Poetry And Its Relationship To The Dharma

I would like to start with a story called Chiyono's No Water,

No Moon,

And this story is from The Hidden Lamp,

Stories of 25 Centuries of Awakened Women,

And this story was written in the 13th century of Japan.

Chiyono was a Zen convent who wanted to practice Zazen.

One day she approached an elderly nun and asked,

I am of humble birth.

I can't read or write and must work all the time.

Is there any possibility that I could attain the way of Buddha even though I have no skills?

The nun answered her,

This is wonderful my dear.

In Buddhism there are no distinctions between people.

There is only this.

Each person must hold fast to the desire to awaken and cultivate a heart of great compassion.

People are complete as they are.

If you don't fall into delusive thoughts,

There is no Buddha and no sentient being.

There is only one complete nature.

If you want to know your true nature,

You need to turn towards the source of your delusive thoughts.

This is called Zazen or meditation.

Chiyono said with happiness,

With this practice as my companion,

I have only to go about my daily life practicing day and night.

After months of wholehearted practice,

She went out on a full moon night to draw some water from the well.

The bottom of her old bucket held together by bamboo strips suddenly gave way and the reflection of the moon vanished with the water.

When she saw this,

She attained great realization.

Her enlightenment poem was this,

With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together and then the bottom fell out.

Where water does not collect,

The moon does not dwell.

So what this poem expresses for me is the way in which poetry and contemplative practice can open up spaces beyond words.

Poetry points towards what can't be comprehended in words.

The line,

With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together.

This really speaks to me in that I'm often pulled by this trying to keep my life together,

You know,

And keep this practice in the forefront of my life.

The way in which I am pulled by desire and pushed away by unpleasant experiences.

The effort I put forward.

How we keep things together is an important part of life.

Sometimes keeping things together is all we can do based on the conditions of our life.

So knowing when to let go,

In the moments when we can let go,

Is really important.

Often there is a habitual way in which we keep the bucket together.

You know,

Keeping it tied together with the habit patterns of our lives and the well-worn grooves of our lives.

And those habit ways keep the bucket together,

But they also have a high cost.

Sometimes they're like very old voices that shouted us,

You know,

To keep the bucket together.

You know,

These stories are really important to recognize and to honor and to also gently untangle in the service of letting go.

The moments that we can't keep it together and the bottom falls out.

The moments when we see the nature of all things,

Including ourselves,

Which is the nature to fall apart in the end.

It can seem like bad news when the bottom falls out.

The personal pain and the suffering that's experienced.

And the teachings in this tradition tell us again and again that everything is welcome.

Everything belongs.

Everything is teaching us.

Even the most profound suffering and loss is workable.

Little by little we are learning to soften through the body and the mind.

Learning to soften and include these aspects of our humanity that are hard to bear.

Learning to hold our own hand and meet all of ourselves with care instead of falling into the habitual patterns that we do.

You know,

Pushing away or searching for pleasant distractions.

And in this process,

Slowly,

Little by little,

We may encounter a fearlessness and a capacity we didn't know that we had.

And this takes me to poetry.

The way poetry pushes out like new buds on a branch that we we thought were bare and dead.

You know,

Poetry has been a wonderful support in my own practice.

And it can support our practice.

It can sort of drop us in the realm of truth outside of ordinary awareness.

This is from the poet Rosemary Waltola Tromer with permission.

It is the work of the living to grieve the dead.

It is our work to wake up each day to live into the world that is.

It is our work to weep and it is our work to be healed.

Some part of us knows not only the absence of our beloveds but also their presence.

How they continue to teach us,

How they invite us to grow.

It is our work to be softened by loss,

To be undone,

Destroyed,

Remade.

Wounded we recoil and it is our work to notice how,

Like crushed and trampled grass,

We spring back.

It is our work to meet death again and again and again.

And though it aches to be open,

It is our work to be opened,

To live into the opening until we know ourselves as blossoms nourished from within by the radiance of the ones who are no longer physically here.

They have given us their love light to carry.

It is our work to be in service of that light.

We know ourselves as blossomed,

Nourished from within.

That line touches me deeply.

And the response that I have is called Vedana in the Buddhist tradition.

Vedana means feeling tones in this early Buddhist teaching.

And we tend towards pleasant feelings.

I think all of us want pleasant experiences to happen and continue or a response to unpleasant experiences.

We have a relationship with unpleasant experiences and strategies like avoiding and pushing away or distracting ourselves.

And then the neutral feelings of Vedana are the habitual ways,

The ways that we space out or are not paying attention.

So it's neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

It's just sort of numbing out on the show or like having a few drinks or shopping,

Something like that.

So our responses to the poem I just read are entangled with many conditions,

Mainly our relationship to what we heard.

You might have heard this poem and it just left you cold,

Like you don't have a relationship to it.

And in another moment it can pierce us.

We can hear with new ears and see with clear eyes and understand with a fresh mind.

What is beautiful in the relationship between poetry and the Dharma is that poems point towards impermanence quite often.

The poem is fluid in relationship to the reader whose perception is always changing,

Right?

Through this practice and the relationship to poetry we have an opportunity to see how all things,

Including ourselves,

Are interdependent.

And when we begin to see that,

It can begin to open our hearts and expand our compassion.

Going to the last lines of the first poem that I shared,

Where water does not collect,

The moon does not dwell.

And we might say,

But I want the moon to stay and be full and beautiful and reflected in the water.

Like when we go out into the night down by the river or stand at the sea during a full moon,

Or even the way that water reflects in a puddle on a full moon night.

Seeing the relationship of that wanting and not wanting that experience to go away,

It's really human,

Very relatable,

Wanting the moon to stay.

So our practice invites us to always let go and to make peace,

Like the way Rumi offers.

He writes,

Very little grows on jagged rock.

Be ground,

Be crumbled,

So wildflowers will come up where you are.

You have been stony for too many years.

Try something different.

Surrender.

So thank you for your kind attention.