Zen and Poetry Class

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Life and Poetry - Ryokan, Didactic Poems - Writing without adjectives/adverbs

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miss months try single you've seen our in it
jane hirschfield and somebody else wrote about the poetry of basho
i too may be just serendipitous when hot synchronistic that we have so many people interested suddenly innocent in they even coke in a mere the poem over wallace stevens that we can we talk about snowman
are time i recited it
ah i guess i did there in texas anyway
he couldn't hear too
so either were all a lot more
caught by certain
ideas and images of what we think
zen poetry is about or and some unanimous feeling there was just a coincidence
i'm supply
here are a dharma the were nine hundred thousand nearly any kalpoes having it to see and listen to
remembering i they extract
today's that to a very different words i see we have a basket full of fresh her
produce
kirsch greenwood fresh greenwood tonight and we can read some of those later in the our

so tonight
we offer two weeks with the last two weeks we pretty much been looking at
are suggesting where poetry
in the tradition that chinese and japanese tradition and a particular mood and culture in which it gives rise to
has in common and will look at one war poet tonight
translation of one more poor tonight of that guilt and then beginning next week with a move up to our time
with our contemporary poets and see if the make some connection between
particular context in which we think
those poems were written in the mindsets of those poem in and how they may or may not at all jive with what we think
this particular aspect of being a wanderer a drop out
an iconoclast a dissatisfied but poetic and highly sensitive individual informed by
the teachings of the buddha who happens also to find great memorable poetic expression
how that particular idea that we have is just that are particular idea and tonight
i want to look at
we all can

the great for or diagnose

how many people have heard a real car
say
hey of course a pet
we have an authority than a so if i if i make a mistake you know that you do can correct me okay

you see ryokan is extremely popular with zen students in fact the would the writings the publications concerning this particular individual both in japan and then the west than the last twenty five years is enormous not really his poems as they appear in anthologies or
in collections but scholarly works about him because it seems with real can we come to some kind of quintessential
i will almost the archetype or on an individual who exhibits all of these characteristics and just what how do we pinned down those characteristics and then what how does it actually influence our idea who we are as zen practitioners maybe
so in view of that approach
i thought
it might be a good idea
if i read aloud a few
poems i don't have them duplicated this week because it just got back from a trip and we were busy busy with many things including a long meeting deceptive
but what i would like to do is mention
and few things about real con and then read some of his poor and as you listen to the palms i want you to think of
how you see this person if you can find a way maybe salient characteristic feature that you'd put into one definition
of what you hear in this particular person as he is it as his work from the eighteenth century is translated into our twenty twentieth and twenty-first century english idiomatic
translation
and what the implications a level thing is
in
and then
ah can check back with with the other ports we also looked at particularly han shan
and leaders santo car
okay for do it
right
why do i wanna say a couple of things
what are the things that one of the poems that ryokan is famous for his this one would schools who says that my poems are poems my poems aren't poems at all when you understand that might put what
when you understand that my poem poems really aren't poems then we can talk about poetry together who says my poems i pause my poems aren't poems at all when you understand that my poems really aren't poems than we can talk bordry together well what does it mean his poems are palms
so maybe we'll catch
some essence of this guy and then talk a little bit more about his life
some to little biographical things about him
and see if you get a whiff of something in here that made him might already be there in your life
walking along i follow the drifting stream to it's source
guido wang ways poem last week southern they're walking along i followed the drifting stream to with source but reaching the headwaters left me stunned
that's when i realized that the true source isn't a particular place you can reach so now wherever my staff sets down i just play in occurrence eddies and swirls
where you have beauty you have ugliness to where you have right you will also have wrong knowledge and ignorance or each other's cars delusion and enlightenment produce one another it's always been so it didn't start now
grab hold of that you see how stupid it is if you're determined to find the innermost truth why trouble about the changing face of things those are too didactic or teaching poems as it were
doesn't have a name right now i might find it up here but most of these don't have names
i'm
well see me after
i'll talk about him in a minute i'll talk about him his life but first before i
i already set up the context in which you'll come out the palms let the pong speak for him for himself and then we'll talk about who it is little bit empty bowl with the empty bowl of santiago
clear skies ring with a hunk of wild geese and deserted hills leaves world and the wind twilight on a smoky village road carrying an empty begging bowl and walking home alone
will my stupidity and stubbornness ever in
poor and alone that's my life twilight on the streets of a ramshackle town going home again with an empty bowl
that's one mood
oh day i gaze on smoky villages walking and walking begin as i go night falls and the long mountain road stretches before be the wind bitter enough the terra gee whiskers
i threadbare rob trembles like swirling fog i wouldn't begging bowl grows ever stranger with age i've never minded hardship and cold such as always been the lot of people like me
go go go go on various was a measure of rice
place that he called his hermitage it's plain and simple go go on inside a room that's utterly bear beyond the door or forced the cedars a few sutra hems are placed on the walls the rice pot often gathers dust the steamer sims
please sits unused only the old man from the village to the east now and then knocks at my door in the moonlight
who knows that these poems move in many who is that all men and nice and as door is real can be a literal is real can being metaphorical is he being contextual hello how is how are we to interpret these sports about him
knowing something about his life here a couple more
the go to get the drift back
delusion and enlightenment two sides of a coin universe particular just part of a hall all day i read a wordless scriptures oh neither practice know practice meditation on the riverbank a bush warbler sings in the weeping willow in the sweeping village dog bay
a's at the moon nothing troubles the free flow of my feelings but how can this mind be passed on
and mean a to more and then let's get a feeling write down a word anywhere that strikes you about this guy
where did my life come from where will it go meditating by the window of my tumbledown hut i searched my heart absorbed in silence but i searched and searched search
but i search and search and still don't know where it all began how will i ever find where it ends
even the present moment can't be pinned down everything changes everything is empty and in that emptiness the quote i exist only for a little while how can one say anything is or is not
best just to hold true these little thoughts that things simply take their way and so be natural and at your ease does that remind you of
in anybody that i've given you the me
release about
who was it said names are the guests of reality now this is really central to our argument
but names who was it said names are the guests of reality these words have come down to us from ancient times but even a people know that names aren't real they still don't see that reality itself has no root name reality both are beside the point
just naturally find joy in the ever changing flow

