Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

by Matsuo Bashō, translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa

What a simple set of words by the 17th-century Japanese haiku master Bashō, and yet what a world they open into! A world of effortlessness, of non-doing, maybe even of no doer. Which seems very appealing in the face of busyness and the sense of things being hard work at times. But obviously, striving for effortlessness will only get me further away from it. What does seem to help, is occasionally dropping the question in: could I do less? or: can I use less effort? Can I trust the grass growing by itself, a little bit more? This may not exactly be transcending the ‘doer and deed’ as described in Buddhist teachings, but it can make a surprising difference.

Shall we sit for a while, quietly, doing nothing – and see what happens?

PS if you’d like to sit together quietly, doing approximately nothing, there’s a new level 1 mindfulness course starting soon… because although it’s simple, it’s not always easy, and it helps to do it together!

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name.
Listen
to the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.

Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.

O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you

speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”

by Thomas Merton

There’s something about this poem, by American Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968), that helps me to feel a sense of stillness and silence that is fathoms deep. There is groundedness (the stones seem to take me there) and there is also mystery (the stones speaking, the Unknown). But then, all of a sudden, in the last stanza, there is a raging fire. What a contrast! I’d like to attempt to reveal to you, and to myself in the writing, what this means to me.

To begin with, I’m fascinated by the phrases in brackets, which seem to be speaking with another voice, maybe from within the poet. Is it the cynical, unbelieving, reticent part of him? Or maybe he’s taking account of the reticent response that could come from the reader. One of my responses to the poem was indeed something like: “Stones speaking? World on fire? I don’t get it. This is all too ‘poetic’ for me! Stones don’t speak!”

Merton’s answer to someone in this position is an encouragement to trust yourself to be able to leave the literal meaning of the words behind and to listen beyond the words – in short to be mindful. To ‘let the words become transparent to the depths that lie beyond’, as priest Simon Small beautifully puts it when speaking about the art of contemplation. When I listen to the poem like this, this is what happens: I’m taken into silence and stillness with a solid, ancient feel. But there’s a voice that keeps questioning. Then I’m on the edge of the unknown and need to release the voice and dare ‘to be my own silence’. I do so, and a sense of the wild wonder of existence roars in and is within and all around me. I give myself to the feel of this awesomeness.

For a long time, I’ve not really understood the last stanza and have even missed it out when sharing the poem because I was attached to the stillness and didn’t want the fire! But I think I’m getting there with it now after pondering, observing my response to it and allowing the words to become transparent to the depths beyond. Perhaps when you’re still enough, you can, on occasion, feel the incredibly intense wonder of existence as if it were like a fire – the creative and destructive force of life. This reminds me of T.S. Elliot’s famous lines ‘And so the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing’.

This poem is a journey. As many poems are. This is where it took me. I wonder where it might take you?

Ps. If you feel attracted towards receiving the wisdom of the world’s poets both ancient and contemporary and you’d like to experiment with how mindfulness can enable a deeper experience of it, come along to the next Mindfulness meets Mystical Poetry 6 week course starting in late May, or to a day long retreat in July (both online). Both are open to all.

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If I were brave enough, I’d tell you how my heart
has raged for love, stretched thin as a high wire.
If I were brave enough, I’d tell you
how my body has been fighting to stay upright
on every precipitous downhill the city
throws at it. If I were brave enough,
I’d climb into your lap and weep with longing.
All I can say is that any attempt at beauty and hope
is land-mined with failure.
And so the dangerous track-making begins.
Wending our way through,
there are possible clutches at sunlight, at windows, at yes.
We are each of us inches from death.
We are each of us inches from life.
We are each of us inches from each other.

by Maya Stein

What does it mean, make an alliance with anguish? Making it your ally? Or even: to ally with it? That definitely sounds counterintuitive at first, yet it immediately makes me curious. What would happen if I tried more of that, rather than the habitual wrestling with anguish, trying to avoid or somehow conquer it?

