Poetry, Beauty And Art

In 'Poetry Beauty and Art', Jack Kornfield reflects on poetry as a vehicle of awakening and a way to open to the beauty of the world. Poet Rumi says there are three phases of spiritual life: the camel, the lion, and the child. Jack touches on these three phases with stories and poems.

Transcript

I want to stay a bit this evening with a theme that we spoke about,

Touched on last week,

Which has to do with the sense of mystery and the mystery of being born in a human body and being incarnated and being here.

So it's pretty mysterious and strange.

And nobody,

No scientist,

Nobody can explain how an acorn remembers for 20 million years the history of oak trees,

But it does.

And nobody can really understand how consciousness can perceive a rainbow and which is more ephemeral and which is real,

Exactly what real is.

Not to speak of the fact that there are 50 billion trillion stars out there in all the far distant galaxies that the Hubble's been able to take pictures of.

As one poet said,

There are sacred places everywhere.

The world is still our holy grove where we wander hunting for the tree of life under which we already live.

Now one of the important qualities of a meditative life or opening oneself to a spiritual dimension is that it's an opening to beauty,

An opening to harmony,

An opening to some sense of rhythm and happiness,

Justice in the world.

Sometimes people get the sense of spirituality as being at a grim duty,

Like taking your vitamins and working out at the gym and doing your meditation,

You know,

It's kind of keep you in shape somehow or other.

There was a study that was done,

Of course one might say something about many studies,

But nevertheless,

In London some years ago they took two streets in an area of London that was quite poor and because it was poor also there was a lot of crime.

Parallel streets about 10 blocks apart and on one of the two streets,

Unbeknownst to the residents,

They set a team to go out and clean the graffiti,

Sweep the streets really regularly for a year,

Fix all the broken lights,

Put some plants in and make it look beautiful.

And they kept it very clean for that year.

And at the end of the year they looked at their statistics and the crime on the street that was beautiful had dropped by 50%.

There's some way in which with the speed and complexity of our life and all the things that we get busy doing,

We lose touch with the mystery and the beauty,

The rhythm that we're a part of.

And there was this amazing article in the Washington Post last winter.

They took one of the world's most respected violinists,

Joshua Bell,

Stuck him down in the metro with a three and a half million dollar Stradivarius and opened the case so people would put coins in it,

Right?

And he played some Bach,

Some amazing Bach pieces on his Stradivarius and nobody stopped to listen except kids.

Little kids would stop,

Everybody else was on their way and I don't know what he got,

You know,

17 bucks for an hour playing.

What has happened to us as a culture?

And it doesn't mean that we should ignore warfare and the hunger in the world and the continuing racism and the ecological problems and so forth.

But one of the sources of all of this is a loss of real attention and real connection to what's beautiful.

What's beautiful in another being,

What's beautiful in the biosphere,

What's harmonious in the ways that we might live together.

And our bodies too know when we have not allowed the beauty of life,

The creative spirit that we're born with,

That every child has come through us.

Sometimes the greatest political act is to turn off CNN or Fox or whatever your particular poison is and turn on Mozart,

You know,

Or Walk in the Sunset.

But there's something about feeling the mysterious beauty of being alive that's critical to nourish the spirit or the heart or the soul or something like that.

Without beauty we get dead to the world or we get overwhelmed in some fashion by the sufferings of it.

And so there comes in some way a question of how alive can we be and how much beauty that is in us and is around us can we see and sense and honor.

And as we come to sit in meditation we can see this not as a denial of the sorrows of the world,

But there's something more than suffering.

Suffering is true,

But there's also a grace that keeps us alive,

That surrounds and holds everything or you could call it the great compassion of the Buddha or all kinds of languages.

And in language itself this beauty,

This harmony is expressed as poetry.

Poetry is the music of language.

So I want to talk about poetry tonight,

But really poetry as the vehicle for a kind of awakening in ourselves.

You know Pablo Neruda writes about the man who is frightened by a lily in one of his lines,

That place where we can't let the world touch us too deeply.

