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.

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.

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.

Silent Spring - A Grim Specter

A Grim Specter

"A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know," warns Rachel Carson quite prophetically in her "fable for tomorrow" Silent Spring, a story penned in 1962 of a blatantly undeniable truth presently afflicting the globe.

Who is this grim specter? He goes by the names corporate greed, the Amazon fire, single-use plastics, the Siberian fires, record high temperatures, the Camp fire, toxic air quality, the Australian fires, deadly carbon emissions, the Indonesian fires and floods, corruption... This list goes on. This grim specter assumes the identity of environmental degradation, climate crisis, anthropogenic global warming. By chance, have you met him? Does any of that sound familiar?

While Carson's Silent Spring, written over half a century ago, centers mostly around the harmful effects of pesticides, her message spans much wider. Take a look around, not just in the immediate surroundings, but at the scope of the global community as a whole. The world around us is in the process of collapsing. Both society and nature are in shambles. The grim specter has made his descent. Who can ward off his advances and how?

Countless Birds, Clouds of Bloom

Lauded as an environmental science masterpiece, Silent Spring begins with an idyllic image of society and nature in harmony, depicting a verdant landscape of rolling meadows and abundant wildlife. How could anything disrupt such utopian beauty?

There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings.

Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wild flowers delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people came from great distances to observe them. Other people came to fish streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their houses, sank their wells, and built their barns.

As opening lines, this passage paints the peaceful picture of prosperity amidst the paths of pines and pristine places of our planet's past. We are provided vivid detail as to the interwoven textures of this landscape, unfolding in utter splendor and brimming with life. What could possibly disrupt such peace?

Strange Stillness, Impending Doom

Although painting a panorama of perfection, the story warps suddenly and unexpectedly.

Seemingly without warning, the beauty of nature vanishes before one's very eyes. All that remains is the barren and desolate. Anticipating the painful present, the portrait pivots into a precarious peril. Such panic-inducing impermanence is portrayed in the grim passage that follows.

Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken while at play and die within a few hours.

There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example — where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.

This is not the sort of stillness anyone would actually wish to experience, not the peace and quiet of rest and relaxation. This silent spring is the eerie aftermath of deafening cries from those begging for their lives. Such cries, unheard, echo through the mountains, fading into oblivion, having been ignored, or worse, caused by those who take pleasure in them. Once cheerful birdsong, next mournful melodies, then the haunting vacuum of nothingness. Such silence strikes at the heart and severs it into pieces. Rather than a peaceful silence, we are left with the grim fruits of environmental violence.

These scars of silence, unanswered cries of suffering, are carved deep into the earth.

Deserted By All Living Things

All that remains in Carson's narrative is the skeleton of what once was and may never be again, a desert landscape left in the wake of an ecosystem previously bursting with life. Carson continues her narrative with further painstaking detail, describing the land as deserted by all living things, a reality that may befall us as well if we continue to ignore the warnings.

On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs — the litters were small and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit.

The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the streams were now lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died.

In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams.

Such an apocalyptic scene, deserted by all living things, seems to reflect much of what has become reality today. With a world seemingly in utter shambles, we appear to have fulfilled the prophecy of Silent Spring, failing to heed its warning.

The People Had Done It Themselves

Most piercing of these lines are those that aptly conclude the chapter, which tell of the cause for such devastation. The people had done it themselves, writes Carson.

No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.

This town does not actually exist, but it might easily have a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world. I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe. Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them. A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know.

What has already silenced the voices of spring in countless towns in America? This book is an attempt to explain.

Anthropogenic climate change ⁠— pollution, toxic elevations in greenhouse gases, rising temperatures, mass deforestation, and extinction caused by human activity ⁠— is the culprit. Even in 1962, Rachel Carson saw this reality. How many in the present day still haven't?

