One for Madhu — A Meditation in Time of War
Gate means gone. Gone from suffering to the liberation of suffering. Gone from forgetfulness to mindfulness. Gone from duality into non-duality. Gate gate means gone, gone. Paragate means gone all the way to the other shore. So this mantra is said in a very strong way. Gone, gone, gone all the way over. In Parasamgate sam means everyone, the sangha, the entire community of beings. Everyone gone over to the other shore. Bodhi is the light inside, enlightenment, or awakening. You see it and the vision of reality liberates you. And svaha is a cry of joy or excitement, like “Welcome!” or “Hallelujah!” “Gone, gone, gone all the way over, everyone gone to the other shore, enlightenment, svaha!”
— and which I remember from my days at Oxford in Edward Conze‘s much earlier English version:
Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond…
And there’s this, from Hamlet, Act 2 scene 2:
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
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So “gate, gate, paragate” gives me “gone, gone, paragon…” — and “paragon” brings me to “paragon of animals … quintessence of dust”.
If you have all three of these utterances in mind — and each one of them is memorable the way a passage in Isaiah or Job, or some great Churchillian speech, or phrase in Melville or Dickens can be memorable — they will all three be present, braided together as a single music, a polyphony, a constellation of meanings, in that one last line.
Roll them on your tongue, taste the beauty in each one of them, the nobility, the evanescence of this human life. And now read the poem through again.
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Madhu:
March 24th, 2012 at 5:03 pm
I was going to be off the internet this weekend, but I will make an exception for this post (I saw the title to the post yesterday before my weekend swearing-off 🙂 )
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First, the poem is gorgeous, Charles. I do like it when you post your poems.
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This line: “nothing is so mechanical visioned in paint”
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Made me think of the following poem:
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Which made me think of this NPR story with Camille Paglia:
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“The red wheelbarrow carries a heavy load of meaning (“so much depends upon”), but what that might be is left unsaid (1). Or perhaps it is inexpressible: language, as an emanation of the human brain, can never fully reach the stubbornly concrete world. To understand his own riveted reaction, Williams analyses the scene into its visual elements and lays them out in small, spare units, unpunctuated to induce our contemplativeness.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4575085
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Which made me realize that is why I couldn’t “commune” with the poem Carl Prine discusses here:
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http://www.lineofdeparture.com/2012/02/24/dear-dr-madhu/
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So, though I understand the beauty of the poem after his “close” reading, I still do not reach the instinctive and meditative state I reach when I read the William Carlos William poem, or your poem.
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Back to another conversation (am I learning to play the game, now? 🙂 ):
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“The Vivid.”
Madhu:
March 26th, 2012 at 2:24 pm
More:
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“So close did the procession pass that one could see the very texture of the soldiers’ faces. I remember one who had put on his powder unevenly, so that here and there his dark skin showed through, looking like those black patches in the garden, when the snow has begun to melt.” – Sei Shonagan, The Pillow Book
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And:
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http://www.americantanka.com/
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The American Tanka online poetry magazine is wonderful, given my taste for the form….
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Yesterday, Charles, I took a little trip around the city because I had guests and promised to escort them to an area of the city I normally like. In the past year, things have deteriorated in my old haunts and the trains I’ve taken for years are frightening, crowded, a hint of fear in the air. Someone who cleans out offices at my work complained the other day that he wanted to see cops on the train. During the ride, which for some reason I was reminded of by the painting from Kings of War that you posted, I made a mental note to never ride that train again.
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And so a city, or a neighborhood dies, when we give up because we no longer feel safe. We plan our escapes. I’m like Goldilocks with the three bowls, I search right, nope too cold, I search left, no too hot, I try the just-right bowl of moderation and I see only status quo thinking, dull, duller, dullest.
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I have no idea where I am going with this but some strand must be linking all these thoughts.