Or Hafiz who says,

The great religions are ships,

Poets the life boats.

Every sane person I know has jumped overboard.

So he invites you into the water of poetry.

Or Gabrielle Mistral who she says,

What the soul does for the body,

The poet does for her people,

That the voice of the poet is that voice of the spirit or the soul of those who are around.

You know I was listening to some of the Supreme Court nomination hearings,

Right?

So I have to read this poem to you.

It's called A Charm Against the Language of Politics,

Just to help.

When you hear the politicians slippery words,

Enunciate the vegetables,

Artichoke,

Okra,

Parsnip,

Calendula,

Cauliflower.

When they tell you their plans and ideas,

Recite the apples by name.

Wine sap,

Granny Smith,

Jonathan,

Rome Beauty,

Macintosh.

After turning off the television,

Chant the names of spiders,

Black Widow,

Combfoot,

Orb Spider,

Green Recluse.

Remember most short verbs are ethical,

Hatch,

Spin,

Eat,

Rest,

Dig deep,

Lay low,

And hole up for the duration.

And it's not to say that we don't have a political responsibility,

But you know what I'm talking about.

There's a way in which we lose what's important in the 24-7 news cycle.

You know,

It's not an oil spill,

It's an information spill.

And the Buddhist teachings are filled with poetry.

The first words of the Buddha after he awakened under the Bodhi tree were a poem.

Oh house builder thou art seen at last,

The ridge pole is shattered,

The rafters are broken,

Freed am I from this house of sorrow.

And Ryokan,

The beloved Japanese Zen poet,

If someone asks my abode I reply,

The east edge of the Milky Way.

Puts things in perspective basically.

And you can hear how simple the language of poetry is to speak of things that we need to be reminded about.

If you can see with the eyes of a poet,

Says Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh,

In this one sheet of paper is floating a cloud,

The rain clouds that watered the trees from which this paper was made.

And the trees,

You know,

And the hummus and soil in that forest,

And the lager who cut them down,

And the lager's wife who made the sandwich that morning,

And the wheat that was in the bread in the combine that harvested that wheat,

And everything that you can possibly imagine,

The whole of the universe,

The sunshine that grew that tree,

The star that's our nearest star all in this sheet of paper.

Because nothing exists by itself.

It all exists in this interbeing,

The interwoven interbeing.

And to meditate is to take a deep breath and go,

Oh yeah,

Here we are,

Oh yes,

Interwoven in this mystery.

And it puts things into perspective.

You sit so quietly with your breath,

Feel how the breath breathes itself.

I think this is Merwin,

Little breath,

Breathe me gently,

Roll me gently,

For I am a river,

I am learning to cross.

And you feel the breath bring you back to yourself in some way,

Each breath.

So simple,

One line.

You can hear a lot of truth in a poem.

I'm nobody,

Who are you?

Are you nobody too?

I mean,

Who are we,

This mystery of being someone or no one?

The Zen poem says,

Don't draw another's bow,

Don't ride another's horse.

I mean,

There's so much teaching in that.

Your own bow,

Your own horse.

Or Suzuki Roshi put it this way,

He said,

Stop waiting at the bus stop and realize that you're already on the bus.

That's Zen,

Right?

Always waiting,

Waiting,

Waiting for something in your life that's going to make it right.

This is it.

This mystery is it now,

Always here and now in the present.

So as we meditate,

We might have these ideas of getting quiet and having some great meditative experience.

And what you discover,

Like Thich Nhat Hanh's paper,

Is that to meditate is to encounter the whole universe,

That we contain all things,

What Emily Dixon called the mob within the heart.

So you sit quietly in sleepiness and fear and longing and grief and restlessness and love and ideas and creativity and all these things arise.

You hear all the voices and the unfinished business of the heart shows itself very quickly.

You sit quietly and things that need to be tended to appear for you because they've been waiting to be listened to.

Their songs,

Their tears or their love or their beauty,

They want to be heard.

