But I'm thinking of this not so much as a dharma class, as—can you all hear me okay? Is this for the tape? Wait. Are you being very loud? Yes. So I'm thinking of this not so much as a dharma class, as a kind of a discussion group, a chance for us to appreciate some poems together, but appreciate them particularly as people who are on the path, working on a practice, and maybe these poems have something to do with that, and maybe as we discuss them, we can focus on that, what they tell us about our path, and I hope we all feel permission to speak from the heart and learn from each other. So, there's a lot of people, so we're going to have to sometimes, if not most of the time,

[01:12]

speak in groups together, because with a great big group like this, it's hard to talk. So we'll probably, from time to time, get into smaller groups. But, actually, I don't know a lot of you, and you don't know me probably, and we don't know each other, possibly. So, maybe we can begin with everybody just introducing himself or herself, just telling us your name, and maybe with this many people, that's probably enough. Is that your name? Yes. Otherwise, we'll spend the whole night just telling who we are, which any one of us could probably spend several nights telling who we are. So, my name is Norman Fisher, and my excuse is that I'm an Abbot of Zen Center now, and Also, I love poetry a lot and read it a lot, and where this booklet comes from, actually,

[02:19]

is over the years I used poems in Dharma talks, and my system for many years was when I find a poem in my reading that I think would be good for a Dharma talk, I write it down on a little three-by-five card, and sometimes, so I have a little stack of them, and sometimes if I'm traveling or it's time for sashin or something, I just leap through the stack of three-by-five cards and pull out some that seem interesting and use them for talks. And I've been doing this for many years, and this is a selection of some of those poems that I've used in Dharma talks over the years. So, anyway, Norman Fisher is my name. Maybe we can go over this part of the room and just sort of get around to the other side. So, could you? My name is Margarita. Sorry. Margarita. I'm Stephen. I'm Betty. Alexandra. Alexandra. Can you go back here? Andrea.

[03:21]

I'm Jeffrey. I'm Marsha. I sat with you. That's right. That's right. I remember you. I'm John. I'm Tim. What's your name? Ed. Todd. My name is Brett. I'm sorry, I didn't hear your name. Nikki. Thank you. Stephen. Peter. My name is Russ. Ellen, yes. Robert. David. Ray. Kate. Christy. My name is Dana. Sarah. Elizabeth. Sheila. Sylvia. Del. Rachel. Jennifer. Katherine. Kendal. Irene. Darcy. Then we're in the back, I guess, right? Fran. Marge.

[04:24]

Brooke. Linda. I'm Joe. I'm Liz. Hi, everybody. Some people are arriving now, so here are some booklets. What's your name? Max. Max. Hi, Max. Barbara. Oh, no. Thank you. You didn't get one? It's not me. Oh, yeah, yeah. She didn't get one. Who didn't get one? Yeah. I didn't get that. Okay. Yeah, good idea. We'll collect them at the end. Sorry. Barbara just handed me a note that says somebody has a Toyota white Cressida. License plate 1PE7211.

[05:25]

It just says will be towed. It's in the driveway. Yeah. It's in your driveway or something? White Toyota Cressida? Yeah. Is it yours? It's in the one pocket. Okay. So we could start anywhere, but I was just rummaging around and I thought maybe of starting on page 16 with a couple of poems of Su Dongbao, otherwise known as Su Sher, who is a classic Chinese

[06:28]

Zen poet who actually studied Zen. He was not a Zen priest, but he was, like many of the Chinese poets, he was a government official, a literati, and he made many trips to Chan monasteries. A lot of his poems are about such trips. And some of his poems are often quoted in Zen literature. He's the author of the famous poem that's not in here, his enlightenment poem, which goes something like, the mountain is his broad back, the stream is his tongue, all night long I hear 84,000 sutras, but in the morning I

[07:43]

can't tell it to anyone. So this is a famous Zen poem, often quoted, that he wrote on the night of his awakening moment. And as I say, many phrases and so on from his poetry are used in the Zen tradition. So he's a real hardcore Zen poet. And his imagery and his whole sense of what poetry is, and approach to poetry, is very much classically Chan. So let's start with this poem on page 16. The clear wind, what is it? Something to be loved, not to be named. Moving like a prince wherever it goes. The grass and trees whisper its praise.

[08:47]

This outing of ours never had a purpose. Let the lone boat swing about as it will. In the middle of the current, lying face up, and there probably shouldn't be a period there, I greet the breeze that happens along and lift a cup to offer to the vastness. How pleasant that we have no thought for each other. Coming back through two river valleys, clouds and water shine in the night. The clear wind, what is it? Something to be loved, not to be named. Moving like a prince wherever it goes. The grass and trees whisper its praise. This outing of ours never had a purpose.

[09:50]

Let the lone boat swing about as it will. In the middle of the current, lying face up, I greet the breeze that happens along and lift a cup to offer to the vastness. How pleasant that we have no thought for each other. Coming back through two river valleys, clouds and water shine in the night. Usually it's my practice when considering poems to have them read a number of times in various voices so that you can hear them differently. So I wonder, Gloria, would you read it, please? The clear wind, what is it? Something to be loved, not to be named. Moving like a prince wherever it goes. The grass and trees whisper its praise. This outing of ours never had a purpose.

[10:52]

Let the lone boat swing about as it will. In the middle of the current, lying face up, I greet the breeze that happens along and lift a cup to offer to the vastness. How pleasant that we have no thought for each other. Coming back through two river valleys, clouds and water shine in the night. Thank you. And Steve, would you read it, please? The clear wind, what is it? Something to be loved, not to be named. Moving like a prince wherever it goes. The grass and trees whisper its praise. This outing of ours never had a purpose. Let the lone boat swing about as it will. In the middle of the current, lying face up, I greet the breeze that happens along and lift a cup to offer to the vastness. How pleasant that we have no thought for each other. Coming back through two river valleys, clouds and water shine in the night.

