary,
You shift your word.
All who bear the yoke
Of mortality fear you,
You care about the thoughts of all;
The arrogant soul,
The reckless one,
Finds no escape.
You see all, you hear all,
You arbitrate all.
O sublime deity,
In whom dwells justice for men,
Come, blessed and pure one,
Ever helpful to the initiates,
Grant nobility of mind,
Put an end to repulsive thoughts,
Thoughts unholy,
Fickle and haughty.
From The Orphic Hymns: translation, introduction and notes by Apostolos N. Athanasskis and Benjamin M. Wolkow Baltimore: Maryland, USA: The John Hopkins Press, 2013.
In his introduction to this collection, Apostolos Athanassakis talks about Orphic hymns as instances of a devotional mysticism that uses “the power of clustering epithets” for the creation of “an emotional and spiritual crescendo that might raise our human spirit and help approach the divine”. They remind him of Vedic hymns, Rumi’s verses within the Islamic Sufi world, and aspects of his own Christian Orthodox upbringing. The hymns are beautiful to read – though it is worth remembering that they are designed for group practice in a charged, incense laded atmosphere, with repetition upon repetition, perhaps accompanied by swaying, movement or dance of various kinds.
In the ancient Greek and Greek-influenced world, Nemesis was primarily seen as the goddess of retribution against hubris, arrogance before the gods. She was also called Adrasteia (the inescapable) and at times attracted the epithet Erinys (implacable). In early times she was thought of as the distributor of fortune, and Aphrodite was sometimes called Aphrodite Nemesis. Later she appears as a maiden goddess of proportion and avenger of crime, equipped with measuring rod, bridle, scales, sword and scourge.
The Orphic hymns probably date from the third century CE, a time of philosophical and religious change in the Roman Empire. They were popular for as long as it was possible to maintain a syncretistic religion forged of traditional pagan elements in those parts of the world (chiefly the Eastern Roman sphere) where it was practised. The hymns name specific pagan deities, yet appeal to universal spiritual powers. In this instance Nemesis seems to be seen as a goddess, or personification, of something akin to karma. Devotees are not praying directly for a change in their fate, but in their own thoughts and feelings, in the hope that the energy of the goddess may assist them.
May 24, 2015
POEM: BLOSSOM
This poem, by Jay Ramsay, was recently published on Philip Carr-Gomm’s weblog. I like it very much.
THE BLOSSOMING for Martin
You know the story. After months of grey
rain, wind and weather wet
the cherry blossom suddenly appears
with the merest touch of late April sun,
its three or four day lover. Blossom
filling the branches, and up against the blue
as you gaze up…its delicate pale pink chandeliers
each hanging by a thread, intact.
But then three days of blasting wind
billowing up the path, around the house
battering it, beating at it, torn
down in bucketfuls, coating the front bed
and the lawn inches deep—
with the waste of it only just blossomed.
Why do you care? Because it’s moved you
because every beautiful thing you’ve seen
has entered your heart, aware or unaware
becoming part of you extending out
you can’t escape now, it’s too late
your heart is open and it can’t close again.
You care because it’s all you are
this beautiful ravaged world now
resurrected then crucified…and as the wind dies
with all we still have, as it returns.
I call it poetry, with or without words
the one language we know without speaking
that seeks us out from the Beginning
because it knows we must blossom
there is no other hope, no other way
to become human, but to love, and lose
turned inside out and outside in—
and this, my God and yours, is the operation.
May 14, 2015
REFLECTION ON CHINESE POETRY
In his poem Written on a Cold Evening Yang Wan-li* writes:
The poet must work with brush and paper,
but this is not what makes the poem.
A man doesn’t go in search of a poem –
The poem comes in search of him.
