Cawing of a Crow - Reflections from the Cremation Fire

"The cawing of a crow -
I also am alone."

Santōka

Alone

A poet of free-style haiku, Santōka Taneda's life was plagued by instability. Born Taneda Shōichi in Japan to a wealthy family, he unfortunately lost his mother to suicide when he was 11 years old. As he grew older, he struggled with drinking to excess and nervous breakdowns, but sought catharsis through poetry.

The young college drop-out studied with skilled haiku masters and took the pen-name Santōka, meaning fire of the cremation ground, possibly in homage to his deceased mother. His father went bankrupt while Santōka was away from home. While inventing himself as a poet, Santōka married and divorced, then lost his father to untimely death.

Following a suicide attempt, Santōka ordained as a Zen priest. He died at age 58 in his sleep. We here weave the tumultuous twists and turns of Santōka's life into a brief treatment of one of his short poems.

The Cawing of a Crow

Reflecting the loneliness that haunted him since childhood, the cawing of the crow and the solitary Santōka are situated on the far ends of the poem, which both opens and closes with two characters in Kanji (originally Chinese ideograms, imported to Japan) and six syllables of Hiragana script in the interim.

鴉啼いてわたしも一人

Of these, the pieces 鴉啼 (the crow's caw) and 一人 (lone person) stand on separate ends of a desolate field, shorn of autumn harvest, now barren and bleak. This image could only have come close to capturing the loneliness of Santōka's life.

Reflections from the Cremation Fire

In an era like ours, plagued as it is by environmental degradation and fires raging across the globe, a virus claiming the lives of more than a million while limiting our capacity to connect in person, civil rights abuses and political strife sowing the seeds of distrust throughout societies, and far more avoidable tragedies, contemplative poetry from the likes of Santōka offer their solidarity.

As we find ourselves increasingly faced with scalding challenges, burning through whatever remains of our sanity, we can perhaps find solace in being alone together in these times. Despite all that divides and separates us, we still gather around the proverbial fire from afar.

Santōka's crow caws at a distance. I am also alone, he replies. Thus are his reflections from the cremation fire. To be continued...

Drifting Like Foam - Disintegrating and Reintegrating Aggregates in the Phena Sutta

Form is like a glob of foam;
feeling, a bubble;
perception, a mirage;
fabrications, a banana tree;
consciousness, a magic trick —
this has been taught
by the Kinsman of the Sun.
However you observe them,
appropriately examine them,
they're empty, void
to whoever sees them
appropriately.

Impermanence and Insubstantiality

Poetically evocative in its weaving together of imagery to convey the impermanent, we find in the Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta a sweeping landscape portrait depicting the frequently overlooked realities of lived experience. As the world erupts in chaos upon crisis upon catastrophe, some may seek ways to deny the reality of mortality, the reality of epidemiological, societal, and environmental illness, the reality of impermanence. In some ways, we are wired, numbed, conditioned to ignore these realities in a desperate struggle for self-preservation. The "Kinsman of the Sun," however, suggests an alternative.

Perhaps counter to popular opinion, it's in our best interest to fully realize the insubstantial nature of not only the external world but the very constituents of who we think we are in order to sustain some semblance of sanity.

Poignant and piercing in how succinctly he summarizes the reality of impermanence, here the Buddha compares the aggregates, the psycho-physical heaps of phenomena that comprise a person, to insubstantial aspects of the natural and mental spheres. Given its timely content, relevant as much to today's challenges as those of yesteryear or yester-millenia in the case of its original context, we stew in the Pheṇa Sutta, letting its teachings on impermanence and insubstantiality percolate.

Aggregates

In each line of the verse section, we find reference to one of the aggregates, the clumps, piles, heaps so often mistaken for me and mine. Accompanying each of these aggregates is a carefully chosen simile.

Form is like foam erupting from pressure as a river's current flows downstream.

Feeling is like a bubble at the water's surface that pops shortly after floating up from the depths.

Perception is like a mirage whose shimmering distortions manifest out of sunlight.

Fabrication is like a banana tree whose core consists of insubstantial onion-like layers.

Consciousness is like a magic trick conjured at the hands of another.

A common theme pervades all of them. In every case, they are not what they appear to be. Some element of illusion or deception is present, even if unintended. The aggregates, these mental and material pieces of our lived experience that so often become objects of attachment for us, are unreliable.

Disintegrating and Reintegrating

Notice that in none of these similes are any of these phenomena said to be non-existent. Rather, they're not as they appear to be. Foam disintegrates when the conditions for its arising are absent, but reintegrates when those conditions return. And yet one never steps in the same river twice.

Form, the body and its elements, disintegrates in every moment. While not apparent to us on such an immediate timescale, this becomes especially clear as we age, grow sick, and die. The form aggregate's constituent parts decay, disintegrate, decompose. Those atoms inevitably find their way into the soil, water, or air consumed by other beings, whether plants or animals, and reintegrate in other shapes and configurations. The same applies to each of the other aggregates, although form is most visible in its transformations.


That all goes to say that the process of disintegrating and reintegrating is, for us, inevitable. We drift like foam through this world. Coming to terms with our own impermanent and insubstantial nature may provoke resistance and discomfort, but to see form as foam also offers us the opportunity to release it when the time comes for it to disintegrate. It never was "me" or "mine" to begin with and when it reintegrates elsewhere it will likewise be ownerless.

This in no way absolves me of responsibility in the present, but it dissolves the tendency to cling desperately to foam that cannot be grasped. In dissolving this clinging, we stand a successful chance at resolving existential dread of what lies ahead. To be continued.

Poetry in Diaspora - Murmurs of Moonlight

One Kind of Emotion

Let me murmur the immemorial vow
As I gently bow my head.
A tenderness like water
Flows beneath this evening's liquid moonlight.
How should I visualize that place, so distant?
I hear a child's voice lifted in benediction.
The stars impart an icy solace.
The stationery's pale;
A couple of ordinary words stagger my heart.
I call Heaven and Earth to witness:
Life is but a cloud, a leaf.

Tsering Woeser

One Kind of Emotion

Written in 1988 Chengdu by Tibetan poet Tsering Woeser, "One Kind of Emotion" succinctly captures the everyday emotions of not only contemporary Tibetan women like its author, but of displaced people across the global diaspora, writers and artists with stories to tell but few to bear witness to them. While Woeser does not profess the ability to speak for anyone besides herself, her poetry nonetheless speaks to the experiences of many.

Born in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and educated in Chengdu, China, Woeser's name is scarcely known outside of Chinese and Tibetan circles. Because of the tenuous situation between Tibet and China, she underwent censorship at the hands of the Chinese government for her book Notes on Tibet which revealed her observations on the ground in Chinese-occupied Tibet at the heat of its largest wave of protests so far in the twenty-first century.