[11:54]

Thank you. Anybody have any reactions you'd like to? It's a pretty poem, isn't it? Yeah. You said you didn't think there should be a period after swinging face up, but given that there's also a blank line between those two phrases, I wonder if the middle of the current doesn't refer to the boat swinging about as it will rather than the I greeting the breeze. Say that again? Sorry. It sounded as though the way people were reading it, the middle of the current lying face up was I greeting the breeze that happens along, but given that there's a blank line between the two and a period, it seems to me that what might be the middle of the current lying face up is the lone boat. Yeah. Would you say a boat lies face up, though? I guess you could. Yeah. I kind of pictured him floating down the river, lying in the boat.

[13:00]

Lying down, kind of face up, looking at the stars and lifting up his cup. But, you know, this gap in the line, you know, the stanza break there, we shouldn't take that seriously because Chinese poems aren't written that way. And this is the translator's edition. No. No. So they're usually written like, there are various verse forms, but they're usually written like, say, four character lines, you know, just one after another without any breaks, generally. We're used to seeing as traffic signals really aren't. Yeah. Right. So you can't really. And even the English words, of course, are not what it says in the Chinese. That's a whole other discussion, is how different the Chinese verse works than English. And in the English version of Chinese, particularly, I mean, it's true in any translation,

[14:06]

but particularly in Chinese poetry where so much of it has a visual impact and, you know, the characters are made up of different elements and the elements sometimes rhyme, even though when you translate the words into English, you would never see the correspondences between the characters. So there's a whole kind of balance and harmony and beauty and not to mention literary reference, particularly in this. This is late, I mean, high. This is like the height of Chinese poetry. There's been a lot of, by the year 1079, unlike, you know, in the West where 1079, what we call the English tradition in literature hasn't even really quite started yet. Here in China, by 1079, there have been centuries of high literature so that every time Xu Shi is using a word, it has echoes back through that literature. So all of that is operating here. And so in the case of, and it's not true. Other poems that we'll discuss here are written in English.

[15:09]

And so then we can pretty much say, well, this is the word, you know, and that's what it says and what does it mean. But here, you know, we're looking at a very, like a little screen onto something that's basically unknown, which is the actual poem that Xu Shi wrote. I have a question. Yes. How pleasant that we have no thought for each other. Yes, I thought, yeah. You mentioned up above this owing of ours, so it must be referring to someone. Yes. I get that. Yes, well, that's the scene here. You know, it's not entirely clear, but it seems as if this is, you know, Xu Shi, long journeys, right, is one of the great subjects of Chinese poetry because China is one big country, right? Really big. And all the poets were constantly getting transferred from one post to another or more likely getting exiled because they screwed up

[16:13]

or the emperor changed or something. So then they would be exiled from the capital and they were constantly going on endless journeys off and down rivers. And so a lot of times the journey would be mixed with, you know, whatever the emotion was, like if they had just been kicked out of office, you know, and exiled to the provinces, which happened to Xu Shi more than once, that would be one route. If they were going the other way toward the capital into power, that would be another thing. So I'm imagining that this is a long journey and that he's floating down the river. And I don't think it's so clear whether he's alone or not, but it's a convention in Chinese poetry quite often that one is alone, whether or not you really are. So in other words, he could be going down the river with, you know, 17 porters,

[17:21]

you know, his wife and five children, etc., etc. He might write a poem about how lonely and tender it is to go down the river by yourself because that's a mood, you know what I mean? It's not necessarily what's really going on. So we don't really know what's going on, but I think it sort of has a lonely mood. The lone boats swing about as it will. He's talking about the boat, but it sounds a little bit like the mood of the moment. You know, he's lonely or alone. No, he's not unhappy. Lonely usually means like you're unhappy or you're bereft, but he seems happy enough and alone it feels like in the context of the poem that he's alone. And so this outing of ours never had a purpose. For me, that line has deep metaphysical resonances. I think it's about our life. Maybe he's, well, now we'll sort of wax imaginative here.

[18:24]

Maybe he's, we could probably look this up, but maybe he has been exiled and he's giving up, you know, the life in the capital and he's floating downriver to a far distant province where he's going to live in a grass hut and grow yams, you know. And so he gives it up. There was never any purpose anyway to all my government work and all my studies and all my stuff, social stuff. Forget it, you know. Actually, that's the beauty of our life is we're born without any purpose. That can sound horrible. Oh no, there's no purpose in my life. What am I going to do? But this is a joyful no purpose, right? It's just what it is. You know, our life is complete the way it is. We don't have to do anything. All the things that we're all putting around doing so that we can be somebody and say, hey, my life was worthwhile. Look what I did. I did this, I did that, I did this, I did that. I have a great life. But forget it all. You don't need any of that. Just that you're alive. Free is sufficient because there really isn't any purpose.

[19:29]

There really isn't any need to do anything more. And that's a very kind of Taoist, you know, point of view. I think so. That's how I read it. And then when he says how pleasant that we have no thought for each other, that's a very, that line loops out of you too because you think, oh, you know, we should always have a thought for each other. We should always be kind and thinking of one another. But this is beyond and so free that, you know, you're free, I'm free. We don't have to worry about each other. We don't have to have obligations to each other. We don't have to have entanglements with each other. We're just free. You know, my life is perfect just without any purpose. Your life is perfect just without any purpose. I'm floating down the river lifting up my cup and toasting the stars, and you're floating down the river lifting up your cup and toasting the stars, and we don't even really need to worry about each other. We just recognize each other as we float by, and that's how we are, right? We're all in these little boats floating by one another, and we don't really, our boats don't touch,

[20:30]

but we appreciate each other sort of sailing by. That's how I read it, you know. But then several people have things to say, yeah. I had a question that maybe he was, I mean, that was my take on the outing of Arsene, that maybe he said ours because he's talking kind of about life, you know, one's life. Yeah, yeah. I was wondering when he said, because I did get the feeling he was alone or trying to create the mood of alone, and I was wondering if when he said, how pleasant that we have no thought for each other, he might be referring to the vastness. How pleasant that the vastness and I have no thought for each other? Could be. We're just here. Yeah, yeah, he doesn't have to worry about it.

