A Storehouse Of Treasures Opens By Itself - A Thanksgiving Day Reverie And Homage To John Tarrant

NOTE:  This essay was originally published November 23, 2017.  

All photos but for the two Asian ink paintings are by Warren Falcon. 

NOTE 3/29/2018:  

Happy to say that I was misinformed (my mistake) that John Tarrant, zen master and writer, had died in 2010.  He is alive and kicking zen rocks up and down zen non-hills still.  

I will just let this essay stand (or sit) as is

as the grackle 

wrestles with 

the tree top

These pentitential psalms of David play while snow flurries out over the creek steeply below the  crest this house rest upon; spruce trees sift and sort out just which large bird of many will try their tip tops to rest upon...grackles, and, yesterday, an enormous eagle regally perched in stillness as the top limbs, thinner being uppermos, bent from feather weight and still, a day after the grackle's heft, gently sways as the arbol job description says. Zen's a job, too, efforts needed yet

No need to watch the breath here in Keene.
What is seen is enough to nestle one inside and out.
Cold feet. Too ensconced to move and search - sort for socks.
Upstairs a toilet flushes. Two year old feet clumsily thump
as Psalmist David laments, 

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. . . My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?"

Meanwhile roasting turkey aroma brooks no other scent though spruce and fir try while sage cornbread dressing also wafts downstairs where I sit zafu-ed beside a large plate glass door, me waking up, espresso cup full and steaming, taking in what is seen. And heard. Then, as instructed between sips, let them go - "se fue" ("they went away" or "got gone" in Spanish) - or they clumped up in scores of spider webs....seems this dark, cool ground floor space is residence for spiders all kinds and is thusly webby.  One massive web complex stretched over the entire  toilet bowl upon my first arrival to the ground floor apartment.  Creepy.  Amazing. Wilderness living, indeed.

Afternoon. At the desk now, pondering this offering from John Tarrant, Western zen teacher and Jungian analyst who, sad to say, I discover online just this morning, passed in 2010 and, I am surprised to read, had been living in Jersey City just a Hudson River away from my East Village perch. Had I known he was so close by I would have gladly trekked over bridge and river to sit with him. 

I discovered Tarrant years ago via an anthology of American Buddhist poetry,Beneath A Single Moon (click here) and fell madly in love with his poem, Poem To Be Recited While Banishing Loneliness where I instantly memorized the phrase, "he does not shut out any part of himself." This is the essense of Jungian psychology, Jung's notion, or more-than-notion but arrival again and again to an authentic experience of wholeness (what I experience as hold-ness) which includes everthing (natch) and does not exclude or shut out or prefer/value one quality over another. Conscious wholeness, conscious being the operative word, is what Jung means as does Tarrant's line and poem entire:

Spell To Be Recited For Banishing Loneliness by John Tarrant

Like a good Zen student Mephistopheles
says "Myself am hell."
So all the old accounts are mistaken.
We need to translate,
the meanings are turned around:
for his screams, read "delight,"
and for the tortures he undergoes,
read "he does not shut out
any part of himself."

I make a flower arrangement
of frangipani like a froth of stars
and a black eucalypt twig.
I don't care why I am lonely;
it's the taste of copper dust and the ringing of hammers,
the feeling of being so huge
that I don't know what's inside.

For despair, read
"when I stare and stare at a flower
it's bigger than me,"
and for grief, read
"the gentleness of my hands brings out of things
the light that is inside them."

So the grackle wrestles with the tree top rocking as I do in my rocker where I sit with fullness and grief knowing that a remote teacher has been dead 7 years and I had often enough entertained sitting with Tarrant and perhaps find some help with my own wresting a poem, my life's too big to wrestle with, the mind not withstanding, into some good-enough resonant holding/beholding (my frozen fingers just typed "begolding" - thank you Mr. Tarrant).

This koan comes to me from Tarrant now, fitting for the present view through the glass, a black cat named Shadow now at my feet, news of Tarrant taking off "the tight shoe of the body" seven years now and now the word 'year'means nothing at all and while I sit watching, the world is shaking off its dusty robe. And will continue to do so. year by year depending on what the Alloter has in store till kaput, no more. But shake my dusty throw (flung a la Sartre) self I did while I slept with cold feet and nose tip, the room being frigid in spite of a heater hissing away, its blue flame, and gold too, somehow burns without any motion that I can see, my eyes trying to catch some fire to warm from the outside in. Evenso, in spite of discomfort up here in winter mountain frigid's the thing, reminds me that I am heavily, ecstatically (a rare event in older age) alive.

Having lived in a giant city for half my life now I wouldn't exchange my freezing toes and nose, these flannel sheets, red red, for all the miracle of its urban bridges (webs, too, of metal sorts and spans) with its parks allowing some green space enough to hint of the island's aeons of it, green, while a resident, one of many, mourning dove on my fire escape wakes me to receive the noise of the all too human world mugged by machines and machinations, odd treasures that they are, or can be, or that we must alchemize then into. The dove doesn't care where I am, there or here (which I prefer) beneath mountain steeps....but breath by breath and scatter shot thoughts I'll lend homage to Tarrant and that wake up event suggested by the word and name Buddha.

From John Tarrant a fitting koan for Thanksgiving day:

The storehouse of
treasures opens by 

itself. 

You can take them,
you can use them,
anyway you wish. 

For now, lightning is a good story.

by Juan Bosco, Spain

I look up just in time

to see a black wing 

disappear behind a stand of spruce. 

What eyes and wings are for.

