What I'd like to talk to you tonight is really, when I looked at the title, I realized it could be interpreted that I was going to go through the whole of the Western poetic tradition and compare it to the Buddhist tradition. And really, what I'm really wanting to get to in the title is really to compare the practice of Buddhism, particularly through the medium of Zen sitting, with the practice of facing the terrible and lovely white page that has confronted the poet in the West for centuries. And I want to try and look at the way that those experiences, though they're two very different doorways, two very different gateways, can take us to a place where your outer masks and shadows and constructions can fall away, and there can be a deeper remembrance and a deeper sense of belonging to the world.

[01:09]

And I'm interested in the way that they're both very difficult and fierce ways of paying attention to the world. That the act of silence on the cushion and of breathing and of intense entrance into the world has many similarities to the same parallel experience you have at the desk with your pen hovering over that page, and Dante and Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare and Yeats looking over your shoulder as you're doing it. And when you're sitting intently in a sashin or in your daily practice, it's often being remarked that you feel as if you're sitting with everyone else who has sat before you, and everyone else who is attempting any kind of entrance into silence. And of course, you have exactly the same experience in writing, that when you've apprenticed yourself to the art of utterance and of speech

[02:12]

and of entrance through speech and of changing your life through courageous talk, you feel as if you're in conversation with all of the greats who have gone before you, and also all of the anonymous ones who didn't quite make it to that mileage level in the great scheme of things. But I was just flying down today, speaking of mileage, and I was reading a piece by Dogen Zenji where he has this marvelous metaphor for life. He says, when you're born, you have so much working for you already. You're like a boat that is launched out onto the water, and you have your body which is like the boat, and all your physiological systems are like the water which holds you buoyant above it. He says, but when you look out from that boat, the whole world is part of that boat and part

[03:14]

of that meeting with the water. You've got the boat, you have the water, you have the landscape, you have the sky, and it's all one belonging, and you happen to be walking in just through the little doorway of the boat into the world. It reminded me of an experience I had floating out on the waters of the Puget Sound, which is my northwestern home right now, and realizing that I was floating on that water, and I was experiencing water at just one part of a whole cycle, because the whole sky was full of water in the sense of the clouds. I looked out to the mountains, and they were covered in this white, silky substance we call snow. Then out of those mountains, you could see the valleys which had been formed by the melting of that snow and the movement of water. Then I was surrounded by the Puget Sound, and I was actually floating on it. I had this sudden entrance into this whole circular ecological movement of which I was a part. It's almost

[04:18]

like water was the great conversation between everything. So I wrote this piece, and it's called Where Many Rivers Meet. All the water below me came from above. All the water below me came from above. This is one of the great pitfalls of sudden insight. You say something that is completely and utterly ordinary, but it's just if you've discovered it for the first time. There's a great Elizabethan love poem by Sir Edward Dyer, and in the first line he says, he says, the lowest trees have tops. You know immediately he's a goner. He's in love. You say, who is she, you know? The lowest trees have tops. So same thing, sublime experience reduced to cliche. All the water below me came from

[05:18]

above. All the clouds living in the mountains gave it to the rivers, who gave it to the sea, which was there dying. All the water below me came from above. All the clouds, all the clouds living in the mountains gave it to the rivers, who gave it to the sea, which was there dying, and so I float on cloud, become water. Central sea, surrounded by white mountains, the water salt, once fresh, cloudfall and streamrush, tree root and tidebank leading to the river mouths, and the mouths of the rivers sing into the sea, the stories buried in the mountains give out into the sea, and the sea remembers and sings back from the depths where nothing is forgotten. All the water below me came from above, all the water below me came from above, all the clouds living in the mountains gave it to the rivers,

[06:20]

who gave it to the sea, which was there dying, and so, and so, I float on cloud, become water, central sea, surrounded by white mountains, the water salt, the water salt, once fresh, cloudfall and streamrush, tree root and tidebank leading to the river mouths, and the mouths of the rivers sing into the sea, the stories buried in the mountains give out into the sea, and the sea remembers and sings back from the depths where nothing is forgotten. Often, when I'd be memorizing a poem, I'd often memorize it in the car as I was driving along, or if I was walking. And there was many a time, my son was three or four years old at this time, when I wrote Where Many Rivers Meet, and he used to sit in the back of the car, in his car seat, and he'd hear me reciting the poem, or he'd be in his pushchair as I walked along. And there was a moment a few days later when we were down by the waters

[07:24]

of the Puget Sound, and my son used to go into the freezing cold waters. You know what they're like when they're three or four years old. There's nothing can touch them at all, and they're in, up to their necks for the longest time, and into that freezing water, and he'd just love it. And then we'd stand by the waters of the Sound and push out logs, and they'd float back in and push out logs. But then there was a moment where he suddenly just stopped, and I could see his little body stop, and he looked down into the water, and he was looking for the longest time, and I just stood behind him. And he was looking, and [...] looking. And then there was a moment when he just said, he said, Papa, I said, What? He said, Is this the place where nothing is forgotten? I said, It is. He says, This is the place where nothing is forgotten.

[08:26]

Because I feel we're all desperate for a sense of belonging, which is outside of our normal sense of siege that we feel when we're engaged with time in a conversation in which we're actually imprisoned by that conversation. And we're desperate for a sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves, and a moment of eternity, where eternity is not an endless amount of time, but a moment outside of time, where you're free to belong in a way which does not need endless amounts of will, and in a way that does not exhaust you, and in a way in which you don't know how much time is passing at all. In fact, your experience of time emanates from the wellspring of your confrontation with the frontier that you're on at that moment. It comes from the very meeting itself. And when you're engaged in that experience,

[09:28]

that place of the meeting of all things, there's nowhere else you need to be. There's no other place you need to go. And at that moment with my son, there was no other place to go to in the whole world. This was the place where nothing is forgotten. And there's something about looking into deep water which is very nourishing, and it's very parallel to the intense, attentive looking you have on the cushion in the discipline of Zazen, very parallel to the intense attention you pay trying to say the next word in your piece, in your poem. Because when you think about it, you look at water, when you look into deep water, you see the shadows of the things that are below, but you also see the reflection of yourself at the same time. And both are transformed by the medium through which you are looking.