[21:37]

Yeah, he doesn't have to think about it, yeah. It's something that's so natural and flows so easily. You don't even have to think about it. Just like the wind. Yeah, like the wind. And it starts out with the clear wind. And this is already in the first two lines. In a way, you could say the whole poem is an unfolding of those first two lines. The clear wind. What is this wind? We don't have to name it. Naming, meaning like work. You've got to work at naming everything, and then once we name it, we have to dust it off, and then after we dust it off, we have to put it in the right place, and then we have to fix the house that holds it, and then we have to fix the city that holds the house, and then we have to fix the country that holds it. All that stuff just from naming something. We don't even have to name it. All we have to do is love it. Just love. So we don't have to think about each other, just love. We don't have to worry about which way the boat goes. Let it swing whatever way it goes. There's only this kind of pure love without naming, without grasping,

[22:39]

without obligation, without anything. Just toasting our life. Yeah, why don't you? In his last line, he says, coming back, to Riverbend, that coming back, returning. Yes. So maybe they go out and circle back. Well, you don't know whether, yeah, you don't know whether this is a journey, like a little jaunt where he goes out and then comes back, or whether he's coming back home. He could be coming from a distant city in China with a two, three month, this was not unusual, a two, three month journey, you know, from one end of China to the other, coming home. So we don't really know whether he's coming, but there's this sense of coming back, returning to the place that you have been, you know, where you came from, somehow. Either way, it's still the case. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, coming back through two river valleys.

[23:43]

You know, if you're running a river, and, you know, it can be, when you open up into a big valley, it's a beautiful thing, you know. So, he probably went through two great river valleys, great China river valleys, on his journey, yeah. Is the process of not naming indicative, particularly indicative of Zen poetry? Well, the, you know, Zen, the Zen spirit evidenced in this poem and in other such poems of this period is very much flavored with a Taoist feeling. And, yeah, in Taoism, and not that it's different from Buddhism, but it's a kind of a tone or cast, there's a strong feeling for, yeah, you know, the uncarved block, that which exists before naming takes place, before society takes place,

[24:45]

and returning to that as a kind of the wellspring of our life, that is the sense of it, yeah. So it is characteristic of poetry of that period. Now, a lot of the poems, I mean, I'm starting with this poem kind of on purpose because it is such a very classical Zen attitude and Zen spirit, but a lot of the poetry in here is Western poetry that isn't necessarily written by anybody who ever heard of Zen. But it's in here because I think it's expressive of the inner journey that's characteristic of the Zen path, although a lot of the poems don't have this particular classical Taoist Zen kind of take on reality, but this one does, yeah. I asked, too, just briefly, because it seems that, well, in your own poetry, by and large, that naming is such an integral process. Yeah, it is in a way,

[25:46]

but to me, anyway, from my perspective, is that Zen or no Zen, that the job of poetry is to return things to their unnamed state in the sense that naming is a limitation in possession. And so when we kind of... And that process of naming is the process of... Excuse me. Is the process of limiting and making things conventionalized, routine, known, in the sense of controlled. So for me, the job of poetry is to undo all that, is to return us to that moment of wonder or openness where we don't know what's going on. We don't know.

[26:47]

Now, the thing is that poetry is about words, uses words as a medium to do that, so therefore words involve naming, and so things are always named in poems. But to me, the naming is for the purpose of undoing naming. That's my theory of poetry, anyway. Can you give an example? Because when you say naming... Well, this poem, for example. This poem is not really about telling us the story of Su Shiu's life, because so much about the life situation here is vague, as we've been saying. It's not about... He's not telling you, you know, like prose is about, okay, I felt this, and that happened, and he was here, and she was there, and this was the situation, and blah, blah, blah, here's the details, and you can even say, and I felt like this, and I felt like that, and I felt like this because of that, but here, this is not what's happening.

[27:48]

What's happening here is there's a big suggestion of a space opening up. Yeah, and if you really appreciate the poem, you feel it. You feel that sense of freedom that the poem is expressing, of just floating, and just swinging, and just, you know, let's make a toast to the stars, you know, that feeling. And maybe you can relate it to a feeling that you've had before, but actually, mostly, it isn't about relating it to a feeling you've had before as much as it is right now, getting that feeling from the words. But he's not telling you how to get to that feeling, you know what I'm saying? He's not using naming. He's actually undoing, because it's the naming that we do on a moment-by-moment basis that closes us off from such feelings, which are probably available all the time, if only we would be as open as we can be when we read a poem. I have a question for you. Yeah. The only Zen or Taoist type of poem

[28:49]

that I recall ever having read had to do with a similar mood of opening, contemplative sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. Or sometimes even feeling of joy. Yes. You know, some mild elation. I never recall reading a poem with... Actually, maybe once there was something about sadness or despair. There's somebody, I don't remember who, about grieving the death of their small child. Yes, yes. You'll find that, yeah. That's by Issa's famous... Still without the type of emotions that are a little bit... Yeah. We'll get to that. There's a lot of poems in here that'll be like that. We'll see that, yeah. Suffering is the great favorite topic, you know. It is or it is not? Oh yes, oh yes. We Buddhists, we love suffering. We always talk about it. Suffering, oh yes. Endless on and on. We just spent the last month at Gringold talking about suffering. Yeah. I'm still...