Here is Carl Sandberg,

There's a wolf in me,

Fangs pointed for tearing gashes,

A red tongue for raw meat,

The hot lapping of blood.

I keep the wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There's a fox in me,

Silver gray fox,

Sniffing gas and pick things out of the wind and air and nose in the dark night.

There's a hog in me,

Snout and belly,

Machinery for eating and grunting and sleeping satisfied in the sun.

There's a fish in me,

I came from salt blue water gates and scurried with shoals of herring and water spouts with porpoises.

There's a baboon in me,

Clambering clawed dog faced yapping a gaoloot's hunger,

Hairy under the armpits.

There's an eagle in me and a mockingbird and the eagle flies among the rocky mountains of my dreams and the mockingbird warbles in the forenoon and the underbrush of my Chattanooga's of hope.

Oh,

I got a zoo,

I got a menagerie inside my ribs,

Under my bony head,

Under my red valve heart.

I got something else,

It's a man-child heart,

A woman-child heart.

It's a father and mother and lover,

It came from God knows where and it's going to God knows where for I am the keeper of the zoo and I say yes and no and sing and kill and work and I am a pal of the world,

I came from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let me go.

And so you sit very quietly and inside is the zoo and you know it's true,

If somebody could put a little like microphone inside the mind and then turn up the sound,

The people around you would go,

Oh my God,

She has to listen to that all the time.

The judgment and the comments and the planning and the anxiety and the hopes and the,

I mean come on.

So the poets,

The poets really tell the story of the zoo inside and out and how to be a good zookeeper.

I mean because how do we relate to the zoo?

Communication is an invitation to this beauty or this connection with life,

To an aliveness,

A presence,

A mystery,

A passion,

A freedom.

People think that to become mindful is like detaching yourself from the world but it's quite the opposite.

Here's a poem from Thomas Carlyle,

He writes,

It's good to use the best china,

The oldest lace tablecloth,

The most genuine goblets.

Of course there's a risk every time we use anything or share an intimate moment,

A fragile cup of revelation.

But not to touch,

Not to handle the artifacts of being human is the quiet crash,

The deadly catastrophe where nothing is enjoyed or broken or spilled or spoken or stained or mended,

Where nothing is ever lived,

Loved,

Laughed over,

Wept over,

Where nothing is ever lost or found.

And in that way mindfulness,

Mindfulness,

You sit and sense the breath,

Feel the body,

Allow the stories and emotions all to reveal themselves and come into a place of connection with this mystery of life.

This is an invitation to be more present,

More alive,

More able to dance with the energies of life rather than the body of fear that shuts it down.

I remember my teacher Deepamash,

You know somebody asked her,

Doesn't meditation kind of make you quiet and passive and dull?

And she said,

I had been quiet and passive and dull and meditation woke me up.

Life is fresh in a way that it never was until I paid attention.

Rumi talks about this poetic journey because Rumi is this extraordinary poet like Mozart who wrote down his symphonies as fast as he could because he just heard them,

They were being dictated to him by the cosmos or whatever.

It's the same for Rumi.

Rumi wandered around with his acolytes and disciples and poetry just poured out of him and they kept writing it down.

It was the Mathnaue is called the ocean of poetry and it's beautiful because it's wild discipline and ecstatic intelligence.

It has both form and abandon and it has intelligence and beauty all together.

And anyway Rumi says that the spiritual life has three phases,

The camel,

The lion and the child.

And as I speak of these maybe you can sense this as you do your meditation or undertake whatever is your own spiritual discipline because the images of poetry,

The metaphors,

Speak in a language deeper than just an explanation.

The camel,

The camel symbolizes the first steps of meditation which one takes forever it turns out of devotion,

Repetition,

Service,

A kind of necessary devotion,

Commitment.

Gandhi called it blessed monotony.

The willingness just to sit even though you get hungry and not get up and open the refrigerator.

The willingness to sit even though you're bored to say,

All right,

I'll touch the boredom or the loneliness or whatever it is that I usually run from and not open the refrigerator or call somebody or distract myself.