[10:31]

And I do believe that we're trying to belong to the world in a way in which we're constantly at that frontier, and we're constantly attempting to belong to something larger than ourselves. And when we don't feel that sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves, we not only feel as if we're running in place, we actually feel as if we're dying in place. We feel as if there's something wrong with the world, and we think there's something wrong with ourselves at the same time. So there's, in the act of writing, and in the act of silence, and of resting into the breath, there is a kind of return at the same time to our own true home in the world. And I often think, you know, the way we use destiny in the world, or at least we've used it up until this time, has been very elitist in a way.

[11:39]

And when we use the word destiny, we think of Madame Curie, and Napoleon, and Julius Caesar, and all the great names of history. But when you think about it, everyone in this room belongs to the world in an absolutely unique and particular way. And though we share commonalities with one another, those commonalities are caught in each of us in such a way and in such a recipe that there is no other person can belong to creation in the way that you can belong to that creation, or that I can belong to it. There's no other part of the world that can take our place. And there never has been throughout the whole of recorded time, and there never will be again. We are this astonishing intersection, this astonishing frontier, that will never appear again in its particular form that we inhabit. And therefore, all of our great traditions, whether they're our Western literate traditions or our Eastern Buddhist traditions,

[12:39]

say, in effect, that actually the rest of creation is waiting breathless for you to take your place. And that the universe is made up of belonging in such an incredible way that everything, actually, if you will just give yourself a break, is working on your behalf for you to take your place. But that this doesn't call for a radical kind of doing, but a radical kind of undoing. And that you're actually to take what a friend of mine calls a path of radical non-interference with yourself. And what T.S. Eliot described in a sense when he said, he said, not known because not looked for,

[13:40]

not known because not looked for, but heard, half heard in the stillness between two waves of the sea. Look now, hear now, always a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything. Not known because not looked for, not known because not looked for, but heard, half heard, but heard, half heard, in the stillness between two waves of the sea. Look now, hear now, always a condition of complete simplicity, a condition of complete simplicity, a condition of complete simplicity, simplicity, costing not less than everything. One of the difficulties of practice, whether you're going to your cushion or to your writing desk,

[14:42]

is an experience of kind of displacement behavior that occurs, where suddenly you realize that the refrigerator needs defrosting, or that even though you don't know the first thing about cars, you're going to replace, you know, something in the engine. And there's nothing more frightening to an artist or writer than actually finishing your writing studio that you've been working on for months, you know. And if you've ever noticed, writing studios take weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks to finish the last part of it, because who would you be if you had no excuses then, if you went in there and you did have the perfect conditions, you know, and then you couldn't write, you know. And who would you be if you just sat there and breathed, you know. There's actually, you know, in the pen hovering over the paper,

[15:43]

there's an intimation of one's own death. And in the sudden realization of how much will you are using simply to breathe in the world, there's an understanding of the strangeness of the personality that you've built for yourself on the surface. And both disciplines call for a kind of dying unto yourself and a kind of innocent reclaiming of your own life that immediately causes a kind of family death in a way. And the death in the family is inside yourself. This is a piece I wrote. It's actually called Sitting Zen. And there's always an experience, particularly in Sashin, or a longer meditational experience that will go on for hours and days, where you suddenly realize how far away you are

[16:45]

from the natural tidal rhythms of your own breath, you know. And you hadn't even realized how much energy and work you were putting just into getting the old oxygen in and out of the body, you know. And there comes a moment as you're swaying, you know, down into yourself through the breath where you feel literally as if something is breaking and falling away from the outer surface of yourself, like the outer shell of a Russian doll. It's just breaking apart. Or the shell of a crab or lobster that's attempting to move out and grow into the world. And this is a part of you that's actually dying. And it's as if that part of you, to use another metaphor, is almost like falling victim to you paying attention to the world. And it becomes almost like a wounded animal or a prey

[17:47]

that you're tracking down through your breath or through the lines that you're writing on the page. And so this image of Sitting Zen here is actually brought together and conflated with another much older image, which is right at the root of English literature, which is the image of the lake in Beowulf, where Beowulf has to enter this lake in order to wrestle with Grendel's mother. And the surface of the lake looked quite difficult to enter. And it's a perfect description of what the page looks like when you can't write and when you don't want to sit. Thank you. After three days of sitting hard by the window, after three days of sitting hard by the window,

[18:48]

following grief through the breath like a hunter who has tracked for days the blood spots of his injured prey. After three days sitting hard by the window, following grief through the breath, like a hunter who has tracked for days the blood spots of his injured prey. I came to the lake where the deer had run exhausted. I came to the lake where the deer had run exhausted, refusing to save its life in the dark water, refusing to save its life in the dark water. And there it fell to ground in our mutual and respectful quiet, pierced by the pale diamond edge of the breath's listening presence. After three days sitting hard by the window, following grief through the breath, like a hunter who has tracked for days the blood spots of his injured prey.

[19:49]

I came to the lake where the deer had run exhausted. I came to the lake where the deer had run exhausted, refusing to save its life in the dark water, refusing to save its life in the dark water. And there it fell to ground in our mutual and respectful quiet, pierced by the pale diamond edge of the breath's listening presence. I don't know if you've ever felt, you know, in moments of silence where you're making a breakthrough, the intensity of the attention and the way at the same time that you have the intensity, you also have to couple that with restfulness at the same time. And so there's attentive restfulness occurring and you're trying to hold both in the same movement. And you're just holding that attention on your breath and you're letting it go at the same time. And you're following it through and you feel,

[20:51]

oh, just this next breath, no, next breath, next breath. And you're rocking almost like a baby backwards and forwards down into yourself. And the same experience on the page as you're following the gravity, the gravitational weight of what you're trying to say line by line and the discipline it takes to stay with the actual way the water is flowing down to the sea and not get out of the water and go off in any number of directions that you could be pulled off in while you're writing. And yet, even as you're attentive to that direction, you're also trying to rest into something that's waiting just in the next line to be said. I often think that one of the ways human beings change is by getting really tired of themselves. And that if you really want to change sometimes, all you have to do is to keep doing what you've been doing and watch yourself do it as you're doing it.