[29:50]

I'm not clear really on how you're defining an enemy. It's like... It sounds like you're saying it's like a word, it's like a conversation and yet it's not this whole... How am I defining naming? Well, I guess I'm defining naming and... Who am I to define naming, right? But it's one of those things you stick your foot in it and there you are, you're stuck and you try to get out of it. I'm defining naming as... possession. Knowledge, understanding, possession, accumulation, control. Add your own words beyond that. Do you see what I mean? No, not to say... No, I say that realizing

[30:51]

that naming is our life and there's no way to go around not naming anything. I mean, I understand that. So I'm not making naming out to be the bad guy and we're going to undo the bad guy. No, naming is necessary. It's just like growing up is a bummer. Like taxes, bad relationships and so forth. But there's no choice, right? We grow up and we have to take our joy in it. So naming is like that, right? There's no choice. You get language, you name. You have experience in the world, life gets limited, right? But there have to be breaks in that. There have to be... It's unhealthy to make a life out of that. To me, that's what meditation, religion, poetry is all about is creating spaces, clearings in the process of naming and doing all that stuff

[31:52]

which seems unavoidable and even in some ways joyful. But it needs its clearings and its spaces. It needs its rivers that we can float down. So that's how I'm defining naming. And of course, poetry is a form that uses really any form. Any form is a form toward the formless, right? Poetry is a naming toward the naming, the namelessness. Visual arts are a form toward the formlessness. At least in this way that I'm speaking of the arts, this sort of contemplative or somehow religious view of the arts, which is a very powerful view in the arts, in all the arts. Anyway, does that make it clear? Yes. Yeah. There seems to be a tone of somberness that I can't really... I keep reading it over and over again and I just feel that there's a little bit of sorrow. Sorrow? Maybe not suffering, but there's...

[32:52]

Could be. It's kind of mournful realization or... No, where do you... Tell me where you see the mournfulness. This outing of ours never had a purpose. Let the lone boat swing about as it will. The loneliness is a little... Yeah, it's not a party. If you look at let the lone boat, you could have said let this lone boat, but he referred to it as if he were sitting on a shore watching this boat out there. Yeah. And then he brings this image of him up in it, so you don't really know where he is. Yeah. You don't know how he's experiencing it. Yeah. Where he's not really nailing himself down to anywhere. Yeah. It's... Yes. It disappears in this whole thing. Yeah. That's true. Of course, all poems are set in nowhere, right? Because all you ever get is a little, you know, snippet of where

[33:54]

this might be a river, but what river and what does it look like and you don't know what time of year it is. I mean, you know, any... Even exhaustive descriptive writing tells you very little about what it really looks like. I've tried to read descriptive writing, studied it very carefully, and let's see now, is the tree in front of the lake or behind the lake and how many... In other words, you always end up filling in the blanks, and especially in a poem. But yeah, I mean, I could see that. Some... It's quiet, that's for sure. It's very quiet. Yeah, at the end, clouds and water shine in the night. Maybe some of you know that clouds and water is a name for Zen monks. Do you know that? Yeah. Unsui. Clouds and water. So... And the reason why it's a name for Zen monks is because Zen monks are supposed to be like clouds and water. No fixed abode,

[34:55]

flowing with circumstances, no fixed shape, no possessions. And water is also often an image for emptiness. You know, water which is in everything. There's nothing in this world that doesn't have water in it. And water doesn't have a fixed shape. It takes the shape of whatever container it's given. It transforms to clouds and ice and rain and sleet and so on. So, this clouds and water, it could even be, I don't know the answer to this, but it could be that this is why. It could be kind of this poem. This is why Zen monks are clouds and water, called clouds and water.

[35:57]

It's a good question. Where did that term originate? Whether it predates or annidates this poem. I actually don't know the answer to that. But anyway, it's certainly a suggestion of that. At this point, historically, we can't read clouds and water shine in the night without that whole sense of the Zen quest of freedom. Do you think that he relates, he's comparing wind to just our life. Is that what you were saying earlier, sort of that, you were saying something about, like not really having, you know, purpose like that in terms of beauty and that, but it seems to me that's the only thing in the landscape, a natural element that he doesn't feel like can be sort of, I guess, wind is sort of invisible mostly. Yeah, exactly. Wind isn't anything. The only way you know the presence of wind is by seeing how other things behave, right?

[36:58]

Not necessarily. You feel it. Like reading the breeze. Yeah, but you feel it, but you can't see it, or you know what I mean, it's only known by its effects. Yeah, right, you see it. Yeah. Things reacting to it. Yeah. You see things reacting to us. Yeah. Yeah, so I think the clear wind is like the water at the end. It's the dharma, or emptiness, or the pattern of the great force of life, the great pattern of life. And what is it? It's not something to be named, it's something to be loved. Moving like a prince wherever it goes, the grass and trees whisper its praise, literally, whispering as the wind passes through. So yeah, that's how our life is. Everything in our life, everything in life is touched by the truth, the truth which is insubstantial and is only known by its effects on things in this world, whether it's on our skin or in the case of the wind

[37:59]

or in the trees or grasses. Nothing, it touches everything. In and of itself, it isn't anything separate from those other things. It moves like a prince with a kind of dignity, a kind of royal feeling of being untouched while touching everything and embracing everything. And everything praises it. So I think, yeah, I think the wind certainly is an important image in the poem. And for me, it's like the water. Clouds and water shine in the night. You get the feeling for the spark. You ever look at water when the moon shines on it? Or the sun and how it has a million little sparkles, little jewels glittering, and you look at it and you can just look at it for a long time and the jewels are always moving and different ones are appearing and it's remarkable

[39:02]

and that's what it is. He's lying there. And then also the same with the breeze. If you ever just, you know, there's certain breezes that are really nice, that are really soft and really refreshing. And just to sit quietly and feel the breeze and hear the breeze in the trees and so on is a beautiful thing. So I feel like that's what he's doing. He's floating, he's feeling, he's hearing and so on. Yes? Something that struck me in this discussion about the wind is something that we only notice when we look at the last line how does the water shine at night? Why does it shine at night? Well, the moon. It struck me that He doesn't mention the moon. The moon isn't present there. Yeah, yeah, it must be, it must be, yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Maybe, yeah, go ahead.