Poet, writing guide and adventuress Maya Stein talks about what she would do if she were brave enough – daring to be more truthful, more vulnerable, risking the many varieties of failure. It inspired me to make my own list: if I were brave enough, I would… and yes, if I didn’t mind anguish as much, more choices would open up and I might inch my way closer to beauty and hope, to life and the important others in it…

But then of course, the question of how arises. How do I make an alliance with anguish? I guess that’s where the dangerous track-making begins, one step and one moment at the time, aware of the risk of the landmines of failure. And: maybe failure isn’t the end of everything, maybe that would just mean some more anguish which I can also be with, breathe with…

Although mindfulness is usually associated with becoming more calm and peaceful, it definitely also supports me towards living more courageously. Sitting undilutedly with myself, especially for longer periods in a retreat context, has undoubtedly required and further grown my braveness. Chogyam Trungpa said that “ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.” So here is to more practice!

PS. I love reading about brave and inspiring people, as if their courage and ability to think out of the box could be contageous somehow. Reading a bit about Maya’s adventures was definitely inspiring, and it made me wonder what adventures I could provide for myself…
And if you feel ready for an adventure in mindfulness and discovering what that can bring you, we have a four level pathway plus a number of themed courses to choose from!

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by Rolf Jacobsen translated by Robert Bly

When I read this poem by Norwegian poet Rolf Jacobsen and receive it into embodied presence, I initially notice something unnameable in my heart. Is it longing, heartbreak, love? Sitting with the feeling a little longer, I know that I’ve recognised a deep truth in the poem; a truth that is hollowing out all the dross from my heart to make room for love.

The primordial wild of the phenomenal world – the Ocean – speaks to me in the poem and reminds me how small I am and how humility is really the only position to take. This puts me in my place, but not in a way that feels harsh or unwelcome. It’s a gentle return to honouring the Greater Intelligence of Life (or whatever you would like to call it – God, Buddha, the Universe…) via the bridge of humility. This position is desperately necessary in our crazy world.

The suggestion is that our violent, haughty, self-aggrandising tendencies may be worn away by the constant Sssh of the waves. It’s not a pounding or thrashing of breakers, but a persistent, almost soothing Sssh which also suggests a stilling and quietening. And a taming of ego. Knowing that Jacobsen was Norwegian adds to the atmosphere around the poem for me – moody, elemental coastlines hover in my mind’s eye, the feeling of being tussled by wind and awed by magnificent vistas of sea, rock, clouds, sun.

I happily sink into this humble, quiet place and find my heart bursts with love to be there. How strange that from the point of view of the day-to-day hussle of life we might resist this humbling, when actually it is such a beautiful place to land up at! It feels like deep belonging and soft opening. It even has a tinge of romance to it. Perhaps this is the longing that the mystics-of-old wrote of (Rumi, Hafiz), the longing and devotion for the Beloved. Perhaps the ocean is like the Beloved, a Vast Powerful Awakener, inviting us home to union with all Life.

Ps. Join us at the end of May for the next Mindfulness Meets Mystical Poetry course where we’ll reflect from embodied presence, on a diverse range of poems that connect us to our humanity, our deep intelligence and to something altogether vaster. Are you curious get to know your own particular responses to poems and where they might transport you to?

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The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.
In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,
to see the universal and the particular,
simultaneously.
Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

by David Budbill

Wow, what a clear setting out of the human endeavour to live wisely! So simply and concisely stated – and yet as the last sentence indicates, anything but straightforward and worth knowing about when it’s achieved. I loved the combination of sage instruction with the down-to-earth commentary, the dry humour and the teacher-student familiarity I felt in it. This was not an aloof wise one diseminating wisdom – here is an friendly and encouraging fellow human who knows his way around the great endeavours and their challenge.

As so often happens, reading this poem made me curious about the person who the words travelled through, and the life that led to this expression. It came from one of the eight books of poetry written by David Budbill (1940-2016) with a title that intrigued me: ‘Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse’. His life was summarised on his website as ‘humble, engaged, and passionate’, and he brought his poetry into the world with others in musical collaborations reaching diverse audiences. Diving a bit more into the traces he’s left on the great web made me feel this almost childlike excitement: the world is full with wonderful people living what Lama Yeshe would call a ‘joyful and useful’ life, I only know of such a small fraction of them and yet they’re everywhere and here is another one!

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