[21:54]

And you'll just see and you'll get really tired of yourself and eventually you'll get so fed up that you'll just change. And this is a time-honored method of actually... So I think one of the disciplines of poetry is arranging to get extremely tired of yourself. So that you'd suddenly make room for another kind of voice inside yourself. And on the cushion you would get extremely tired of this constant kind of inner accountant who's asking you to corroborate everything you've ever done and everything you ever are going to do in your life. It's like the ultimate expense account report. And if you can slip through,

[23:03]

there's a whole other world on the other side. And one of the things I think that the reading of poetry grants to people is the courage to take that step themselves. I think one of the gifts, for instance, in the Celtic tradition and the whole Irish inheritance which came down on my side through my mother is the constant reminding that the other world is just one step away from you. And in the West of Ireland, they'll say, Tia na nobh is just at the bottom of your garden and it's just around the next hedgerow and it's just on the other side of the Bank of Mist and it's just one step away. And the understanding also is that it takes your whole life to take that one step. But it is only one step away from you. And so you'll get a master like Yeats who will suddenly just say out of nowhere, I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head.

[24:06]

I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head and cut and peeled a hazel wand and hooked a berry to a thread. And when white moths were on the wing and moth-like stars were flippering out, I dropped the berry in a stream and caught and caught a little silver trout. And I brought the fire aflame. I laid it on the floor and something rustled on the floor and something called me by my name. It was a glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair who called me by my name and ran and faded through the brightening air. Now I am old with wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands. I will find out where she went and kiss her lips

[25:08]

and take her hands and walk through long and dappled grass and pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun. I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head and cut and peeled a hazel wand and hooked a berry to a thread. And when white moths were on the wing and moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream and caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor, I went to blow the fire aflame, but something rustled on the floor and something called me by my name. It had become a glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair who called me by my name and ran and faded through the brightening air. Now I am old, now I am old with wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands. I will find out where she went

[26:10]

and take her hands and kiss her lips and walk till time and times are done and pluck till time and times are done. The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun. I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head. There's tremendous permission in that line. Actually, in the Celtic tradition, the Druids, men and women, would carry hazel sticks and the hazel was a symbol of inner knowledge and knowledge of the other worlds. And you don't need to know this for the poem to work. But what he's saying is you can just do that. You can just say because if you know what your desires are in the world, if you learn your bodily wants

[27:11]

and how you belong to this world, then you can suddenly get on track and into the gravitational field of that belonging and wham, all kinds of things happen. But mostly nothing happens because you're in a place where nothing needs to happen. You're actually in this astonishing entrance into a timeless sense. And when you get to those last lines, you don't know where the hell you are or who you're with and you don't care. You're just plucking those silver apples of the moon and the golden apples of the sun. You're literally in Tien and O, the land of the young. To me, the act of poetry and the act of sitting are both disciplines of learning about the frontier between your time-bound life and the experience of eternity which lies on the other side.

[28:13]

And it's the act of building a facility from going from one world to another and eventually of quitting both worlds and living right at the frontier. I should say quitting the desire for a kind of nirvana and quitting the feeling that there's only one life and it's made of practicalities and concrete things and then living between the two that we're actually not supposed to choose at all between those two worlds. I had a very early briefing on this cosmological kind of matter when I was young because I grew up in Yorkshire where a spade is a spade in the north of England. Very, very practical place. The dialect even, it's very down-to-earth, guttural, full of strong, deep vowel sounds. Very compassionate place at the same time, but very down-to-earth. And in Yorkshire, a spade is a spade.

[29:13]

But then I had an Irish mother who had immigrated to England from the other shore and to her, a spade could be anything you wanted it to be, you know? And time had a totally different experience in her mind. And I remember the house was full of different clocks and there was a clock for every action, you know? There was one clock for catching the number 11 bus over the back which would be 10 minutes fast, but the clock for catching the number 6, you know, down at the Savile Arms would be 5 minutes slow. And there were reasons for all this, you know, as to how she'd get there. But the whole feeling of time in my mother's cosmology was totally different. And the understanding was that you'd never, ever let your experience of the fluidity of things be trammeled by an over-concrete application of what you saw around you every day. And I remember living,

[30:18]

these two worlds collided in this small house that I grew up in, in Yorkshire. And there used to be a place over the fields that I'd go to and in Yorkshire, the stone walls are, they're just loose stone, but packed together in a very fine way so that they last centuries. There's no cement in them at all. They're dry stone walls, as they're called, so that the frost and water can't get in and break them apart. They just settle as the centuries go by. And most of the wall, the stones are laid flat. And then on the upper part of the wall, they're laid almost like books on a library shelf, you know, upright. But there was one place in this beautiful viewpoint where a large stone had been placed, a flat stone, where the upright stones would be on the top. And you could sit there and look out at the landscape. And I remember sitting out there and just thinking about my father's inheritance in this land and my mother's inheritance and feeling my future beckoning to me,

[31:21]

almost as if it was beckoning from the horizon of the moors that I was looking out to. And a sudden realization that I actually wasn't supposed to choose between these two things at all, that I was supposed to live in the conversation between them. And I often think, you know, taking that as a kind of template or act of contemplation, that there are many times in our lives where we force ourselves to make choices before we've actually ripened into the question fully. And there is a ripening that's going on all the time inside us and a kind of entrance and that we're constantly, by a lack of faith in ourselves or a lack of faith in the world, constantly interfering with the way that that cycle takes place inside ourselves. But I do feel also that we're living at a threshold time now

[32:22]

where the game is up as far as our strategic minds are concerned. And this is where most of the interference actually comes from. And I often think of the strategic mind and the intellectual mind as being a marvelous kind of servant. But that's exactly what it's supposed to be, a servant for the soul's desires in the world. But at some time in our spiritual evolution, there was a palace coup. And that part of the mind, which was meant to make sure that there was enough cornflakes in the cupboard for the kids in the morning, you know, and enough money in the bank to put them through college, and enough to pay the car payments and all that. Sometime in our spiritual history, that part of us became so afraid of creation and of the world that it actually usurped the central and true inheritance, you know, of our inner royal family in a way and pushed that inner sense of belonging to the side.