[40:03]

A couple more Taoist influences here. Something to be loved, not to be named. Well, like it says in Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, even though we use words and language, they can't really name reality. Reality is beyond language. The real Tao is the Tao that can't be named, right? And also the Tao is seen as being most present in things like wind and water, the things that we think of as receptive and weak, yeah, right. They're supple, they're flexible. And so even the boat, even though we're in the boat, instead of trying to direct the boat, we're harmonizing with nature by just letting the boat float as is. Gee, that's pretty good, Joe. You ought to be a literature teacher. Yeah, Brett, you want to add something? Well, just, I was trying to think, I immediately associated the clear wind, I think,

[41:04]

at least in some poetry, and I think it's moderately common in Zen poetry, isn't it? A reference to the golden wind as enlightenment or some experience of enlightenment. Sort of, maybe just the course, maybe the course in that direction, but I took it as an enlightenment poem right off. No, I think, I think so, yeah. Yeah. Yes? Also, I see it as a way of, perhaps his way of looking at life and seeing that so much of it is out of our control and that we only can let ourselves go with whatever happens in a more accepting way. Yes, uh-huh. And all, I mean, I see that throughout the poem, letting the lone boat be letting ourselves go that whichever way the current comes, and how at the end, then, perhaps if we're able to do that, you do become like clouds of water shining in the night.

[42:05]

Yes. A reference to that being a monk totally open without possessions. Uh-huh. I think so. I think so. This allowing, just allowing our life to unfold, not getting in our own way, you know, as we so often do. Yeah. I don't know if this is any good, the translation, but I was noticing that clouds of water shine in the night. The word shine, at least the way I think of it, is almost always being attributed to something that originates light as opposed to reflects it. Uh-huh. Or it might have been, if they could have used the word that was very scientifically more... Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. At least the translation. Uh-huh. The purpose behind that, you know, that if something about these both clouds and water not necessarily reflecting light, Uh-huh. Shimmering off of it or glimmering off of it, another source, but emitting it in themselves, you know. Yeah. If that fits into that being about monks,

[43:07]

you know, maybe... Yeah. Well, I don't know. It's pretty naturalistic because if you think of being a landscape in the dark, when it's really dark, mountains and the ground don't reflect light, but clouds and sky and water do. Uh-huh. It seems to emit from them, so I get a very naturalistic feeling from... Yeah. No, I think it's... It's like really being there. Meant to be that way, yeah. Well, let's do one more Sushur poem. Why do you call him Sushur? Uh... One of... Sushur is the usual name that he's known by. I think that's his literary name, or this is... It's the other way around. S-U-S-H-I-H. I think that that's his literary name, and this is his family name or something. S-U. S-U, one word, and the other word is S-H-I-H, which is pronounced shur in Chinese. So let's do this shur poem

[44:11]

that's on the next page. By the way, my idea is that we read till 9. Yes? Yes. And since mostly I have to drive a long way to get home, I like to end pretty close to 9. So this one, From the side, a whole range. From the end, a single peak. Far, near, high, low, no two parts alike. Why can't I tell the true shape of Lushan, the Lu Mountain? Because I myself am in the mountain. From the side, a whole range. From the end, a single peak. Far, near, high, low, no two parts alike. Why can't I tell the true shape of Lushan,

[45:12]

because I myself am in the mountain. Alexandra, would you do the honors next, please? Thank you. And Jeffrey, would you read it as well? From the side, a whole range. From the end, a single peak. Far, near, high, low, no two parts alike. Why can't I tell the true shape of Lushan, because I myself am in the mountain. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody have any, want to start us off? The last line,

[46:17]

because I myself am in the mountain, but that immediately brought to my mind this experience and the chasm of a subject and object emerging, where there's no, if not thinker and thought, feeling and feeler, and it's very subtle, and that's exactly what I thought of. Yes, I think so, yeah. Does everybody understand what he's talking about? It reminds me very much of one of my favorite passages from Dogen in The Mountains and Rivers Sutra, which is a great text of Dogen, where he says, he's talking about the ocean, and he says, what is the ocean, really? And he says, to a bird, the ocean is a jewel, right? A bird's flying over,

[47:18]

looks down, and sees this shining jewel, right? To a bird, it's a jewel. To a fish, it's a palace. To a human being, it's water. To a dragon, it's a city and its lair. And he lists a whole bunch of different creatures and says that for each one, the ocean is a totally different thing. And then he says, but which is the real ocean? And basically, all of them, none of them, there is no ocean apart from these views of the ocean. Each view conditioned by the creature who has that view, each creature is in the ocean, and so for that creature, the ocean is this way or that way.

[48:19]

So I think it's like that. If you look at Lushan from the side, you see a vast range. If you hike down the end and stand at the end and wind it up like this, you see one peak, all looks like one peak. If you're over here, it looks like a forest. If you're over here, it looks like a meadow. If you're over here, it looks like a mountain lake. What does it really look like? Well, all we can say is, I myself am in the mountain. From where I am now, this is what it looks like. So that's enough to make you humble in a way or not think that when you see something, it's got to be the absolute truth of what it is. Oh, we see it differently now. Interesting. It seems to me this is about knowing because for me,

[49:22]

what it's talking about is inside, it doesn't matter what the name is, it's just what it is. Yes, and this is about the deeply provisional nature of naming, right? This is pointing out that behind naming, there's always the non-naming. There's always the fact that no one knows what anything is other than just, for me, it's this way now. So when we name something, it's never covering what that thing is. It's only just now for me. So people, you know, kill one another over their names, right? I say it's this way and you say it's that way. Well, we better fight over that, see? Till we find the absolute name that's the correct name, which is impossible. So, you know, so fighting, it seems unbelievable

[50:27]

to think of this now, but do you remember at the beginning of the century, not that you were around then, but in the history books, they said that they were going to fight a war that would end all wars because they were going to finally get down to the absolute truth of right and wrong, and they were going to have no more wars after that. It seems unbelievable, you know, now, to think of that, but that's what they actually thought as they went marching off, killing one another in the most devastating ways that had ever been seen up to that time. They thought that it was all going to be worth it because they had come to the final position about what was what and they would have no more wars. But there is no final position, so don't fight in the first place. Naming is provisional because we're always in it.