Silent Spring

While this may sound dismal, not all hope is lost. Rather than point fingers of blame and shame, a healthy sense of responsibility is needed. There remains much that can be done or abstained from in order to shift the scales and restore symbiotic balance.

In order to clean up one's act, one must recognize the mess one has made for what it is. Rather than wallow in said mess, active efforts to transform it are in order. Even dung can be turned into compost. So, what do we do with the present conditions? What hasn't already been done? In heeding Carson's warning from Silent Spring, how does one overcome climate anxiety and work for climate justice?

A healthy sense of urgency helps. Not panic, but urgency. What can be done in this moment to make even the slightest bit of improvement? There's no waiting for tomorrow, if we take Carson's message seriously. The simplest first step in response to such urgency is to spread the word. Not panic, but words that speak to values such as justice. To spread panic only piles further challenges upon us. While Carson's warning and our observations of the world around us may induce panic, such panic has to be transformed into urgency in order to have any meaningful impact. Panic paralyzes us. Urgency propels us forward.

In light of the constantly shifting terrain, stay informed and stay in touch. Stay in touch with the latest conversations on climate. Stay in touch with your communities. Stay in touch with the natural world so as not to become desensitized to its suffering. Stay in touch, in embodied relation to all there is.

To be continued...

Braiding Sweetgrass - A Potawatomi Botanist's Reflections on Language and Contemplative Ecology

Braiding Sweetgrass

In our day-to-day experience in the modern world, it may prove challenging to maintain an awareness of the life that animates nature, or even how inextricably intertwined our lives are with the natural world. With so much of the natural world seemingly crumbling before our very eyes, contemplative ecology is an urgent undertaking. In fact, that so much of the natural world is crumbling not before our very eyes, but behind the guise of economic growth and progress, is among the most pressing issues in need of attention. Too often, we do not directly witness the devastation and destruction that befalls nature, and thus we turn a blind eye to its demise, a deaf ear to its cries...

Here we venture into the contemplative reflections contained in Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.

While not (yet) a classic, instead published quite recently in 2013, Braiding Sweetgrass is no less illuminating than the others we've addressed. Our emphasis thus far has been on pieces that date back hundreds to thousands of years, which have proven themselves surprisingly relevant today, perhaps even as much as they were to people in vastly different times and contexts. Yet intuitive value imbues recent contemplative undertakings as well. In this case, its recency makes it all the more relevant to contemporary concerns, especially environmental. Like several of our other explorations, Braiding Sweetgrass also traverses the realm of language, a path we invite you to explore with us.

Reflections on Language

Taking the form of a first-person narrative interwoven with contemplative musings and botanical themes, Braiding Sweetgrass includes several poignant reflections on language. For instance, drawing on personal experience, Kimmerer describes her efforts at learning a new language, a task many of us may have also undertaken at some time or another. In the course of this effort, she discovers that the natural world has its own language and is, in essence, “speaking” to us. Too often, we fail to comprehend the message.

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer observes that the English language remains a limited starting point for understanding the language of nature, insofar as its words and concepts fail to do justice to the animation that the land itself embodies, the stories it narrates.

Contemplating linguistic trends, Kimmerer notes that English is a noun-based language while only roughly 30 percent of English words are verbs, perhaps suggesting an emphasis on entities to the neglect of processes. Given the structures inherent in English language conventions, privilege is given to a solid perspective of the world. Our attention defaults to objects which we can clearly perceive, firmly grasp, and definitively make-sense-of. Anything else either eludes our awareness or remains in the shadowy background or blurry periphery of conscious experience, the sub-conscious. Further, the English language implies that nouns are inanimate given that they are simply “things” rather than imbued with a life of their own. This comes in stark contrast to the Potawatomi language, wherein both nouns and verbs may be animate and inanimate, Kimmerer reflects.



Interestingly, Kimmerer also reflects that the natural world, both plants and animals (including rocks) are animate, and so are mountains, water, fire... even places. When they are displaced, their living essence is disturbed.

