Speaker 1: No matter how long you feel like something, if you
Speaker 1: stay alive, you will eventually feel something else. You know,
Speaker 1: it is part of living a human life to experience
Speaker 1: these emotions, the ones we want, the ones we don't want.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Jane Hirschfield,
Speaker 2: an American poet, essayist, and translator, known as one of
Speaker 2: American poetry's central spokepersons for the biosphere and recognized as
Speaker 2: among the masters writing some of the most important poetry
Speaker 2: in the world Today. Jane is a twenty nineteen elected
Speaker 2: member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her
Speaker 2: books include numerous award winning collections of her own poems,
Speaker 2: collections of essays, and edited and co translated volumes of
Speaker 2: world writers from the deep past. Her work has been
Speaker 2: translated into over fifteen languages. Today, Eric and Jane discuss
Speaker 2: her new book, The Asking.
Speaker 3: Hi, Jane, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful to be talking with you.
Speaker 3: I am really excited to have you on. As I
Speaker 3: said to you earlier, I have known of your work
Speaker 3: for many years now, and I believe a long time ago,
Speaker 3: when I start thinking about, like who would be good
Speaker 3: guests on this show, your name was on a very
Speaker 3: very early list. So it's really great that we're able
Speaker 3: to make this happen. And we're doing it around the
Speaker 3: release of a new book of yours, called The Asking,
Speaker 3: which is new and selected poems. So it's sort of
Speaker 3: some new poems and a collection of a bunch of
Speaker 3: your older poems, and we'll be reading some of those
Speaker 3: as we go along. But let's start, like we always do,
Speaker 3: with a parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's
Speaker 3: talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life, there
Speaker 3: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 3: What is a good wolf which represents things like kindness
Speaker 3: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandchild stops and they think about it for a
Speaker 3: second and they look up at their grandparents. They say, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins? And the grandparents says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Well. It is very close to my heart and my
Speaker 1: life's work, because it is so much a story about
Speaker 1: working with the intentions, working with vou working with how
Speaker 1: we turn our awareness, being basically the tiller of our lives,
Speaker 1: of our experience. And I wanted to bring you what
Speaker 1: I think will be a rather unusual response from one
Speaker 1: of your guests, which is a particular story about this
Speaker 1: very thing, which then turned into a poem.
Speaker 3: Please.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to read you the poem first and
Speaker 1: hope not to baffle readers, and then I will give
Speaker 1: you the event behind it. So the poem is called
Speaker 1: the bird Net, and it's from the most recent book
Speaker 1: before the Asking, a book called Ledger. The bird Net.
Speaker 1: I once decided to pretend to be angry. Then I was,
Speaker 1: as a bird is caught in its birdness. Before it
Speaker 1: is caught in the bird net, the bird might be counted, tagged, released,
Speaker 1: the bird might be eaten. It took hours for the
Speaker 1: shaking to leave my body, body of air, body of branch.
Speaker 1: What Earth's yellows and nectars were made for. So what
Speaker 1: happened that evoked this poem was I was teaching at
Speaker 1: a writer's conference, and I won't say where so as
Speaker 1: not to malign the conference. The cooks were a little
Speaker 1: careless about something. So I've been a vegetarian for over
Speaker 1: fifty years now, and somehow I discovered maybe they had
Speaker 1: actually just listed the ingredients, but the vegetarian option for
Speaker 1: a meal for the conference, and we were all eating
Speaker 1: out of the cafeteria, of course, had beef stock in it.
Speaker 1: And I saw this and I thought, well, you know,
Speaker 1: that's not very acceptable. And then I decided, Okay, I
Speaker 1: am just going to strategically pretend I'm very angry, because
Speaker 1: that will make an impression on them and then they
Speaker 1: will not do this again. And so I, you know,
Speaker 1: as the poem says, I decided, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: that angry. I'm used to it. I've seen it all
Speaker 1: the time. Friends have served me with Soto and they've said, oh,
Speaker 1: it's wonderful. I made a homemade chicken stock, and I've
Speaker 1: sort of gone, oh, But I faked anger. And what
Speaker 1: I discovered as I was enacting my anger was that
Speaker 1: first I really felt angry, and then I literally was
Speaker 1: shaking for hours internally afterwards, because I am not, in
Speaker 1: general a person who when I feel anger. This is
Speaker 1: something we can, you know, talk about later in the podcast.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, how do we work with things
Speaker 1: like anger? How do we work with the uncomfortable emotions?
Speaker 1: But it's really rare for me to yell at anybody.
Speaker 1: And I was so upset by having done it that,
Speaker 1: you know, I just felt the effects of it and
Speaker 1: how hard it was to physiologically change my state of
Speaker 1: being after having fed the wrong wolf, basically, and it
Speaker 1: was a great lesson to me that, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: somebody who's a better actor than me can pretend to
Speaker 1: be angry, but I cannot. It is not something that
Speaker 1: I am able to do without feeling the after effects
Speaker 1: of it. And it also, you know, made me question
Speaker 1: a little bit, was this really such a strategically accurate choice?
Speaker 1: Do you have to be angry in order to impress
Speaker 1: on someone that maybe you don't put beef stock in
Speaker 1: the vegetarian entree? So anyhow, that was just such a
Speaker 1: clear example to me of which wolf do you feed?
Speaker 1: What are the after effects of that? And that, of course,
Speaker 1: is what this is all about, This conversation you are
Speaker 1: having with so many of us so usefully over the
Speaker 1: years now, is about how do our lives turn out
Speaker 1: depending on the choices that we make and the awareness
Speaker 1: that we can actually make a choice at all in
Speaker 1: these matters. That's what practice is. That's what the mind
Speaker 1: of malleability is about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's such a great story because it
Speaker 3: speaks to what I often think about, which is sort
Speaker 3: of the interplay between behavior, thought, and emotion because they
Speaker 3: all influence each other. We know how thought can influence emotion.
Speaker 3: I think about something that is unpleasant, and I suddenly
Speaker 3: feel yucky inside my body. You know, we can often
Speaker 3: think about how we'll just wake up in a mood
Speaker 3: you know, an emotional state, and our thoughts sort of
Speaker 3: take on that color. But our behavior is another very
Speaker 3: reliable way of moving things. And we talk on here
Speaker 3: a lot about that behavior being a way to move
Speaker 3: ourselves in a positive direction. But you've given such a
Speaker 3: great example of that behavior how it can move us
Speaker 3: in a negative direction and cause us to feel and
Speaker 3: take on what we are pretending at. And I think
Speaker 3: that's why any program of growth really has to address
Speaker 3: all three of those core elements, because they're all critical.
