Memo 3

 

Another memo.

Because of posts here I began, at odd moments - some more odd than others - to reflect upon art, of the difference, if any, between religious texts, suttas, "holy books" and more secular poetry and verse. I tend to thing that many "labels" or borders between things are often arbitrary in the "Dharmic" sense that nothing is at rest, unless it is defined as being so. All things are "becoming".

In Christianity there is an often seen difference between the "word as text" and the Living Word. I think that such a difference can be fundamental. Jane Hirshfield has written that:-

  A work of art is not a piece of fruit lifted from a tree branch; it is a ripening collaboration of artist, receiver, and world. 

Again she speaks of the potential of great art or poetry "to evoke, a truing of vision, a changing of vision. Entering a good poem, a person feels, tastes, hears, thinks, and sees in altered ways......by changing selves, one by one, art changes also the outer world that selves create and share."

As I see it, such "change" is true transformation - not the pointless revolutions of thought and word that are simply a revolving of the samsaric wheel. True change is an advance into novelty.

Apparently Nagarjuna wrote his major works in verse. The text was terse, virtually simple "bullet points", a mnemonic device. Students/novices would learn the verses by heart but would need a "master" or a commentary to "fill in" the details, or the actual intent of the words which were not always totally evident. And as time has passed, there were, and are, various commentaries. The differences between them can be subtle.

Anyway, as I sit here in McDonalds, recovering in a sense from a day or two of taxing mental health issues, I'll finish with a couple of poems. Others are invited to open to the words, each according to your own unique perspectives. What "alters"......what "fruit" will you lift from the words?

"First Sight" by Philip Larkin.

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

And second, "The Two Headed Calf" by Laura Gilpin.

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.

Both poems call upon us to see with new eyes. Also to rejoice in what others see beyond our own vision. The beauty of difference. Differences that do not bring division and inquisitions and conflict, but rather communion, a sharing, even a giving to others - and a receiving.

May true Dharma continue.
No blame. Be kind. Love everything.