Consider a cave and a museum. When the cave is ransacked and objects are taken from it for installation in a museum exhibit, on one hand those objects are made more widely accessible to the general public, who stand to learn immensely about archaeology, history, and ancient cultures by examining these artifacts. However, something is lost in the process, namely through the objectification of those artifacts, which before entering the museum, perhaps did not even function as objects or artifacts in the same sense that they do upon being branded as such. The cave is a living entity that “speaks” to us, whereas in a museum, the living aspect of language is lost and thus artifacts can only speak indirectly, divorced from context.

We use this example as a rather benign case relative to extreme situations entailing the appropriation of nature and indigenous cultures, situations that unfortunately haunt a great deal of human history, especially recent...

Common Language

Broadening the scope of her contemplations, Kimmerer observes that plants, animals, and humans share a common language that functions to bring individuals together. However, it seems that the manner in which we approach this process of communication can backfire, setting up barriers that prevent us from speaking to one another. Increasingly over time, individuals, especially in non-indigenous contexts, have tended to isolate themselves from the natural world, whether consciously or unconsciously. In light of rapid industrialization, we've been torn, willingly or unwillingly, from the land. The land, in turn, has been razed; animals, confined; forests, burnt to ashes.

In other words, hierarchical language has the potential to divide humans, animals, and the surrounding environment. A language that sees the natural world as populated by mere objects to be used for human pleasure and so-called progress is a language that divides us.



As difficult as it may be to envision, animate and inanimate beings speak a common language and impart wisdom to each other, according to Kimmerer. If we lack the ability to tune in to this shared language, the message is lost on deaf ears. It is not the case that we are utterly incapable of tuning in. Far from it. Rather, we increasingly overlook the value of such communication given an overwhelming societal push toward economic growth at the expense of the natural world, the very ecology we inhabit.

Kimmerer reflects that when we see a maple as a living thing, instead of an object, we hold a moral responsibility to safeguard it, allowing for mutual benefit and interconnection as opposed to exploitation. In fact, when we regard the maple as an object, such a perception imposes an artificial barrier that divides us from the shared world that we inhabit.

Contemplative Ecology

Certainly far more could be said of Kimmerer's work, but we pause here for the time being. Contemplative ecology, an approach to the natural world that entails an ongoing awareness of environmental illness and wellness, as well as our dependency upon its state of health for our very survival, is absolutely essential now more than ever. We intend to follow-up on the theme of contemplative ecology, as well as several practices complementary to or derived from contemplative ecology, in the reflections to come.

Thunderous Silence - A Multitude of Words

Unorthodox Paradox

We return here to The Thunder, Perfect Mind, a Gnostic poem belonging to the Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in the mid-twentieth century, and translated into English by George W. MacRae. The origins of the poem date back to a Coptic manuscript from roughly 350 C.E., tracing itself even further to Greek antiquity.



Employing unorthodox paradox, perhaps for the purpose of shaking us from our ordinary stupor, the poem winds up taking us through the contemplations of a mystic. A Gnostic text, it combines Egyptian and Jewish influence and appears to document a goddess or other female divinity speaking of self-revelation. We tease apart a select few of its paradoxes here.

Thunderous Clap: Be On Your Guard

Heed the thunderous clap, "Be on your guard!" A recurring exclamation throughout The Thunder, Perfect Mind is this eerie, thunderous warning. Statements surrounding such a proclamation, from one angle at least, read as almost threatening. Watch your back, one might say. Thunder warns us of lightning to come, and lightning of thunder to follow. For instance, consider the following passage.

Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard!
Do not be ignorant of me.
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one
and many are her sons.



I am she whose wedding is great,
and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband
and he is my offspring.

While no explicit threats are made in the poem, some sort of intimidation is nonetheless apparent. The speaker is everything at once, mother of her father, sister of her husband, and her husband is her offspring, no less! The paradox shines through in glaring audacity. How can one be both bride and bridegroom? Barren yet with many sons? Whore yet virgin? Honored yet scorned?

