Landscapes, Haiku etc

Decided to merely waffle in a mood of complete self-indulgence. Love the little picture above. Not actually a landscape but certainly a haiku:-

Patient little snail

Slides across the morning dew

In the zen garden

Obviously, as far as the snail is concerned, it could well be an English Country Garden, how would it know?

I do think sometimes of the difference between Japanese Landscapes and those of a more "western" tradition and of Kipling's little ditty:- "East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet"

 Here on the left, a forest scene by the Russian painter Shishkin.

Here, on the right, a typical Japanese Landscape.

Quite interesting, the difference between the two; and to reflect upon the significance. Certainly not simply a difference in style but grounded in two ways of "seeing" the world once we have been born into a particular culture. 

For me this brings to mind once again the art of translation. How each of us "translates" our world. We are all in the same world and yet there is obviously a sense in which we all experience it differently. Each creating our heavens and our hells. (Though often being able to impose them on others, for good or ill)

I am reading a biography of Wittgenstein at the moment. He was the guy who said "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent". He seemed to think that we cannot speak much about anything, including ethics. Yet he insisted that such could be shown. Alas, much of his philosophy goes right over my head, or perhaps, straight through it. But the idea that what has ultimate meaning is inexpressible has resonance, not least with certain "eastern" ways, as in the opening line of the Tao  Te Ching:-

The name that can be named is not the eternal name

Well, I might be misunderstanding Wittgenstein (and he seemed pretty insistent that no one understood him) but the idea that in the realm of ethics, of meaning itself, things can only be shown and not said, well, that is consistent with much in Zen and even Christian mysticism, particularly the apophatic tradition of Meister Eckhart and St John of the Cross. 

So we have a mothers love for her child and the verse from the Bible, "and a little child shall lead them" (while the "wise" are led away, empty)

Returning to Wittgenstein, he was a pretty intense person, suicidal at various times (two of his brothers did in fact take their own lives so it seems to have run in the family) Born into immense riches but upon his inheritance, gave it all away. But as far as not understanding him, how about his conviction that he had "found the point at which solipsism and realism meet"? 

Wittgenstein, looking just a little less intense than usual

Alas, I have drifted from my original theme. So back to haiku's and the very very famous one by Basho, concerning a frog. Anyone who googles can find perhaps seven or eight varied translations of this poem. Here are two, with illustrations:-

A moment is captured, perhaps a moment where "solipsism and realism" meet, but who would know? Not me. 

Once again returning to my theme, a couple of Japanese landscapes which I like. 

Here on the left we have the moon, often a symbol of Buddhist awakening.

Here on the right, Mount Fuji, often the subject of Japanese artists. 

Well, that's all for now folks.

Grace

I was reading today in a well known tabloid newspaper that according to a new poll 53% of people in the UK do not identify with any religion at all. Which calls into question the significance of "Grace". Most religion revolves around God, and Grace is more often than not seen as God being merciful towards us. Thus religion involves God, which involves grace - and if so many no longer subscribe to any religion at all then the whole package becomes redundant. "Amazing Grace" has floundered.

But Grace remains for me a beautiful word that suggests so much. It can suggest that the reality that we live in is ultimately benign, significant and meaningful. Even in a totally non-theistic context, the reality of grace is that all is given - not "attained" - and that we are OK just as we are. Treating ourselves as some sort of object that must needs be polished and perfected and made suitable for others to admire is a non-starter. Self-acceptance, as I see it, is at the heart of grace -  and far from this being a justification for a passive attitude it can in fact prove to be the catalyst for genuine transformation. As is acceptance of others just as they are.

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. (Thomas Merton)

Getting back to the lack of religion, those who view this as some sort of unwelcome development - often the Clergy - then often insist that something is "missing" in our modern lives, even that the average human being is haunted by a sense of "incompleteness", even "emptiness". Personally I am happy enough as I am. Others will have to answer for themselves.

A feeling of emptiness?