ah
who was it said names are the guests of reality
there's a footnote that otto who it was
these words have come down to us from ancient times but even if people know that names aren't real they don't see that reality itself has no root
name reality are beside the point
just naturally find joy in the ever-changing flow

now what
the is always going with the empty flow isn't this one sitting alone in my empty room my mind restless and downcast
i sat on my horse and ride far far away climb to hide and gaze out over the distance seen a whirlwind springs up shaken the earth in no time at all the sudden things in the west broad rivers turn with forming waves field stretch stretch endlessly pesto horizon black monkey's called to their companion
kids with melancholic grise wild geese know a south one hundred cares line by a bro ten thousand and troubles written my heart i want to return but i've lost the way back here it is the end of another year what am i to do
whoa
rags and patches patches and regs rags and patches as my life my food is what whatever i begged by the roadside my house is completely overrun with wild grass in autumn gazing at the moon i recite poetry all night long
in spring and transport the blossoms i wander off and forget to come home
i left the temple and this is how i ended up a broken down old mule
and finally maybe one more
however since i quit the temple my life has been completely carefree my staff is always at my side my robe is weren't completely threadbare
at night in my hut through the lonely window i hear the falling rain on spring days when the flowers riot in bloom i'm playing ball out on the street if anyone asks what i'm doing i say the most useless man there ever was
who was ryoko

a real person what do you mean
he seems you
okay he feels real anybody else
romantic why
yeah