[33:25]

There was an astonishing moment that I witnessed in a production of Richard III about 15 years ago where Sir John Wood, who's a great Shakespearean actor, was taking the part of Richard III. This was in the National Theatre in London 15, 16, 17 years ago. I'm not sure. But it was absolutely brilliantly played, especially the moment where Richard had assassinated his way to the throne and was actually receiving the crown at last. And they had a bare stage, and they had the trumpets blaring from both sides. And they had Richard there slowly luring himself onto this huge wooden throne with a young boy standing behind him to drop the throne on his head. I'm sorry, to drop the crown on his head. That's just what you want to do to Richard by the time this. But the moment of truth came when Richard finally touched the throne and sat in it. The moment he touched it, the trumpets stopped,

[34:28]

the crown dropped on his head, and then it was so brilliantly played because Richard looked round at both sides and you saw the shiver of fear go through him because he knew he didn't belong there. And he knew intuitively that the rest of life would be working like a tide to scour him out of that place. And this is one of the fears that we feel when we step towards the cushion or we step towards the open page is we know intuitively that we're going to remember ourselves in such a way that we won't be able to survive. We'll know that the identity we've constructed so assiduously on the surface will break apart and atomize and be carried away on this other tide of affairs that is much more germane to us and much more real and much more worthwhile.

[35:30]

And it's almost as if you're greeting yourself and remembering yourself and shaking hands with yourself and looking at yourself in a completely new way. This is a piece I wrote coming from a very personal conversation I had with a little statue of Buddha at a wayside shrine in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. This was just a little shrine at the side of the road and I just went in there just to have a few moments to myself. And you had to stoop to go into it. As I stooped, I came eye level with this statue. And the statue was so beautifully carved that there was an absolutely whole human personality in there. Totally whole, you know. It was just like meeting someone in a corner of a pub in the west of Ireland. A whole character right there, ready for the conversation. And it felt exactly the same. And I just felt for a moment

[36:42]

as if all the centuries of build-up over the personality of Buddha had swept away and I'd met the fellow firsthand. And so it was a very intimate experience. So I wrote this piece because what I was really confronted with was the courage of the man. I suddenly felt the lonely human courage of the way he'd stepped out in his own particular way in the world and how he'd spoken out from that place. So this is called Statue of Buddha. Your hand moves in the gesture of welcome. Your lips in the gestures of praise. Your hand moves in the gesture of welcome. Your lips in the gestures of praise. You believed in your own sound and so everything you said is still being spoken. You believed in your own sound and so everything you said is still being spoken.

[37:43]

In that first step away from home you came so far and all alone faithful to all things as you met them until finally everything bowed to you and everything spoke to you in its own voice. You were the child whose first step encompassed the four directions. You said, Heaven above, Earth below, I alone and sacred. Creation means finding the new world in that first fierce step with no thought of return. Your hand moves in the gesture of welcome. Your lips in the gestures of praise. You believed in your own sound and so everything you said is still being spoken. Everything you said is still being spoken.

[38:45]

In that first step away from home you came so far and all alone faithful to all things as you met them until finally everything bowed to you and everything spoke to you in its own voice. You were the child whose first step encompassed the four directions. You said, Heaven above, Earth below, I alone and sacred. Creation means finding the new world in that first fierce step with no thought of return. I often feel in the act of writing or the act of deep contemplation you have to make a friend in a sense with the parts of you that are going to be dying and the parts that you leave behind. You step out and you step towards something that's unutterably grand

[39:46]

and at the same time you step away from a part of yourself that you've been with for years. And in a sense you can't be brutal about that leaving because they're family. It's like a family member and it doesn't matter how long you haven't spoken to a certain family member. If they're in the hospital and they're on their way out and they're dying, you go to see them because you have to, because they're family. And it doesn't matter how long a parent's been estranged from their runaway son. You hear the stones at the window at two o'clock in the morning, you let them in because they're family. You belong to them, you don't have any choice. And there's a way in which when we sit at the desk there's a whole courageous stepping out and an unutterable kind of loneliness at the same time of leaving this other part of yourself behind that in a sense has been a companion to you for years.

[40:47]

Because there's many a part of our personality that becomes redundant but at the time when we actually took it on it was absolutely essential to our survival in the world. And young children who have particularly difficult and brutal family environments often find this is so. That at certain times in their life they have to be a certain hard-edged way in the world in order to survive, for their soul to survive. The only trouble is the threat goes away but you still have the hard edge. And that's a very magnified version of what goes on but all of us build a kind of series of walls around us and then suddenly you realize that you've made the whole world into walls and you don't even know who lives within the city. There's a superb piece by Rilke the great German-speaking poet where he's just gone for a holiday in the north of Italy.