Speaker 3: And if we look at most of our psychological traditions
Speaker 3: and spiritual traditions, they are most of them addressing all
Speaker 3: three of them in their own way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, we have all heard the very
Speaker 1: simple saying, if you want to be a Buddha, act
Speaker 1: like a Buddha, and Americans especially, we often have doubts
Speaker 1: about this particular piece of advice, sometimes because we have
Speaker 1: doubts about you know, fake it until you make it.
Speaker 1: We have thoughts about sincerity and insincerity, and many of us,
Speaker 1: I think, especially in the current culture, do feel the
Speaker 1: necessity for truth saying speaking the actuality of experience. And
Speaker 1: I think it's really important for those of us who
Speaker 1: are on the path of practice, on the path of
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what is skillful, means, what works,
Speaker 1: what turns out well, what doesn't At a time when
Speaker 1: there is so much to feel, so many different emotions about.
Speaker 1: For me, this experience that's hel in that poem was
Speaker 1: a real teaching of the penalty of running that experiment,
Speaker 1: and that for me because it is not who I
Speaker 1: want to be, And the emotion of you know, tiny outrage,
Speaker 1: the little footstomping person saying they did what weren't they
Speaker 1: even thinking? That's useful information. It's useful information for me.
Speaker 1: Don't eat the dish, it's useful information for the cooks
Speaker 1: next time, you know, do something else. But how the
Speaker 1: information is carried within a life and between people, you know,
Speaker 1: that is the rich field of transformation. And I think
Speaker 1: for all of us now, one of the central questions
Speaker 1: is how can we change the way of this world
Speaker 1: we are part of. You know, it is such an
Speaker 1: obvious moment of crisis and fracture and you know, too
Speaker 1: much failure and to find hope and to find interconnection
Speaker 1: and kindness and tenderness towards ourselves and one another. It
Speaker 1: just feels to me to use a cliched expression and
Speaker 1: existential question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's interesting. I had a conversation with both
Speaker 3: my son and my partner Jinny on a similar line recently,
Speaker 3: and it was really about like, what do you say
Speaker 3: to who when when you encounter people who believe something
Speaker 3: very differently than you do, and even something perhaps that
Speaker 3: you find abhorrent perhaps you know, and what do you
Speaker 3: say when? And to what purpose and to what end
Speaker 3: and to what does it accomplish? And I mean I
Speaker 3: don't have any answers to any of those questions, By
Speaker 3: the way, I think the situations call for a lot
Speaker 3: of discernment, you know. Is this a time to just
Speaker 3: sort of be quiet? Is this a time to say
Speaker 3: something because my internal state needs to say something. Is
Speaker 3: this a time to stay something because I might actually
Speaker 3: be able to change a mind or a heart. And
Speaker 3: everybody's different in this, but it's really hard to figure
Speaker 3: out these days. And it makes me think of something
Speaker 3: you said. I think it may have been on the
Speaker 3: Ezra Klein Show a couple of years ago, and you
Speaker 3: said poems are not accusatory, right, you know, or to
Speaker 3: you you said, a good poem is not accusatory, right,
Speaker 3: in that, because that doesn't tend to lead to dialogue,
Speaker 3: conversation change. Yes, you know, and so I do think is,
Speaker 3: you know, how do we speak truth? How do we
Speaker 3: speak truth to power? How do we stand up for
Speaker 3: what we think is right but not be so accusatory
Speaker 3: all the time because people don't change that way.
Speaker 1: Nobody hears anything other than I think you're a bad
Speaker 1: person if you are accusatory, and they cannot take in
Speaker 1: anything else beyond that. We are such tender creatures, really,
Speaker 1: even those of us who look ferocious and you know,
Speaker 1: appear to be bristling with porcupine quills. I think it
Speaker 1: is very rare for someone to be so pathological that
Speaker 1: they do not, in some way in the hidden seed
Speaker 1: corner of the heart, hope for love, hope for safety,
Speaker 1: hope for survival, all these very basic mammalian things. I
Speaker 1: think a great deal these days about Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Speaker 1: And you know, in that pyramid of what has to
Speaker 1: be established first before the next thing can be established,
Speaker 1: you know, at the very big housing, food, a sense
Speaker 1: of safety, a sense of trust, and with that as
Speaker 1: the foundation, if you can establish that between human beings
Speaker 1: and within lives, then you can begin to have a
Speaker 1: conversation about the next things, which have to do with
Speaker 1: justice and ethics and art and joy and abundance and
Speaker 1: mystical ecstasy. You know, it would take a real saint. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: this is you know, part of the stories of the
Speaker 1: saints is those who can preserve their sense of mystical
Speaker 1: union under the direst of circumstances. That is the very
Speaker 1: definition of a saint. So I heard a conversation you
Speaker 1: had that went up on the podcast very recently. By
Speaker 1: the time this errors, it won't be so recent. But
Speaker 1: you are talking about Saint Francis and the wolf, and
Speaker 1: that the wolf is not tamed, the wolf is heard.
Speaker 1: That is the transformation. It is not force, It is
Speaker 1: not domestication, it is not domination. It is listening. And
Speaker 1: the quality of our listening to one another, and the
Speaker 1: intentions of our listening to one another, I think is
Speaker 1: as important as the quality of our saying and of
Speaker 1: our actions.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I mean, if you look at nearly any
Speaker 3: theory of communication, right, they all start from you have
Speaker 3: to have safety or there is no dialogue, you know,
Speaker 3: And the vast majority of public conversations I see these
Speaker 3: days start immediately from a place of unsafety, like they
Speaker 3: start there, you know, it's not even like where you're like, well,
Speaker 3: I've got to kind of watch to see if we
Speaker 3: head into territory where somebody can safe. It's like that's
Speaker 3: the jumping off point, you know, and it just goes
Speaker 3: downhill from there. So I agree. I was wondering if
Speaker 3: we could maybe talk about something that I think is
Speaker 3: central to your work, and I can see it in
Speaker 3: your work, and I've heard you say it, and it's
Speaker 3: been a key theme of my life. I'll just read
Speaker 3: something you said. You said, a task for me has
Speaker 3: always been to make that sense of myself larger and larger,
Speaker 3: less fixed and less in the grip of the narrowest
Speaker 3: forms of self service, and more available to the larger
Speaker 3: interconnection which we are equally and indelibly a part of.