colorful
that's a rich feeling to it
what else would market as romantic
longing
a kind of melancholy but that's happened that's hung over all of these poems to some extent hesitant the sense of loneliness sabi ah
sometimes depressed
seems to great
to use those
raw
experience
need to live on the edge yeah he needs to in email
okay now
now some of the biographical stuff about real kind is that he came from upper middle class family father who was village elder and was very important kind of family connections he had brothers and sisters that his early age since he was supposed to inherit his father's role as a kind of media
later in this boosts in is he lived by the way about the time of our revolution
in the eighteenth century and i didn't read eighty nineties and seventeen nineties
i think
he went to a monastery at an early age and according to what we understand from his his the notes that he's left behind that he studied for years or a very rigorous
the ah
but she's very rigorously even severely rigorous practice for a number of years
and at some point
he had an awakening and went to his master and his master given the name of real con
but he also called them die great fool
no he has become such a legend in his own country that we can't we can't separate the legend pardon and what he might have really been like but according to legend he left the monastery because he was dissatisfied after this particular point with what he saw as a kind of decadent
or a kind of yeah kind of decadence settling into the religious establishment not unlike
psycho five hundred years before
and he wondered about begin making his life by begging we think right that's how it sounds like that he went about begging from door to door making his livelihood that way and would go back to his little grass shack the shores a waikiki know it's wrong century
to little grass hut up in the mountains and
and live up on the edge kind of a hand-to-mouth existence he was also called great fool because he loved to play with children for hours on end hide and go seek many stories about him going to have closed his eyes are hired as you will not look as the children run and and hours later
or six seven hours later he's still in the fields holding his hands over his eyes so there's there's something in that in the myth of real con about great navy tae sounds like a sense of
not been very sophisticated yet at the same time his literary capacity is real conscientious
poems and chinese many of those poems were written in chinese who wrote many in japanese his calligraphy is today priceless it's a collector's item he was known even at his time as a great collector and wonderful poet and people would try to get stop him on the street see if they could get him to write something and he would
them off now if you read the letters that he wrote the people mature by the way in this book which by the way is also in the library you will see that he sent home or sent to various people requests for numerous things such as k tobacco he loved to smoke
so as for rice s for materials with which to write his poems and so on and lived very often in the shadow of a larger establishment
so although he sounds like a very romantic figure and so on yoga and the practice very hard what what
this this archetype this person that playing some residents and response in what in our own hearts because he is what
he's free to thing if you about real kindness i'm free of it i'm free of the establishment i'm free of following any particular way of being other than letting the winds of the moment blow me now this way and now that way
the second the have ever read anything or felt something like that's how you would like to study
read it i'm confident that like didn't dare so here i am instead
okay your story to break in for a moment i wanted that life too and i got it
and it was a most miserable nine months ever spent at my life
that's why i mean here for years i had read real con the image of having a little shack almost no needs having your life informed by buddhist practice romantic yes because it's rustic romantic guess because kind of back to nature it's kind of counter established
isn't it
has a sense of the the earthiness of things the eternal reality of the myth of the earth and all of this back to nature back to a simpler life form and so forth so i spent nine months in a hut that was a much bigger than his a barely stand up in had one sank and it and to tatami mats
in every day i had a face myself about how real this idea was and how romantic it was in our heads because as has been pointed out in more than one book that when we take these japanese and chinese poets we are
