Getting Beyond the Bitterness

I turned to the poem in the anthology partly because of an experience involving a friend when I was in college.  That fellow student's family owned a produce company that brought together vegetables from a number of farmers, cleaned and packed them, and distributed them to grocery stores.  One evening, my friend took me to see the company's processing center after the day's operations had been completed.  There I saw more radishes than I had ever seen in my life or will probably ever see again.  The radishes were neatly packaged in small bags piled five-feet high on a pallet five-feet square.  An estimated 125 cubic feet of the familiar reddish radish, each no more than an inch in diameter!

As I said, it was partly that memory that prompted me to turn to a particular poem -- one with "radish" in its title -- in an anthology of sacred poetry.  The poem was a simple three-liner by the 18th-century Japanese poet Issa:

"The man pulling radishes

pointed the way

with a radish."

So short, the poem forced my mind to pause, taking it a few moments to picture the gardener on his knees, one arm outstretched to give directions, using the humble radish in a new-found way, as a pointer.

Growing up, I was introduced to radishes when our family had Sunday dinner at a restaurant.  On each of our restaurant salads was a single brightly colored radish, mostly as garnish.  It would require returning to that restaurant a few times before my sister and I could begin to nibble like rabbits on the humble, red vegetable as we became accustomed to its bitter edge.

In the collection of spiritual poetry, I turned to the biography of this man Issa, and found there more bitterness than I was prepared for.  The biography described how "Issa (1763-1827)... lost his mother at the age of three and was continually beaten by his stepmother....  His later life was marked by poverty... and the death of his first wife and four young children.  But somehow he triumphed over all these obstacles and kept his simple, affectionate nature.  His is particularly admired for his love of animals and his championing of the underdog."

My heart warmed to this somewhat overlooked man, and so I turned back the pages of my book to read another haiku poem by him:

"In the cherry blossom's shade

there's no such thing

as a stranger."

This second three-liner was a very upbeat poem, the kind our U.S. society today prefers to have populating its collections of religious poems.  However, having read of Issa's life -- both the bitter and the beautiful -- I decided to treasure both of the poems, printed back-to-back on a single leaf of paper in my book.

~~~

Has there been in your life any bitterness you have had to get beyond to find your way?

(The poems and biography of Issa are from The Enlightened Heart,

 ed. Stephen Mitchell, © 1989.  pp. 99, 158 & 100.)

A Small, Sound Voice on Stillness

Cultural historical memories are fickle:  A few people are remembered; many are forgotten. This holds true for literature as well.  How many people have written poetry?  The number is unimaginable.  And yet, open any anthology of poetry, and you will find poems by fewer than a hundred poets, usually only a few dozen.

Siegfried Sassoon (1917)

One early 20th-century English-speaking poet who has been a victim of this cultural forgetfulness is Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967).  His poems are mostly forgotten because he got labeled as being a "war poet" for his poems expressing the horrors of World War I.  But his war poems could not match those of his contemporary Wilfred Owen, and so Sassoon became eclipsed by Owen.  However, only some of Siegfried Sassoon's poems are about war.  Many are spiritual.  Some are also about Nature.  One in particular speaks of winter in a way that is meaningful whether the world is at peace or at war.

The poem begins with the words "December stillness," setting the nearly-still atmosphere of both the poem and the winter day the poet is experiencing.  The next words quickly show that it is more than stillness Sassoon is evoking.  He is also speaking about an invisible depth behind the stillness, a spiritual depth -- one that some readers might want to use the word "God" for, even though Sassoon never employs that word:

"December stillness, teach me through your trees

That loom along the west, one with the land,

The veiled evangel of your mysteries."

At this point, it would be tempting for any poet to begin describing those "trees."  After all, winter evergreens can be majestically beautiful, as can the outlines of bare trees with winter snow in the background.  Instead, Sassoon seizes upon another phenomenon of winter -- that the bareness of trees can better allow us to look up at the sky:

"Speak, roofless Nature, your instinctive words;

And let me learn your secret from the sky,"

Continuing to convey his firsthand, immediate experience, Sassoon has his clear line of sight caught by something seemingly unexpected:

"And let me learn your secret from the sky,

Following a flock of steadfast, journeying birds"

Now, Sassoon's contemplative openness to Nature on this still winter day leads to his becoming more aware of, and being able to express, a yearning within his heart.  The desire he speaks in the poem's final line mirrors something he perceived in the birds:

"Teach me to travel far and bear my loads."

We may all be eventually forgotten.  Nonetheless, may our lives more often touch the depths of our own living by being touched by the depths of Nature.

