spiritual values – The BeZine

When we traveled to Ireland we visited Skellig Michael, a monastery founded by Christian monks in the 7th century. Life there was remote and harsh, the weather often severe. The monks collected rainwater to drink, raised a few animals and imported soil from the mainland nine miles away so they could grow vegetables on that barren little island.

If a monk made a rare crossing to the mainland for supplies, rough weather might strand him there for a week or a month. To return to his spartan life in a cold stone beehive hut, he would have to climb 700 feet up these winding stairs, bearing whatever supplies he had fetched home.

On our life’s journey most of us earn our bread, raise our families, and pursue our passions. Sometimes, like water flowing down a hillside, we take the path of least resistance. What in your life do you care enough about to be willing to make this climb?

– Naomi Baltuck

NAOMI BALTUCK ~ is a Contributing Editor and Resident Storyteller here at Bardo. She is a world-traveler and an award-winning writer, photographer, and story-teller whose works of fiction and nonfiction are available through Amazon HERE. Naomi presents her wonderful photo-stories – always interesting and rich with meaning and humor – at Writing Between the Lines, Life from the Writer’s POV. She also conducts workshops such as Peace Porridge (multicultural stories to promote cooperation, goodwill, and peaceful coexistence), Whispers in the Graveyard (a spellbinding array of haunting and mysterious stories), Tandem Tales, Traveling Light Around the World, and others. For more on her programs visit Naomi Baltuck.com

BUDDHIST POETRY IN THE WEST

Jamie Dedes

We often think of the Beats when we think of Buddhist inspired poetry in the West. Actually, the influence of Buddhism in the West began 100 years ago, largely due to the midwifery of Ezra Pound, that American expatriate poet of the Lost Generation, an influential figure in the Modernist Movement in poetry. He played a role in Imagism, his generation’s rejection of flowery Victorian and Georgian poetry in favor of directness and economy. Pound took a year to write of this experience in the Paris Underground, distilling essence much as the Japanese did with their haiku, a poetic form.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough. Ezra Pound

Where the Lost Generation adopted stylistic elements of Buddhism and struggled with meaninglessness under the pall of World War I, the Beat Generation was anything but lost and went beyond style. In ‘50s atmosphere of paranoia, the Beats found sanity in Buddhism. In the light of non-duality, no difference between heaven and hell, man or woman, the hierarchies and them vs. us mentality becomes meaningless. The mendicant life recommended by Buddha becomes a haven. Life on the road and the poetry of rebellion become antidotes to 1950s conformity and consumerism in America.

Western interest in Zen and Zen poetry is perhaps a surprise to some but it is also absolutely serious. Alan Watts criticized the Beat Generation poets, calling them dillettantes. He couldn’t say that of today’s Buddhist and Buddhist-influenced poets, not with the likes Leonard Cohen, an ordained monk, and Jane Hirshfield, who received Soto-Zen lay ordination. Buddhist inspired poetry today is characterized by neither hopelessness nor rebellion, rather by the Buddhist spiritual values of non-duality, transience and impermanence, and the practice of present moment and mindfulness. In their hands, reading and writing poetry becomes spiritual practice.

Photo credit ~ Beautiful and very uncommon Chinese Celloid Buddha Shrine. Probably late Ching, circa 1900. 8.5″ tall, 6.25″ wide, 4 5/8″ deep. Item 4216 courtesy of curator of The Buddha Gallery.