I Am The Silence

Seeming contradictions abound as the paradox further unfurls. I am the silence, she says. In speaking, she is no less silent. In silence, she no less speaks. How do we make sense of it all?

I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.

Perhaps such utterances are intended to shake us awake from the slumber in which we lay. The mind whose self-proclaimed duty is to make sense of it all is left confounded. This may be exactly the point. Such a mind cannot fathom the non-dual and so must be transcended. Not obliterated, not annihilated, not repressed, mind you, but overcome so that one may see from above, taking an aerial view.



Such a view is all-encompassing, much like the identity of the speaker, who continues with a series of further paradoxes.

Why, you who hate me, do you love me,
and hate those who love me?

You who deny me, confess me,
and you who confess me, deny me.

You who tell the truth about me, lie about me,
and you who have lied about me, tell the truth about me.

Here, too, the sense-making mind is at a loss. One is perhaps reminded of the turnings of thought, the process whereby the gears of logic start turning, thereby churning through a calculative process of attempted sense-making. In cases of the mystical, such an approach backfires.



Such seeming contradictions in logic aren't intended to be made-sense-of. Rather, perhaps they are intended to reorient the mind, away from the habitual tendencies of calculative thought, toward a more meditative style.

The following lines further illustrate this sort of reorientation.

You who know me, be ignorant of me,
and those who have not known me, let them know me.
For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am shameless; I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.

In speaking such paradoxes, the speaker may be nudging us toward the non-dual.

Poverty and Wealth

Similarly non-dual in orientation, as we tread deeper onto the poem's winding path, we encounter yet another juxtaposition, this time with socio-economic ramifications.

Give heed to my poverty and my wealth.

While presumably a reference particular to time and place, we may also consider such a command in light of contemporary conditions. We are asked to give heed to her poverty and her wealth.

What does she mean?



Perhaps with poverty and wealth, she alludes to the divisions of class. Collapsing such divisions, rendering them arbitrary and without inherent substance, she demands that we give heed to both. Perhaps such an invocation is relevant in light of the ever-growing gap between rich and poor throughout much of the world today. Give heed to both the rich and poor equally, without worshipping the rich as a concrete category while relegating the poor to the wastebin or gutter, as is so often the case. The politics of power must be actively challenged. Political commentaries aside, to see beyond such divisions while at the same time acknowledging their felt realities at the very least allows for a more fluid approach to the exchanges, transactions, we undergo economically, socially, and contemplatively.

Compassionate and Cruel

Before we know it, however, we are swept into another pair of paradoxes.

I am compassionate and I am cruel.

I am senseless and I am wise.

What may initially appear cruel may actually be profoundly compassionate. Imagine a parent shouting profanities at their child who runs into the street to chase after a ball. While ideally harsh speech may be set aside, the intention in such a situation is not to hurt the child, but to protect him. Likewise, the child may act senseless at times but exhibit wisdom all the while. Perhaps the speaker is the parent and the child.



Both compassionate yet cruel, senseless yet wise, she navigates the juxtaposition by refusing to inhabit a single position. Her nature is to shape-shift. She is malleable, conforming, deforming, and reforming to the conditions she encounters rather than fruitlessly forcing a fake, fixed identity, which has no ground on which to stand in the first place.

Life and Death

She hovers above this ground, while at other times plunging deep into it and unearthing what no others dared to excavate. Life and death so happen to be one such excavation.

I am the one who has been hated everywhere
and who has been loved everywhere.

I am the one whom they call Life,
and you have called Death.

I, I am godless,
and I am the one whose God is great.

Moving seamlessly between the hated and loved, life and death, the godless and God, she again manifests her malleability. She is like liquid gold, melted under heat, capable of being shaped into any form she chooses. Once she assumes one form, she liquefies once more and dissolves before assuming the next.