Woeser was placed on house arrest for writings she published to the internet during the Tibetan uprisings of 2008. A collection of her poems, ranging from political to spiritual in content, were translated into English and published in the book Tibet's True Heart. It is from this book that we pull the poem "One Kind of Emotion" for contemplation in the larger context of diasporic expression.

Murmurs of Moonlight

Let me murmur the immemorial vow
As I gently bow my head.
Beginning the poem, Woeser's murmurs here allude to a widely respected practice of vow-making in Tibetan Buddhism, where vows often function as commitments to help relieve the suffering of all sentient beings. Notably, a quote by the renowned Tibetan poet-sage Milarepa introduces the book: "Pray hearken to this song with five parables and six meanings, the song with rhythm, the song like a golden string." Such lines are heavy with symbolism. Like her predecessors, Woeser seldom addresses Buddhism explicitly in her work, but sprinkles symbolic references familiar to her readers throughout many of them. These vows are closely followed by a vivid night-time image of liquid moonlight whose soothing effect speaks for itself.

A tenderness like water
Flows beneath this evening's liquid moonlight.

Icy Solace

As Woeser's poetic reflections further unfold, she touches on the frigidity of separation from her homeland, even while physically present to its transformed and thus unfamiliar landscapes, corrupted at the hands of invaders. So distant is that land beneath her very feet, turned into a shell of its former self.

How should I visualize that place, so distant?
I hear a child's voice lifted in benediction.
The stars impart an icy solace.
Such imagery further reflects the emotional tenor faced by many under diasporic conditions, their identities and innocence displaced and erased into the night sky. Even so, Woeser discovers a sense of icy solace imparted by the stars, out of reach and hence untouched, unchanged, unblemished by the powers that be.

A Cloud, A Leaf

The stationery's pale;
A couple of ordinary words stagger my heart.
Both the content and task of Woeser's writing reflect the juxtaposition of tension and relief. As the poem draws near to its conclusion, her process becomes a focal point of her writing. Having survived the arduous trek of intergenerational trauma, inherited by her from her ancestors forced into exile within their own homeland, capturing her emotions on paper proves a virtually impossible feat. She invokes nature to join her in bearing witness to the ephemeral nature of life, which become all the more apparent to her in diaspora.

I call Heaven and Earth to witness:
Life is but a cloud, a leaf.

Poetry in Diaspora

Poetry in diaspora is a much broader realm of intersecting literary, contemplative, and political strands than we can weave together here, but the work of Woeser and others like her at least offer a glimpse into the lived experience of those who create in the midst of destruction.

In fact, in an era like ours, wherein the fabric of society may appear to be unraveling from multiple angles, creative work such as these forms of poetry may help us trace the threads as they fall apart.

Perhaps by teasing apart these tattered threads, weak and wind-worn, a more sustainable fabric can be sewn together in their wake. To be continued.

Dark Water by Du Bois - Microcosm of Tragedy and Comedy

These are the things of which men think, who live: of their own selves and the dwelling place of their fathers; of their neighbors; of work and service; of rule and reason and women and children; of Beauty and Death and War.

To this thinking I have only to add a point of view: I have been in the world, but not of it. I have seen the human drama from a veiled corner, where all the outer tragedy and comedy have reproduced themselves in microcosm within. From this inner torment of souls the human scene without has interpreted itself to me in unusual and even illuminating ways.

For this reason, and this alone, I venture to write again on themes on which great souls have already said greater words, in the hope that I may strike here and there a half-tone, newer even if slighter, up from the heart of my problem and the problems of my people.

Dark Water

Penned one hundred years ago, these reflections from W.E.B. Du Bois ring equally true in the present, perhaps striking a chord in the process of resounding. Included as a Postscript in the first of his three autobiographies titled Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, Du Bois documents his observations of the human condition, probing the roots of suffering in society.

Among the text's many focal points is race. Du Bois was acutely aware of his mixed race ancestry during a period of tense race relations in the United States. Descended from African, Dutch, English, and French relatives, he was nonetheless black in the eyes of his contemporaries and bore the brunt of racism from a young age.

We here investigate a select few key excerpts from Darkwater in honor of the literary legacy of Du Bois, who was both a prolific writer and civil rights activist, among filling various other roles. While undoubtedly leaving a lasting impact in the realm of literature, his reflections were also generally well-received at the time as well, illuminating issues of racial discrimination in America.

Tantalizing Contradiction

And so the contemplative path of Du Bois begins. We start by offering Du Bois the floor, standing alongside him in his discussion of the tantalizing contradiction of the human condition.

Here, then, is beauty and ugliness, a wide vision of world-sacrifice, a fierce gleam of world-hate. Which is life and what is death and how shall we face so tantalizing a contradiction? Any explanation must necessarily be subtle and involved. No pert and easy word of encouragement, no merely dark despair, can lay hold of the roots of these things. And first and before all, we cannot forget that this world is beautiful. Grant all its ugliness and sin—the petty, horrible snarl of its putrid threads, which few have seen more near or more often than I—notwithstanding all this, the beauty of this world is not to be denied.

Casting my eyes about I dare not let them rest on the beauty of Love and Friend, for even if my tongue were cunning enough to sing this, the revelation of reality here is too sacred and the fancy too untrue. Of one world-beauty alone may we at once be brutally frank and that is the glory of physical nature; this, though the last of beauties, is divine!

And so, too, there are depths of human degradation which it is not fair for us to probe. With all their horrible prevalence, we cannot call them natural. But may we not compare the least of the world's beauty with the least of its ugliness—not murder, starvation, and rapine, with love and friendship and creation—but the glory of sea and sky and city, with the little hatefulnesses and thoughtfulnesses of race prejudice, that out of such juxtaposition we may, perhaps, deduce some rule of beauty and life—or death?
Excerpted from the section "Of Beauty and Death," we as readers of Du Bois may begin to envision the reality he faced, which in many ways mirrors our own.


Through these passages, we encounter the paradox, the tantalizing contradiction, with which Du Bois found himself constantly confronted. His life was plagued by the racism of his era, from which he and others suffered tremendously. The "horrible snarl of its putrid threads" bound him in their stinking web, and yet Du Bois never became a cynic.

In fact, it might be said that Du Bois was an optimist at heart. Despite the struggles he faced, growing up fatherless and losing his mother at 16 years old, he earned his way into Harvard, where he eventually completed a Ph.D. in history, the university's first black doctorate.

Perhaps his success may be attributed to his attitude toward life. Focusing on the positive at every turn, Du Bois at the same time shone light on society's ills, the dark corners full of cobwebs and corpses, never ignoring them. He speaks of human degradation, horrific and unnatural, without ever losing faith in life itself.