Maybe in the old days religion was a means to an end; it granted the benefit of "salvation", which presupposes a particular world view. For many that world view, for good or ill, has gone. An "afterlife" makes little sense and for most seems unbelievable. Yet rather than any lack, this can be seen as an opportunity. Many so called "spiritual" people in the past have always insisted that "virtue is its own reward" ( though often looking forward to receiving one ) Now that death is thought to be the end, then what price virtue? Love, compassion, a helping hand. Such things can truly be purely for the sake of the other and not to satisfy a requirement of "faith". 

Our lives can become a means of expressing gratitude for all that we have received, not a means of ego advancement or of gaining any other benefit. This can be bolstered by a faith that we live in a Cosmos, not a chaos, that there is significance in Reality, yet a faith that does not issue in creeds or explicit beliefs but rather allows us to become free to live a full and meaningful existence in this life.

 
 

The Love of Letters

Letter writing seems to be a thing of the past. Maybe the world moves far too quickly, maybe technology has overtaken them. Whatever the reason the fact remains that in past times letter writing could be a great art. I love biographies and often find that a few quotes from a letter written by the subject illuminates their personality in ways that even the various events of their lives fails to do. 

However, rather then waffle on, here are a few examples of those who have written letters in the past and various quotes from the letters, quotes that I have personally found worth reflecting upon.

First, William Blake, the English poet, mystic and engraver, known to converse with angels, a lovable trait. 

Blake, who spoke with angels

Here is a little excerpt from a letter written to a Bishop of his day concerning imagination, vision and the beauties of nature....(capitalisation is Blake's own)

Everybody does not see alike. To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun & a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way.

An old money bag

Grapes on the vine

Blake had little love of the clergy so may have been arguing with the Bishop. I'm not actually sure of the context, but I will take the opportunity to recite a poem of Blake that comes from his "Songs of Innocence and Experience", and gives voice to his views on what could be called "orthodox religion":-

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And Thou shalt not writ over the door;

So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,

That so many sweet flowers bore. 

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be:

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

Well, onto Thomas Merton, perhaps a more orthodox religionist than William Blake, being a Trappist monk - though it must be recorded that as far as some doctrinaire Catholics are concerned, he sailed close to the wind at times, if not disappearing over the horizon. Merton was a great letter writer and these have been published in five volumes. In the introduction to the first volume, "The Hidden Ground of Love", Merton's love of letter writing is spoken of........

The scope and variety of his correspondents are staggering. He wrote to poets and heads of states; to popes, bishops, priests, religious and lay people; to monks, rabbis, and Zen masters; to Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, Orthodox Christians, and Jews; to Buddhists, Hindus, and Sufis; to literary agents and publishers; to theologians and social activists; to old friends and young ones, too. The range and contents of his letters are almost as diverse as the number of his correspondents. He wrote about Allah, Anglicanism, Asia, the Bible, the Blessed Virgin, Buddhism, China, Christ, Christendom, Church, conscience, contemplation, and the cold war; about Eckhart, ecumenism, God, happiness, his hermitage, and his hospital interludes; about illusions, Islam, John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Koran, Latin America, liturgy, the love of God, poetry, political tyranny, precursors of Christ, prophets, psalms, silence, solitude, and sobornost; about technology, Trinity, unity, the will of God, his own writings.

As well as writing to various people of other faiths, he also met with them.

With D T Suzuki

With the Zen Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh

With the Dalai Lama

As a taster, here is a short excerpt from a letter written by Merton to the Buddhist D T Suzuki, and this shows Merton's fundamentally ecumenical heart:-

I want to speak for this Western world.................which has in past centuries broken in upon you and brought you our own confusion, our own alienation, our own decrepitude, our lack of culture, our lack of faith...........If I wept until the end of the world, I could not signify enough of what this tragedy means. If only we had thought of coming to you to learn something..............If only we had thought of coming to you and loving you for what you are in yourselves, instead of trying to make you over into our own image and likeness. For me it is clearly evident that you and I have in common and share most intimately precisely that which, in the eyes of conventional Westerners, would seem to separate us. The fact that you are a Zen Buddhist and I am a Christian monk, far from separating us, makes us most like one another. How many centuries is it going to take for people to discover this fact?