[51:28]

There's no objectification and no objective eternal reality. There's always the reality that we are intimately living with, and that we can appreciate, but we can't really know everything, right? Yeah? When I first heard you read it in the mind, the early part of the century when the physicists got down to observing things very, very carefully, they began to realize that their observation itself was determining their destiny. Exactly, yeah, right. They were part of it. Right. I think it was the beginning of the century. Yeah. And there, physicists are ending up in a position somewhat like this. High, low, up, down. You look at it this way, it's one and all. You look at it this way, it's a wave. You look at it that way, it's a particle. You look at it this way, it's this. You look at it that way, it's that. And now it's getting obvious that what's going on is not a description

[52:29]

of a hard and fast reality, but a mathematical model that is constantly speaking to itself. That's what seems to be what physicists are arriving at. In other words, I mean, now it's like there's antimatter and matter. I mean, what's that, you know? Is that that article in the New York Times? Yeah, recently, yeah. What was that? I try to read that stuff and when I read it, I can understand it, but then I totally forget about it because it doesn't seem to me, I can't hold it in my mind. Yeah, that's right. There's something about how there's a slight tremor. Yeah, there's a slight tremor in the middle of the nothing that they're measuring. They're measuring space. There's nothing in space. But yet in the middle of that nothing, there's a slight tremor which one false move and it could swallow up the universe like that, right? Some scientists say. And other scientists say nothing to worry about.

[53:29]

It won't happen. It's not very true. That's what the article said. And this is all a discussion about nothing, literally nothing because there's nothing there to measure, and yet something is, you know, there's some activity in the middle of nothing. It's all very strange. I don't know. I don't understand how they could think about this stuff, actually. Yeah, you know. Also when you read it, I had that sense of immediately that this was kind of trying to describe not knowing or, you know, not defining something and then when you do that you take away its truth. It's just like saying well, this tremor did a certain thing to swallow up the whole universe as though we have a response that we didn't. Yeah, right. You know? Yeah, yeah. It's sort of irrelevant to always be predicting and knowing before, you know, and taking away the truth of things by knowing them ahead of time. And it made me think of that's when I started to understand not knowing what life means

[54:31]

and not defining it before you, you know, start getting serious about how we already know that this is what it's going to be like or redefine it so then you get there and you say now I know but you don't because it's been predefined and you don't really know what's happening. I know. Yeah. Yeah, it's all you know, like when you project forward with any thought what occurs is never what that thought has projected because the projection of that thought is simply an experience now of thinking. Right? Then later, even if you say tomorrow I'm going to go to the movies and then tomorrow you do go to the movies, what happened is very different from your act of thinking the day before. It's always like that. So we're just now experiencing our life and then later on we're experiencing our life and that's it. Yeah. Well, it seems to me that here it says

[55:32]

I am the mountain. I am in the mountain. I myself am in the mountain. Yeah. In my experience it's like when you're totally aware of something then you can't differentiate and try to say that this and this and this or you know from the side the whole range of different single people because that then just diffuses the experience of being totally aware of something. Uh-huh. You're totally not there. Yeah. But when you're totally aware of something it's usually a particular thing. Right? In that moment. But you don't start analyzing it. Analyzing it, no. Right, right, right. I think the sense is here that there's a particular experience of seeing the whole mountain range fully aware of that. And then there's a particular experience of seeing just one peak fully aware of that. And each experience

[56:36]

is a fullness and we can't say what's real and what's not real or what something is and what something isn't. All we can experience is the fullness of each moment. I think that's what I think that's the idea. So I think it could sound like in the beginning like it's an analysis but I don't think so. I think it's just saying there are all these experiences and they're all different. That's the thing. They're all different. And yet it's supposed to be one mountain range. So where is it? Well, I don't know. All I know is experience, [...] experience. I think that's what that's how I read it anyway. Yeah? So when he chooses to use the word I'm in the mountain it's sort of like he's he could have said I am the mountain or the mountain is in me or I'm on the mountain or

[57:39]

Yeah? It's just interesting that word I got and it's kind of beautiful. It confused me the first few times I read it I didn't understand it. But I guess I don't want to oversimplify it but for me it almost seems just like he's basically relating the mountain to sort of the great mystery that surrounds him and sort of like he tries to look at it and it can look as many different ways as but he's still putting himself smaller than it or inside it and it's like a totally different as opposed to Well I'm sure that in Chinese it's ambiguous. No doubt in my mind that in Chinese it doesn't say in the mountains. It just says I am mountain and it could be read as I'm in the mountain I'm on the mountain I am the mountain the mountain is me. I'm sure that in Chinese it's like that because Chinese is very spare there aren't a lot of inflections and prepositions and what not it's just character character character and very few grammatical connectives and that sort of thing. So I'm sure that in Chinese

[58:42]

it is that way. Yes. I'm thinking a little bit going along the lines of what you're saying about all our experiences we stop and we have to not have to we try to think or analyze about any experience we miss it. He is in the experience totally. Yeah. There's no thought there's just pure experience. The mountain it isn't really a mountain it's just one moment after each moment in life. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. I think so. That's right. Yeah. You could write six or seven totally different autobiographies right. Six or seven. Or ten or twelve.

