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.