Speaker 3: And I see that all through your work and my
Speaker 3: origin story a little bit of being a homeless heroin
Speaker 3: addict at twenty four. I remember very clearly when I
Speaker 3: read this section in the AA Big Book that said selfishness,
Speaker 3: self centeredness that we think is the root of our problem,
Speaker 3: you know, and this bondage to self. And ever since
Speaker 3: I saw that that has been my thing. It's like,
Speaker 3: how do I in that bondage ofself? And so I
Speaker 3: was wondering if you could just sort of share a
Speaker 3: little bit about that in any way that you want to.
Speaker 1: So I remember very little of anything. I have a
Speaker 1: lifelong terrible memory. I can't quote most of my own
Speaker 1: poems by heart, let alone poems by other people. But
Speaker 1: there's one line that I wrote when I was seventeen.
Speaker 1: I think that has always stayed with me and is
Speaker 1: directly about your early realization as well. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think the poem that it was part of
Speaker 1: was very good, but the line of stayed with me,
Speaker 1: and it was to define the meaning of we is
Speaker 1: to find a life of a kind. And for me
Speaker 1: this has also been lifelong central because what I mean
Speaker 1: by we, what I want to mean by we, and
Speaker 1: what I when I use that pronoun, is all of us.
Speaker 1: I do not want a boundary of you know, family, location, identity, nation,
Speaker 1: as I've come to say recently, I'm willing to have
Speaker 1: my we be boundaried by you know, the top of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere of the planet, you know, Earth. That's okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, well, all of us here on Earth.
Speaker 1: But I don't even mean just the humans. I mean
Speaker 1: the animals. I mean the plants, I mean the mushrooms,
Speaker 1: I mean the virus, I mean the rocks, I mean
Speaker 1: the waters. That this is the we that we are
Speaker 1: part of.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Lynn Margulis called it the Gaia hypothesis that, you know,
Speaker 1: just as we think of these human bodies as being
Speaker 1: an entity, and yet within our human bodies there are
Speaker 1: so many different beings having their own lives, enjoying themselves
Speaker 1: and to them, you know, our human form is as
Speaker 1: the planet is to us. You know, they might be
Speaker 1: aware of it, but it's pretty irrelevant. They're just, you know,
Speaker 1: busy being the microbiome. I have a poem that's kind
Speaker 1: of about this. If you would like to hear a poem.
Speaker 3: Yes, I would love to. I think that's great.
Speaker 1: So two of the recent books have these poems which
Speaker 1: begin and I think it's rather you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of funny given what we're talking about. They begin with
Speaker 1: the title my something or other, you know, my this,
Speaker 1: my that, And yet what they are all about is
Speaker 1: enlarging and changing and kind of exploding the idea of
Speaker 1: the meanness of our lives towards the largeness, the complexity,
Speaker 1: the interconnected, bigger systems of our lives. So anyhow, this
Speaker 1: is a poem called My Proteins, and it began with
Speaker 1: a story in the Science Time saying that scientists had
Speaker 1: figured out how itch works, which was quite recent, you know,
Speaker 1: it was only I think it was twenty thirteen that
Speaker 1: they figured out how itch works. So it starts with that,
Speaker 1: but then it moves on to what was then also
Speaker 1: a fairly new concept, although most people know it now,
Speaker 1: this concept of the microbiome that you know, there are
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of independent lives within us who are
Speaker 1: actually creating our moods, our intelligence, our day to day experience,
Speaker 1: our health, our vibrancy, our resilience. So anyhow, my proteins,
Speaker 1: they have discovered, they say the protein of itch nature
Speaker 1: etic polypeptide B, and that it travels its own distinct
Speaker 1: pathway inside my spine, as do pain, pleasure, and heat.
Speaker 1: A body it seems is a highway, a clover leaf crossing,
Speaker 1: well built, well traversed, some of me going north, some
Speaker 1: going south. Ninety percent of my cells, they have discovered,
Speaker 1: are not my own person. They are other beings inside
Speaker 1: me as ninety six percent of my life is not
Speaker 1: my life yet, I they say, am they? My bacteria
Speaker 1: and yees? My father and mother, grandparents, lovers, my drivers
Speaker 1: talking on cell phones, my subways and bridges, my thieves,
Speaker 1: my police who chase myself night and day, my proteins
Speaker 1: apparently also me. Fold the shirts I find in this
Speaker 1: crowded metropolis, a quiet corner where I build of not me,
Speaker 1: lego blocks, a bench, pigeons, a sandwich of rye, bread, mustard,
Speaker 1: and cheese. It is me, and is not the hunger
Speaker 1: that makes the sandwich good? It is not me? Then
Speaker 1: is the sandwich a mystery? Neither of us can fold, unfold,
Speaker 1: or consume.
Speaker 3: That's beautiful.
Speaker 1: You know when I was a little kid, I would
Speaker 1: lie awake at night wondering, Okay I took a bite
Speaker 1: of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When did it
Speaker 1: stop being peanut butter and jelly and start being Jane?
Speaker 1: And of course this goes up and down the scale.
Speaker 1: It goes both within our bodies and beyond our bodies.
Speaker 1: So who are we? Anyhow? You can't put a boundary
Speaker 1: around it. You can't put a gel cell around the
Speaker 1: spirit and you can't put a border around our lives.
Speaker 3: That's the children's version of like the ship of theseus.
Speaker 3: You know, right, that's great, it's great, But I mean
Speaker 3: it is a truth everything you just said. And yet
Speaker 3: it is also so hard sometimes to live that experience, right.
Speaker 3: And one of the things I've noticed is that suffering
Speaker 3: is a contraction. Yes, when I'm struggling, that we or
Speaker 3: that sense of me is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking,
Speaker 3: and it's becoming more and more myopic, which then leads
Speaker 3: to more suffering. But it's very hard when whatever is
Speaker 3: going on inside me seems so important or so relevant
Speaker 3: or so critical to my well being to broaden back
Speaker 3: out and say, oh, you know, in the grand scheme
Speaker 3: of things, what ways have you found it are even
Speaker 3: partially effective in sort of going from that, I'm in
Speaker 3: a sort of myopic place where the only thing I
Speaker 3: seem to be able to think about is myself. And
Speaker 3: yet that's not the way I want to interact with
Speaker 3: the world, because it's not the reality I have known
Speaker 3: in the past. It's not the way I know leads
Speaker 3: to my own wellbeing and the well being of others.
