Snow last night
Morning's all ice -
Insistent rosary of the creek
I stop
Listen
Head bowed
Then
Tight hold "Old Cane"
We move on -
Careful
Careful
*
Yet another post into the VOID but, still, a good letter by Carl Jung re: the noble pursuit of the end of suffering. Best, counsels Jung, to find meaning in and of suffering, and effective (let's presume healthy) ways to soothe, persist, even thrive in midst of the warp and woof (woof woof!) of the "Ten Thousand Thinks" - HA! a Jungian "slip" of the brain-tongue-glong - meant to write "Things" but is it not the real issue, what all our thinking does - trying trying - qua qua qua - all the (FAT CHANCE) "live long" day singing "La La La! - Lords and Ladies of Nothing Much?"
And not sure if Jung said this but he would heartily agree - And even better - best to not waste it, suffering. My old part Cherokee grandmother used to say, "Son, when you fall down, make sure you come up with a handful of dirt." I didn't know it then but that was my job description for life or, as poet Charles Olson wrote, "I got my marching orders" - and I add, substitute, rather -
ORDURES.
And we. all creatures great and small above and below (bellowing as we go), come by it - misery, Jung uses this word, not "suffering" but I'm on a zen jag again so, Buddha's First Noble Truth (LIFE'S front teeth knocked out) is that Suffering's THE Persistent Thing - repeating myself, looping in the loamin' - we all come by it honestly as
"cortal moils" (mortal coils) trying in late stage hominid-o-cidal devolution attempting to tell SHIT from PEANUT BUTTER while picking fly shit outta the black pepper aka
"gotta get me sum 'lightenment' fum somewhere's cuz I kin smell it!" OY.
Thus, as always, I, me, 'poisonally,' subjectively, die-rectly go to mys-directing Zen, my Cheating Zen (see an earlier post here on the blogspot), a real friend with 'is or 'er pants on backwards, a big red nose, an' a profound sense of the absurd aka EXISTENZ - with an unsinkable/unthinkable INTUITION that there is more to us and to cosmos and to consciousness than meets "the eye or thigh" (nods to Freud's apt GOTCHA!)
and/but then comes the urn, post-burn,
the dig, post the surrey reeling jig on the
top soil - cortal moil, or better,
coital moil! to keep the jig and the grave diggers on their toes:
Twenty years a pilgrim,
Footing east, west.
Back in Seiken,
I've not moved an inch.
- SEIKEN-CHIJU
Earth, river, mountain:
Snow/lakes melt in air.
How could I have doubted?
Where's north? south? east? west?
- DANGAI
Searching Him [Buddha] took
My strength.
One night I bent
My pointing finger -
Never such a moon!
- KEPPO
At last I've broken Unmon's barrier!
There's exit everywhere— east, west; north, south.
In at morning, out at evening; neither host nor guest.
My every step stirs up a little breeze.
- DAITO
Magnificent! Magnificent!
No one knows the final word.
The ocean bed's aflame,
Out of the void leap wooden lambs.
- FUMON
Life's as we
Find it— death too.
A parting poem?
Why insist?
- DAIE-SOKO
*
And yet....and yet....
Dinah Washington, All Alone On The Street Of Regret
It was sunrise, October.
Karen had just done herself in.
I suffered it through with
William Blake and gin.
Over the fence across the street
children ran to class and Blake
too chased those kids fast through
leaves in the chill school yard.
I thought - the ground's already hard over
you, Karen. To Charon then and keep
yourself warm. My arms no longer can.
You left no note in the dawn.
Out of lime and song at 7 a.m.
I dress, spin down the steps like then
in this morning now thin with Spring.
There's green over you now.
I can't help but see a thin mildew
form 'round your fingers in the dark.
Blake's down playing in the park.
I'll play some Dinah when I get back in.
Now heart,
don't you start that singing again.
*
Trust the insistent heart's singing despite the moiling.
SO!
Let Jung speak in his missive below
but one last zen zinger which is always an indirect, bent pointing-finger, and laughter, always laughter, the joke's
NO HERE AFTER
- take off yer flip flops and walk with clearer enough eyes BLINK BLINK - no escape so why try
"cuz always dirty feet (the first, middle, and last sermon)."
Regarding dirty feet and other parts, Basho Matsuo of Edo, Japan wrote four hundred years ago, and this one saved my life (a figure of speech), helped (does still) me to waste less time or, rather, to accept such wasting as a job description:
I would be a monk
but for the dust of
the world on my shoulders.
Thusly,
if yer shoulders ain't dusty/dirty, folks,
then GET BUSY.
Once the goal's reached,
Have a good laugh.
Shaven, you re handsomer—
Those useless eyebrows!
- KISHU
These zen poems above are from Lucien Styk's marvelous book which you can read online at this link:
https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/zen-poetry.pdf
*
Musical interlude from the Western canon, some loveliness, tender, to dilute summa da zen,
Requiem composed by Luiji Cherubini - Messa de Requiem - a good thing when dark cellos open the thing as it this album cover - wow click on't to enlarge it oscurito (darkness - one must stare at the gold just as one tries to focus on night stars:
*
And NOW, finalmente! Jung's letter:
To V. Subrahamanya Iyer
Dear Sir, 16 September 1937
I quite agree with you that it is a noble pursuit for any philosophy to seek a way to happiness for all mankind.
It is quite obvious that one cannot attain to this end without eradicating misery.
Philosophy must find a way to accomplish the destruction of misery in order to attain to happiness.
I should call it a pretty ambitious task, however, to eradicate misery and I’m not so optimistic as to believe that such a task could be accomplished.
On the contrary, I believe that misery is an intrinsic part of human life, without which we could never do anything.
We always try to escape misery.
We do it m a million different ways and none of them entirely succeeds.
Thus I come to the conclusion that a feasible thing would be to try to find at least a way how to enable people to endure the inevitable misery which is the lot of every human life.
If anybody achieves at least endurance of misery, he has already accomplished an almost superhuman task.
This might give him some happiness or satisfaction.
If you call this happiness, I wouldn’t have much to say against it I sincerely hope that I shall see you again in India.
In the meantime I remain with every good wish,
Yours faithfully,
C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1, Pages 235-236]
How Long Might I Stay in the Lovely? UponTurning 73 Years Old in Winter Mountains - A Confession
Truth be told, O presenting grief,
I have been poem-less for months
I blame The Intruder, insisting
the death of poetry
and so much more, like, say -
Everything I kneel to
out of brokenness,
out of elevation,
devotion perhaps in
between
little flames
beyond their wicks,
mystic at last
If I wore a hat
I would remove it
such pure slow gestures
butoh or
ballet
convey
that there is not even wind, that
there is only spirit
beyond flame — words
what comes after — as before
what staring is for
when in doldrums
then, again,
reading much,
find moment's reprise
slips a phrase from a
sleeve,
an image dreamed,
poetry visual
so
try
and fail
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