[41:50]

You know it's hard for a real poet just to go on holiday because you know you're always seeing things and writing and the next thing you know you're facing the great Sturm und Drang of humanity. And all you wanted to do was take a few days off. But he was looking at all these marvelous honey-colored villages with red tiled roofs. And I was just there actually in the north of Italy in February and I took the train to the north and saw all these places from the train. It's just a beautiful ride. And I was thinking of this poem and thinking of Rilke because he suddenly realized he looked around and saw that all of these remarkable and beautiful towns and cities and villages were surrounded by 12 foot high walls. And that they'd actually all been at each other's throats for generations. And so immediately he saw himself in this too. Saw himself implicated. So he writes this poem almost as if he's looking in the mirror. And he says all of you undisturbed cities

[42:53]

haven't you ever longed for the enemy? So in the amnesia, in the forgetfulness of creating a home which is too small for yourself you actually turn the great horizon and territory of your life into a kind of besieging force which is constantly trying to reclaim you back to it again and again. But because you know that you're going to die to yourself as you know yourself if you open those gates it actually feels like a threatening and besieging force. You turn life, you turn God you turn your relationship with everything movable, fluid and tidal and rightful in the world you turn it into an enemy. So the very act of creativity is like a dagger pointed towards your heart. All of you undisturbed cities haven't you ever longed for the enemy? I'd like to see you besieged by him

[43:54]

for ten endless and ground-shaking years until you are desperate and mad with suffering. He lies outside the walls like a countryside and he knows very well how to endure longer than the one he comes to visit. This ends side one. Please turn the cassette over here without rewinding to continue. All of you undisturbed cities haven't you ever longed for the enemy? I'd like to see you besieged by him for ten endless and ground-shaking years until you are desperate and mad with suffering. Finally, in hunger, you would feel his weight. He lies outside the walls like a countryside and he knows very well how to endure longer than the ones he comes to visit. Climb up on your roofs and look out his camp is there, his morale does not falter. He will not grow weaker and he sends no one into the city

[44:56]

to threaten or promise and no one to negotiate. He is the one who breaks down the walls and when he works, he works in silence. So you know that Rilke frightened himself to death when he wrote this line and he sends no one into the city to threaten or promise and no one to negotiate. I often say, you know, that poetry is the art of saying things you didn't want to know about the world. And once it's out, that's it. You have to live up to it and into it, you know. And there are certain things you come across in the darkness of your speech, you know, that you bump into that you're immediately, you're sorry that you've discovered. And here Rilke is realizing that, he's realizing something of the elemental nature

[45:56]

of his own belonging which has to do with writing. And I think in a sense he's telling himself that, you know, as a writer you can negotiate with yourself. You can say, David, you know, you write this morning and you can watch the Home Shopping channel this afternoon, you know. And at that level, you know, at that level the negotiation will work because you're still a writer, you're still working. But if I attempt somehow through some incredible kind of intellectual calisthenics to persuade myself that I cannot write at all and I should not write, if I try and barter away my belonging as a writer, I will do immense damage to myself because that is non-negotiable. And whatever my elemental nature is, whatever my way of belonging in the world, demands a kind of faith behind it. And that faith to me is actually

[46:58]

not kind of a willful belief, but actually that faith has to do with a kind of restfulness, you know, of your willingness to rest into your own body, into your own desires, into your own particular belonging in the world. And that the rest of the world of creation is looking at this and saying, you know, you know, there's no other part of creation exactly like you. There's no other part of creation can fail in the way you can fail. And you are quibbling, you know, between success and failure. You're saying, I can't do this because I might fail. But the rest of creation is looking at this and saying, but there's no other corner of the world that can fail in the way you can fail. Why are you hesitating? This is your belonging. This is your one way in the world. And this is another difficult truth that we stumble across in contemplation, in the art of writing, in the act of writing.

[47:59]

We suddenly realize, and it frightens us when we first realize it, that the soul, that is, that part of us which is intent on its own belonging, is absolutely serious about its trajectory in the world. And that it would much rather fail at its own life than it would want to succeed at someone else's. And once you really move into the physicality of that experience, the game is up, you know. And you can't play around so much anymore trying to please others or trying to give away your life in the wrong way. And you really start to ask questions about what does it mean to belong to the world? What does it mean to be useful to others? What does it mean to give your gift to the rest of society,

[49:01]

to the world? And I think at this point you really start to draw to you an understanding of the physical bonds between your own desires in the world, your deepest desires that have to do with your belonging, and the way that you actually show up and give to others in the world. I think one of the great conundrums, actually, in the Buddhist tradition is around the phenomenology of desire. That again and again you're asked to give away your desires. And yet in my own experience, I've never got to a place where desire doesn't exist in some way in the world. And I think it has something to do with movement and with gravity. That one of the great ironies of silence and of deep contemplation is that you're going to a place of stillness, but the further you get into it, the more you realize that there's nothing still at all. It's all moving. And it's all entering

[50:01]

and ripening and disappearing and reappearing. And that there's this astonishing gravitational field of which we're all a part. And that somehow there's a difference between the desires which you're asked to give away, which are really desires for safety in the world, and the desires which lie at the center of your heart and have to do with the way you belong and with your own true nature. And that much of our nature is made up of those desires. But there's a difference between a desire which has kind of willful, defensive power behind it and a desire which is at rest in the world. Does that make sense? So both traditions say to us,

[51:13]

bring it down to contemporary vernacular, when are you going to give yourself a break? When are you going to sit at the center of yourself and breathe? When are you going to sit at the center of yourself and write? How does the world look? How does the world change when you look out from that central point of belonging? How does the world look? Years ago, I wrote the first line of a poem. First I wrote the title at the top of the page, said, Faith. I wrote Faith at the top of the page. Wrote it at a time I didn't have any at all. Said, Faith. Next line was, I want to write about faith.