unconsciously as westerners and through our own romantic
ideas that is the romance it comes down from someone like rousseau thinking that which counted the age of enlightenment in the eighteenth century recover it with our own ideas have been a drop out of being footloose and fancy free in a world of phenomena that in which we have we can be great
fools and have no more particular need to do anything but wonder about
but what would happen to you if you did that you know time
if you got a staff and our time and acted like rio content you'd probably be given a handful of prozac and sent to a homeless shelter
and then analyzed maybe for a while to find out why you are so neurotic as you couldn't confirm
which reminds me of a palm
what is this going to say actually they don't pay that much attention to homeless people would just be one of them all but if he's just one of the homeless people you will be reopened
why not
crack in a monastery
well that's one good evening practice in a monastery for twenty years why would you still have this particular mood wandering in the fields and streams of america
ah a japanese you're not part of that context there is a whole context in which this is possible to be this way now read one of those on poems
and you'll hear are exactly it sounds like the same voice and of course he read hampshire i was one of his favorite products poets was hijacked he was carrying on this myth of the drop out wanderer holy man
the discussion but himself
his great contribution was that in his poetry as a mahayana poet come
managed to not take sides on being enlightened or be enlightened
in being poor or being rich
in any of the dichotomy is that are hidden within our language itself ryokan exposes their economies in his life
in the way he lived and
manifested what than this one argument is a real example or of non-duality
yesterday did i tell you this poem yesterday they got basho you know that one mrs if they live today yesterday they got by show they already as you know picked up hon shot miller rape and lipo and not so that old coot is
is is they sent to napa long ago
you know in napa is a hobby my own right
this state mental hospital or the county mental hospital
as for bodhidharma he got busted for illegal entry and as cooling his heels and el paso
but yesterday dhamma yesterday after all they finally got poor old basho her writing a haiku on a restaurant while
there are you nuts one of i
the
but what's interesting is that in some way
it's i had to take the feeling of how will it be today if you try to be basho
another time why i put in my backpack
by shows poetry haku and poetry and i think philip whalen maybe something like that and was walking up the mountain roads with my staff quoting him and so on bosh all know
or haku in our son paul guns on thinking of that kind of life and along i suddenly coming to over the hill was kawasaki
the
and the yamaha me and i met the yamaha and kawasaki on the road and i'm quoting bioshock
and they're are sitting on the anaheim so you see we brought these if what i'm trying to say is if we update if we update teachers poets to conform to our idea of who we think they were not to mention in their own context who they thought they were in terms of the practice
then there is no difference between what we consider to be what they realize in what we realized and if that is the case that is not a buddhist teaching him the pinnacle arising and the impermanence of all things is it
if we think that we can live the life of barr show just as the basho thought that he could live the life of hon chan
and we try to update the model of the teacher to conform to to fit our preconceptions of who we think that person's enlightenment is than what that curse we think that person expressive as enlightenment and our experience is no different and if it is no different
it means it has what an entity in integral self had has not changed according to context through time this is not understanding what he was actually writing about
i think
this mimicking
it's being a little funny so if we try to act like for even in our poll poetry in our day and age we have to invest or is as we have to inculcate into our words into our expressions those cultural
whose cultural signs and symbols and signals and so on that show us who we are as linguistically as a culture because culture is language you see what i'm saying
so here's here's what i want from you
the next week
try to write the following kind of palms
one try to write a poem that didactic that is to say it's just has something to do with a lesson about how you understand the practice
i think i'd try to write one myself to see
when i meant by that
ah