I'll actually let myself be present for whatever is here within me,

The whole zoo and learn to find a place of compassion and wisdom in the midst of it all.

And this is the work of the camel to sit,

To breathe over and over,

To walk,

To pray,

Whatever it happens to be.

Isaac Dinesen said,

The cure for anything is salt water,

Sweat,

Tears or the ocean.

So this is her way of speaking of the discipline.

And Chogiam Trimpa called meditation manual labor.

And there's the camel in the desert learning to kneel,

To bow,

To honor,

This is the way things are.

One of the most extraordinary poems of the poet Rilke,

Well here's his lines,

He says,

What we choose to fight is so tiny and what fights with us is so great.

If only we would let ourselves be dominated as things do by some immense storm.

For when we win,

It's with small things and the triumph itself makes us small.

What is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent by us.

I mean the angel who appeared to the wrestlers in the Old Testament when the wrestlers sinews grew long like metal strings.

He felt them under his fingers like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this angel went away proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand.

Winning does not tempt at this one.

This is how we grow,

By being defeated decisively by constantly greater things.

It's a pretty different message than you get in the kind of cultural zeitgeist,

If you will.

In some way our life is not about winning but it's about opening ourselves to the energies of life.

This is the work of the camel.

Here's Rumi's description of the camel.

He says,

You've lost your camel my friend and everybody's giving you advice.

You don't know where your camel is but you do know these casual directions are wrong.

Even someone who hasn't lost a camel,

Who's never even owned a camel gets in on the excitement.

Yes,

I've lost a camel too.

Big reward for whoever finds mine.

He says this in order to connect with your camel that you can't find yet either.

He has lost it but he doesn't know.

Everybody's looking for something says Rumi.

But we're like the thief who steals from his own house.

We are what we seek.

So this stage of practice,

The camel stage,

Is humbling.

And when we sit at first the wounds that we carry come.

There's a kind of deep process of healing in meditation.

The wounds of the body,

The wounds of the heart,

The inner conflict,

The measure of sorrow that each person is given along with the beauty of their life.

Emily Dickinson writes,

There's a pain so utter it swallows substance up then covers it with trance so you can walk upon it as if in a swoon.

And we do.

We live at times in a trance because we can't bear some of the sorrows of our life.

And to sit as the camel in the first stages of meditation is to allow these all to arise and to touch them with respect.

The measure of sorrows,

The longing,

The beauty,

The loneliness.

Sometimes says Galway Canal,

It's necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness as Saint Francis put his hand on the brow of the sow.

And the sow began to remember all down her thick length from her snout all the way to the spiritual curl of her tail,

The long perfect loveliness of sow.

And so when you meditate and you sit as the camel in the camel stage,

Whatever comes,

The things that show themselves,

The tensions that we carry in the body or the traumas that stored in our nervous system or the things that we long for that weren't fulfilled,

That bowed to,

That get respected in some way and held like Saint Francis holds the brow of the sow.

You do not have to be good,

Writes Mary Oliver.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair yours and I will tell you mine.

And so this is the healing work of the camel,

A kind of devotion and with it comes a trust if you sit and meditate that after a time and absolutely in its own season,

The things that are hard to bear,

Hard to be with,

That are as much a part of your humanity as your own breath become workable.

They become part of the compassion that deepens in you.

So again the poet Ghalib,

He writes,

For the raindrop joy is entering the river.

Travel far enough into sorrow and tears turn to sighing.

When after the heavy rain storm clouds disperse,

Is it not that they've wept themselves clean clear to the end?

And so there's a way in which our tending of ourselves is a phase in meditation,

A caring for,

A willing presence and to the extent that we can tend all of the parts of ourselves,

To that extent can we then tend the earth or the people around us or the community or the trees or the crazy wars and insane prison system and things that we see around us that we know don't work anymore.

Somehow we need to find this way to tend those very things in ourselves and it gives us the courage and the discipline and the devotion gives us a strength to be in this world centered and wise.