Du Bois further expands on this vision in vivid detail, also included in the visionary section "Of Birth and Death," painting an entire landscape filled with both literal significance and symbolic extrapolation, all in service of depicting the microcosm of tragedy and comedy that characterized his experience.

God molded his world largely and mightily off this marvelous coast and meant that in the tired days of life men should come and worship here and renew their spirit. This I have done and turning I go to work again. As we go, ever the mountains of Mount Desert rise and greet us on our going—somber, rock-ribbed and silent, looking unmoved on the moving world, yet conscious of their everlasting strength.

About us beats the sea—the sail-flecked, restless sea, humming its tune about our flying keel, unmindful of the voices of men. The land sinks to meadows, black pine forests, with here and there a blue and wistful mountain. Then there are islands—bold rocks above the sea, curled meadows; through and about them roll ships, weather-beaten and patched of sail, strong-hulled and smoking, light gray and shining. All the colors of the sea lie about us—gray and yellowing greens and doubtful blues, blacks not quite black, tinted silvers and golds and dreaming whites.



Long tongues of dark and golden land lick far out into the tossing waters, and the white gulls sail and scream above them. It is a mighty coast—ground out and pounded, scarred, crushed, and carven in massive, frightful lineaments. Everywhere stand the pines—the little dark and steadfast pines that smile not, neither weep, but wait and wait. Near us lie isles of flesh and blood, white cottages, tiled and meadowed. Afar lie shadow-lands, high mist-hidden hills, mountains boldly limned, yet shading to the sky, faint and unreal.

We skirt the pine-clad shores, chary of men, and know how bitterly winter kisses these lonely shores to fill yon row of beaked ice houses that creep up the hills. We are sailing due westward and the sun, yet two hours high, is blazoning a fiery glory on the sea that spreads and gleams like some broad, jeweled trail, to where the blue and distant shadow-land lifts its carven front aloft, leaving, as it gropes, shades of shadows beyond.
With each reference to aspects of the natural world - its sweeping meadows and rugged mountains - we are offered a glimpse into the microcosmic terrain of the mind. Although Du Bois doesn't say so directly, perhaps these features stand theatrically for experiences he encountered on his contemplative path.

Microcosm of Tragedy and Comedy

To conclude our reflections here, we return to a passage from the Postscript, included at the outset. "To this thinking I have only to add a point of view: I have been in the world, but not of it. I have seen the human drama from a veiled corner, where all the outer tragedy and comedy have reproduced themselves in microcosm within. From this inner torment of souls the human scene without has interpreted itself to me in unusual and even illuminating ways." In this microcosm of tragedy and comedy we find represented the macrocosm of existence.

Racism is a undeniable felt reality. To turn one's back to the world, overlooking its weather-beaten, wind-torn, ship-wrecked elements, tossed about at sea, is to indulge in ignorance - a misguided ignoring of actuality, an ignoring of the churning sea in foolish fantasy of smooth sailing. For Du Bois, facing racism was to be in the world but not of the world, navigating the microcosm of tragedy and comedy like a ship at sail at sea.

For Du Bois, the microcosm of tragedy and comedy enacts itself in nature and in humanity's relationships, collectively forming a macrocosm encompassing all existence. Each of these relations, no matter how cloaked in shadows, was for Du Bois a valuable lesson and teacher. By confronting these shadows, we stand to overcome their grip, freeing both ourselves and our spiritual brothers and sisters from bondage, sailing toward the sun so that we may, perhaps, reach the further shore together.


To be continued...

On Moving Beyond Myopic Musings - Seeing the Elephant as it is

The Blind Men and the Elephant

Scattered throughout the literature of ancient India, the parable of the blind men and the elephant has been told in variations preserved in Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu sources. It paints an image of the violence and vitriol that may erupt in the clash between different interpretations of reality, each surmised from a limited vantage point. We here examine one version of the story in detail, its early Buddhist depiction based on the Tittha Sutta of the Pāli Canon.



In exploring the parable of the blind men and the elephant, we aim to draw out its implications for our present state of affairs in a world characterized largely by contention and competing views, many of them starkly contrasting. In untangling the perspectives from the story, we hope they may be pieced together to allow for a collaborative understanding of the bigger picture, allowing the elephant to be seen as a whole rather than parts mistaken for something they are not.

Myopic Musings

The Buddhist version of the blind men and the elephant offers a critique of the tendency toward myopic musings, the narrow-minded and short-sighted perspectives we may be prone to entertain, informed by distorted perceptions of the world. Providing some context, the narration begins by setting the scene.

“There were many contemplatives, brahmans, & wanderers of various sects living around Sāvatthī with differing views, differing opinions, differing beliefs, dependent for support on their differing views.”

Here, the participants in the story are described as being in some way attached and identified with competing sets of doctrine, on which they depend for the sake of sustenance or status in society. For them, their prized views have become a crutch, the basis for their sense of self. Any challenge to such views is taken as a direct threat to their identity.



This attachment and identification is a felt reality for many in the modern world as much as in ancient times, lending itself to the emergence of divided factions in politics and religion. Pitting their precious views against each other, each camp advocates its own perspective as ultimate reality while dismissing all others as unworthy even of consideration.

“Only this is true; anything otherwise is worthless.”

In such a declaration, a single truth is pushed to the exclusion of all competing perspectives. We may witness this all around us, especially in light of differing portrayals of the coronavirus pandemic in the media by various sources, each laying sole claim to reality. In obsessing over their myopic musings, they lose sight of the bigger picture.

Missing the Bigger Picture

Not only do these individuals attach to and identify with their theories, they furiously debate over them, inflicting harm upon each other in the process.

“They kept on arguing, quarreling, & disputing, wounding one another with weapons of the mouth, saying, ‘The Dhamma is like this, it’s not like that. The Dhamma’s not like that, it’s like this.’”

The harm that comes from such vehement attachment and identification is evidenced throughout history up to the present day by wars waged and lives taken over doctrines and dogmas. Illustrating the absurdity of clinging to myopic perspectives, the Buddha in the Tittha Sutta compares these sectarians who quarrel over their cherished views to blind men arguing over their limited understanding of an elephant when coming into contact with but one of its various parts.


From their limited vantage points, each insists that the part they perceive (the trunk, the tail, etc.) is all there is, as illustrated by the image opening our reflections here. Not only that, they fail to even recognize the trunk as a trunk, mistaking it for a pole. The same applies to each of the elephant's various other body parts.

“Saying, ‘The elephant is like this, it’s not like that. The elephant’s not like that, it’s like this,’ they struck one another with their fists.”
Each of these men neglect the forest for the trees, over which they fight each another relentlessly, hacking away at the forest itself. In their frenzy, they miss the bigger picture. Much like many today, they are blinded by their narrow-minded, short-sighted insistence on their own perspectives. Their refusal to closely examine others stands in the way of seeing clearly.

