Reading scholarly articles from 2003 Buddhist Studies Review I am taken by how I prefer the ordinary, everyday, quotidian factuality of mere occurrence rather than the fantastical, mythologically embellished supra-extraordinary telling from olden renderings of stories about celestial creatures, beings of incomprehensible deeds, and narratives so out there as to freeze comprehension far short of the ability to say ‘yes, I see!’
The melancholy of worldly things
Can’t match the hills and mountains,
Where green pines hide the sun
And jasper streams flow long.
Mountain clouds are my tent,
The night moon is my fishing hook;
I sleep beneath wisteria,
My pillow a block of stone.
I don’t look up to the Son of Heaven;
Why should I envy lords and kings?
Life and death with no worries;
What sadness could there be?
--Wang Fanzhi (7th c)
Wang Fanzhi (Chinese: 王梵志; pinyin: Wáng Fànzhì; Wade–Giles: Wang Fan-chih, fl. 7th century) or Brahmacarin Wang[1] was a Chinese Buddhist poet born in Hebi, Henan during the Tang dynasty. He is the putative author of two collections of early Tang vernacular poetry. The language can be dated to the 8th century. Very few of the poems were known until the Dunhuang manuscripts were discovered in the early 20th century. --wikipedia
Give me a dog slowly wagging its brown tail walking into room ready to go outside. Or the crows yapping before 6AM out over the barn. Or the cranky cats trying to scratch each other's noses for the crime of walking past the other too slowly.
There is no peignoir here to be complacent. Only the early drivers and bicyclists navigating the road between mountains settled in breezeless stillness.
The gods, (who said it?), who have disappeared behind the clouds will reappear from the center of the earth.
Those of us who do not walk up the stairs of a public church, temple, or zendo have only the distant barking of a dog, the circling of carrion, and the light exhalation of leaf-passing breeze to speak to us of the holy.
There is a sense of nearing. We are no longer far from things. There are whispers. Those who covet rituals practice with sincerity the rituals they choose. Some of us sit in dooryard facing, front and back, holy mountains. God, or the gods, if such are to be named, grow berries on drooping branches over rusted dinghy trailer by property fence.
There's a price to be paid for going deeper into the commotion of the world. There's an equal consideration to be made when sinking into the facticity of the holy.
Schwer verlässt
was nahe dem Ursprung wohnet, den Ort.
Reluctantly
that which dwells near its origin departs.
(--"The Journey," Freidrich Hölderlin, verses 18-19)
There is a language of words as well as a language of silence. Which we cultivate has implications we've yet to consider.
"Man speaks only as he responds to language.Language speaks.Its speaking speaks for us in what has been spoken:(--Martin Heidegger, in Poetry, Language, Thought)
Sunday morning is a good time to contemplate each of the languages around which we are surrounded.
Here is what I think:
Hör gut zu. Werde zu dem Klang, der deine Seele – dein Wesen – nährt.(Listen closely. Become the sound that nourishes your soul—your being.)