But after the camel comes the stage of the lion.

And the lion or the lioness has this great roar of authority.

The lionesses are actually the ones that hunt.

They're the most fierce in many ways.

And I don't know if you've ever heard a lion roar close up.

Even in a zoo it's the most amazing thing because a lion doesn't roar with its vocal cords or its mouth,

It roars with its entire body.

It's like a bellows and when it roars it's like every hair,

Every cell of its body is making this enormous sound and all the other,

You know the baboons and the chimps and the birds and everyone goes whoop,

It's quiet.

Okay,

Dude,

Somebody's talking.

The lioness,

The lion,

The zoo just gets quiet.

And what it says in some way is I do not belong here.

I do not belong in this zoo.

And you can hear the voice of that lion as if it was wildly running across the Kalahari desert where it actually belongs.

The Buddhist teaching was called the lion's roar because it was a fearless invitation for all to awaken.

I am here in the midst of it all.

No matter what happens I am still here.

And I am awake and compassionate no matter what happens.

And the Buddha was challenged as a teacher by all these various ascetics and yogis.

What do you know?

What is your teaching?

And when the Buddha spoke his lion's roar he said I have done every practice,

Every difficult practice that India has to offer,

The beds of nails,

The fasting and standing out in the sun on the hottest day of the year looking at the sun.

And all of those things,

They were not the way.

They were not the way.

The way is the middle path,

The path that takes this one seat in the center of the universe,

In the center of this earth,

Opens the eye of wisdom and the heart of compassion and says yes,

Here we are connected with all things,

Not running away from them.

And in this comes the great freedom of awakening,

The lion's roar of the Buddha.

And the lion bestows blessings,

Serves the Dharma,

Sees this huge and vast dance and takes her seat or his seat in the midst of it all.

The Buddha speaking,

I consider the position of kings and rulers as that of dust motes in a sunbeam.

I see the greatest treasures of gold and gems as broken tiles.

I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags.

I see the myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds and the great Indian ocean as but drops of water at my feet.

I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusions of magicians.

If you don't understand that,

Go back to look at Wall Street and the last years of our finances.

I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of dragons and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons.

I take this seat in the midst of this mystery of space and time,

The timeless seat that sees all things.

And this means finding your own royalty,

Finding your nobility,

Oh nobly born,

Your own dignity.

And the beautiful thing in the prison work that I've done or in traveling in Burma or reading and hearing about the figures that are the most acclaimed and loved and acknowledged for the spirit that they carry,

Nelson Mandela,

Aung San Suu Kyi in this world,

Is that they can put your body in prison but no one can imprison your spirit.

The lion can be in the zoo but the lion's roar is,

I do not belong in this zoo.

This zoo cannot limit me.

And there is as we sit a kind of dignity,

Taking this seat halfway between heaven and earth,

Being willing to bow to and name all of the forces that arise and still remain seated here as the lion or the lioness,

Remembering our own true nature.

This a poem from William Stafford called A Story That Could Be True.

If you were exchanged in the cradle and your real mother died without ever telling the story then no one knows your name.

And somewhere in the world your father is lost and needs you but you are far away.

He can never find how true you are,

How ready.

And when the great winds come and the robberies of the rain you stand in the corner shivering and the people who go by you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind,

Who are you really wanderer?

And the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is,

Maybe I'm a king,

Maybe I'm a queen.

And so Stafford points you back to remember some dignity,

Some beauty,

Some nobility that is your birthright,

Oh nobly born,

The Buddha nature within you.

But it's like the Nag Hammadi Gospel,

The woman writes,

I am the first born and the last and I am the mother of my father and the honored and the scorn.

I am the barren one who has born many sons for I am the bride and the bridegroom.

I am incomprehensible silence and memory never lost.

I am one voice who sounds everywhere,

Knowledge and ignorance,

The joining and dissolving.

I am the hearing in all ears and the story and truth.

Hear me in softness and know me in roughness for I am she who cries out and she who answers.