what was something like gum
all the buddhas and ancestors or nothing else
but the transmission transmission of this face to face meeting at this moment something like that
whenever you coming up with it
a sudden insight into what you're studying now what the buddhists and answers or about or not people living at some other time as some other place to the arising of your own mind at this moment in the that kind of condition anything like that that is revealed to you as you're doing your studies and write it down as make it like a didactic poem it's a matter of crow
owning with is that okay portrait
no i thought maybe you are saying no no no
but then i mean it it it it's not dumb
now clear what i'm asking for
and
just there it's not clear
i mean minute
how about breathless i am born deathless i die
something like that in which possibly if you can turn the two sides
of the image back on itself another one i thought it was this robe of liberation
he's also a straight jacket and a shrug
turns around trying to find that image that turns and shows both sides of the story in a shorter a shorter way as possibly you understand what i'm saying
and then as we build longer poems as we've gone through the weeks weekend
use these particular
conceits
i think the main thing i'm trying to get at here for myself and for all of us is that there's no way you can write an authentic palm
in with the same kind of feeling that because we don't know what is feeling was that we all kind of we don't know what han shan really felt we're only guessing and we're guessing it through the filter of our own interpretation
as long as you're constantly doing that and we're we're always updating what that means and other words were keeping that spirit alive how that really applies to us in our own way what are we really respond to be in that particular kind of individual who goes his or her own way this is a big things in his detention
you see it here is the tension between the collective as the church and so on and the individual within those forms what is that tension how do you how do you manifested where your yourself as an autonomous feeling individual expresses himself within the context of the greater
whoa that made you who you are in this case would be the soto's in buddhist church
the maybe they gave him the poor by which he could feel himself you fall this is contextual looking at the context in which we so find phrases
that means something to they can even be slang phrases and try to be as concrete with us those phrases as possible
yeah you can be personal watch how you use the pronoun i was with this kind of language japanese and chinese you're only pronouns as much as you do an english but you can still
you can still
you can still give a presentation without actually putting in there and you can even have feelings in your poetry that don't express to the ir but who thy is but is implied such as a phrase alone with
the wind and the cry of the hawk
you can say why i like to go to nature to be in solitude and that's very abstract but if you say alone with the wind and the crate of the heart you get all that feeling you can feel the wind you can hear the audio part of it and you can feel the spaciousness of it you look for those kind of images that bring disparate sides of our experienced
together to form of the emptiness for example
the question
how all that
shoot only factor don't gonna i'm gonna lie
that's right
the