I realise, that when I read or present classical Chinese poems, I am not just working with translations from another language, but with translations from a completely different approach to the art of writing itself. So here I’ve added a piece about Chinese calligraphy, taken from an article by Dawn Delbanco, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University which is available on: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chcl/hd_chcl.htm
Calligraphy, or the art of writing, was the visual art form prized above all others in traditional China, revered as a fine art long before painting. What makes the written language distinctive is its visual form. Unlike written words formed from alphabets, Chinese characters convey more than phonetic sound or semantic meaning. Written words play multiple roles: not only does a character denote specific meanings, but its very form manifests the energy of the human body and the vitality of nature itself. Writings on calligraphy use nature metaphors to describe the sense of wonder, the elemental power, conveyed by written words:
“[When viewing calligraphy,] I have seen the wonder of a drop of dew glistening from a dangling needle, a shower of rock hailing down in a raging thunder, a flock of geese gliding [in the sky], frantic beasts stampeding in terror, a phoenix dancing, a startled snake slithering away in fright.” (Sun Guoting, 7th century)
How can a simple character convey all this? The seeming simplicity of the tools is belied by the complexity of effects. A multiplicity of effect is produced in part by varying the consistency and amount of ink carried by the brush. Black ink is formed into solid sticks or cakes that are ground in water on a stone surface to produce a liquid. Calligraphers can control the thickness of the ink by varying both the amount of water and the solid ink that is ground. Once they start writing, by loading the brush sometimes with more ink, sometimes with less, by allowing the ink to almost run out before dipping the brush in the ink again, they create characters that resemble a shower of rock here, the wonder of a drop of dew there.
Unlike a rigid instrument such as a stylus or a ballpoint pen, a flexible hair brush allows not only for variations in the width of strokes, but, depending on whether one uses the tip or side of the brush, one can create either two-dimensional or three-dimensional effects. Depending on the speed with which one wields the brush and the amount of pressure exerted on the writing surface, one can create a great variety of effects. The brush becomes an extension of the writer’s arm, indeed, their entire body. The physical gestures produced by the wielding of the brush reveal much more than physical motion; they reveal much of the writers themselves – their impulsiveness, restraint, elegance, rebelliousness.
I would add that this kind of writing enacts the dance between ‘emptiness and form’ referred to in the Buddhist Heart Sutra (a favourite text in China) and the earlier references to that same dance in the Tao Te Ching, where it says, less abstractly:
Thirty spokes meet in the hub
Where the wheel isn’t, is where it’s useful.
Hollowed out, clay makes a pot
Where the pot’s not is where it’s useful.
Cut doors and windows to make a room.
Where the room isn’t, there’s room for you.
So the profit in what is, is in the use of what isn’t. **
In Chinese calligraphy and painting the empty spaces can be as significant as the filled ones. The two cannot be separated and this is an enduring lesson both of Chinese arts and spirituality (in their Taoist and Buddhist influenced versions). For me it’s a key lesson of the contemplative journey in any culture.
*From Yang Wan-li Heaven my Blanket: Earth my Pillow: Poems from Sung Dynasty China New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1975 (Translated and introduced by Jonathan Chaves)
** From Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching: a Book about the Way and the Power of the Way Shambhala: Boston & London, 1998 (new English version by Ursula K. Le Guin)
May 4, 2015
WHAT IS POETRY?
Yang Wan-li’s poem ‘What is Poetry?’ asks the question from the Buddhist and Taoist influenced perspective of Sung Dynasty China (the poet lived in our 12th. century – a little younger than Geoffrey of Monmouth, a little older than Gerald of Wales). It is also timeless.
Now, what is poetry?
If you say it is a matter of words,
I will say a good poet gets rid of words.
If you say it is simply a matter of meaning,
I will say a good poet gets rid of meaning,
“But”, you ask, “without words and without meaning
Where is the poetry?”
To this I reply: “Get rid of words and get rid of meaning,
And there is still poetry.”
From Yang Wan-li Heaven my Blanket: Earth my Pillow: Poems from Sung Dynasty China New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1975 (Translated and introduced by Jonathan Chaves)
April 22, 2015
POEM: BOATING THROUGH A GORGE
Here turtles fish and turn back,
and even the crabs are worried,
But for some reason poets risk their lives
to run these rapids and swirl past these rocks.
From Yang Wan-li Heaven my Blanket: Earth my Pillow: Poems from Sung Dynasty China New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1975 (Translated and introduced by Jonathan Chaves)
April 20, 2015
LINES WRITTEN ON CONTEMPLATIVE RETREAT, WHEN THE BLUEBELLS APPEARED
BLUEBELL
Growing –
green growing
viriditas
virilitas
I have pushed up through the earth
nurtured by her nutrients
and her moistures,
fuelled by the fires of her core.
I have pushed up through the earth
and out of the earth
out of the earth
skywards
a green stalk
a green stalk in the joy of being
the potency of becoming.
I have pushed up
I have bathed in the sun rain and wind
In the light, open world
pushed up from the nurturing dark below
and am now, in my own being,
the grace of the blue flowers
a profusion …
some open
some opening
some yet to open
some never to open.
All mine. All me.
And in the heart of these abundant
reachings-out,
I am waiting.
Contemplative Inquiry 