Settled Clarity

We are thus reminded of the importance in considering experience collectively. In Jain contexts, here is where the notion of anekāntavāda or "many-sidedness" comes into play. The parts of the elephant function as valuable pieces of the puzzle, but such parts must be accurately discerned with settled clarity rather than mistaken for something they are not.

In a Hindu version of the story, the blind men conclude that each of them must have encountered an entirely different animal, and so they are at least spared of the fundamental delusion of mistaking parts of the elephant for inanimate objects found lying around the house or yard. However, this does not go far enough.

Rather, we are invited to consider the possibility that we perceive different sides of the elephant. If one can understand the elephant's trunk as the elephant's trunk, the elephant's tail as the elephant's tail, and so on, all belonging to the same elephant, then eventually one may piece the parts together and perceive the elephant as a unified whole, as it actually is.


In contemplative contexts, this discerning capacity is chiseled by practices such as meditation to facilitate the mind's settling and clarifying processes. By bringing such settled clarity into our everyday activities, we may develop greater immunity to the forces of attachment and identification, psychological drives that draw us into unwholesome relationships with our unchecked versions of reality, often informed by obstructions to settled clarity in vision. In so doing, we stand to widen our perspective.

Even so, successfully integrating such a widening of perspective into the broader realm of politics in an effort to resolve interpersonal conflict continues to prove itself an immense challenge.

Some "blind men" of our day and age refuse to step back and entertain any perspective other than their own. In those cases, without stirring up more dust to obscure both our own and their vision, we may attempt to calmly and clearly demonstrate to them, to whatever extent is possible in individual exchanges, that a rope is a rope and not the snake for which they mistake it. This may at least begin to shift the directional momentum of perspectives on the whole from a contracting to expanding orientation. To be continued.

Riding the Waves - Virginia Woolf on the Churning Currents of Existence

"The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it.

Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually."

Virginia Woolf

Riding the Waves

Excerpted from The Waves, an experimental tapestry of soliloquies woven in word by British novelist Virginia Woolf in 1931, this scene opening the book paints a picture both poetic and poignantly reminiscent of a world beset by perpetual waves of unfolding tragedy.

The Waves documents the turbulence of Woolf's life, charting its valleys and crests, affectionately called a "play poem" by Woolf herself. Its structure takes the shape of a wave-like arc, stretching from sunrise to sunset along the coast, a simultaneously literal and metaphorical setting. Its churning currents and contents consist of the internal monologues of six characters, flowing into and out of each other, mixing poetry with prose like sea water. Each of their voices bleed and blend together in harmony.

Given its relevance to times like our own, characterized by relentless waves of disease, death, desperation, perhaps even depression, distance, desolation, we here let The Waves wash over us as we join Woolf in riding them out.

Churning Currents

The churning currents of existence occupy much of the oceanic expanse encompassed by The Waves. Throughout the text, Woolf frequently weaves in references to her struggles with solitude and society, alone and alienated. In the voice of an imaginative child, she writes:

"...my ships may ride the waves. Some will flounder. Some will dash themselves against the cliffs. One sails alone. That is my ship. It sails into icy caverns where the sea-bear barks and stalactites swing green chains. The waves rise; their crests curl; look at the lights on the mastheads. They have scattered, they have foundered, all except my ship, which mounts the wave and sweeps before the gale and reaches the islands where the parrots chatter..."

Woolf proceeds to share her visceral sense of numbness in a world alien to her. As if perched precariously on a cliff's edge, she risks plummeting into the void of solitude, cut off from embodied modes of being. Immersed in imagination, nothing can snap her out of her stupor, a world of ruminative ideation.

"I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness."

Continuing with the seaside imagery, Woolf further pours her alienation onto the page, like hot water gushing forth from a vessel, escaping the spout, spilling everywhere at once, scalding children at a tea party. Yet her emotions are muted, her heart desolate, burning but without heat. She envisions being but a strand of seaweed or lump of seafoam tossed about without care or concern. Worthless to others, she is swept asunder by the waves.

"The waves broke and spread their waters swiftly over the shore. One after another they massed themselves and fell; the spray tossed itself back with the energy of their fall. The waves were steeped deep-blue save for a pattern of diamond-pointed light on their backs which rippled as the backs of great horses ripple with muscles as they move. The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping."

Painted here is a scene so delicate yet powerful. As Woolf describes the coming and going of waves, almost as if from a distance, the immersed reader is consumed by them. These waves, figments of our own imaginations, gallop like a stampede across the mind's rugged terrain, like choppy currents dancing across the sea.

"I see nothing. We may sink and settle on the waves. The sea will drum in my ears. The white petals will be darkened with sea water. They will float for a moment and then sink. Rolling over the waves will shoulder me under. Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me."

Woolf later encounters the waves, making contact as they crash upon her. Her life, our lives, are like these churning currents, rising and falling with the stirring of conditions. She appears to put up no resistance to being swept under by them, perhaps even finding relief in her own dissolution, as if finally being cleansed of her own mind's torment.

"And in me too the wave rises."

Indeed, Woolf's entire arc in The Waves is but a mirror image of her inner world. In times of isolation and stress, many in the present pandemic may be feeling quite similarly. Woolf retreated inward yet found little to no solace in the confines of her own mind. How would each of us respond to the waves inside us rising as if to devour us whole?

Riding the Waves

Virginia Woolf lived a morbid existence, her mother dying when Woolf was 13 years old, inducing the first of her various mental breakdowns, followed shortly by the untimely death of her half-sister and close friend. Institutionalized multiple times, she suffered severely from mental illness throughout her life. Woolf attempted suicide at least twice and finally succeeded at drowning herself at 59 in the River Ouse at its juncture with the town of Lewes in England.

The waves broke on the shore.

Riding the waves of her own life, yet unable to surface from them, Woolf succumbed to their onslaught. In times like ours, there are simultaneously more stressors and more resources offering relief. Given our present conditions, how shall we go about navigating these vicious waves so as not to be drowned by them? What can Virginia Woolf's reflections teach us about riding the waves? Is there anything further to be done or undone in order to not endure the same fate? To be continued.

A Blessing for a Sick World - The Visionary Contemplations of Crazy Horse

"I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become a circle again."

⁠— Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse, a Lakota chief and medicine man also known as Tȟašúŋke Witkó, played a pivotal role in the indigenous resistance against encroaching colonialist settlers during the nineteenth century. His efforts were intended to preserve the traditional way of life of the Lakota people of the Midwest.

While perhaps best known for his participation in battles across the Great Plains, the visions associated with Crazy Horse are also noteworthy, especially for their relevance to the present.