when we writes those the same a poet don't understand me
what he's suggesting at least to me is that he would impact he said it outright he said there's three things i dislike poetry by poets cooking by professional cooks and calligraphy by professional calligrapher is
but this has always taken a position that one has against some established
position in the world and i have a feeling that a lot of us come here over need to do that to find ourselves over and against what any particular establishment where this art whether it's sciences where the particulars religion and so on out of that tension between who you should be as the pro
petitioner within the form mimicking the former's imitating the forms that have passed out and where you feel your own
when you feel this edge of yourself come in
friction or intention with those traditions that tension if we keep their attention alive if we can give expression to that tension that's where poetry that's where language begins to redefine the meanings inherent in the traditions that have come before we find a new way to express
something but it is a new way the way that we will express ourselves will not be the same with and haku to express himself a real kind express himself in terms of our practice these are only models
okay
and then next week
i want to bring some up to date palms as i said that actually pick up issues social issues
buddhism as
buddhism is kind of act social activism some of those poems by people like gary snyder
and where they seem to fit with this kind of tradition where that where the point of departure
there's one he wrote that it comes to mind right away smokey the bear sutra remember that
and our own norman
and several other people the book from which we will be looking at and you can take to get it in the library and maybe niemi and the bookstore is called what book
have you seen that book
it's about ports from professionals and amateurs and people within the children and so on or excuse all writing about different aspects of buddhist practice
this two weeks i want to do that right and begin to write longer palms in the eight lions are so maybe in ten lines of poetry that begin to using these ideas the immediacy one hit maybe as a starting point a didactic poem notice how he'll use the didactic
idea of the permanence and so on all you know if you have good you have bad and so on then ios on suddenly switch and but the thirds part of the poem to the wisteria or some what's called objective correlative something that
physically some physical detail that recapitulates the shows that idea in in the phenomena at large so they can see it you can smell it you can taste it that's important for us to do
to come alive with us will reason we love him me if you even in translation because if you're very human
we can almost you know step into his shoes we feel
we feel
okay get a few minutes or we're going to read some poems here tonight right and i wanted to ask you when it comes time to make up our little chap of you want your name's animals should be anonymous
how many one anonymous anonymity how many one their names know what nothing wrong to have your name
you can
who gives the some people i guess a hacker and no gender we're going to do this
last something
that
poor
and then after i recognition a
if you wanted their name on them happening
yeah
why you're here
one is one of the things i said in the beginning and this is very it's just part of our practice actually used to begin to look our egos begin to get involved and this is a question about you know i think i'm pretty good too i want to come for an issue on i don't think i'm a very good at all and going to begin to see this comparative mine come up as we explore
press
ourselves in language which is what pretty good way to express yourself who doing it all the time and the name of the game is what
yeah
who said that words who said that words aren't real
sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me baloney
you're here for the sticks and stones but name's going with you forever right
so always in buddhist practice there is right speech how do we use language in a way that's
tells the truth is open
how do we how do we use language is what is right speech as ports
does charles bukowski right right speech this race speech only mean you know has to be circumscribed by certain moral standards what is right speech for a point when it comes time
yeah and i didn't do it was taking responsibility
taking responsibility
the point is you put your name on it you taking responsibility right
yeah well i think
i wasn't thinking that are becoming practically shit
hello
nearly comments on this we need a way to proceed because one of these days we have to get to work on it and and i'm also thinking that we can maybe print every poem there's an awful lot of work to be done to be did evolving and then we can do everyone but then how do we call through them pay
ah
you sure we just grew up on a hat i mean what's fair do we are we going to edit them
see how this me
we have to put 'em on a computer it can take forever
a busy man of
so i think we need to i think we need to call through them some way
and i'm not quite sure how we're going to do that yet not to talk out or call of us
we just
everybody
one
me either
a matter of need
i put one night have a better
mixed up the put together of this i get the editor as well you know it's something on a particular
when i was just one knows
one manuscript copy that
right
did not
ah doesn't bother me
well i see that the mechanics of this has yet to be worked out
and this is
know anybody who's inspired to actually take this very subject is something to write about
my poems are not palms whoever goes and palms don't understand me because i'm not about poetry says we all got what am i bought i'm about living my life freely and openly and which portray as part of the expression of i'll i'll do that but don't call me a poor first on the other hand
i'm known for my poetry
and always always always by that which is absent by that which you can you know express as the opposite giving you that which has a sparks your inspiration
that part of this time you have to realise without that without having the very thing he wanted to drop out from very thing he dislikes without that there's no real kine so what is the what does that thing we push against fight against object against right about i'm not this i'm not that trying to find the
the conflation of the self and other in one line in one poem
our language itself is set up with dualities isn't it
a language has already set up with good and hierarchies good bad male female black white so forth and always the second of those pairs are unconsciously
of lower status and these are already implied in our language
have we have hierarchical signs built into the way we express ourselves i reading poems by but since we don't we don't have
you know we don't have masculine and feminine forms particularly in are nouns
verbs and so on his other languages as which is earn languishes might
the more implied that made explicit so by the by taking on forms of poetry and writing about them we begin to see what our attitudes are
unconsciously they come forward
give a name to the way you feel
name it and once you name it we've taken the whole history of all the language and bring it forward into your life and expressing it we have to express ourselves some way in order for this tradition to keep
changing and growing and if we get caught in only being one way and understand one way of being in the world
with were soon not going to have a practice or a practice place
unless we are inspired to come here in practice
and ah
by have been inspired by the past by those figures of the past what discover something that they had to say and then bring it forward into a nowhere new language and new cold
when we can be inspired to on our practices to come forward and articulate our point of view
freshly by taking these words and freshly expressing ourselves
the not just mimicking from my mind is not dog zingy his mind
if it's one mind and one taste from the beginning and we understand one taste mean one thing there's no telling what they meant by one taste what the context was what do we mean by it
what i'm saying is this is an exercise that we're constantly faced with how to articulate and bring forth the teaching in the here and now as ourselves
not some thing sit like your hair is on fire even if you're too green to burn
the
splitting freshly cut to green the burn eucalyptus rounds green juice spurts out
i heard a bird sing
the tall stately redwood trees blue tagged for cutting to grin and bear
who gave the burn try as i that
does the pump
two green to bird try and didactic poem or and bring her fifty vehicles and see what the mind picks up in this class of bring them into focus
the
ever