[52:15]

I've already got two lines, the title and the first line. I want to write about faith. But suddenly there was this interior image which rose inside me and that was the image of the moon rising over cold snow. There was a lovely thing that Keats said a couple of hundred years ago. He said, I'm certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imagination. I'm certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imagination. Lovely line, holiness of the heart's affections. And then, just another step takes you forward. He says, and the truth of the imagination. And here he's not speaking about the ability of a human being to think up new things, but that central faculty inside us which is constantly forming images that make sense and make a home for all the thousands of images that we're surrounded by

[53:17]

at any one time in our world. So when you're dying under the weight of responsibility for your family and in your job, you know, Keats is saying there's a place you can go to inside you. There's an image inside you that will make sense of all that belonging and allow you to stand upright again. And that image is not only an answer to your heartfelt prayer for freedom in the world, but it's actually a way of being in the world. The image is the way of being. And it may not even be a literal image. It may be just a kind of bodily tonality that you have inside you that's a place of opening and freedom. I went to his, I went to his, the room where he died in Rome actually in February. And it's just a beautiful place. It's just a holy and sacred place. He was a remarkable young man. He died in his early 20s and had already written himself into immortality, you know, by that time.

[54:17]

And he said marvelous things. He said, the great thing about poetry is it makes everything interesting. The great thing. And otherwise, it's a way of remembering. And you always felt like he kept his central act of remembrance alive. And even as he was dying and he was being nursed by his friend, Seven, who was an artist and actually sketched him on his deathbed because he spent long hours through the nights with him as he was dying of tuberculosis, you felt like he kept an incredible innocence and a generosity right to the end that was with him. It was actually his way of being in the world. And he carried that innocence right up to the moment he went. And when you go into the room, I just felt as if the innocence was still there, you know, just filling the whole place. And you could look out from the room and here there was the stillness inside the four walls. And you looked out and there was the whole youth of the world out on the Spanish steps. There's Germans and Japanese and Italians and French and young Americans. And they're all there

[55:19]

just having an incredible time. And you look out and you think Keats would have been incredibly happy, you know, looking out and seeing that youthful sense of anticipation in the world, that innocence there. So inside each of us is this place which is like a compass point. I often feel that we're such creatures of belonging that if you ever just take a piece of paper and a pen and you just try to write, for instance, if you're in the midst of suffering or difficulty or amnesia or forgetfulness or distance or exile, you know, all you've got to do is write down exactly how you are exiled from the world on that page. Just write down the physical experience you have of not belonging. And by the bottom of the page,

[56:20]

if you have said it, you will be back in the full stream of your life again. That we're such creatures of relationship and of that greater gravity feel which holds us in place, that you've only got to enumerate all the ways that you've forgotten to remember again. This is a piece I wrote for a friend of mine who was going through a very difficult time, a great time of amnesia and loneliness. And there's often an experience you have, I'm sure you've all had it yourself, where a friend is going through a very difficult time and as they're going through it, through all the trauma, you realize that they're becoming more and more pleasant to be around, actually. They're actually, they're actually becoming more real and you're quite gratified at what's occurring. But if you're a good friend, the last thing you'd want to do is say, this is really good for you,

[57:21]

you know, so. So you keep very quiet about it. You might write a poem on the side like this. And then years later you'd recite it to thousands of people, you know. But this was written for a friend of mine, it's called The Journey. And it's about the return that occurs. Even as you feel you're going further away from yourself, this other return that's occurring because you're actually retracing the path you took away from your old home, you know. It's full of the image of the island where I live in the northwest. It's called The Journey. Above the mountains, the geese turn into the light again. Above the mountains, the geese turn into the light again, painting their black silhouettes on an open sky. Above the mountains, the geese turn into the light again, painting their black silhouettes on an open sky. Sometimes, sometimes, everything has to be inscribed

[58:22]

across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes everything, sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes it takes a great sky to find that first bright and indescribable wedge of freedom in your own heart. Sometimes with the bones of the black sticks left when the fire has gone out, someone, someone has written something new in the ashes of your life. Sometimes with the bones of the black sticks left when the fire has gone out, someone has written something new in the ashes of your life. You are not leaving. You are not leaving. You are arriving. You are not leaving.

[59:25]

You are not leaving. You are arriving. Above the mountains, the geese turn into the light again, painting their black silhouettes on an open sky. Some ways I feel that's one of the great phenomena of our time, that we have this immense feeling of leaving that's occurring around the millennium right now, and an immense sense of loneliness in the world because many of our older ways of belonging are no longer extant in the world. They just don't belong, and so we're between the older way of belonging in the world and the new one which we're almost like children in, exploring a new garden. But perhaps a better and more fiercer metaphor would be to say it's almost like that great cycle of human experience that we all have where we're constantly making

[60:26]

homes for ourselves in the world. And just as you've got the home exactly as you want it, and you have the showerhead you can live with, and you have the decor and the whole thing, you've got it just as you want it, there's a knock on the door and you're out. And you're orphaned into your new life. But when you step out the door, because you don't recognize the territory as yet, you feel as if you're stepping out into the pitch black, into the dark. And you say, but I like my old home. D. H. Lawrence said, who is that knocking at my door? Who is that knocking at my door? It is someone come to do me harm. Who is that knocking at my door? It is someone come to do me harm. And he catches himself. He says, no, no. It is the three strange angels. Admit them. Admit them. Who is that knocking at my door? Who is that knocking at my door? It is someone come to do me harm.

[61:27]

No, no. It is the three strange angels. Admit them. Admit them. Above the mountains, the geese turn into the light again, painting their black silhouettes on an open sky. Sometimes, sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes everything, everything, sometimes everything, everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes it takes a great sky to find that first bright and indescribable, an indescribable wedge of freedom in your own heart. Sometimes, sometimes with the bones of the black sticks left when the fire has gone out, someone, someone

[62:29]

has written something new in the ashes of your life. You are not leaving. You are not leaving. You are arriving. When I wrote those last lines, I had this whole feeling almost, the physical feeling inside myself was almost of a pivoting forward. And I just thought to myself, what an enormous difference it would make if I just pivoted ever so slightly away from leaving and into arrival. If I had my frontier just infinitesimally weighted more towards arrival than towards leaving, what an astonishing difference it would make in my life. And I just started going through my days just feeling that movement, you know, as though I was leaning on my unknown future which was emerging around me at any one time during the day in a physical kind of way.