I Myself Will Appear, I Myself Will Hide

In this process, she alternates between that which appears and that which is hidden. She proclaims:

But whenever you hide yourselves,
I myself will appear.
For whenever you appear,
I myself will hide from you.

Here, she seems to follow us, yet when we attempt to follow her, she vanishes. She cannot be pinned down.

Come forward to childhood,
and do not despise it because it is small and it is little.
And do not turn away greatnesses in some parts from the smallnesses,
for the smallnesses are known from the greatnesses.

Collapsing even the great and small, she razes the ground so both yet neither may occupy it.

I am the one who is honored, and who is praised,
and who is despised scornfully.

I am peace...



...and war has come because of me.

And I am an alien and a citizen.
I am the substance and the one who has no substance.

Like those that came before them, these lines are mind-bending. Perhaps the author again intentionally pulls the rug from under our feet in order to stir her reader from his ordinary ways of thinking. The line “I am the substance and the one who has no substance” in particular hints at her amorphous aspect. She assumes a form only to leave it behind, to transform.

Those who are close to me have been ignorant of me,
and those who are far away from me are the ones who have known me.
On the day when I am close to you, you are far away from me,
and on the day when I am far away from you, I am close to you.

Such lines illustrate that perhaps being too close to something prevents our seeing it as a whole. Our vision grows myopic, or rather, shrinks. The resulting perspective is limited in the sense that one cannot see beyond what is already close. We take for granted that which is already present. Those with some distance may accommodate a broader view.

Multitude of Words

In this way, by taking a step back, we paradoxically move closer to the meaning.



Referencing a multitude of words yet without speaking, she says:

I am a mute who does not speak,
and great is my multitude of words.
Hear me in gentleness, and learn of me in roughness.
I am she who cries out,
and I am cast forth upon the face of the earth.
I prepare the bread and my mind within.
I am the knowledge of my name.
I am the one who cries out,
and I listen.

Indeed, a multitude of words could be employed to unpack and interpret her paradoxes, but by this point, we hope the potential intent has made itself all the more clear. In contemplative contexts such as these, paradox cannot be analyzed to any fruitful degree while preserving the non-dual import of the message. Certainly one may try to dissect the dualities, to unconfound the conundrum, but in so doing, one misses the contemplative call.

For what is inside of you is what is outside of you,
and the one who fashions you on the outside
is the one who shaped the inside of you.
And what you see outside of you, you see inside of you;
it is visible and it is your garment.

Ultimately, it seems that we are asked to dissolve the boundary between within and without, to access the divine that is present and pervasive in full unmediated immediacy.

Perfect Mind

Where does that leave us?

Embracing the thunderous silence seems to be at least one of the major themes woven throughout the lyrical cadence of The Thunder, Perfect Mind. We are left with the impression that it remains possible to see through the discriminating tendencies of the mind under siege by its own churning activity. Such tendencies otherwise give rise to perception of discrete aspects of the phenomenal world. We are left with a reality that seems full of contrasts and contradictions. Yet one may transcend this myopic perspective and thereby bring the mind to perfection. Rather than being led astray by the default tendency to dichotomize, one may consciously shift toward an equanimous receptivity to multiple points of view, without needing to attach or cling to any of them.

Such radical reorientation entails coming face to face with one's own strengths and weaknesses. I am compassionate and cruel, the poem reflects. Perhaps the poet hints that we have the opportunity to radically accept both the positive and negative at once. That's not to say we should allow cruelty to go unquestioned, but rather, we may dissolve its reputation of solidity. Perhaps neither compassion nor cruelty exist in any concrete way, being culturally conditioned constructs. Again, that's not to say we should downplay their differences, only that they're not permanent states. Clinging superficially to such categories sets us up to be disappointed. For those who understand and see through the so-called “ordinary” world, the poet asks for ignorance. And for those who are ignorant of themselves, the poet demands knowledge.

What say you?