I am the only one who exists and yet does not exist and there is no one to judge me for I am beyond birth and death.

And that could be a beautiful Buddhist text as well.

It speaks like Kalu Rinpoche said,

You live in illusion and the appearance of things.

There is a reality but you do not remember this.

When you understand you will see that you are nothing and being nothing you are everything.

That is all.

And it's a poem but it's actually an experience.

And the experience happens,

I see it all the time on retreats,

People get quiet,

The mind starts to quiet,

The heart starts to open,

The shell of thoughts and busyness starts to drop away and someone will be walking outside and walk up to a tree and they become not a tree hugger but they realize,

Oh you know this bay tree and I have the same last name.

We are children of the same earth and they know as Alice Walker said,

I know that if I cut this tree my arm would bleed.

And this isn't just a poem of words or a myth but it's an experience that we all have,

Walking in the mountains or giving birth or watching a birth or being at the mystery of someone's death or listening to amazing music or getting high or meditating or you know whatever it was for you and still is.

There is something so alive and real beyond the small sense of self and it doesn't mean that you don't tend your life,

Just tend it in a different way,

You tend it from the place of dignity and mystery.

You remember not just your Buddha nature but also your social security number but the real game is to have the two together.

And this lion's roar of taking your seat in this world,

Your dignity,

Oh nobly born of being the Buddha,

The awakened one,

Knowing your inner freedom,

Then gives birth to the last stage,

The camel,

The lion and the child.

And the child is really the child of the spirit.

Angeles Salasis writes,

If in your heart you make a manger for his birth then God will once again become a child on this earth.

And so the child is really the child of wonder,

What Zen Master Suzuki Ueshi called the goal of meditation which is beginner's mind.

So to meditate,

Yes is to heal,

Yes is to be the camel that's willing to serve and devote with a courage.

Yes it's willing to be the lion that says this is what I know to be true,

This liberation I have found in myself no matter what you say,

No matter what happens.

But it's also a reclaiming of amazement,

Of beauty,

The line from Mary Oliver,

All my life I was a bride married to amazement.

And this kind of mystery,

We don't have to look very far,

Sleep,

Anybody ever paid attention to sleep?

It's the most bizarre thing.

I mean we're worried about letting go of stuff and should I keep it or maybe put it out at a garage sale,

Should I give a little stuff away?

You get tired and you get tonight and oh my God blessed unconsciousness,

If only the world would go away for a while and I could have nothing.

You know,

I mean it's,

What a weird thing that mammals clunk out,

Close their eyes and go someplace else for hours and then have all these visions and dreams.

I mean it's bizarre,

Don't you think?

It's as bizarre as having a hole at one end of the body,

There's this tube into which you stuff dead plants and animals every day,

Grind them up and glug them through the tube,

You know.

Just the whole deal.

It's pretty strange.

Here is Whitman.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars.

The running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven and the mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

Just the existence of things is so mysterious.

Nobody knows how consciousness works,

No neuroscience,

They can talk about the nervous system and so forth,

But nobody actually knows how it works and how neural pathways connect with consciousness.

Consciousness is the thing that's not yet been studied in science really.

It's like gravity.

There are equations about gravity but nobody quite knows what it is except that it tugs on things or it's a warp in space time or other kinds of definitions.

So mysterious.

Or water.

We couldn't exist without water and the fact that in a pretty small temperature range it can go from solid to liquid to gas,

Just wild.

In all the forms of water,

Zen Master Dogen said,

To meditate is like being out on the ocean and you never know quite where you are except here.

And the ocean is like a palace,

It's neither round nor square.

It's infinite in variety,

It's a jewel,

It's a castle,

It's enormous waves,

It's a vision,

It can be anything.

Water.

Ryo Kahn writes,

In my bowl dandelions,

Lilacs and the Buddhas of all three worlds.

And then he says,

I go to play with the children,

Hang my bowl by the Buddhist shrine and romp around with them.

Last year a foolish monk,

This year no change.