[59:43]

Till you ran out of time. Yes. Can I ask would you suppose would you guess that in the composition of this poem that when he got to the point he said why can't I tell the true story to the true story do you think he was really asking that question at that time totally and waiting for the answer to come so that so that like I don't know you can call it inspiration in Western creativity or so that the answer that came was an answer to the question at the time. You mean actually while he was writing in the composition of writing in the moment of writing. Well I don't know what do you think what's your imagination of it? It seems like you feel that it that it was. But I but I

[60:46]

I can imagine that. Yeah I remember it was written in the mountains or after a long mountain trip. Between lines. If you ever spend so much time in the mountains you know that it's one thing to be far away looking at those glorious peaks and then you start walking and they look totally different you know and especially the deception of distances in the mountains. You look at something and say you know climb up that in a second you know it's much steeper than you thought and that little short distance is actually quite long. And then

[61:48]

high places don't seem high when you're in the midst of them sometimes. And valleys open up that didn't appear to be there at all. The mountains look like they're going straight up you know but actually they're flat and big lots of depth to them and space to them and yeah of course the Chinese poets have a great love for the mountains and wrote about the mountains a lot. Yeah well in Zen Buddhism the monasteries were built up in the mountains sometimes literally and sometimes figuratively and the name of every monastery was called a mountain

[62:50]

and so the name of the abbots of the monasteries were called by the same mountain and the idea was that that's where you went to seek the way far away from the world the dusty world you know far away from the dusty world to the purity of the mountains where you could meet yourself where you could meet the truth so sitting on a lofty peak you know is a metaphor for seeking awakening yes I was also thinking that it's with the why can't I tell the true shape of Lushan it's like why can't I be everywhere at once and then I'm I just have to travel through life and my perspective is going to change with every step and I can get a general idea of you know from as my perspective moves what the object is truly like but because I'm always on the move

[63:52]

I'm never going to have that complete perspective like there's not perfection it's always going to be always a process a process yeah yeah did the Chinese ever give titles to their poems or they're all nameless no there's titles there are titles there are titles sometimes yeah well let's do another one shall we okay oh yes ah well it just seems like I guess I want to speak up but seems like our discussion of it sort of focused mostly on the fragmentedness of things but it seems like to me I get a sense of attention of not just fragmentedness but also a sense of wholeness of all inclusiveness and there being a tension between those two it's not just fragmentedness no no I agree the whole sense of the mountain being on a mountain

[64:52]

is an overwhelming experience of the wholeness that there is something there there's a mountain yet at the same time and so that makes you want to sort of grasp it and define it and so on exactly yeah which you never can but yet you still know maybe that's right yeah yes yes that there is a wholeness there is a mountain yes no I I agree with you I don't feel that it's a poem about a painful fragmentation not at all I think it's it's a it's a it's a an appreciation like you say for a tremendous wholeness but at the same time a realization that one can't name or possess or finally know that whole wholeness one can only live it so I I I am in the mountains means I I am in my life you know I am fully wholly in my life it's just that I can't know how to define it and that's a that's a great thing it's it's inexhaustible if I could know

[65:53]

how to define it I mean there's nothing worse than knowing and defining your life right that would be dreary you know well that's it now what you know so the indefinability the inexhaustibility the indivisibility in a way of our life we can't even divide ourselves from it long enough to say what it is so I agree with you I don't think it's it's a poem about fragmentation in the sense of you know something is missing or something's not put together I think it's very much a poem about the affirmation of the totality of experience moment after moment unnamed yeah unnamed yeah one more quick thing well in western literature the mountain is often used to symbolize the eternal and in the old testament the mountain is identified with God so that image is universal which it probably is so it's why can't I tell the true shape of the eternal because I myself am the eternal I am one with the eternal yeah

[66:54]

uh-huh which is a a that's a good uh and uh particularly uh gives a difference in the feeling between uh at least our received sense of spirituality in the west where the top of the mountain is foreboding and scary you know what I mean and and it could be dangerous if you go up there um but here the top of the mountain is identical with myself I can't see it's true shape perhaps but I but I am I can be there I can be in the mountain I can be all so the mountain is is a uh you know like for for uh westerners it's changing now to a great extent because of buddhism and because of uh the encounter of east and west but you know typical western notion of the wilderness is something that's foreboding out of control

[67:56]

uh scary you know and what we want to do is uh make an outpost somewhere where where we feel comfortable and one wouldn't want to go to the top of the mountain particularly but for these old Chinese parts the mountain was where one went to find oneself and one was identified with the mountain you know so that's a good point yes keeps coming back with this influence of Daoism and naming there's a quote I remember from Simone Valdez truth is unutterable but without utterance no art and another contemporary poet wrote Fanny Hal all of my writing is an attempt to say the word god and so that paradoxical nature of what how the language

[68:57]

does enable us somehow or another connect with what we're referring to as the sacred is basically part and paradoxically a part of naming because that naming as you suggested earlier is also an extension of power in the claim to power or possession of power it continues to be a difficult notion for me not so much in terms of understanding in an intellectual way the dispossessing of the universe if you will whether being in the mountain or part of it but how we use in the composition of poems the very language

[69:58]

which ultimately becomes a threat to our... yeah well there's no escape from language see there's always language that's making language is so completely what it means to be human there's no way you can get away from it and language is naming yeah and language is naming so the only way out is in you know what do you mean by that well I mean you can't if we would all decide that language is the problem say we're all going to give it up you couldn't do it you know you'd go to the top of the mountain and vow never to speak to anybody again but you'd have that language going on in your head you know so the only thing that you can do about that is to use language to free yourself within language or at least make that attempt and for me that's what poetry is all about

[70:59]

how do you do that in your poetry well in my poetry I'm constantly trying to discover what anything means you know I'm in other words for me the most of course poetry can't be guilty of all these things right it's not that poetry is always you sit down and write a line of poetry and automatically everything is perfect you know and you're free no I mean poetry can also be turned into the same stuff right the same commodity the same and this is what happens right to us as we become poets we write and oh now we know how to write and oh now I'm supposed to write like that because I'm this guy these are the kind of things that I'm supposed to say and so forth and so on it gets very repetitive so one has to have a sense of discovery right what is it that is going on here now what are these words anyway and what are they trying to say anyway