How long indeed before we all seek to learn from each other - rather than to judge each other, each within our own little cocoon of "truth". 

Maybe in another rambling blog I will quote more from Merton, but enough for now. Must finish now with John Keats, a man who died far too young, just 25, yet managed in his short life to write "To Autumn" and various Odes and longer poems, now considered some of the best in the English Canon ( although during his life they often came in for some harsh criticism from the Literary Establishment) I have read a few biographies and one highlight is his relationship with a young lady, Fanny Brawne, to whom he wrote many letters. The excerpt below, however, is not from one of them. Keats was ardent about the source of poetry and wrote the following:-

........at once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously,  I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

"Negative Capability" I will leave for others to ruminate upon, and leave you with a couple of pictures of John Keats and his love, Fanny Brawne.

John

Fanny

So as not to end so abruptly, it has popped into my head to quote a poem, "Call Me By My True Names", written by the Zen Buddhist, Thich Nhat Hanh, a man who met Thomas Merton at one time ( see photo above ).  Hanh is Vietnamese, though forced into exile at one point, and is known for his work with the so called "boat people". He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King in 1967. He now lives in Plum Village in France.

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

God - to Believe or Not to Believe

Personally I no longer ask the question:- Is there a God? The question seems to have so many presuppositions and baggage that I can no longer see the wood for the trees - and the loud voices of the ardent often drown me out. Sometimes I wonder what the significance of our answer is anyway, when some who believe appear to grow in love, while others who also believe seem to shrivel up into tight balls of judgement and hate.

God as per Michelangelo

God as per William Blake

More relevant to me is to think that I live in a Cosmos, not in a chaos. That there is significance to our lives. If anyone wishes to call that faith, so be it. 

"He's got the whole world in his hands" sing the faithful, or if more mystically inclined "The whole world IS his hands". But getting back to presuppositions and baggage.......why "his" hands, or why even "hands"? Maybe "beak" or "claws"?

On a Discussion Forum once, waffling on the same theme, the discussion wended its weary way towards a comparison between what would be termed a chaos, and what would be a Cosmos. A video was posted and I found it very interesting, even astonishing. If anyone has a few minutes.......

This led to the idea of intelligent design, which many find evidence of. Which made me think of "All Things Bright and Beautiful" and the Monty Python team who countered with "All Things Dull and Ugly". Just how "intelligent" is the "design" of our Universe?

The discussion morphed slowly into the parable of the blind men ( why always "men"? ) feeling the different parts of an elephant and coming up with various ideas of just what constituted its actual reality. 

Do we actually have to reach a conclusion? There is a passage in the Buddhist Theravada Canon of Scripture where the Buddha himself speaks of the elephant and the various blind men. The moral of the story found there - at least according to Stephen Batchelor - is to reject "views". The Dharma ( Truth ) cannot be reduced to a set of truth-claims.

Only by letting go of such views will one be able to understand how dharma practice is not about being "right" or "wrong". ​

Batchelor cites a zen master, who in effect said that any appropriate response to any situation in hand need not relate to some form of abstract truth, pre-conceived and "believed in". "Views" themselves can actually lead to becoming blind, while an appropriate response could well be to see hunger and to feed the one who is hungry, to see loneliness and to reach out towards the one who is lonely. As the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said:- "Love has no why". 

Eckhart, who appears a sourpuss but had his lighter moments

Apologies for getting a bit heavy but there you go. Ramblings.

Who are the Wise?

 There was a story I read in a Sunday Newspaper some time ago. A chimney sweep had a large gnome and a couple of other smaller gnomes in his front garden and each week placed an Ad in the local newspaper advertising his services...."The one with the Gnomes". Then another man in the same trade moved in as a neighbour and put a few gnomes in his own garden. At that point just perhaps they should have had a polite word with each other, but instead the original chimney sweep added to his own set of gnomes with many more. Come the finish, each had countless gnomes in their gardens.