~~~

Even if winter has only begun where you live, have you noticed any changes in Nature?  Have you noticed any changes in the stirrings of your heart at this time of year?

(Sassoon's poem is from Collected Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, © 1918, 1920.)

(The entire poem can be read at this external link:  "December Stillness.")

Etiquette, Empathy, and Animals

The short radio segment stayed with me.  It did so because it was about something people shared and didn't share in their ways of looking at the world.  The article (on NPR radio) was about a survey showing that in the U.S., both parents and schoolteachers thought it was important that children be kind.  But when the survey dug a little deeper, it revealed a significant difference in what the adults meant by “being kind.” Parents tended to think it meant that a child had good manners.  In contrast, teachers tended to thing that being kind meant that a child had learned to empathize with what other people are feeling.

In its usage today, the word “manners” lies on a spectrum between “etiquette” and “courtesy.” Etiquette encompasses practices that have to do more with locale and social standing.  Such as where the fork, knife, and spoon are placed around the dinner plate.  Or how a person manipulates their fork while eating.  Although manners can overlap with some codes of etiquette, the word “manners” implies ways of behaving that are more fundamental to smoothing the wheels of social interaction. Such as saying “please” and “thank you.”

Even learning manners, however, does not require being sensitive to what other people are feeling (as those schoolteachers tried to remind us).  Being well-mannered means that I have developed some self-restraint, civility, and forbearance in my actions.  But that does not mean that I can empathize with the feelings and needs of other people amid the complexity of real-life situations -- so that I can compassionately adjust my response to the needs of the moment.

Even some non-human animals can be said to be well-mannered based on the demands of their own social groups.  For example, animal behaviorists (such as the 20th-century pioneer Konrad Lorenz), have studied how dogs have evolved instinctive rituals for greeting each other.  And dogs have even developed such abilities as recognizing that a human's smile showing teeth is a sign of friendliness, whereas instinct usually interprets the baring of teeth as meaning aggression. However, such an extension of knowledge beyond one's own species is uncommon. For non-human social animals, “manners” are in most cases confined to their own species.

In contrast, as the Christian eco-theologian Thomas Berry has pointed, we humans are unique in our ability to feel compassion for all other species. Although instances have been observed in which some mammals have shown distress when an animal of another species was in anguish, to the best of our knowledge, only we humans can try to identify with what all other species experience.  And behind that possibility, in addition to our conceptual powers, lies the remarkable ability of humans to empathize with what another creature might be feeling.

There is a classic story out of the ancient Chinese faith-tradition of Taoism.  The wise teacher Chuang Tzu and a companion, walking together, pause on a footbridge to watch the fish swimming in the water below.  After a bit, Chuang Tzu says “How happy those fish are!” The second man replies, “You are not a fish.  So you cannot know what a fish feels.”  But Chuang Tzu cleverly responds by saying, “If that were the case -- and you not being me -- then how can you know what I do and do not know about fish?”

~ ~ ~

What do you think prevents us human beings from better cultivating our ability to empathize?

(The story “The Joy of Fishes,” in poetic stanzas,
 can be found in The Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton, © 1965.  pp. 97-98.)

(The pictures are from Konrad Lorenz's books Man Meets Dog and
  King Solomon's Ring, and are used under Fair Use.)

Looking Up to Trees

Down the block from the house where my wife grew up, there is a modest but nice park.  There is only a little bit of playground equipment.  Instead the park is mostly a place for kids to run and adults to walk beneath the tall, very old trees.

One evening near sunset, I strolled alone into the park, and found myself for some reason pausing before one of the trees.  With no one else around to make me feel embarrassed, I felt a desire to unhurriedly contemplate the tree.  At first I saw up close the rough texture of its bark and the pockmarks from where life's diseases had left scars.  Despite those signs of the tree's vulnerability, I was next struck by the tree's massiveness.  It's height and solidity.  I thought about how the tree had endured countless nights, standing there unattended through wind, rain, and dangerous lightning.

I found myself not only looking up at the tree in its immense height, but also looking up to the tree for its virtues.

To some people, it might seem strange to turn to trees to look for virtues to inspire.  But Tennessee Williams, in his play The Night of the Iguana, turned to a tree for guidance on the distinctly human challenge of facing one's mortality.  In that play (superbly adapted into a movie), a middle-aged spinster artist is traveling through Mexico with her 97-year old grandfather, who is a poet.  The two are broke, trying to hang on by her drawing portraits of tourists and by his recitation of poems for tips.