[71:59]

and how do they work and how can I break them open and how can I discover the way that they move and so forth and so on so for me any poem is an effort to start all over again to try to understand what the experience of making language is for me so I'm not now I had an insight now I'm going to tell you what it is that's not for me that's not a poem for me a poem is now I have no idea what will happen let's see that's for me that's the situation of a poem so in that sense you know so when I write a poem I feel you know a deep encounter

[73:00]

with language itself and I refresh my whole sense of what language is and what it's doing and how I am a person in language because you know my language for any of us language is inseparable from the person that we are I mean if we literally this is really true if you somehow had knocked your head on the wall over there and lost your ability to make language you actually wouldn't know who you are you really would also lose your identity if you totally lost the I'm not talking about how you can't speak the words are in your head but you can't speak I'm talking about the language part of your brain is shot and you can't apprehend language at all then you don't have then you're not you actually it's true you're not you anymore so we are we are our language and so to encounter ourselves and refresh ourselves we do that with our language you know yes

[74:03]

the interesting thing is if you didn't have language you're also not free in that way I was thinking if you didn't have language yes if that happened to you you wouldn't be free and I guess that's what you mean by saying the only way is in it exactly because we can't escape from language it's not about let's all get lobotomies and let go of our language and then we'll all be happy we won't be happy because we won't we won't have been what we are which is a human being we won't be a human being if we don't have yes children learn language it's it's supposed to be about possession and control in one way but in another way it's about freedom because it's yeah and it's about love did you ever see a child suddenly you see it's a very complicated thing all this because you know like in a certain way you could say what you can't name you aren't aware of

[75:04]

because when a child sees you know like orange or apple you know say apple child sees apple and says apple and gets it that this is an apple usually when a child learns a word like that it's not saying oh no I gotta learn this word there's probably a lot more words I'm gonna have to learn it's not like that it's like they're thrilled they're totally thrilled wow you know because the apple appears to them now in a way that it didn't before and so they're overjoyed you know they're thrilled so to watch a child acquire language is a wonderful thing so language has that aspect to it as well it's very freeing and very the world is brought to us through the language see like if you walk through the woods and you know the name of a plant you'll see that plant if you don't know the name of it you might not see it you literally might not see you actually might not see it in the cacophony of all the things going on

[76:06]

it's language that accesses the world for us to a great extent so it's not like I said it's more complicated than that language is the bad guy and we're gonna like you know get into the good guy and get rid of this bad guy no it's more complicated than that just like it's it's tough you know to be us right it's complicated being us you know it's a wonderful gift to be a human being and it's a big problem and we face a huge problem being a human being we have these problems I mean that are basic it's not just because we're not making enough money that we have problems it's because we're human beings we got a big problem there and yet that's also our joy and what's wonderful about us so that's how it is it's complicated and we would like to have the good guys and the bad guys and all we have to do is but it's not like that you know it's just settling into the complexity of what it is to be who we are and language is a huge part of that and when you read a poem it brings it all up

[77:08]

that's why we end up talking about it all all the time yeah it's funny how you know at the base of language um you know like a spring is sort of like a spring on top of the ground but you know how far down out of the ground is there a spring you know it's like animals don't speak but they they know what they want and they communicate that to each other either with sounds or with sort of um a shared a shared knowledge at the same time you know it's like a a cat you know looks at you standing by its pole you know it knows what it wants it knows that you're going to figure that out but there's no language it's interesting that underneath our I think in a way languages is a blessing and a curse because underneath it all is something very simple that like what you say without language we would cease to exist or we us you know but I don't think

[78:08]

that's true I think that we would we would we would feel what we we would just feel we would yeah we would be a different kind of creature animals do have language yeah animals do have language yeah then I'm sitting here listening to all this yeah yeah and I'm thinking well you know uh if we really want to get into this discussion it gets very complicated like what is a language right you know I don't know I mean in other words there's linguistic linguistic theory and so forth about which I know very little but people have thought about this a lot and yeah certainly uh can you say that there's language uh without words well probably you know there's a kind of language without words but there is a kind of a language without words so you could say animals have a kind of a language some proto language or version of language but then symbols you know obviously words are different from some uh and some uh

[79:09]

not uh um qualitatively different but certainly it's a step further in complexity but anyway I don't know what am I talking about I don't know anything about this I can talk like really what we were talking about was that poetry sometimes to me is um is trying to get as close to possible as motivating source of language yeah that's my image I always say like poetry is like we're walking around on the first floor or second floor or third floor of the house and poetry is the guy in the basement in the furnace you know throwing the throwing the coal on poetry is working at that level of language at the basis I would say of language that's how I feel anyway well I was sort of thinking God I wonder if anybody will have anything to say about these poems and I thought that we would do

[80:11]

about six poems tonight or at least four anyway I thought we would just warm up on these first two it would take us about twenty minutes really I was planning to do at least three more poems tonight but I'm actually delighted that everybody feels full permission to speak and one question is can you hear each other yeah seems like it even though you couldn't you have to try to huddle a little bit more closer in but it looked it seemed like most of the people could hear everybody's comments so very enjoyable class for me really nice and next week we'll meet again and take up some poems you can you know this booklet is for you to have so you know see if you have anything I will probably come next week with a few poems in mind that I'm thinking of discussing but it's not necessarily going to go that way we'll see what happens are we actually going to do some writing are we going

[81:11]

to do some writing I wasn't planning on it I wasn't planning on doing some writing but that's not to say that maybe we will we could do that we'll see what people want to do but my plan was that we would discuss but we'll see let's see how it goes those of you who have requests to do writing you can speak to me and we'll see yeah I was wondering if you could you have the author here can you give us a poem or two of yours well there's some of them in here there's that and that's another thing I could come and bring my notebook and read some of my recent poems at some point I'd be happy to do that if you're interested too can ask you rather than guessing what the poem is I might not know travel further down the road yeah okay yes I have a friend from out of town coming to visit me she's a practitioner I was wondering if I could take her to the class just for one night sure next week sure okay thanks everybody good night see you next week

[82:12]

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