[63:29]

. So one of the ways I feel that the courageous act of speaking out in poetry is immensely useful now and the courageous act of actually being still through the disciplines of Zazen in a time of immense busyness is that it returns us to this eternal sense of arrival and this eternal sense of belonging. And it creates a house of belonging inside ourselves so that you don't need to take other people's houses away from them on the outer part of your life. You have a home to live in inside yourself. Therefore, you're not encroaching on other people's territory and you can actually have an appreciation for what it takes for other people to live

[64:34]

in their own homes in the world. It makes us generous somehow. And we're also building a facility with the unknown. And if there's anything that's needed in this time, this millennial edge, it's an ability to live in the world without fear because we're going to have plenty of reasons to be fearful. And we will not only have plenty of personal reasons, but there'll be great powers in the world, in the media, and in the political world, which will be holding things up for us to be fearful of and to hate, which will have no business being fearful of or hating. And that the people will be really useful in this time are the people who have some place inside themselves they can go to where their sense of belonging is greater than their fears of belonging to the world.

[65:35]

I just want to finish with a couple of poems. And one of them is about building that facility with the unknown. It's a poem I wrote late at night up on my little corner I have on a landing in my house with a window that looks out onto the dark and the moon. And it's called Sweet Darkness. And it's about making a friend of the night. The first line actually comes from an experience I had years ago working as a naturalist in the Galapagos Islands where I realized when I got there I didn't know a thing at all. Not a thing. And that none of the animals had been reading any of the zoology books that I had studied for so long back in North Wales in the university library. And they insisted on having

[66:46]

lives of their own. And I got to live for two years in those islands. And I realized that I was looking through a glass darkly at the place. And I also began to realize as the weeks and months went by and I got to spend hours and hours day after day in silent conversation with those animals and landscapes that my identity actually depended on how much attention I was paying to the world. And when there was very little attention there there was almost no world out there to greet me. And it was as if, you know, when I made myself one-dimensional in the world there was only one dimension to see out there. And it wasn't because the world was unmerciful and was taking its ball home because I wasn't playing properly. It was because it actually couldn't find me. That was my experience. There was no one there actually for creation to come and greet. And the more that I paid attention

[67:47]

to the world the more I made my surface area available. So the first line, when your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. It's time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. It's time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure, there you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. The night, the night will give you a horizon further than you can see. You must learn one thing. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in.

[68:50]

Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive you have made too small for you. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneless to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. This last line cuts both ways because sometimes even your nearest and dearest don't bring you alive. Sometimes the work for which you sacrifice so many years

[69:55]

doesn't bring you alive. Sometimes your own life doesn't bring you alive. So you have to ask yourself, what did I do? What story am I telling myself? How am I looking at the world such that I've made those things too small for me? How do I come back into the world? How do I show up? How do I make an entrance? How do I get into trouble again, you know, in a good way? How do I come out from behind myself? How do I start the conversation going again? So years ago, in the Himalayas, in this temple,

[71:08]

on the side of the slopes of Annapurna, I had this experience of confrontation and remembrance all at the same time. And the kind of questions I've just asked, being asked of me. And that was through this confrontation and meeting and of awestruck witnessing of this temple there in which there are these just astonishing statues and faces. And this little temple is called, well, it's in the temple, it's in the village of Braga. And Braga is a stop on the Annapurna circuit now. When I first went there in 1979, hardly anyone had been there at all. They'd only just opened up that trail. And I actually came into the village half dead from amoebic dysentery. And I came out of the mountains,

[72:08]

we'd been shown a shortcut, as it was called, over the mountains. And so I was suffering a victim of the shortcut and of amoebic dysentery, staggering into the village. And when I first came to the village, it was just like stumbling into something out of Gulliver's Travels, an image from Gulliver's Travels, because I was in a semi-hallucinatory state in my illness. As I looked down the village on these flat-top stone houses with prayer flags snapping in the wind above them, I looked down, I saw they all had half doors. And out of each half door, there was a horse, a Tibetan pony was looking up the street. And it just looked as if the whole town was inhabited by horses, you know? And they were just talking to each other out of the doors, you know? And then they all looked my way. And I was just at that edge, you know, between sanity and something else, when suddenly a real, live human being appeared.

[73:12]

And it was a lay monk, actually, a young monk. And he had this huge key in his hand. I was with two other people, a Belgian ornithologist and a Sherpa guide we had with us. And this fellow appeared and he shouted out and lifted the key in the air. And then hundreds of people poured into the street as if from nowhere. And suddenly we were surrounded by these people. And our Sherpa didn't quite speak the dialect of this area. And before we knew it, we were being carried up towards wherever this key opened. And because they had so few visitors, these people knew immediately that if we'd come to Braga, then we wanted to see their temple, which was so famous, you know? And so I was taken up at the edge, you know, death's door to this temple. And we were taken out to begin with onto a terrace on the outer side of a cliff. And we were standing there. And the two of these lay monks stood on either side of these huge 12-foot doors in the cliff side.

[74:14]

And I stood there and my body began to tremble because I knew intuitively something was going to happen. And sure enough, it didn't. They opened these doors and you've got to imagine the snows falling in front of the doors. And behind us is a six or seven or eight or a thousand foot, how, don't know how deep a drop behind us down the mountainside. And we're in this astonishing place, 11,000 feet up in the Himalayas. And they open these doors and there is the most gorgeous golden statue of Buddha with purple eyes and the snows falling in front of it. It's one of the most beautiful things I'd seen, at least in my delirious state. And I just collapsed crying. And I fell onto the floor. It was like the end of it. I had no more strength left. And I'd just been given this incredible sight and I fell to the ground. And they just closed the doors again. It's wonderful. And they didn't made no fuss of me at all because the whole feeling was that, well, of course, that's the experience you would have. You know, if you were just in the right place

[75:15]

and we opened the doors and you really saw our statue, you know, and, but eventually they saw that I was really ill and they put me on a litter, you know, and carried me back down to the village. And I didn't get to see the rest of the temple, which I heard was marvelous. And I knew that Braga was famous for its statues of bodhisattvas, of people who had made the great vow. Sentient beings are numberless. I vow to save them. No one knows what this means, but we say it, you know. And sentient beings are numberless. I vow to save them. It's the ultimate altruistic act. And so seven years later, I came back, this time not on a winter's day, but in a beautiful summer's day. And all of the meadows were full of wild hyacinths and it was just lovely. But by this time, Braga was well visited and there was no one there to hurry us up into the temple. We had to rouse someone out, actually, an old lay monk.