Among Crazy Horse's visions is one directly concerned with unity. This is the prophecy we contemplate here. It is said that Crazy Horse shared this vision with his fellow Lakota leader Sitting Bull during a pipe ceremony, a sacred ritual connecting physical and spiritual worlds.

A Blessing for a Sick World

Introduced as a blessing for a sick world, Crazy Horse envisions a future of misfortune. While such a description could be applied to any period of history, it is especially characteristic of our present circumstances under the synergistic tensions of climate change, pandemic, and racial injustice.

"Upon suffering beyond suffering, the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world."
In the context of a world in peril, plagued by disease, the need for blessings becomes ever more dire. With the prediction that the Red Nation shall rise again, Crazy Horse suggests that indigenous wisdom may offer an alternative to the distress that infects humanity. His contextualization further mentions a world longing for light.



"A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations. A world longing for light again."
These features characterize our present circumstances with exceptional precision. The ways of life inherited by us from whatever powers that be have not yielded the fruits promised to us. Our lives are largely dictated by stratification on various levels ranging from economic to ethnic, with each class and category set apart from the others. We live in the darkness of ignorance and yearn for illumination that will allow us to see clearly.

"I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become a circle again."
Here Crazy Horse details his vision in images central to his indigenous identity. These references emphasize the interconnected nature of existence, with Seven Generations hearkening both backwards and forwards to the lineage from which one has emerged and for which one leaves one's trace through present deeds. The Sacred Tree of Life depicts diverse branches springing from the same trunk, with roots firmly planted in the Earth. Each of these references lends further depth to his vision.

"In that day there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of the unity among all living things, and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom."

We find in this section of the prophecy an allusion to the healing power of well-intended intercultural exchange. The unimpeded transmission of wisdom between cultures offers exactly the psychological and spiritual medicine needed by the world, despite opposition by an especially vocal few. These inward remedies are necessary ingredients for paving the way toward resolving material illness in the world at large.

"I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be as one."
Concluding his vision, Crazy Horse points directly to what appears to function as the inner source of unity between all. Only by first returning to the nature that resides within us are we then capable of genuinely connecting with others in the world beyond ourselves. To do so, we are asked to recognize the common strand that runs through us all, despite our superficial differences.

Visionary Contemplations

Given the divided nature of contemporary race relations, politics, class hierarchies, and other sources of social tension, Crazy Horse's vision of the future may appear to be a mere "pipe dream" without tangible correlates on the ground. However, its hopeful understanding of unity and interconnection may not be so far out of reach. The solution to our situation of separation is simple, but by no means easy.


Crazy Horse was killed through a fatal stab wound to his back, but more than a hundred years later, his vision for the future has not died. Much remains to be done and undone in the world in order for us to approach anything near his vision of unity. Yet as we can discern from his words, such unity may be found right within plurality itself. To be continued.

Ground Sprouts Vanished - A Buddhist Depiction of the Climate Crisis and Civilization's Collapse

"Due to corruption and unskillful things among us, the earth's nectar vanished, ground-sprouts vanished, bursting pods vanished..."

Aggañña Sutta

Origin of the World

Painting a portrait eerily reminiscent of the current state of our world, the Aggañña Sutta records an early Buddhist origin story. In fact, the Pāli word "aggañña" itself means origin, from "agga" or the Sanskrit agra, first or foremost. Despite this emphasis on origination, the Aggañña Sutta's contents reflect what appears to be a process of decline, with implications for both the climate crisis and civilization's collapse through neglect of basic civil rights and universal civility.

The origin of the world is intimately tied into its mode of undoing. Much like the way in which the cycle of dependent origination begins with ignorance and culminates in suffering, any alteration to its conditions stands to unravel the process. As we discuss below, the Aggañña Sutta identifies greed as a primary cause for the origin of the world, which we interpret as a psychological basis for our present state of affairs. If our present world originates from greed, it will disintegrate via greed as well...

We thus take up the Aggañña Sutta's story on the origin of the world as a topic of inquiry, especially given the increasingly tumultuous state of the environment, economy, and epidemiology amidst various forms of suffering deriving from racial injustice and inter-generational trauma extending back through time immemorial.

Feasting on Nectar

The Aggañña Sutta begins with an idyllic image of beings unconstrained by coarse bodies, floating through the ether, rapturous and radiant. As if breathing, the cosmos contracts and expands as these beings flicker out and back into radiance, all the while feeding on rapture. During a stretch of cosmic expansion, sweet nectar forms on earth, piquing the curiosity of these beings. It solidifies on the earth's surface, tempting them down from the ether.

What happens next in some ways closely resembles the story from the Garden of Eden. Perhaps it functions as an archetypal literary device, as its basic themes traverse traditions.

Abandoning their rapture, one of these beings recklessly dips their finger into the nectar. Upon tasting its delectable sweetness, craving is born in them. From this moment forward, ruled by desire as if addicted, these previously radiant beings begin greedily feasting on nectar.

Ground Sprouts Vanished

As they feast, the nectar is said to break into chunks, becoming the celestial bodies, including sun, moon, and stars. Despite their beauty, these once glorious beings deplete this cherished resource from the earth.

In the absence of nectar, ground-sprouts appear, like mushrooms blooming from the earth. No longer sustained by rapture, no longer sustained by nectar, the beings whose bodies have by now become coarse and heavy feed off the ground-sprouts. Lo and behold, they deplete the ground-sprouts through their greed. In the absence of ground-sprouts, bursting pods appear, like fruiting trees. Those are soon depleted as well. In the absence of bursting pods, ripe untilled rice appears, for a while regenerating with each passing of the sun. What has by now become a self-perpetuating pattern, driven by greed, continues.

As these beings dig themselves deeper into greed, they think to themselves, "We'd better divide up the rice and set boundaries," hoping to preserve their resources. The plan backfires, given that "While guarding their own share, they took another's share without it being given and ate it," leading to widespread jealousy and theft.

Climate Crisis and Civilization's Collapse

Greed ultimately tips the dominoes in motion for a series of other unwholesome outcomes. "From that day on, stealing was found, and blaming and lying and the taking up of rods." In this chain reaction of events, an initial moment of greed eventually culminates in violence, characterizing the present climate crisis and civilization's collapse. When beings greedily covet resources and deprive others, then further harmful activities are sure to follow.

Greed → Depletion of Resources → Scarcity → Stealing → Blaming and Lying → Violence
What, then, can be done to reverse the cycle? If we treat this web of causality similar to that of dependent origination, there are multiple points at which the process can be re-routed. The Aggañña Sutta suggests a basic foundation in morality - refraining from killing, stealing, and so forth. Interestingly, in the Buddha's teaching that comes immediately before the Aggañña Sutta in the Pāli Canon, the Buddha goes a step further, crossing into the realm of politics. He advises rulers to distribute resources to the masses in order to ensure their basic needs are met. This, says the Buddha, will prevent the emergence of scarcity, poverty, stealing, and other such events.