Speaker 3: And yet I seem like I'm locked in here, you know,
Speaker 3: when that's happening with me, I mean, after a little while,
Speaker 3: I get so tired of myself. I'm like, oh, crying
Speaker 3: out loud, something else besides this, Me, me, me, me please.
Speaker 1: I think this is why in the Buddhist description of things,
Speaker 1: the first noble truth is named as suffering. And some
Speaker 1: people think that, you know, suffering is something that you
Speaker 1: name it so that you can try to figure out
Speaker 1: how to escape from it, and that is part of
Speaker 1: the description certainly, But also I always think of all
Speaker 1: these noble truths as they are all always present, and
Speaker 1: so you don't get to those of us who are
Speaker 1: not fully enlightened beings. You know, we will always suffer,
Speaker 1: We will always experience suffering. And the thing about it
Speaker 1: is it's so painful that the very pain of it
Speaker 1: reminds you that you are trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: you can do about it. This is information and the
Speaker 1: information of myopia contraction, you know, the unbearable muscle cramp
Speaker 1: of ego when it feels injured, which is something that
Speaker 1: happens to all of us, you know, continually in these
Speaker 1: human lives. You know, it is absolutely unbearable, and the
Speaker 1: very unbearability of it is what reminds you to think, Okay,
Speaker 1: what worked in the past, What have I heard? What
Speaker 1: can I do? What have I learned? I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you two answers to the question. One answer is
Speaker 1: simply something you know learned through the long, difficult hours, weeks,
Speaker 1: months of suffering life. Is if I feel like I
Speaker 1: can do nothing else, I can help someone else. You know,
Speaker 1: I might be in my own doghouse. I am consigned
Speaker 1: to my own personal hell realm for as long as
Speaker 1: it's going to take for me to work my way
Speaker 1: through that experience. But can I do anything that will
Speaker 1: help someone else? And that tiny crack is so useful.
Speaker 1: Of the things I learned a long time ago in
Speaker 1: one of the longest and worst spells of abyss of
Speaker 1: my life was that when I finally emerged from it,
Speaker 1: even that was helpful because it meant that for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life, when somebody describes themselves being in
Speaker 1: such a condition, I know what they mean. That was helpful.
Speaker 1: But then the second answer I'm going to give, which
Speaker 1: was quite transformative for me, was, at some point I
Speaker 1: began to understand that all the emotions are necessary and
Speaker 1: essential information. And so when you realize that this hell
Speaker 1: realm you find yourself in, I mean, for me, the
Speaker 1: two most excruciating of the painful emotions are one is
Speaker 1: anxiety and the other is embarrassment or shame. You know,
Speaker 1: both of those are absolutely unbearable. Grief, I'm quite fond of.
Speaker 1: Grief is a genuine emotion. It is connected to what
Speaker 1: we love, what we care about. Grief is one of
Speaker 1: the faces of love. But anxiety and embarrassment there's almost
Speaker 1: nothing you can do with them. But at some point,
Speaker 1: what I began to understand was they were telling me
Speaker 1: that I had made some mistake, and I needed to
Speaker 1: figure out what the mistake might have been and then
Speaker 1: either vow to not repeat it or figure out if
Speaker 1: there is some way to make restoration, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it is to myself or to somebody else, to whom
Speaker 1: I perhaps have caused injury. And so when you understand
Speaker 1: that this unbearable condition of being can be seen as
Speaker 1: something I can learn from, that begins to put a
Speaker 1: little W. D. Forty in that rusted closed lock of
Speaker 1: the experience. I have a poem that talks a little
Speaker 1: bit about this it's a shorter poem. Would you like
Speaker 1: to hear another poem?
Speaker 3: I would, but I first have to comment on the
Speaker 3: line of the muscle cramp of I don't know what
Speaker 3: you call it, a constricted ego or whatever. Holy mackerel,
Speaker 3: that's a poet phrase right there, so descriptive and so
Speaker 3: much how it feels. It is agonizing.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you. Yeah, we poets. We're always trying to
Speaker 1: look for the vivid description if we can find one.
Speaker 1: It's part of the job, is, you know, can you
Speaker 1: describe something as it really feels in your own.
Speaker 3: Words, in your own language.
Speaker 1: So this is this tiny little poem in which what
Speaker 1: I haven't said in this description of the emotions is
Speaker 1: information is the other thing I realized, because if you
Speaker 1: pay attention to your life long enough, you do realize
Speaker 1: another of the great Buddhist teachings, which is that everything changes.
Speaker 1: You know, transience is inevitable. No matter how long you
Speaker 1: feel like something, if you stay alive, you will eventually
Speaker 1: feel something else. And so one of the other ways
Speaker 1: that I've begun to relate to the emotions is they
Speaker 1: are weather and weather changes, and so this is a
Speaker 1: little poem, My weather, wakeful sleepy, hungry, anxious, restless, stunned, relieved.
Speaker 1: Does a tree also a mountain? A cup holds sugar flower,
Speaker 1: three large rabbit breaths of air? I hold these so
Speaker 1: you know, it is part of living a human life
Speaker 1: to experience these emotions, the ones we want, the ones we.
Speaker 3: Don't want, yep, And that recognition is often a step
Speaker 3: in the healing of them. Is to sort of realize, like,
Speaker 3: of course, this happens to everybody, right, you know. One
Speaker 3: of the things I often find myself in is this
Speaker 3: shouldn't be happening to me. I'm doing something wrong. I've
Speaker 3: somehow missed something in my zen training, or I didn't
Speaker 3: read that book clearly enough, or I should be better
Speaker 3: than this. Somehow I should know better than this. I
Speaker 3: have all these tools. Why do I feel so bad?