[76:16]

And he took us into the temple, into the very center of it. And I had this experience when we went into the vestibule, we were all looking around for the one flashlight that we knew one of us had somewhere in one of the backpacks. So we're milling around in the vestibule. And I suddenly, as my eyes got used to the dark, saw this awful apparition. And it was the, of course it was the guardian figure to the temple, the Vajrapani, the diamond water figure, a half woman, half man drinking blood from a skull cup with a spear directed directly at your heart. And I saw it just as my eyes were getting used to the dark, so it was a complete surprise. And I saw it and had an immediate intake of breath and a startled reaction, oh my God, what's that? And then I realized what it was. But I realized too, instantaneously, that I'd had a kind of innocent experience of it. And I felt immediately that the creature was saying to me, take that one in, just that fear.

[77:18]

You know, the one you felt when you went, bring that into the temple. And I had a sudden inversion around the whole cliche around these guardian figures where you usually say they're there to remind you to keep your fears out, you know, leave your fears behind. But no, this was an invitation in, bring that in with you. And almost immediately as the flashlight came on, I saw past the lay monk and down the corridor, the golden Buddha was there, you know, beckoning us in with the mudra of welcome. And I thought, isn't that just life, you know? You know it's your life when you've got the spear and the beckoning, both at the same time. So we went in and the old monk led us and he had the prayer beads in his hands. And we went in there and we bowed in front of the temple and he lit all of the yak butter lamps. And suddenly the whole thing filled with light and shadows. And we looked up and saw all these faces,

[78:19]

statues carved above on a high kind of plinths around the upper part of the monastic enclosure, the wall. And I felt a whole wave of emotion go through the whole eight or nine of us that were there in that group. It was like a wave of recognition. And it was just as if we all saw at once this astonishing love and compassion in these wooden faces. And at the same time, there was a question in my heart saying, why is it that these people, these genius carvers, could put so much love and compassion into solid wood and here we are with our malleable, movable faces that are so often set against the world. So I wrote this piece to get to the bottom of that mystery. And it's called The Faces at Braga. In monastery darkness, in monastery darkness

[79:24]

by the light of one flashlight, the old shrine room waits in silence. In monastery darkness, by the light of one flashlight, the old shrine room waits in silence. While above the door, while above the door, we see the terrible figure, fierce eyes demanding, will you step through, will you step through? And the old monk leads his bent back nudging blackness, prayer beads in the hand that beckons. We light the butter lamps and bow. We light the butter lamps and bow. Eyes blinking in the pungent smoke. Look up without a word. See faces in meditation. A hundred faces carved above. Eyelines wrinkled in the hand held light. Such love in solid wood. Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence, they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them. Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence, they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them.

[80:25]

Engulfed by the past, they have been neglected. They have been neglected. But through smoke and darkness, they are like the flowers we have seen growing through the dust of eroded slopes. Their slowly opening faces turn toward the mountain. Carved in devotion, their eyes are softened through age and their mouths curve through delight of the carver's hand. If only our own faces, if only our own faces, if only our own faces would allow the invisible carver's hands to bring the deep grain of love to the surface. If only our own faces would allow the invisible carver's hands to bring the deep grain of love to the surface. If only we knew, as the carver knew, how the flaws in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core, we would smile too and not need faces immobilized by fear or the weight of things undone.

[81:27]

When we fight with our failing, when we fight with our failings, we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good. And as we fight, our eyes are hooded with grief and our lips are dry with pain. If only we could give ourselves to the blows of the carver's hands. If only we could give ourselves to the blows of the carver's hands. The lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers feeding the sea where voices meet, praising the features of the mountain and the cloud and the sky. Our faces would fall away. Our faces would fall away until we, until we, growing younger toward death, until we, growing younger toward death every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration, would gather all our flaws in celebration

[82:30]

to merge with them perfectly, impossibly, wedded to our essence, full of silence, full of silence from the carver's hands. Full of silence from the carver's hands. If only our own faces, if only our own faces would allow the invisible carver's hands to bring the deep grain of love to the surface. If only our own faces would allow the invisible carver's hands to bring the deep grain of love to the surface. If only we knew, if the carver knew, if the carver knew how the flaws in the wood

[83:31]

led his searching chisel to the very core, we would smile too and not need faces immobilized by fear or the weight of things undone. When we fight with our failing, we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good. As we fight, our eyes are hooded with grief and our lips are dry with pain. If only we could give ourselves the blows of the carver's hands, the lines in our faces, the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers feeding the sea where voices meet, praising the features of the mountain and the cloud and the sky. Our faces would fall away. Our faces would fall away until we, until we, growing younger to our death, growing younger to our death every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration, would gather all our flaws,

[84:31]

would gather all our flaws in celebration to merge with them perfectly, impossibly wedded to our essence, full of silence, full of silence, full of silence, full of silence from the carver's hand. So I'd like to thank the Zen Center for the invitation here. And I'm very happy that all the entrance fees are going towards creating houses for people to enter into the silence.

[85:33]

Which we've been talking about, hopefully experiencing this evening. So thank you for the listening ear. Thank you for the invisible conversation. And thank you for your contribution to the goal of the housing for students at the Zen Center. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[85:54]

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