So where does that leave us? We stand at one of the most complex crossroads, a momentous junction in the earth's history, on multiple intersecting levels. The complex web of causality is coalescing around events with huge potential to shift the state of affairs drastically in the years to come. What role do we play?

Let us collectively reflect: In our present situation, what steps can each of us take to overcome greed, to prevent the depletion of resources, to avoid scarcity and relieve others from poverty? Social justice requires our collective efforts.

What responsibility will you undertake, what responsibility will I undertake, in order to help co-create a world in which all may experience the greatest benefit and the least harm? Each thread in the web, no matter how small, stands to make a difference. To be continued.

Still I Rise - Dust Contemplations by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Maya Angelou

In light of the abhorrent recent murder of George Floyd, an inexcusably violent act in a string of senseless atrocities perpetrated against communities of color, we turn to the work of African-American poet Maya Angelou.

Born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, Angelou was a performer turned writer who worked with both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X during the civil rights movement. Her career spans and merges the realms of theater, literature, and activism.

Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise" provides a snapshot into her personal contemplations on injustice. We thus join her in reflection in the midst of protests sweeping the globe, primarily letting her speak for herself.

Like Dust

The image of dust invoked by Maya Angelou in "Still I Rise" carries an especially nuanced power. Prior to its mention, Angelou references the cloud of misinformation, a miasma of distorted history, written at the hands of those in power, who intentionally warp reality to fit their chosen narrative. She observes that although she and other people of color are portrayed as defiled caricatures and thus essentially trodden into the dirt under the heels or knees of oppressive forces, she absolutely refuses to be snuffed out by them. Whatever dust they grind her into becomes her new means of rising above.

But still, like dust, I'll rise
Those voices that are most stifled will nonetheless continue to speak in spite of efforts to suppress them. Angelou herself was mute for several years a child after suffering rape by her mother's partner, whom her protective relatives later killed. As a young girl, she felt responsible for all that had occurred and lost the will to speak. With the encouragement of a black female teacher educated in literature, Angelou eventually recovered her voice and went on to use it skillfully for social justice in the civil rights movement, rising like dust so fine it can be lifted up into the open expanse.

Still I Rise

Much of Angelou's carefully chosen words speak volumes to resilience in the face of horrendous injustices, which continue to plague us today. In fact, with an unrelenting sense of determination, she drew upon the collective strength of her community to triumph over tremendous adversity and traumatic life events during an era of social unrest and turmoil. Shining a beaming light of hope for the future in a time of darkness, which characterizes the atrocities of her time as much as ours, Maya Angelou concludes the poem "Still I Rise" with a set of momentous verses, through which her thunderous voice resounds.

Out of the huts
of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past
that’s rooted in pain
I rise

I'm a black ocean,
leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling
I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights
of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak
that’s wondrously clear
I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou. "Still I Rise," And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems. 1978.

Vimalakirti's Sick Room - A Bodhisattva's Contemplations on Illness, Compassion, and Wisdom

Vimalakīrti's Sick Room

"Because all living beings are subject to illness, I am ill as well.
When all living beings are no longer ill, my illness will come to an end."

Vimalakīrti



We turn here to the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra, an early Mahāyāna Buddhist text with origins traceable to approximately 100 CE, shortly after the life of Jesus Christ. Its content orbits around the layman Vimalakīrti while on his deathbed, confined to a tiny sick room yet visited by countless beings who somehow manage to all squeeze inside, listening to him teach on subjects ranging from illusions to non-dualism and beyond. While obviously not following the guidelines of social distancing, the story of Vimalakīrti's sick room is still especially relevant to the present pandemic.

Illness and Compassion

The Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra takes place primarily in a single space, a sick room occupied by the householder Vimalakīrti, who is described as a wealthy devotee. Vimalakīrti is depicted as entirely bed-bound, afflicted with illness, practically on the verge of death. While initially the exact nature of his illness remains unclear, Vimalakīrti later explains it through analogy to the existential unease afflicting sentient beings.

Because all living beings are subject to illness, I am ill as well. When all living beings are no longer ill, my illness will come to an end. Why? A Bodhisattva, because of (his vow to save) living beings, enters the realm of birth and death which is subject to illness; if they are all cured, the Bodhisattva will no longer be ill.

So long as we are subject to birth and death, we are subject to illness. A bodhisattva, an awakened being or a being in the process of awakening who willingly remains in the rounds of cyclic existence in order to liberate other beings, is only ill insofar as other beings remain ill. She vows to remain by their side, through sickness and health, and to assist them in awakening from the dream until all are free. Thus, Vimalakīrti remains bound to his sick room yet continues to teach living beings, millions of whom come to his bedside.



Illness is no impediment to the bodhisattva's continued service. In fact, in dialogue, a close, even causal association is drawn between compassion and illness.

Mañjuśrī asked: “What is the cause of a Bodhisattva’s illness?”
Vimalakīrti replied: “A Bodhisattva’s illness comes from (his) great compassion.”

Given this association, the bodhisattva path may seem undesirable for one's own good. If a bodhisattva's compassion leads to illness, then isn't that technically a form of self-harm? Indeed, we find in the modern era that compassion fatigue and burn-out increasingly afflict individuals in service-oriented professions, including healthcare, especially in light of the present pandemic. Out of compassion, they may put themselves in harm's way, risking their health and lives in order to care for the sick and ailing, occasionally succumbing to infection and dying as a result. While the bodhisattva does not flee from sickness and death, she must also exercise wise discernment while serving beings rather than recklessly throw herself into danger. Hence the appearance of Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom, in dialogue with Vimalakīrti.

Wisdom and Compassion

An essential coupling in much of Buddhism is that of wisdom and compassion. When wisdom is lacking, compassion is easily depleted as a result of its haphazard deployment. One may even lose life and limb in the process. When compassion is lacking, wisdom remains stale and lifeless. Occasionally understood by Buddhist practitioners as the two wings of a bird, wisdom and compassion are complementary qualities to be cultivated, especially on the bodhisattva path.

The choice to enter into the realm of sickness out of compassion must be tempered with wisdom in order to succeed in freeing beings. Compassion without wisdom would only perpetuate the cycle of illness, whereby both patient and doctor succumb to infection and die. Thus, the wisdom teachings of emptiness, as well as discernment in conduct, are invoked throughout the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra as a means of striking an appropriate balance. Although at a literal level, it may not seem that packing millions of beings into a tiny sick room is a medically wise or even compassionate course of action, Vimalakīrti clarifies that the illness he speaks of is metaphorical, a spiritual illness, which may be cured through contemplative practice. The beings in attendance manifest with ease, free of disease, in an entirely contemplative capacity.