Speaker 3: Which just tightens the muscle cramp right right?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, one of my favorite lines in all
Speaker 1: of Budh's teaching is the thirteenth century end master Dogan,
Speaker 1: who said a zen master's life is one long mistake.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like we all are making mistakes all
Speaker 1: the time, and to not idealize our vision of other
Speaker 1: people have got it all solved, because no one has
Speaker 1: it all solved, and at least we've got company. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the good that poems do in
Speaker 1: the world, you know, out there in everyone's lives, other
Speaker 1: people's poems, for me, my poems, sometimes for other people,
Speaker 1: is they tell you that you are not the first
Speaker 1: to have felt whatever it is, that you will always
Speaker 1: find someone who has not only experienced this before, but
Speaker 1: survived long enough to bear witness to it and to
Speaker 1: leave you words and buy the ability to read those
Speaker 1: words of you know, Gerard Manley Hopkins's most desperate dark sonnet.
Speaker 1: You know he lived because he wrote the words down.
Speaker 1: You know, he survived because the testimony is there, and
Speaker 1: that is a great reassurance when you know so much
Speaker 1: of the time, I think for so many of us now,
Speaker 1: one of the things that everyone I know struggles with
Speaker 1: is despair because the issues of a possibly catastrophically failing
Speaker 1: biological planet are so ubiquitous and there's absolutely no assurance
Speaker 1: that we are going to make our way through this,
Speaker 1: and also the failures of culture and justice and social
Speaker 1: compact and economic equity. You know, I came of a
Speaker 1: which at a time of great hope and optimism. The
Speaker 1: First Earth Day happened in my young adulthood, and you know,
Speaker 1: all the environmental things we needed to do were clear
Speaker 1: back then. You know, Jimmy Carter put solar panels on
Speaker 1: the roof of the White House. Ronald Reagan came along
Speaker 1: and took them off. Rachel Carson told us everything we
Speaker 1: needed to know, not only in nineteen sixty two, but
Speaker 1: even earlier, you know, books before Silent Spring, we knew
Speaker 1: what we needed to do. And I really thought, as
Speaker 1: you know, I looked at the first photograph of the
Speaker 1: whole Earth that was taken by one of the Apollo astronauts,
Speaker 1: and the environmental movement was gaining traction. And you know,
Speaker 1: for whatever its flaws were, you know, the Summer of Love,
Speaker 1: which I wit as a person a little too young
Speaker 1: to take part in, but you know, I saw so
Speaker 1: much expansion of the contractions that are equally humanly possible.
Speaker 1: And then over my lifetime I have seen these enormous backlashes,
Speaker 1: and that surprised me. I wasn't prepared for so much backlash,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't prepared for the strength of it, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't prepared for the uncertainty of it. But you know,
Speaker 1: how do we work with despair? I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a question I see everybody asking. And it's not by
Speaker 1: refusing to feel it. It's not by a false optimism.
Speaker 1: It's by feeling it as a spur rather than an
Speaker 1: anchor dragging you to the bottom of the sea. To
Speaker 1: understand despair as a vow to work harder is the
Speaker 1: only way I can pass through its enormous iron gait
Speaker 1: and keep breathing. Yeah, we all want to open our
Speaker 1: eyes the next day if we possibly can, if we
Speaker 1: possibly can, And the example of others' helps, and the
Speaker 1: memory that there have been impossibly dark times before in
Speaker 1: human history and we somehow got through them, the thought
Speaker 1: of biological resilience. All of these things are hands that
Speaker 1: hold mine in the dark.
Speaker 3: Again. By the time this errors, this will be way
Speaker 3: in the past. But I'm preparing to teach a workshop
Speaker 3: at Cripoulu this upcoming week about connecting with nature and
Speaker 3: using it as a path into our spiritual life. And
Speaker 3: I was working today on using nature as an example
Speaker 3: of resilience. And probably know this, but it's one of
Speaker 3: my favorites, which is that I don't remember it was
Speaker 3: Hiroshima or Nagasaki. But basically the scientists said nothing will
Speaker 3: grow here for seventy five hundred years, right, But there
Speaker 3: are a couple of trees that survived all of that
Speaker 3: and continue to grow, and they are national treasures because
Speaker 3: they speak to some resilience in nature amidst horror, a
Speaker 3: beautiful example of like nature finds away and we can
Speaker 3: take strength and hope in that.
Speaker 1: You might be wondering why I'm sitting here with a
Speaker 1: big smile on my face when you.
Speaker 4: Speak of this.
Speaker 3: I hope it's not because it's not true.
Speaker 4: No, it's because I have in my own garden a
Speaker 4: tree which is an offspring from the pallonia that survived Hiroshima.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's so cool.
Speaker 1: Wendy Johnson, the great gardener and Buddhist teacher who ran
Speaker 1: the garden at Green Gulch Suan Center for decades. Wendy
Speaker 1: went to Hiroshima, gathered seeds from that tree, sprouted them,
Speaker 1: and gave them to various practice centers, and she had
Speaker 1: a few leftover, and I have one of them in
Speaker 1: my own garden.
Speaker 3: Ah, that's so great. That's so great. Well, maybe I
Speaker 3: will see it one day. That's really special.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It is an extraordinary thing to be able to caretake.
Speaker 1: And you know, not many people come here. I lead
Speaker 1: a quiet in private life, but I have this beautiful garden,
Speaker 1: and anybody who does come here and gets, you know,
Speaker 1: the tour of the apple trees and the fig tree,
Speaker 1: and the mired lemon tree, and what I call the
Speaker 1: optimistic grapefruit, they also meet the Hiroshima tree, which is
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to say. I didn't have a good place
Speaker 1: to plant it, and so for years I kept it
Speaker 1: in its pot, and I think I bonceied it a bit,
Speaker 1: and so every year it grows a little tiny bit
Speaker 1: more and at some point point I think it will
Speaker 1: truly gain traction and just shoot up and become a
Speaker 1: big tree. But it's still a little on the small side.
Speaker 1: I still cultivate it carefully, make sure it gets some
Speaker 1: summer water. You know, the California climate is very different
Speaker 1: from Japan's climate, and so anyhow, it is still alive.
Speaker 1: And I've had it for you know, probably now twenty years,
Speaker 1: and this year particularly, we got a lot of rains
Speaker 1: this winter, and so the Hiroshima tree is happier and
Speaker 1: putting forth more new growth than usual.
