Update on Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement (DANCE)
Artists and other activists at the Tate Gallery London highlighting BP's sponsorship of the gallery
Over the last couple of years DANCErs have been involved in various peaceful and fun actions as meditators who love our planet. Some Bristolians travelled to Paris for the global Climate Change talks last December, including by bike.
There have also been actions in London, including the most recent which was a perambulation and chanting at the Welcome Institute during an exhibition about Tibetan Buddhism and medicine which was indirectly sponsored by fossil fuel companies. It was a very dignified action and sparked a quite deep conversation with the curator.
Previously, DANCErs have been part of larger actions organised by a mixed arts group called PLATFORM which includes singers, actors, visual artists and Quakers. These actions are to encourage divestment in fossil fuel sponsorship in places like the British Museum, the South Bank, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Opera House and the Tate and have already been very successful. This is important because for a very small investment, fossil fuel companies gain much prestige and validity which masks their intention to dig up five times as much fossil fuel as is safe for the planet, human beings and other species.
The Tate has been a really difficult gallery to persuade but last year they had their five yearly review. As a consequence, I recently received a message from PLATFORM and 'Liberate Tate' telling us that as from 2017 the Tate will not be renewing their sponsorship deal with BP. I think this a very exciting development, not least, because it acts as a marker to other arts institutions. I feel real hope partly because it proves that persistent creative actions, even by a few, can make real change happen.
Please see the link to the DANCE website in the section below.
Jill Bird
Review of Ryokan's Zen poems
Gordon has been busy and has sent in a review of
‘Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen Poems of Ryokan’ (Shambhala, 1993)
‘One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan’ (Weatherhill, 1997)
(both translated from the Japanese by John Stevens)
“Go as deep as you can into life,
And you will be able to let go of even blossoms.”
Ryokan
I came upon Ryokan’s poetry about 10 years ago on a Bristol Gaia House Group self-led retreat at
The Golden Buddha Centre in Devon. This was the last of a series of 4 self-led retreats that BGHG had at the centre. I became unwell on the retreat and needed to stay in bed for a couple of days. During my time in bed I read ‘
One Robe, One Bowl’ – borrowed from someone on the retreat. The book is of poems by Ryokan, translated by John Stevens.
I had never heard of Ryokan, but my encounter with him through his poetry was a delight and was one of the unexpected highlights of the retreat. I found Ryokan’s poetry to be refreshing and re-vitalising and reading this book was the beginning of a relationship with Ryokan which has continued since.
Ryokan (1758–1831) was an enlightened Japanese Zen monk who was the dharma heir of Kokusen, the most famous Soto Zen
roshi of the period in northern Japan. After Kokusen’s death in 1791 Ryokan chose not to teach but to live his life ‘in the world’ as a hermit in a tiny hut on a remote hillside near his childhood home. Although Ryokan was an excellent calligrapher, his main legacy is his poems, which are simple, clear and poignant; in them Ryokan celebrates nature and the natural life, but his poems also touch the whole range of human experience. Ryokan’s poems have helped shatter preconceptions I previously held about what an enlightened life might be like!
Each poem is a vivid sketch, and together the poems present a fascinating portrait of Ryokan’s simple hermit life.
At night, deep in the mountains, I sit in zazen.
The affairs of men never reach here.
In the stillness I sit on a cushion across from the empty
window.
The incense has been swallowed up by the endless night.
My robe has become a garment of white dew.
Unable to sleep, I walk into the garden.
Suddenly, above the highest peak, the round moon appears.
Although he spent much of his time alone, Ryokan loved company and enjoyed conversing and discussing poetry with his friends, and drinking sake with the local farmers:
Waiting for a visitor, I drank four or five
cups of this splendid saké.
Already completely drunk, I’ve forgotten who is coming.
Next time be more careful!
One of Ryokan’s great pleasures was to play with the village children:
First days of spring – blue sky, bright sun.
Everything is gradually becoming fresh and green.
Carrying my bowl, I walk slowly to the village.
The children, surprised to see me,
Joyfully crowd about, bringing
My begging trip to an end at the temple gate.
I place my bowl on top of a white rock and
Hang my sack from the branch of a tree.
Here we play with the wild grasses and throw a ball.
For a time I play catch while the children sing,
Then it is my turn.
Playing like this, here and there,
I have forgotten the time.
Passers-by point and laugh at me, asking,
“What is the reason for such foolishness?”
No answer I give, only a deep bow.
Even if I replied, they would not understand.
Look around! There is nothing besides this.
Ryokan seemed content with his hermit’s existence and much of his poetry is a celebration of life, however he also endured hardship and feelings of disappointment, loneliness and isolation, and many of his poems describe his sparse surroundings and allude to his loneliness:
The wind tears at my frail body,
And my little bowl looks so forlorn –
Yet this is my chosen path that guides me
Through disappointment and pain, cold and hunger.
Around my shuttered door,
Fallen pine needles:
How lonely I feel...
As well as painting a poignant picture of his simple, earthy life, Ryokan’s poems are infused with Buddhist philosophy, wisdom...and humour:
Inscription on My Painting of a Skull
All things born of karma disappear when that karma
is exhausted.
But where is this karma born?
From whence does the First Cause arise?
Here words and thoughts are of no avail.
I asked an old woman in the East about the matter,
But she wasn’t pleased.
And the old man in the West
Just frowned and left.
I wrote the problem on a rice cake
And gave it to a puppy,
But even it wouldn’t bite.
Realising that such words are bad luck,
I blended life and death into a pill
And gave it to a weather-beaten skull.
The skull suddenly leaped up,
Singing and dancing for me –
A spellbinding ballad that spanned past, present, and
future,
A marvellous dance that sported through the realm of
samsara.
The skull covered everything most thoroughly –
I saw the moon set on Ch’ang-an and heard its
midnight bells!
I Have Nothing to Report
My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest.
Every year the green ivy grows longer.
No news of the affairs of men,
Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.
The sun shines and I mend my robe.
When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems.
I have nothing to report my friends.
If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after
So many things.
Finally, in this poem Ryokan refers to his own imminent death:
My legacy –
What will it be?
Flowers in spring,
The cuckoo in summer,
And the crimson maples
of autumn.
I have had both volumes of Ryokan’s poems for some years now and I find that I come back to them again and again. Amidst the complexity of modern existence there is something refreshing in the vivid simplicity of the life and the world that Ryokan’s poems paint.
Gordon Adam (March 2016)
The ink paintings included in the text are by Koshi no Sengai (1895-1958), who devoted himself to paintings of Ryokan.
Focusing & Insight Meditation: an experiential comparison
by Gordon Adam.
If you did not catch this excellent article last month, you can read it on
our website