While we pause here for the time being, we conclude with a brief reflection on the meaning and implications of bodhicitta, literally the mind of awakening. Such a mind is imbued with both wisdom and compassion, serving as the foundation for the bodhisattva's vows in service of all beings. As long as beings learn from the suffering that characterizes the present pandemic rather than attempting to mask its visceral reality, the seeds of bodhicitta may germinate for the freedom of all. For Vimalakīrti's confrontation with illness, bodhicitta informed by both wisdom and compassion was key.

Neoplatonist Contemplations - Withstanding Rain & Wind Across Winter Storms

"It is rather like some farmer who, having sown seeds or even planted a tree, is always setting all the things right that winter rains and sustained frosts and wind-storms have damaged."

Plotinus

Neoplatonist Contemplations

Shifting gears momentarily, we turn to the Enneads, a collection of contemplations by the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus. Especially noteworthy among his reflections is a passage that speaks to multiple intersecting themes, ranging from contemplative ecology to resilience in times of hardship.

A Hellenistic philosopher native to Egypt, Plotinus is credited as the founder of Neoplatonism, a new phase in the tradition inspired by the esteemed Greek philosopher Plato. He ventured to modern-day Iran to study Persian and Indian philosophy before retiring to Rome. Plotinus composed the Enneads on a variety of topics, including ethics, cosmology, psychology, epistemology, and natural philosophy, among others.

Relevant to the ongoing environmental crisis and the more recently sparked pandemic, we here investigate the long winter to which Plotinus alludes in a short section from the Enneads, briefly examining the means toward a spring thaw and recovery.

Winter Storms

Broadly, Plotinus distinguishes between three aspects of existence: Soul, Intellect, and the "One." Our passage of interest pertains to the tendency of the soul to "administer the universe," often via comparison, analysis, rumination, and other activities, all overwhelmingly discursive. In characterizing the soul, Plotinus draws on a permacultural analogy.

Keeping a watchful eye over both the spiritual and terrestrial domains, the soul seeks to put objects in their proper order, similar to a farmer mending damages in her garden left by the cold season or inclement weather.

Much of the world remains in an extended winter storm of sorts, characterized by frozen economies, dwindling ecosystems, and a bitter epidemic at large. Interestingly, Plotinus situates the soul below the intellect, and the intellect below the "One." Each is, of course, related to the others. While the soul is concerned with satisfying its externally oriented desires through discursive activity, the intellect contemplates in a less discursive capacity. The so-called "One" is the first principle from which everything else derives, the "Good" to which everything else returns.

Despite the soul's limitations, its acting as a farmer is an image that lends itself to a contemplative ecology with implications for cultivating both mental and physical terrain.

While not the focus of his work, that things can even be set right at all despite damage from winter rains and sustained frosts and wind-storms opens several doors pertaining directly to the challenges we presently face.

On Withstanding Rain And Wind

Although the text itself does not speak explicitly on withstanding rain and wind, or the various other sorts of storms the soul inevitably encounters in its efforts to administrate the universe, we here reference the pandemic and ecological crisis it appears to have eclipsed.

First, the soul's efforts at setting things right ought to be critically scrutinized. Given that its activity, according to Plotinus, is inspired by an effort to satisfy material desires, we should be wary of efforts to fix the present situation through superficial bandages. The causes of these ecological and epidemiological disasters must be deeply probed rather than merely covered up in the name of economic prosperity.

Second, if the farmer's activity is informed by wisdom and thus complementary to the intellect's reunion and reintegration with the first principle (a metaphysical topic deserving of further investigation elsewhere), then we must thoroughly equip ourselves with the knowledge and skills necessary to restore life to frost-bitten, rain-ravaged, wind-torn farmland. Nothing less than the full commitment to revolutionize all systems, both personal and political, from the inside out will do.

Perhaps a similar message of hopeful resilience is echoed further by an additional section from the Enneads, with which we conclude.

"His suffering will not be pitiable, but the light in him will continue to shine like the light of a lantern when the wind is blowing outside in a great fierceness of rain and winter storm."

Plotinus

Sick and Withered - Wandering Dream Fields Via Japanese Haiku - Part III on Basho

Sick on a journey,
my dreams wander
the withered fields.

旅に病んで
夢は枯れ野を
かけめぐる

Matsuo Bashō

Bashō

The most famous of all poets in Edo period Japan, Matsuo Bashō enjoyed a relatively privileged childhood, his father being of the samurai class or perhaps an estate farmer of the same relative standing. When Bashō was 12 years old, his father died and the young boy was passed on to a local feudal lord, whose son, Yoshitada, had taken up the aristocratic practice of composing verses. Bashō studied with Yoshitada, learning the art of haiku. When Bashō was 22, his mentor Yoshitada died, and Bashō moved once again, although exactly where remains unknown.

Bashō's forty-nine years can be divided into phases. In his twenties, he showed the promise of a budding haikuist, while in his thirties he became a prolific writer and teacher, studying Chinese poetry while dabbling in both Daoism and Zen. He is credited with reinventing Japanese haiku, breaking from the status quo and imbuing his art with new life. Even so, by his forties, Bashō grew sick of the literary life and set off on pilgrimage, documenting his voyages in a travel journal, which developed into a literary genre in Japan. His travelogue, interspersed with poetry, known as Narrow Road to the Far North, continues to be widely read.

Half literary celebrity, half homeless pilgrim, Bashō was familiar with multiple intersecting worlds. Near the end of his life, while roaming in solitude, his poetry began to increasingly reflect a sense of loneliness, intense concentration, and lightness at once. Written shortly before his death, Bashō's final haiku distills the essence of each of these themes. We thus contemplate its relevance to contemporary contexts.

Sick on a Journey

Opening the haiku, Bashō writes of being "sick on a journey," which we may read in several ways. On one hand, although quite well-off as a result of both the social class afforded to him by birth and a successful haiku career, Bashō had grown tired of the lime light, which he never fully enjoyed. Perhaps wishing to reinvent himself, much like he had reinvented the art of haiku during his literary career, he sought a simpler existence through solitary pilgrimage. In this phase of his life, Bashō traveled light and consumed minimally, shaving his head and donning rag robes. At the same time, Bashō had fallen fatally ill while on pilgrimage, eventually meeting an early death.

In an era of pandemic, we too encounter an opportunity to reinvent ourselves as the world undergoes huge, largely devastating shifts in momentum. Some of us—perhaps sick of structural inequities stemming from long-accumulating cracks in the foundations of society that are increasingly brought to light by the virus—may see the present situation as a momentous occasion for regenerative undertakings in ecology. Sick in more ways than one, we face a long and daunting journey ahead if we are to collectively recreate a sustainable future, a feat Bashō seems to have undertaken as well on his own terms.