Speaker 3: Good I'm happy to hear that one of my favorite
Speaker 3: quotes of all time is also a Dogan quote, and
Speaker 3: it is enlightenment is intimacy with all things. Yes, I
Speaker 3: know that.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: When you've talked about why did you go into zen
Speaker 3: training in your twenties, you said it different ways, but
Speaker 3: one way you said it was I was looking for
Speaker 3: an unmediated intimacy with things the way they really are,
Speaker 3: or about becoming permeable to the inner and outer world.
Speaker 3: And to me, that's why I love that quote. Right,
Speaker 3: the more intimate I am with everything, the closer I
Speaker 3: feel like I am to actual enlightenment. And I was
Speaker 3: wondering if you could read a poem for us that
Speaker 3: I felt spoke to this just a little bit. And
Speaker 3: it's called the Promise on page two hundred and fourteen
Speaker 3: of the latest book.
Speaker 1: Yes, the Promise. Mysteriously they entered those few minutes, mysteriously
Speaker 1: they left, as if the great dog of confusion guarding
Speaker 1: my heart, who is always sleepless, suddenly slept. It was
Speaker 1: not any awakening of the large, not so much as
Speaker 1: that only a stepping back from the petty I gazed
Speaker 1: at the range of blue mountains. I drank from the stream,
Speaker 1: tossed in a small stone from the bank. Whatever direction
Speaker 1: the fates of my life might travel, I trusted, even
Speaker 1: the greedy direction, even the grieving trusted there was nothing
Speaker 1: left to be saved from bliss nor danger. The dog's
Speaker 1: tail wagged a little in his dream. Thank you for
Speaker 1: asking for that poem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that poem. I mean, I think it
Speaker 3: speaks to impermeability also, but also this trust in what
Speaker 3: life brings us. Yeah, and there's nothing left to be
Speaker 3: saved from whatever direction the fates of my life might travel.
Speaker 3: I trusted. Right, It's just a beautiful poem.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you. And that goes back to what
Speaker 1: we were speaking about earlier, of course, that only when
Speaker 1: people feel this flood of the perfection of things as
Speaker 1: they are, whatever is included in that, can we have
Speaker 1: that sense of safety that allows you to behave well.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things which so troubles me
Speaker 1: about some of the current discourse in that culture out
Speaker 1: there and in here, you know, because nothing happens in
Speaker 1: the world that doesn't happen within each of us, is
Speaker 1: one can either experience one's life as scarcity and longing
Speaker 1: for more and hunger, you know, the hungry ghosts of
Speaker 1: you know, one of the realms of existence is the
Speaker 1: insatiable hungry ghost, which is that second wolf in the story,
Speaker 1: or perhaps the first wolf. I don't know which order
Speaker 1: you put them in. But the other experience of the world,
Speaker 1: which is possible is the absolute abundance at every moment.
Speaker 1: You know, there is not a moment when we are
Speaker 1: not completely surrounded by existence inside and outside. And when
Speaker 1: you can feel your life as abundance, you behave generously.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like a spring flowing out of a mountain.
Speaker 1: You can drink as much of it as you need,
Speaker 1: you can let the rest of it flow on. The
Speaker 1: spring will continue to flow. This is a kinesthetic experience
Speaker 1: of existence, and it is one that when I am
Speaker 1: able to find my way to that sense of the
Speaker 1: flowing spring, I am not afraid, and I can be generous,
Speaker 1: and I don't need to sequester anything. When we are
Speaker 1: continually told that this is a world of us them,
Speaker 1: and somebody is going to take away what we have.
Speaker 1: They're going to come for it. That is the script
Speaker 1: of people who are trying to use are fears for
Speaker 1: their own advancement. And I see how the effective that
Speaker 1: script has been. You know, I'm haunted by certain historical
Speaker 1: things that you know, have happened during my lifetime. The
Speaker 1: genocide in Rwanda, the fracturing of Yugoslavia into sectarians, slaughtering.
Speaker 1: I saw these things, I read about them, I saw
Speaker 1: them develop. And you know, people in Rwanda were coexisting
Speaker 1: and intermarrying and perfectly. It was a functional culture until
Speaker 1: one person decided that they wanted power and got on
Speaker 1: the radio and began frightening people of one another. And
Speaker 1: out of that mutual fear, what a disaster, what a
Speaker 1: catastrophe arose because one person had a mouthpiece for raising
Speaker 1: the specter of the wolf. And it is so easy
Speaker 1: to fan the embers of fear and division, and how
Speaker 1: we can counter them. It is less easy to fan
Speaker 1: the sense of the fountain in us, because you know,
Speaker 1: evolution made us susceptible to fear. The amygdala is a
Speaker 1: very powerful part of the brain, and the Darwinian survival
Speaker 1: mechanisms are strong. And how you can counter them. It
Speaker 1: has to do with how we raise our children. It
Speaker 1: has to do with the stories we tell ourselves. It
Speaker 1: has to do with when you walk down the street,
Speaker 1: are we engaged in a dance of mutual to see
Speaker 1: that allows us not to run into each other. Are
Speaker 1: we meeting each other's eyes? Do we have the sense
Speaker 1: of the city as a place of community that can
Speaker 1: be increased by any of us in any moment, just
Speaker 1: by how you conduct yourself when you walk down the street,
Speaker 1: if someone bumps into you, or if you bump into someone,
Speaker 1: what is said. And you know, I'm really fast to
Speaker 1: say I'm so sorry or you are right. I noticed,
Speaker 1: you know, in this time of the great COVID, you know,
Speaker 1: do you wear a mask? Do you not wear a mask?
Speaker 1: So I'm still, you know, at the time that we're
Speaker 1: recording this, which is pretty far into things, I'm still
Speaker 1: one of the last ones wearing a mask most of
Speaker 1: the time because I've never caught the virus and I'm
Speaker 1: afraid of long COVID. And I have no problem with masks.
Speaker 1: You know, They're not uncomfortable. They work, and at least,
Speaker 1: you know, for me, it has worked rather well. And
Speaker 1: so I hear stories of you know, other people who
Speaker 1: are still wearing masks, and they talk about sometimes they
Speaker 1: go out and somebody looks at them in a way
Speaker 1: that does not make them comfortable and happy. And I
Speaker 1: think I go around inside my mask beaming at everyone.
Speaker 1: I'm always sort of beaming at people, and nobody has
Speaker 1: ever ever said anything mean to me or questioned my mask.