Intermittently throughout the play, the now nearly deaf and nearly blind grandfather repeats the opening lines of a poem he has been working on but has been unable to complete:

"How calmly does the orange branch

Observe the sky begin to blanch..."

The play's climax is expressed poetically through the grandfather finally having completed his
poem mentally, which he then recites while his granddaughter transcribes it.  The completed poem expresses how the tree, even though it lives "without a prayer" (unlike humans), nonetheless shows "no betrayal of despair" in the face of its future:

grandfather reciting poem
in The Night of the Iguana

"Sometime while night obscures the tree...

A second history will commence.

...the broken stem

The plummeting to earth...."

This return to the earth is:

"An intercourse not well designed

For beings of a golden kind."

It is instead " [a] bargaining with mist and mould."

And yet, despite that altered future, the living tree still holds its head high.  So much so that the soon-to-die grandfather looks up to the tree, expressing in the final stanza of the poem his desire to live like it:

"O Courage, could you not as well

Select a second place to dwell,

Not only in that golden tree

But in the frightened heart of me?"

~~~

Are there any qualities of trees that you would like to share in?

(The poem quoted is recited by Nonno in The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams, © 1961.  Act. 3.)

(The movie-still from The Night of the Iguana [1964], directed by John Huston, is used under Fair Use.)

(The full poem by Tennessee Williams, in print and read by a different actor, is at this external link:  "How calmly does....")

A Flow that Courses Beneath Our Lives

Rivers.  Every continent on this planet has at least one major river that forms a backbone of life. There is the Nile of ancient Egypt.  The Mesopotamian Tigris and Euphrates of Biblical proportions.  The Mississippi.  Not to mention the Ganges, considered sacred, so important is it to India.

I remember once in my very early adulthood looking out a railway-car window at night as the train I was on crossed over the Mississippi River.  Even though I had read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn growing up in school, only then, as I saw that river's serpentine twists in the moonlight, was I able to truly understand how Huck and Jim were able to experience that river as both a source of safe places to hide and as a treacherous place for navigating in the fog.

celebrating the Festival of Lights
by floating lamps on the Ganges

Obviously, rivers are composed of water, and as such participate in all the symbolic meanings of water, no matter which shape the river takes.  However, because rivers are massive and flowing, they have carried additional layers of symbolism -- ones that draw upon the aspects of depth and of time.  (As the early 20th-century author Thomas Wolfe knew when he titled one of his novels Of Time and the River.)

The story of humankind has been filled with tragedy and comedy, mischief and virtue, chaos and order.  Through it all, rivers have been not only a physical means for life-support, but also a way for faith-traditions and writers to find a way of supporting the fragile boats that our lives sometimes become.  Rivers have thus served as symbols that penetrate into the often hidden continuity of our existence amid all of life's flux.  Amid all the twists and turns of life.

contemporary ferryman in India

I do not know of any novel where this layer of
symbolism is used to better effect than in Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha (1922), in which the author fuses Eastern Buddhist thought and Western psychological insights.  That book follows the life-course of a man from early adolescence through his middle years and into his later years -- as he struggles to find an integrity and meaning for his life.  Both as a young man and as old man, he crosses the same river, while that ever-flowing body of water and the ferryman provide a continuity. During one of their encounters later in life, the ferryman guides him with this lesson:  "The river has taught me to listen; you will learn from it, too.  The river knows everything; one can learn everything from it.  You have already learned from the river that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek the depths."

The 14th century Christian mystic theologian Meister Eckhart had a gift for spiritual teaching. Part of that gift lay in his ability to speak of the Eternal in ways that helped his students discern God not as an abstract concept but as a Force underlying their own ordinary lives.  Eckhart drew upon many metaphors to do that.  Once he wrote:

"God is a great underground river

 that no one can dam up  and no one can stop"

~~~

Have you found a continuity in your life that helps sustain you?  What is it?

(The Hesse quote is from Siddhartha [1922], trans. by Hilda Rosner, © 1951.  p. 86.)

(The Eckhart quote is taken from Wrestling with the Prophets by Matthew Fox, © 1995.  p. 13.)

(The first photo is by User:Pradeep211, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

(The second photo is by Steffi, upload by Herrick, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)