My Dreams Wander

Bashō continues his near-death reflections by observing, "my dreams wander," suggesting the movement of his own mind's creations. While on pilgrimage, anyone's contemplative musings are likely to be stirred. The impressions left by wandering unfamiliar paths inevitably imprint upon the unconscious and express themselves through dreams, where creative energy blooms freely. Perhaps Bashō here alludes to his poetry itself, which he hopes will wander freely after he dies. Knowing his own death to be fast encroaching, he composes this haiku as a departing reflection, possibly intending to live on through his poetry in the dreams of others.

During times of novelty and uncertainty, dreams are the boundary-less container in which creative energy stirs. As many seem to be experiencing, the mind entertains myriads of possibilities in the depths of night, some perhaps soothing, others the cause of demonic fright. Present pandemic, traumas from the recent or distant past, and hypothetical futures invade and populate our dreams. On other occasions, visions of regeneration and flourishing may arise, whether while waking or sleeping. In these times of groundless fog, obscuring clarity and obstructing progress, may our dreams teach us without causing us incapacitating stagnation or regression. May they wander freely, and may where ever they happen to take us impart wisdom.

The Withered Fields

At the poem's conclusion, Bashō mentions "the withered fields" that he witnesses on his sick journey. In fact, Bashō's dreams wander these withered fields. Whether referring to the land itself, the figurative terrain across which his life has wound its course, or even his own decrepit body, beset by illness, or mind, ravaged by regrets, a sense of desolation pervades the scene. Nonetheless, Bashō's dreams appear eager to wander through such desolation.

Rather than turn away from the unpleasant realities that face us, we too may heal from letting our dreams wander the withered fields, intimately exploring the wreckage often concealed from us. Death and destruction plague our present reality. They shattered populations extending even further back than documented history shows. Such devastating events will no doubt continue to plague us into the future. By wandering their withered fields, perhaps we may trace the scars of the past and learn from them as we journey onward. Despite his own sickness and the withered nature of these fields, Bashō's dreams continued to wander, unimpeded. Perhaps ours may too in spite of all the carnage.

To Be Continued

World of Dew - Hopeful Impermanence Via Japanese Haiku - Part II on Kobayashi Issa

The world of dew
is the world of dew.
And yet, and yet —

露の世は露の世ながらさりながら

Kobayashi Issa

Wandering

Born 1763 in a small mountain village in central Japan, Yataro Kobayashi, who later in life adopted the pen name "Issa," was surrounded by nature from an early age. The son of a farmer, his mother passing away when he was two years old, Issa was raised primarily by his grandmother. He studied with a calligraphy and haiku master while attending the village school but encountered familial tension with his new stepmother and was sent away after his grandmother's death when he was 14 years old to train as an apprentice for hire at the capital in Edo.

The next ten years of Issa's life are largely unknown, but by age 25, he had begun publishing poems under a haiku teacher through the Katsushika school, known for stylistic references to animals and the natural world, which would soon populate Issa's poems.

After his master's death, Issa was promoted, but again faced tensions with his fellow poets and resigned by 29, departing on less than ideal terms. He traveled alone to visit his father before moving onward, wandering the countryside for ten years on a pilgrimage to Pure Land Buddhist temples across Japan before returning to his childhood home to tend to his father on his deathbed. Dividing the family property in half, Issa lived side by side with his stepfamily and married but lost all of his three children shortly after their births before finally losing his wife and their fourth child. Issa remarried several times but died before the birth of his one and only daughter, whom he never met. Her family was still living at the Kobayashi property into the 1950s and perhaps later.

Issa's story represents another all too human pattern. In a sense nothing special, he encountered the same sorts of conflict and loss that characterize any of our lives. In our second installation of a series on Japanese poetry, we feature here one of Issa's many poems as a reflection on transience, a both painful and hopeful theme that weaves its way into the present pandemic as much as the environmental crisis and other such events. And yet, and yet...

Cup of Tea

Issa (一茶), whose pen name means "a cup of tea" with the added implication of "a single bubble in steeping tea," saw the bubbles of transience, the tides of change, sweep over his eyes on countless occasions, often bearing misfortune. Yet being a child of the farm, a wandering man of the countryside, he also witnessed nature's impermanence at every step, perceiving beauty, even if mournful, in the transient nature of existence. His haiku on dew conveys these perhaps mixed feelings.

"The world of dew" (露の世) he writes at the outset, thereby setting the scene for his readers. Deeply influenced by Buddhism, particularly its Pure Land doctrine of salvation in the divine abode of the Buddha of light, Issa saw the world as a dewdrop perched precariously on a blade of grass, gone in an instant, vanished in a flash. Upon losing his infant daughter to smallpox, Issa composed this poem, mourning her death through creation.

World of Dew

For Issa, this world of dew symbolized the fleeting joys of life. Despite their transience, Issa saw them as no less joyful while they were present. Their loss, however, was heart-wrenching for him. His early childhood encounter with death through the loss of his mother at age two, followed by the loss of his grandmother who had been his primary caretaker at age 14, foreshadowed the blows dealt to him later by mortality with the passing of multiple infant children and his first wife. Issa also lost his father in the midst of this whirlwind of death. He grieved deeply. Bearing strong resemblance to each other, another of Issa's poems reads:

A world of dew
and in every dewdrop
a world of sorrow.

露の世の露の中にてけんくわ哉

Kobayashi Issa

Indeed, the world of dew is an image that finds itself repeatedly interwoven throughout his poetry. The Pure Land school to which he belonged laid particular emphasis on the desperately fleeting nature of worldly existence, offering relief through the grace of Amitābha, the Buddha of light. By chanting Amitābha's name, some semblance of peace was restored in the hearts and minds of devotees, who were promised rebirth in a heavenly paradise known as the Pure Land. Many have since attempted to establish such a Pure Land on earth, an effort that becomes all the more pertinent in the face of pandemic and climate change with its feverish symptoms which plague the planet. Issa no doubt invoked the pure light of Amitābha throughout his encounters with death and loss.

And Yet

We turn now to the concluding lines of Issa's haiku, "And yet, and yet —"...

Left with a sense of inconclusiveness, perhaps spaciousness and hopefulness, Issa ends on open terrain. While in his other poem, he concludes with reference to the world of sorrow, here the possibilities are endless. The Japanese phrase "ながらさりながら" (nagara sari nagara) rolls off the tongue with the sense of sauntering onward.

In light of the various waves of impermanence sweeping the globe, whether environmental or epidemiological, it remains uncertain what, precisely, lies on the horizon. While pained by these ongoing traumas, if we can find even the slightest opening, the faintest glimmer of hope, then perhaps behind the darkness, beneath that crack in our armor, lies a wellspring of light. "And yet," writes Issa, "and yet —"...

To be continued.