13 January 2020 – Guest Poets: English-Speakers on Mindfulness

This month’s guest poet(s) are from English-speaking countries and themes addressing mindfulness, that topic of ever-growing popularity from traditional Buddhist temples, to the temples of corporations dedicated to profit. The selections in this post are from a book titled The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy, edited by John Brehm (Wisdom Publications 2017). The book is a treasure of spiritual inspiration on the three subjects of the title. Here, and in coming months, I will share some of the pieces that spoke to me the most. 

Mindfulness is a key Buddhist practice that can easily be translated to every day living. A partner of another key element, impermanence, wherein everything that arises ends, mindfulness places one right in the middle of living. Unlike the difficult emotions connected with impermanence, mindfulness can be both sad and joyful, as one absorbed the beauty and tragedy of each life lived.

Editor, John Brehm, begins his “Introduction” with the statement, “Mindful attending is essential to these poems.” He goes on to say that, “This kind of seeing requires mindfulness – the intentional, nonjudging awareness of present-moment experience. . . .  have found that looking intently, without judgment, at the most ‘insignificant things’ – hubcaps, weathered fence posts, gate latches, bolts on fire hydrants, weeds, trash on the street, and so on – has the most profoundly awakening effect.” After all, such things only make up all of our lives.

So, here you go . . . perhaps consider mindfulness as you read.

Dick Allen (1939 -) -- Listening deeply

Listening deeply

sometimes – in another – you can hear

the sound of a hermit sighing

as he climbs a mountain trail to reach

a waterfall

or a Buddhist nun reciting prayers

while moonlight falls through the window

onto an old clay floor,

and once in a while, a child

rolling a hoop through the alleyways of Tokyo,

            laughing

or a farmer pausing in a rice field to watch

            geese fly

the thoughts on his lips he doesn’t think to say

D. H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930) The White Horse

The youth walks up to the white horse, to put

            its halter on

and the horse looks at him in silence.

They are so silent they are in another world.

A.    R. Ammons (1926 -2001) Reflective

I found a 

weed

that had a

mirror in it

and that

mirror

looked in at

a mirror

in

me that

had a weed in it

Ezra Pound  ( 1885 – 1972) In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

petals on a wet, black bough

Jane Hirshfield (1953 -) Lighthouse

Its vision sweeps its one path

like an aged monk raking a garden,

his question long ago answered or moved on.

Far off, night-grazing horses,

breath scented with oatgrass and fennel,

step through it, disappear, step through it

            disappear

Background

I selected these poems for their concrete, vivid imagery – that we see (or don’t) as we (un)tangle ourselves from the world that largely exists in shadows for most of us. The unusual people, places, and things are easy to notice; it’s the tiny, familiar things that are not.

The selections also call up what is not seen, not heard, not consciously presenting. You may notice that in some of the poems it is not the poet nor the person(s) in the poem that/who is mindful, but rather a distant observer much like the “surprised” reader who reads Zen haiku and other Asian forms of poetry.

Exploration 1: How acquainted are you with the concept of mindfulness, whether through academic study, through personal practice, through a root teacher, or through observation of others who engage in mindfulness?

Exploration 2:  What do you think happens/changes in daily life when mindfulness is engaged? 

Exploration 3: Think about the “observer” in each poem. How does this change the meaning of the work?