A typical chimney sweep's garden

Not sure just how it all ended up but safe to say that very little wisdom was involved. 

Concerning the subject of this blog, "who are the wise", I have found the words expressed by Suzuki Roshi worth pondering, and being a Buddhist he links wisdom with enlightenment:-

 "Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity."

 Another worthy said of these words.......This remarkable statement tells us that enlightenment cannot be held by anyone. It simply exists in moments of freedom. 

We all seem to have such moments, or at least I like to think so.

Suzuki Roshi, also known as Crooked Cucumber, and he holds a keisaku, an awakening stick used for striking the unwary - so be careful.

There is a little story I have always loved and I have actually told it on many a Discussion Forum with mixed reviews! Whenever I think of it myself it always seems to relate to the subject in hand. Here it is.........

There is an old zen master who only speaks broken English, walking around his monastery with a newly enlightened westerner. At each and every statue of the Buddha the old master stops and bows deeply. The westerner looks on with increasing disdain and eventually exclaims "Don't you think that we are a bit above that sort of thing now? Speaking for myself, I think I would just as soon spit at those statues as bow to them" To which the old master says "OK. You spit, I bow"

An old zen master

I suppose the story could be about tolerance but surely there was a degree of wisdom involved in the old guys response? 

Well, alas, I'm waffling as usual. In this instance simply because I have no idea what wisdom is. But nevertheless, I can keep the quotes going. Here is Stephen Batchelor, one of my favourite Buddhist writers. Mr Batchelor is known for what is called his agnostic approach to various Buddhist teachings (those such as reincarnation for example) and comes in for a lot of stick from the more doctrinaire Buddhists. Anyway, here we have him speaking of the way words of wisdom just might issue from us in our better moments.

 After speaking of a psuedo integrity that responds to a moral dilemma only by repeating the gestures and words of a parent, an authority figure or a religious text, he writes:-

 (we sometimes act) .......in a way that startles us. A friend asks our advice about a tricky moral choice. Yet instead of offering him consoling platitudes or the wisdom of someone else, we say something that we did not know we knew. Such gestures and words spring from body and tongue with shocking spontaneity. We cannot call them "mine" but neither have we copied them from others. Compassion has dissolved the stranglehold of self. And we taste, for a few exhilarating seconds, the creative freedom of awakening.

Well, that is it really. If anyone has some sort of take on wisdom please post a comment. 

Wei Wu Wei (or, what's in a name?)

There was once a little second hand bookshop in Maldon, just at the bottom of the High Street. I often took a trip on the bus and ended up browsing the shelves. Being interested in certain "eastern" ways I once spied a book called "Ask the Awakened" by Wei Wu Wei. The book was just a bit water stained but I snapped it up at a bargain price and proudly took it home. For quite a while I imagined Wei Wu Wei as an ancient wizened and crinkled hermit, perhaps living in a cave in the Himalaya's, breaking his fasting now and again to put pen to paper. Then I stumbled upon his amazing secret - he was in fact Terence Gray, Anglo-Irish,  theatre producer and racehorse owner. Did this knowledge mean that the teaching and sayings of the "awakened" who had been "asked" was suspect? Or even, perhaps, was where East and West did in fact meet?

Wei Wu Wei, or perhaps Terence Gray, or both

It does seem to be a common practice for those who write so called "spiritual" books to give themselves screen names. Another instance - seeking out the authentic way of the Buddha I picked up a very weighty volume called "A Survey Of Buddhism" by one Sangharakshita. I read the whole thing, reassured by the name that here was the real McCoy, the Dharma as per an authentic easterner and practitioner. Alas, at a certain point I found that Sangharakshita had been born Dennis Lingwood, and hailed from Romford. 

Sangharakshita, from Romford

So what is in a name? And does it matter? I prefer questions to answers, so make up your own mind. One of the very best books on Buddhism I have read is "The Vision of Dhamma", a collection of weighty essays by Nyanaponika Thera. Nyanaponika Thera? You've guessed it, he is (or was) Sigmund Feniger, a German born Jew. He took on the name Nyanaponika when he was ordained into the Therevada Buddhist Order, Thera meaning "Elder".