I remember the Dalai Lama gave some teachings in Madison Square Garden some years ago.

I think they were the Kalashakra teachings,

The teachings on time and eternity and the mystery of how time is all the play of consciousness,

Which it is.

And when we understand,

When we sit and meditate,

We come to rest in the reality of the present and see that past is just a thought,

A memory,

And the future is a thought.

And that all we ever have is this unfolding present that comes out of the void,

Out of nothing and displays itself.

And so we take our seat as the Buddha in the timeless realm.

And so here's the Dalai Lama about to give these amazing teachings of liberation from time and finding the healing in the midst of the turning cycles of the galaxies.

And he comes out and there are all these Tibetan monks in their robes and there's a kind of ritual element to it.

They play these great horns that they have and they clash the cymbals and they do that multi-vocal chanting.

And it's very beautiful.

And the Dalai Lama walks out and they made a throne for him and he goes up.

It's got all this lovely,

You know,

Oriental carpet.

And at the top of the throne to make it comfy for him,

They put a couple mattresses and then covered it with a silk or something.

And he sat down on it and it bounced.

And he smiled,

This big grin.

And he bounced again and it bounced higher.

And then he just started bouncing on it for a while like a big kid.

I mean here's the Dalai Lama,

Nobel Prize winner,

Right?

You know,

Head of Tibet,

Whatever,

About to give the most extraordinary Tibetan teachings on the nature of time and consciousness.

And he's sitting there bouncing on the bed like a big kid.

To awaken the child of the spirit is to find a freedom that is innate,

That is a gift in you,

That you carry and that you can give to every other being that you meet.

This again from the Buddha where he says,

Instructions to you.

My friends,

Live in joy and love even among those who hate.

Live in joy and health even among the afflicted.

Live in joy and peace even among the troubled.

Look within,

Be still,

Free from fear and confusion and attachment.

Know the sweet joy of living in the way.

So it's really finding this capacity for beauty and joy.

You meditate not in order to have an experience but to quiet the mind,

Open the heart and come back to yourself,

Come back to mystery.

This breath,

Yes there's the healing of the camel,

Yes there is the dignity,

Nobility of the lion and then finally there is the child of the spirit.

And it gives perspective saying that is so common now from the Ojibwe Indians,

Sometimes I go about pitying myself and all the while I'm being carried by great winds across the sky.

As we practice we allow the space of wonder to open.

We shift from the content,

My teacher Ajahn Chah was so emphatic about this point.

You come to him and say I had this meditation experience,

You know I had a beautiful sitting and it was bliss came and light and dissolving and so forth or I had a terrible meditation experience and I relived this trauma and I was weeping and my body hurt and he would just listen,

You know and he'd say yeah everything comes doesn't it and then it goes.

He wasn't terribly interested in the content but instead what he would say is can you rest in awareness,

Can you become the witness to all things.

Instead of getting lost in each of the movies that come and play the romantic comedy and the war movie and the action movie and the documentary and you know the comedy of errors or whatever it happens to be,

Can you say oh yeah this is the movie and here we are,

Here we are the space of awareness that can bow and say yes,

Touch it and be touched by it,

Be present for it but not reactive,

Not lost,

Not afraid.

Can you rest in awareness because this is the gift that will liberate you and it's not a detachment.

The funny thing that I hope I'm communicating is that as you do this you become more present,

More loving,

More in some way more alive.

It's kind of paradoxical.

It's this teach us to care and not to care as T.

S.

Eliot's words or here's another poem that explains it.

David Budbill he writes,

Han Shan this great crazy wonderful Chinese poet of a thousand years ago said we're all just like bugs in a bowl all day going around never leaving their bowl.

I say that's right.

Every day climb up the steep slides,

Sliding back over and over again up and back down.

So sit in the bottom of the bowl,

Head in your hands,

Cry,

Moan,

Feel sorry for yourself or look around,

See your fellow bugs,

Walk around,

Say hey how you doing,

Say nice bowl.