i swear i said the zigzag course but
it's not my writing
somebody's listening to green to burn yet here i am we scatter my ashes over the sea
now i understand without these white plum blossoms the world falls apart
a patch of sunlight move slowly across the wall the birds require
the cry over hawk
needs a sunbeam both pierce the heart that is bristled brush after the rain the mood takes one careful step spring breeze caressed the grass past and wind always cracked me up a smiling face for lunch tote with her dinner a dewdrop in the sun every tooth a diamond
a breeze caressing me at the reservoir the wind chaser the waves rain hits the skylight trees of i the breeze but a ways to be turning pin

i'm on fire then your to green to burden i said oh really you have no no
hello
the
sochi
thanks to go to bed again we call a toll on her
and here to read to burn in there
is nice but then here
mrs government and for to me in the brain forms at the month

freshmen cool live streams why the fire green never read it again
fresh mint cool live streams live in the fire
you bring the fact
why why why

ha ha

darryl green to burn as bright working
if that in a flat
two green to burn farming over nighttime new a child killed his back said i felt a paddle
my friend

have him
slowly included sometimes it's hard it would really help with your printed these poems so there were easy to read
arrived at the escape twenty four years ago to green to burn
i am not yet ready to be have to time i am ready for joy for making and only you ready or not here i go yeah
i am
hey
had the park every one more here and god

how for you mark
i'm three young monk degree from
you
happy about
other end
how are you
all the sweet young mom
editor
it has been able to protect the
a hundred
hello mama path
february monks and short
whatever
her even
hope it's going to have a month of it you know now they don't have to be the breath and yes
a
but instead he forgot broken mood on rippling on moonlight on the path
we the last one for instead before dawn broke him on my on moonlight on the path
investigate and another one
brew my own path hearing tobacco now a birthday
god
try to see also if you can write you have to do for next week but before we're done
to write a poem has no adjectives or adverbs
and even a password or right
no i'm also will be possible
no qualifiers in other words i can describe
the action itself other than the verb to qualify it nothing to modify the person or the normative the noun
the thing
neither was thing in action thing in action thing in action and
bring into
maybe two elements into the thing at thing of action something abstract about your teaching and something concrete try that without adjectives without adverbs
what this does is help us the instead of try to describe something find those very things and those very actions that suggested
the impact
yeah
just as a little you could say
plum blossoms you know sprinkled on the muddy path right
i'm not doing very good myself or and really
something about my own passing or something in which
all things are impermanent plum blossoms on the
something that and in which you find the more i can come up number a creative at the mood but something
yeah
rather than just have a totally didactic poem have a didactic poem and and from the relative that expresses it without adjectives that don't have
why did i said no a very creative right and i'd have to sit down
so there should be the directive you have no idea
the dolpo that they didn't know where you can write a didactic would try to write also appalled i just said so this and as an national exercise try to write without qualifying was like as you to the for average
i take graduate exactly the and to good idea to do that with painter sometimes at these your hands or elbows and knees you have to come up with new ways that
paint

here's another quality and this kind of poetry
if it's a quality of taking the stand the stance of being humble
of
writing yourself off in a sense like rags and patches patches and bags and then he calls himself at the end this broken down old mule but there's
there's a kind of praise and that is a kind of exulting the cell is in some sense and beaten in presenting yourself in negative terms that doesn't go always over so well anymore in our
poetry
because if it in those terms because it's become self-conscious goes away of
setting yourself up for comparison as i'm just this old wreck rambling right from georgia tech and this is i didn't lead by life and he used it because he was actually apologetic that he
could not help out with the family fortunes for example that he let things go in the world at large and there's a certain amount of
asking for forgiveness within the social conditions of this time i don't think people in the west fuel network particularly that we should have to apologize
humility

having another thing about writing poetry like us is that it can be embarrassing the next day
or even the next hour and why is that is because it's that at a certain moment that we express ourselves it seems real enough when we put it down but as causes and conditions and the next two miniature days and so on change we look from a different perspective back there and we see well that's not real
lee how i feel it's not exactly how i feel and if one were to ask real kind of these poems really really truly were true description of the way he felt he would probably have to answer like you know what's the milosh the polish poet today who says that
poetry is because it a lie that tells the truth
i think because somebody else with happened
no i think is actually precast often
but it may be precursor was quoting something