Speaker 1: You know, I try to model a border Collie, the
Speaker 1: dog love of my life, and my border Collige. Oh,
Speaker 1: she wagged her tail at everybody. She was rising mind
Speaker 1: was this border Collie's nature? And so I learned a
Speaker 1: great deal from Maggie about you know what happens when
Speaker 1: you greet everybody with enthusiasm, openness and joy, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, she was one of my great spiritual teachers.
Speaker 1: My border Collie was.
Speaker 5: Hi, everybody, it's Jinny. You've probably heard me with Eric
Speaker 5: on some episodes of The One You Feed. I have
Speaker 5: a question for you. Are you your own worst critic?
Speaker 5: I mean, when you pay attention to how you talk
Speaker 5: to yourself, is it just kind of mean? And do
Speaker 5: you often feel beat down and just heavy inside? If so,
Speaker 5: I truly understand the struggle. I used to believe that
Speaker 5: relating to myself this way was what kept me performing
Speaker 5: at any acceptable level, and without it, I thought I'd
Speaker 5: drift off into the deep end and become a failure
Speaker 5: in pretty much every aspect of my life. But it
Speaker 5: turns out that's actually one of the inner critics worst
Speaker 5: lies that it helps you. I mean maybe short term
Speaker 5: you get a push and do well, but long term
Speaker 5: it's corrosive and it actually keeps you from living to
Speaker 5: your potential. I've created a free three part video series
Speaker 5: that teaches you how to get to the other side
Speaker 5: of the inner critic like I have, and you can
Speaker 5: grab it today. Just head to one youfeed dot net
Speaker 5: slash inner Critic. I'm sharing this with you as not
Speaker 5: only an inner critic survivor, but also a certified mindfulness teacher,
Speaker 5: and you can learn to relate to yourself differently, living
Speaker 5: with an inner lightness and not a sense of being
Speaker 5: at battle with yourself, and life is so much better
Speaker 5: when you're a friend to yourself, I promise. So go
Speaker 5: to oneufeed dot net slash inner Critic for my free
Speaker 5: mini course see you in the videos.
Speaker 3: I've had some sort of collige Shepherd Mutt, and then
Speaker 3: Ralph was I believe mostly border colligue. But he didn't
Speaker 3: get the smart part of the bard.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry he.
Speaker 3: Got the sweet part. Oh my goodness, was he sweet? Yeah,
Speaker 3: the brains didn't quite come with it, part of his charm.
Speaker 3: It's funny. I spent the first thirty five years of
Speaker 3: my life deploring dogs, scared of them. I didn't like them,
Speaker 3: I actively really didn't like them, and then I ended
Speaker 3: up with a dog. I want to go through the
Speaker 3: whole story. Although it involves Chris, who's the editor of
Speaker 3: this show, he basically gave me a dog and has
Speaker 3: completely changed my life. I've had a number of them now,
Speaker 3: and they are one of the greatest joys. Yes, me
Speaker 3: and I agree.
Speaker 1: Great teachers, great teachers, even the in quotes bad dogs
Speaker 1: are good teachers because they so demonstrate, you know, well,
Speaker 1: if you walk around the world growling at everybody else,
Speaker 1: they're going to growl back. Yeah, you know, or at
Speaker 1: least be frightened and pull away rather than move towards.
Speaker 3: Speaking of animals, you said somewhere you described the complete
Speaker 3: joyousness of remembering we are animals. Say more about that.
Speaker 3: That just jumped out at me.
Speaker 1: I do feel that so much of our woe and
Speaker 1: constriction are our human worries, and when they fall away
Speaker 1: from us, when we are just being in the world,
Speaker 1: which is what I see all the animals that I know,
Speaker 1: They're just busy being inside their lives. They're not adding
Speaker 1: the extra layer of self doubt, self questioning, which can
Speaker 1: be useful. We are human beings, we are fated to
Speaker 1: live human lives. But the moments of greatest happiness are
Speaker 1: the moments when we are fully embodied in the moment,
Speaker 1: without adding an extra layer of self talk or worrying
Speaker 1: about future or past. To me, it is the very
Speaker 1: picture of what again, you know, to go to our
Speaker 1: shared and vocabulary when one master asks another, you know
Speaker 1: what is the face of enlightenment? And the answer is,
Speaker 1: when I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm sleepy, I sleep.
Speaker 1: That great simplicity and directness that animals bring to their lives.
Speaker 1: I've also had a long engagement with horses, and the
Speaker 1: wonderful thing about horses is they are such emotional creatures.
Speaker 1: Whatever this moment brings a horse is going to respond to.
Speaker 1: There's no gap between experience and response, and there's such
Speaker 1: a great integrity and honesty in that, and there's such
Speaker 1: a great joy and a horse putting its muzzle down
Speaker 1: to the ground and tearing at the grass, the deliciousness
Speaker 1: of the grass the deliciousness of the sun. And then
Speaker 1: if a fly lands on their back, you see the
Speaker 1: skin shiver to flick it off, or the tail will come.
Speaker 1: The immediacy of the lives of animals. And we are animals,
Speaker 1: you know, it is to our peril if we forget that.
Speaker 3: There was another poem I was going to ask you,
Speaker 3: perhaps to read, which you just wandered right into the
Speaker 3: middle of which is happiness is harder.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, what is the page for that.
Speaker 3: One fifty six? Because you reference that sort of Zen
Speaker 3: Master idea.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, happiness is harder. To read a book of
Speaker 1: poetry from back to front. There is the cure for
Speaker 1: certain kinds of sadness. A person has only to choose
Speaker 1: what doesn't matter, just that this coffee, that dress. Here
Speaker 1: is the time I would like to arrive today. I
Speaker 1: will wash the windows. Happiness is harder. Consider the Master's
Speaker 1: description of awakened existence. How seemingly simple hungry, I eat, sleepy,
Speaker 1: I sleep? Is this choose and completely or not at all?
Speaker 1: In either case, everything seems to conspire against it. That
Speaker 1: poem has a lot to do with something that, again
Speaker 1: I think of quite often when I'm thinking about poetry's
Speaker 1: role in our lives, which is the fundamentally curative sense
Speaker 1: that comes to us when we believe we have some
Speaker 1: agency in our lives. Again, the antidote to despair in
Speaker 1: the poem, I call it a cure for certain kinds
Speaker 1: of sadness, but it is also a cure for despair.
