I’ve decided to take a break from Chinese and Japanese poetry and refocus on Western poetry for awhile. Luckily, Sam Hamill’s Dumb Luck makes the transition rather easy. If you’ve been following for awhile, you might remember that I discussed several of Hamill’s translations, and this volume of his own poems, like the previous one I discussed, also contains a number of translations.
The book is divided into four sections. Section one includes poems that generally seem written in the western tradition, though a number of my favorites include allusions to Eastern poems as does this one:
CHUANG TZU AND THE FIRST NOBLE TRUTH
As Chuang Tzu would say
when some good Confucian talked
about righteousness
and virtue, “Not quite there yet,
eh?” knowing that words can say
only so much, that
behind the words are more words,
and more behind those.
What the old man understood
is that each word names, and by
naming, it divides:
this from that and on and on.
But the Tao is one.
What is good is good for whom?
Do dogs have Buddha nature?
Say yes or say no,
and Buddha nature is gone.
The practice refines
itself. All the words I’ve loved
so many years? Going, gone.
Buddha nature, Tao,
the practice of poetry-
going, going, gone.
Present mind and future mind
lie beyond what is contained.
What mind do we bring
to the poem or to bed?
Stuck in samsara,
dreaming of truth and virtue,
just who is that butterfly,
just who is that man
who says again with a grin
and shake of the head,
“Struggle and judgment and pain-
still not quite there yet, eh?”
Having just spent most of the summer focusing on Chinese and Japanese literature, references to Chuang Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha all take on a new meaning, one that relates directly to the paradoxical nature of trying to write about Buddhism. Each word attempts to describe a small segment of “reality;” words are by their very nature “divisive.” How, then, can one use them to convey the idea of the underlying unity of our world?
And in the end, of course, no matter how much I read once I am drawn back to the “real” world, and particularly the world of politics, I find myself muttering “still not quite there yet, eh?”
Still unsure whether I want to shut out the whole world of politics or, like some Buddhist monk protesting the Vietnam war, sacrifice myself to help create a world that I would want to live in.
The second section of the book is entitled Lives of a Poet: Saigyo’s Soiitude. My favorite poem in this section is:
On the clear mirror,
just a single speck of dust.
And yet we see it
before all else, our poor world
having come to what it is.
Although I suspect that there are more than a few specks of dust on my mirror, it’s good to be reminded that we should not allow ourselves to be distracted from our original purpose by those imperfections. If we are, we will forget that the purpose of the mirror is to reflect ourselves so that we can see ourselves as we truly are and continue our journey of becoming.