Impromptu "Ku" Torrents for Tarrant

Give this looking back a rest

so fall into

purple fields

edged by sheer snow peaks 

where sheep sure-feet know

no fear of heights and there 

do dung and play fearless 

or at least pretend not to fall 

in their waking dream which 

is the thing -

concavity curves

in a dead hatchling's

sparkless eye reflecting

dead eggs' perfect

forms soft brooded

upon as one might

brood one in hand

pondering which is

the better off the

flown lone one or

the ongoing nest

knot which can also

denote an egg -

hatched or not or

clotted everyly or

otherwise

is all

surmise 

who knows

what is the thing

joy's winged

malingerers

rise in sudden

annunciate thunder

As one elderly old bird once said

my being newly fledged/ flung,

me at her knobby wither-knees

admiring her mustache and tooth,

told me. she, to observe and note

1 or 3 do re mi's or more like the,

or to better the, feathered choirs

so try at least to sing

Chirp Caw Crow or Cackle,

break for Grackles, their cousins

black, cross-eyeds seers blear

in all day's array never blink they

say and say and say tho mystery

stays which is a thin

or so hints I Ching 31 (from cafe au soul dot com)

Line 1: Influenced in the big toe = a goal without movement

Line 2: Influenced in the calves, misfortune = better to wait.

Line 3: Influenced in the thigh, humiliation = do not seek low hanging fruit

Line 4: Wishes come true, perseverance brings good fortune = companions

recognize your dream

Line 5: Influenced in the back = no remorse

Line 6: Influence in the jaws, cheeks and tongue = superficial talk

To activate the power of Te, do not negate the mind, but do not allow it to keep

you its prisoner. Being natural and spontaneously yourself, you are always

wooing experience because it will always reflect the condition of your inner

world...

Lieh Tzu was trained by Lao Shang:  For three years, my mind did not

reflect upon right or wrong and my lips did not speak of gain or loss. During this

time, my master bestowed only one glance upon me. After five years, a change

took place, and my mind did reflect on right and wrong; my lips spoke of gain

and loss. For the first time, my master relaxed his countenance and smiled. After

seven years, I let my mind reflect on whatever it would, but it no longer occupied

itself with right or wrong. I let my lips utter whatsoever they pleased, but they

no longer spoke of gain or loss. Then, at last, my master invited me to sit on the

mat beside him. After nine years, my mind gave free reign to its reflections; my

mouth gave free reign to its speech. Of right, wrong, gain or loss, I had no

knowledge. Internal and external were blended in unity. I was wholly unaware of

what my body was resting upon. I was born this way, like leaves falling from a

tree and playing on the wind. In fact, I knew not whether the wind was riding on

me, or whether I was riding on the wind"

'"Grief-muscles" - Charles Darwin

A decade ago, now a stacked deck. decades times seven plus, was in the

Adirondacks, wood stove flue over my left shoulder, the valleys of the

deepening labial folds, dark ink blotting the corners of my mouth, 'goin' south',

or, rather 'west' 'where the fence commences', me gazing 'at the moon till I lose

my senses'. But never the ever-present raver's edge, er, I mean razor's edge.

Was/were my zennish days more or less or not at all, my NOW AND ZEN SOME

days, my zen teacher a proponent of Wrecking Ball Zen which explains the

glazed right eye and the intense left, bereft of self or no-self as the zen language

games go, brilliantly so, sweetens obscurity, blurs meanings edges through

which one can fall into hopeful (bad, bad, no hope no hope screams sensei)

satori, or better, 'what not'. 

From the journal then, rather, yearnal, 

in, rather, urinal - aka pissed zen, patience wearing thin, hair too, gale blowing

from peaks into valley, the comb over undone, T. S. Eliot's gin breathed growling

in the noggin',

"'I grow old. I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms my trousers rolled"

Zen made/makes one, me, somewhat preponderant, or it's just inherently

irreverent me, or, is it just me, if so then

"me who? " - cue zen yodeler in my head, 

warbling "YODEL LAY HE WHOOOOOOO????"

(((((         echoes         re-verbs         )))))

off Three Sisters Mounts looming over

my right shoulder just out the plate-glass door. the Sisters, not my shoulder

(nadda yogini) 

ENTRY - Day 13:

Sensei tells me: 

It's undertow that matters.

I am stumped.

One adjusts. Continually.

The persona is adaptation

appearing to be solid but sleep reveals the neutrality

of the animal.

Dreams tell us otherwise

when we remember them as it takes an ego to witness,

to remember.

They reveal that we are

caught up into something so much greater than

flush and stir.

It's a wonder we make do

as much as we do and still

call ourselves by name, a

species of animal,

homo sapiens.

I regret self pity.

I'd reject it if I could but it adheres,

last resort of old coots born honestly

into it no matter the copious Mercurochrome 

baths, the smelling salts obviating the needed nipple.

The stippled trout I nightly catch,

pink insides turned out by blue

blade kept beneath the pillow

baits me with the riddle

again and again -

Something about a stand of trees,

a man carving some bark,

what breath is for.

Today the Market reports a run on Mercurochrome.

Birth goes on.

I am for rebirth.

A dirth of days makes me suddenly Hindu

foregoing gurus and bindu point.

I've made my own here,

one foot well into 'Cracked and Crank',

the drunk tank a memory

worn out.

Doubt is my companion.

Love, too.

No remorse here.

Buys me time, aftershave, and

loads of underwear for the trickles ahead.

Thank the gods for all that.

Oh. And one last good cigar.

Post Script:

I'm switching to

Groucho Marx Zen viz:

YOU SAID TH' WOID

YOU GOT TH' VOID

Indubitably

Its self 

beyond Christmas

and yet and yet

the kneeling boy
in the evergreen

the shattered orn-
aments ever gleam

the needles' net
a permanence enough

gold-leafed & trumpeting

**