but but you know that the thing about ready out and is putting your neighbor to is that here here is one flash of how you see me or how i see myself but it is the whole picture
it's just this look in the mirror you know
you stand in front of the mirror and you say is that face and figure in the mirror really me
you get that one look
and then if you want to start thinking about his next within a week right little longer more personal poems
and the right longer descriptions of yourself in your practice but room but
bring the roots down into some grasp of understandable see above fusible smell about testable
objects in your life
now we can all relate to
not until the abstract i'm feeling
very poetic today and fuming i understand what nagarajan june mm by emptiness and so on our i don't understand i want to know what happened to you at this moment that makes you feel like
when questions
what life was working
well make us make the didactic poem in the one without adjectives and so on a short for lines but then start writing something maybe that has a little more narrative to it
as and begin to use longer lines and that longer sentence begin to bring other images together and maybe we can begin to move into metaphor similes in the life
are you reading the poems or and a pushover
how many people are ready for
hmm
there's a there's a whole list of books bunch of books up and in in the library on the shelf
we don't have a tremendous amount
just they didn't studies that the new stunning other things so
he's writing poetry a of samadhi
put then
yeah
zazen is a poem is can't write a
yeah when you're sitting as as in maybe you should let the pro to go for a little while if you can but sometimes by letting it go
you know just like the best stuff comes up
and then innocent the whole our thinking i gotta remember that ninety
if someone who brings don't know
and why
here is an edge where
what israel at the moment for us is our practice he talks about just the flow of everyday that's just as there is that edge that we can give voice to
and
yeah
when fact there are no restrictions on what you want to write now i just read it and bring it in a burka it was too longer just going to take us longer to reproduce
when they have a problem they wanted anything up to one of your site
we've gotta go on earth to me
throw covering the ballot and don't want cool
umbilical cord
arising
it
brioche
try me on okay great
what's what
bradley are gentle three grade teacher
yeah
the try to do that same poem without the adjectives try to find some way to express the same thing
dr reese familiar
epic leave boundaries teacher right from
play with that playing play with it that's what i mean take these lines try a different move them around drop this part of suddenly something will come forward that you didn't know until you make yourself available to the process
and in that act in that moment
does a authenticity that rings in the port itself we're not trying and not trying to be a party stay i'm not trying to get
express something and find this just this moment and they express it noted to do that we have to practice a lot so it comes out spontaneously for every hundred poems you're right maybe get one that actually seems to hit the nail on the head
what's twenty of with you
it's twenty or we have to build them what five minutes or
anything anybody else to say about tonight
yeah that's what we're here for
i
i learned during my life
every time research
very you
the good feeling itself so

the right three more is almost exactly like it with the same idea
since you do with it
you know what i mean
that same idea that same impulse
and try it
try to are three ways now
i don't mean to the cancer
to green the burn they say i weight slowly drive gather gathering patients getting ready for that fire
hey
yes you say earn about the in a trying to write a poem a repost it was trying to read poem within the poem happening more spontaneously at first i am just i'm really into trying to write a poem has a like
part of
from the light around anymore
agents die than me i could name them over for me and to a number
well you have to try to write the poem but in by trying be continually doing it and so on by making yourself
present to the process ready in the palm sunday the re-used spun take the spontaneity was innocent clinic the piano or painting or anything else you you try
but
make you so sensitive to that and then it's a moment when you're i think a boon and shaving when i kept the moments when i can't get to a pen or to a brush or something on the moments when these things suddenly occurred to you you're walking down by the ocean is you've got the perfect idea perfect expression for that moment in a scan
and that's okay you know that located have to carry a pen and pencil or a camera or paint brush and try to catch everything that rises at the moment and is perfect for you so actually gonna lose it sometimes and that losing is also part of the process not been available to not having something around that
getting captured with
yeah
they kind of frustration i remember i used to always carry a pen and pencil with me whenever i went because i wanted to jot down but when i carried the pen and pencil with me pepper
this these spun the spontaneous ideas did not arise as much because that's when the because they get the idea and i'm going to be alert and catch it when it arises
but the more i'm aware that process the more of those things will naturally arise why because we've set up the context because of the idea in which that stuff can happen until we make the effort instead of a context for nothing will arise my right
where am i wrong tell me you're right
you're on the final what i'm saying
yes
oh yeah right wingers related because once again that naturally was pretty successful i was reading poetry readings with little snapshots of thing it was the first time i drove from minnesota and you know i was still alive so
awake and so wonderful and every now and then i had to stop the kira and right and the next thing you know
i quit because i was spending all my time grasping these emergency
just like good things and i think about that like isn't isn't a thing
i think that's something that right zip this grasping remember in the beginning we talked about the fact that we're supposed to finally give up words this is a transmission outside of words
on the line without relying on words and yet that very thing is reliant on the words it was just expressed to us not rely on words so we do rely on words but the thing is there's a difference between rely on and onwards and decided that you're going to encapsulate your whole life and and what does that about what is the attention and that's what i'm interested in
not getting caught by some final description or something but still describing it we gotta go
the