Speaker 1: If there is anything you feel you can do, that
Speaker 1: is the beginning of restoration. And so there is almost
Speaker 1: never a time in a human life when there is
Speaker 1: nothing you can do. And so do something arbitrary and silly.
Speaker 1: Read a book backwards, you know, decide that you're going
Speaker 1: to wear this rather than that. That is the beginning
Speaker 1: of agency, and it is the antidote to depression and
Speaker 1: terror and paralysis. Just do something. And I know, for me,
Speaker 1: one of the times when I came out of the
Speaker 1: darkest stretch of my life, one of the ways I
Speaker 1: knew I was emerging from the darkness was I cut
Speaker 1: some flowers and put them on the kitchen table. I
Speaker 1: chose that. And so you know, happiness is harder. Maybe
Speaker 1: you can't make it all the way to happiness. Like
Speaker 1: a little inchworm, we rise from the pitches of abyss
Speaker 1: and move towards happiness. And then the next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: you go, oh, you know, the windows are so much
Speaker 1: brighter now that I wash them, and that always makes
Speaker 1: me happy. I don't do it often enough, but it
Speaker 1: always makes me very happy when the windows are clear,
Speaker 1: because clarity of vision is a great happiness, Seeing truly
Speaker 1: is a great happiness. Accuracy is a happiness, and foolishness
Speaker 1: and whimsy are also happiness. Is I came very late
Speaker 1: to the sense of whimsy in my life. I was
Speaker 1: quite a serious child. And now you know, I hang
Speaker 1: some lights on a tree outside. It makes me happy
Speaker 1: every time I see them, these glowing Japanese solar lanterns.
Speaker 1: Every time I see them, I'm happy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that line in the poem Hungry I eat,
Speaker 3: Sleepy I sleep. Is this choosing completely or not at all? Right,
Speaker 3: such a great thing to think about. I was really
Speaker 3: struck by that. So the last topic that I would
Speaker 3: like to talk about that shows up in a lot
Speaker 3: of your work is this idea of you say. A
Speaker 3: lot of my poems are about finding a way to
Speaker 3: say yes what I would rather say no to, and wow,
Speaker 3: say a little bit more about strengthening that muscle.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you have raised that topic because it truly
Speaker 1: is one of the lifelong tasks for me, and it
Speaker 1: will never be solved, because there will always be things
Speaker 1: that you know, we wish didn't happen, We wish we
Speaker 1: could refuse, but we can't refuse them. So maybe I
Speaker 1: will tell you about a poem that changed my life,
Speaker 1: not written by me, written a thousand years ago by
Speaker 1: a Japanese woman poet Zumishikipu, and I co translated her
Speaker 1: poems for a book called The Ink Dark Moon, with
Speaker 1: a Japanese speaking woman, Marico Ratani, who would give me
Speaker 1: the literals of the poems. I would write down the
Speaker 1: Japanese words in our alpha bet I would go home
Speaker 1: with you know every possible meaning for each of the words.
Speaker 1: And I knew as I received these poems from her,
Speaker 1: I knew that this particular poem, there was obviously something there.
Speaker 1: I had the grammar, I had all the words. I
Speaker 1: could translate it superficially, but I also knew I didn't
Speaker 1: understand yet what it meant, and that only when I
Speaker 1: understood what it meant would I be able to actually
Speaker 1: turn it into an English language poem. And so the
Speaker 1: poem was this although the wind blows terribly here, the
Speaker 1: moonlight also leaks between the roof planks of this ruined house.
Speaker 1: Although the wind blows terribly here, the moonlight also leaks
Speaker 1: between the roof planks of this ruined house. Now, in poetry,
Speaker 1: a house is almost always, you know, both an actual
Speaker 1: house and a sort of figure for your own life.
Speaker 1: Houses are where our lives take place the moon and
Speaker 1: Japanese poetry can mean anything from the fullness of a
Speaker 1: love affair to Buddhist awakening. And what that poem was
Speaker 1: saying was, if you wall up your house so tightly
Speaker 1: that no cold wind can ever come in, nothing you
Speaker 1: don't want can reach you, you will also be walling
Speaker 1: yourself off from everything you do want and hope for
Speaker 1: and wish. Only by our permeability to the difficult are
Speaker 1: we available to our permeability to the largeness, the great,
Speaker 1: the beautiful, the transcendent, the non self, the whole world,
Speaker 1: the sense of abundance, all of those things. And so
Speaker 1: reading that poem, you know, in my early thirties, as
Speaker 1: I co translated that book, it was transformational in its teaching,
Speaker 1: and it became something which has been re enacted in
Speaker 1: different ways in my own work ever since. And so
Speaker 1: I'll give you one poem of my own that holds
Speaker 1: this same gesture, because you have to rEFInd it again
Speaker 1: and again. These kinds of knowledge are not permanent. You
Speaker 1: can't build a lasting structure. You have to keep rediscovering
Speaker 1: them each time. So this is a poem remembering my
Speaker 1: time at the monastery Tasahara. The three years I spent
Speaker 1: in that zen monastery. We had no electricity, we had
Speaker 1: no heat in the cabins, we had no hot water
Speaker 1: in the cabins. And somehow, even though I don't like
Speaker 1: being cold, and I don't like cold water, I have
Speaker 1: preserved the practice of only washing my face in cold
Speaker 1: water in the morning ever since those three years. So
Speaker 1: the poem is called, rather bafflingly, the title is a
Speaker 1: sidery fragrance, even now, decades after, I wash my face
Speaker 1: with cold water, not for discipline, nor memory, nor the
Speaker 1: icy awakening slap, but to practice choosing to make the
Speaker 1: unwanted wanted.
Speaker 3: That is the work of a lifetime. And to your point,
Speaker 3: we come back to it again and again. I think
Speaker 3: that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up.
Speaker 3: I'm actually going to ask you to read another poem
Speaker 3: of yours in the post show conversation that speaks to this,
Speaker 3: also called the weighing Oh.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, that's an absolutely central poem for me. I
Speaker 1: could have read that one, but I'm glad we saved it.
Speaker 3: We saved it so listeners, if you'd like access to
Speaker 3: the post show conversations, get access to that and all
Speaker 3: our other benefits by going to one feed dot net
Speaker 3: slash join Jane. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 3: This is lived up to my very high expectations of
Speaker 3: talking to you, so thank you so much.
Speaker 1: It has been a great pleasure. Thank you.
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