As you sit there will arise sad poems of loss and longing,

Poems of forgetfulness and jealousy,

Poems of beauty and betrayal and art and every part of yourself will reveal itself because you're human.

You take your seat in the midst of this humanity and as someone said the question is not the future of humanity but the presence of eternity.

For in the end,

In the moment,

In any moment you realize that you're not who you thought you were,

Not the small sense of self but something so much greater and therein lies your freedom,

Therein lies your happiness and your liberation.

There is in us an inviolable spirit and to meditate is to invite our attention to drop from the complexity and the busyness of our world which is fine and needs tending,

To quiet the mind,

To open the heart and to listen to some deeper current that is life itself,

Singing itself through you.

It's not a small thing to be able to know who you are in all these dimensions in yourself and find a freedom and liberation with that.

So the last poem before we end from Lynn Park who used to sit here on Monday nights.

She writes,

Take the time to meditate,

To pray.

It is the sweet oil that eases the hinge into the garden so the doorway can swing open easily.

You can always go there.

Consider yourself blessed.

Those stones that break your bones will build the altar of your love.

Your home is the garden.

Carriers odor hidden in you into the city.

Suddenly enemies will buy seed packets and fall to their knees to plant flowers in the dirt by the road and call you friend.

Give everything away except your garden,

Your worry,

Your fear,

Your small mindedness.

And remember,

Your garden can never be taken from you.

Take the time to meditate,

To pray.

It is the sweet oil that eases the hinge into the garden.

You can always go there.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening.

Your kind attention,

Your generosity.

Enjoy the evening.

Reviews

What a beautiful reflection. Thank you for all the insights from poetry and the reminder that this seemingly random gift we call life is full of mystery and beauty.

So enjoyed looking at this, my messy, muddled life from another perspective, the phrase and call to action of "finding your own nobility" sparked such introspection. Thank you for the pivot in thinking and awareness.

Thoroughly enjoyed the calm, wisdom, poetry and insights of this talk as I walked the dog in the forest. Will listen to this again as I feel I missed a few hidden gems. Thank you.

Wonderfully funny, uplifting, down to earth. Real 🙏🏻💞

Magnificent! I will listen to this again and again. Thanks 💕

Wow! This is so inspiring Jack. As a poet myself, this is a breakthrough in my understanding of meditation and life in general. Thank you 🙏🏽

Wonderful. Thank you for your humor, your light touch, your wisdom, the beauty which you share with us.

I love every bit of this, except I really wish he would speak a little slower. So many words to save her, his and all the poetry. Just beautiful, but I feel like I need a transcript ha ha.

What a beautiful talk. Reconnected me with the magic of life and oriented me on your mysterious journey through it. With gratitude 🙏

I will come back to yhis Gem▪︎♡ such a bounty of knowledge. Much appreciated!!!▪︎♡

Jack, this was a beautiful talk you gave, the poetry you shared with us, the warmth of your voice, the fluidity of your storytelling led me into your garden where I sat and sipped a glass of tea while all my senses feasted on the flowers and the birdsongs and the perfume of the earth and the vastness of the sky and so much that my soul swelled while my body contracted to the size of a bug in a bowl—a very nice bowl. Thank you.

This was a beautiful and inspiring talk. One of my favourites by Jack. Thank you 🙏

A delightful and insightful talk! I really enjoyed it. Thank you!🙏❤️

Lovely talk!! Very enjoyable and stimulating on a gentle & subtle level. ☺️🙏🏻🕉 Thank you, Jack!

I've been listening to this talk many times, always discovering something new, very touching. It speaks to my soul and opens me to the poetry of life.

Great, inspired me to plant a shrine in my garden. Poetry is running through my head. 🙏🙏

Exquisite, inspiring warm and with such good humour

Jack’s talks are full of wisdom wrapped in humour and compassion. I can listen over and over and learn something new every time.

A great life lesson and a wonderful mix of wise words and poems

Always a delight to absorb Kack and all the great thought-leaders he shares with us.