Nyanaponika Thera

Another of my favourite Buddhist writers is Stephen Batchelor and he breaks the mould. I sometimes wish he was called Dharmachata, or perhaps Po-Che or even the Venerable Jinmyo something or other. But he insists he is only Stephen Batchelor, which does not appear to effect the sale of his books.

Here is plain old Stephen Batchelor:-

Stephen Batchelor (who is HE trying to kid?)

He actually spent much of his youth in the east, raised in Tibetan monasteries, but is now back "home" giving meditation retreats and featuring on various UTube videos. 

Well, that's enough. Dookie signing off..............

My Little Paradise

I was recently reading a small book about Shinran, one of the ancient (12th century) fathers of Pure Land Buddhism. Apparently Shinran wrote that if we wished to study a spiritual path we needed to set ourselves apart and stick our head in a book (not quite the language he used, but near enough) whereas if we wished to actually walk the path, then there was no better place to start than where we found ourselves now. In fact, no other place to start. Buddhism, in some of its manifestations, also claims that a million Buddha's can be found in just one flower, and that to see the Buddha is to see the Dharma (truth/reality) So reality is everywhere, here and now, not some place other or beyond.

Anyway, flying somewhat in the face of such musing, I have my own little paradise which often stands out as special. Well, it sure beats sitting in a dentist's chair. It is the Record Department of my local Oxfam Store, where I spend every Tuesday afternoon, a volunteer on the tills. It has one of the biggest collections of vinyl records in the UK, as well as CD's and DVD'S, sheet music and other paraphernalia. I once picked up an old guitar there for a few pounds, the one I get out when the grandchildren invade our home (bless 'em), the one they can accidentally knock over or attempt to play as if a cello, leaving more expensive models safe.

Yes, it is paradise. I take along a few of my own CD's, and play them to my hearts content. I also take along my Kindle eReader. Occasionally a customer comes in and rudely interrupts my realm of peace and joy.......but that is a small price to pay. Yet many of the customers have a story to tell, or a point of view to discuss, even an opinion on the music playing (like "what the hell is THAT?") I've passed many a happy hour reminiscing about the Sixties, or the early career of Jerry Lee Lewis, and learnt a lot. I've learnt that all vinyl records are of a particular pressing, much like particular editions of books - there are those willing to pay a lot for the earliest pressing of a particular album - even if they own another copy already. For me I just concentrate on the music itself, but each to their own. If someone wants to pay £60 to Oxfam for a vinyl disc they already have who am I to argue?

Recently an old guy came in, bent over a little, perhaps with arthritis. He had the look of someone who had never had a life. ( Oh yes, I can be very judgemental at times ) He shuffled around the stock for quite a while, picking and choosing, and eventually came over and rudely interrupted my peace by wishing to purchase a couple of vinyl singles. I read out the label of one of the singles he had chosen, an old Fifties number. "Yes, I'll enjoy strumming along to that" the old guy said, " I used to play along to it in my younger days", then revealed that he owned two Stratocasters and two Les Pauls! Well, you never can tell! I asked him if he had ever played in a group and he told me that he had never been able to play in public, just too shy. Which is rather sad, yet in many ways I am able to empathise.

Just to add, and to make this particular blog more substantial, I posted something like this on a Discussion Forum. Such posts can amble about and leave the original ideas well behind, which is what I like about them.....(once I remember an original post that asked the question "Why are you not a Christian?" and within a few posts the subject had drifted onto the difference between the common English garden frog and the South American variety, which I found far more interesting) Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, on that other Forum the whole thing culminated in me posting a poem I have always loved, that I in fact first read on yet another Forum. The poem is about acceptance, of difference, of each of us being unique, even precious. And other things. You might have your own thoughts.



The Two-Headed Calf

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.


Laura Gilpin