Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in.Aldous Huxley, Island
Art: John William Waterhouse
2 Koans/2 Poems
off to work!
Blessings,
G
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Koan: Inch Time Foot Gem
A lord asked Takuan, a Zen Teacher, to suggest how he might pass the time. He felt his days very long attending his office and sitting stiffly to receive the homage of others.
Takuan wrote eight Chinese characters and gave them to the man:
Not twice this day
Inch time foot gem.
This day will not come again.
Each minute is worth a priceless gem.
—
Sleeping in the Daytime
The master Soyen Shaku passed from this world when he was sixty-one years of age. Fulfilling his life’s work, he left a great teaching, far richer than that of most Zen masters. His pupils used to sleep in the daytime during midsummer, and while he overlooked this he himself never wasted a minute.
When he was but twelve years old he was already studying Tendai philosophical speculation. One summer day the air had been so sultry that little Soyen stretched his legs and went to sleep while his teacher was away.
Three hours passed when, suddenly waking, he heard his master enter, but it was too late. There he lay, sprawled across the doorway.
“I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon,” his teacher whispered, stepping carefully over Soyen’s body as if it were that of some distinguished guest. After this, Soyen never slept again in the afternoon.
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2 Poems:
A Poem for the Shekinah on the Feast of the Sabbath
Isaac Luria (Aramaic, 1534-72)
I have sung
an old measure
would open
gates to
her field of apples
(each one a power)
set a new table
to feed her
beautifully
candelabrum
drops its
light on us
Between right & left
the Bride
draws near in
holy jewels
clothes of the sabbath
whose lover
embraces her
down to foundation
gives pleasure
squeezes his strength out
in surcease of
sorrow
& makes new faces
be hers
& new souls
new breath
gives her joy
double measure
of lights & of
streams for her blessing
o Friends of the Bride
go forth
all’s sealed
within her
shines out from
Ancient of Days
Toward the south
I placed
candelabrum
(o mystical)
room in
the north
for table
for bread
for pitchers of wine
for sweet myrtle
gives power to
lovers
new potencies
garlands
give her many
sweet foods to taste
many kinds of
fish
for fertility
birth
of new souls
new spirits
will follow the 32 paths
& 3 branches
the bride with
70 crowns
with her king who
hovers above her
crown above crown in
Holy of Holies
this lady all worlds are
formed in
of words for her
70 crowns
50 gates
the Shekinah
ringd by
6 loaves
of the sabbath
& bound
all sides to
Heavenly refuge
the hostile
powers
have left us
demons you feared
sleep in chains
—-
From The Wishing Bone Cycle
by Jacob Nibenegenesabe, tr. Howard Norman
Swampy Cree
One time I wanted two moons
in the sky.
But I needed someone to look up and see
those two moons
because I wanted to hear him
try and convince the others in the village
of what he saw.
I knew it would be funny.
So, I did it.
I wished another moon up!
There it was, across the sky from the old moon.
Along came a man.
Of course I wished him down that open path.
He looked up in the sky.
He had to see that other moon!
One moon for each of his eyes!
He stood looking
up in the sky
a long time.
Then he suspected me, I think.
He looked into the trees
where he thought I might be.
But he could not see me
since I was disguised as the whole night itself!
Sometimes
I wish myself into looking like the whole day
but this time
I was dressed like the whole night.
Then he said.
“there is something strange
in the sky tonight.”
He said it out loud.
I heard it clearly.
Then he hurried home
and I followed him.
He told the others, “You will not believe this,
but there are ONLY two moons
in the sky tonight.”
He had a funny look on his face.
Then, all the others began looking into the woods.
Looking for me, no doubt!
“Only two moons, ha! Who can believe you?
We wont fall for that!” they all said to him.
They were trying to send the trick back at me!
This was clear to me!
So, I quickly wished a third moon up there
in the sky.
They looked up and saw three moons.
They had to see them!
Then one man
said out loud, “Ah, there, look up!
up there!
There is only one moon!
Well, lets go sleep on this
and in the morning we will try and figure it out.”
They all agreed, and went in their houses
to sleep.
I was left standing there
with three moons shining on me.
There were three I was sure of it.
[2]
One time
all the noises met.
All the noises in the world
met in one place
and I was there
because they met in my house.
My wife said, “Who sent them?”
I said, “Fox or Rabbit,
yes one of those two.
Theyre both out for tricking me back today.
Both of them
are mad at me.
Rabbit is mad because I pulled
his brothers ear
and I held him up that way.
Then I ate him.
And Fox is mad because he wanted
to do those things first.”
“Yes, then it had to be one of them,”
my wife said.
So, all the noises
were there.
These things happen.
Falling-tree noise was there.
Falling-rock noise was there.
Otter-mud-sliding noise was there.
All those noises, and more,
in my house.
“How long do you expect to stay?”
my wife asked them. “We need some sleep!”
They all answered at once!
Thats why now my wife and I
sometimes cant hear well.
I should have wished them all away
first thing.
______
commentary
1. Trickster stories go far back in Cree culture (as elsewhere), but the figure here is the invention, specifically, of Jacob Nibenegenesabe, “who lived for some ninety-four years northeast of Lake Winnipeg, Canada.” Nibenegenesabe was also a teller (= achimoo) of older trickster narratives, the continuity between old & new never being in question. But the move in the Wishing Bone series is toward a rapidity of plot development & changes, plus a switch into first-person narration as a form of enactment. In the frame for those stories, the trickster figure “has found the wishbone of a snow goose who has wandered into the Swampy Cree region and been killed by a lynx. This person now has a wand of metamorphosis allowing him to wish anything into existence; himself into any situation.” Howard Normans method of translation, in turn, involves “first listening to the narratives over and over in the source language, then re-creating them in the same context, story, etc., if notable, ultimately to get a translation word for word.”
2. Writes Norman, further: “The Swampy Cree have a conceptual term which Ive heard used to describe the thinking of a porcupine as he backs into a rock crevice: usá puyew usu wapiw (he goes back ward, looks forward). The porcupine consciously goes backward in order to speculate safely on the future, allowing him to look out at his enemy or just the new day. To the Cree, its an instructive act of self-preservation. Nibenegenesabes opening formula for the wishing bone poems (and other tales) consisted of an invitation to listen, followed by the phrase: I go backward, look forward, as the porcupine does.”
The act of telling, then, is one in which traditional ways (as process) do not imprison but free the mind to new beginnings & speculations. This is the basis in fact of the “oral” as a liberating possibility: an interplay that preserves the minds capacity for transformation as important in an ecological sense as that other preservation (of earth & living forms, etc.) that we now recognize not as nostalgia but a necessary tool for our common survival.
Reprinted from Jerome Rothenberg, Shaking the Pumpkin and Howard Norman, The Wishing Bone Cycle.
