1973.
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mind from fi xed perceptions of beauty,” he does not consider this type of
production to be art. Art requires skill and thought. Watts does, however,
point out that there are Zen artists who have learned to control accidents such
as in Japanese calligraphy and ceramics. He says, “According to Zen feeling
there is no precise rule … which can be formulated in words and taught
systemically. On the other hand, there is in all things a principle of order
… termed li” (96). In Chinese philosophy, li refers to the organic patterns
which occur in nature, and te, in Taoist philosophy, refers to the ability to
recognize and capture the unrestrained beauty of li. Watts describes it as
“the element of the miraculous which we feel both at the stars in heaven and
at our own ability to be conscious” (97). He argues that it is the possession
of te which distinguishes art from everything else.
The nontotalizable nature of Buddhism lends itself to open-mindedness
and open-endedness and, therefore, allows poets to experience te and
graceful acts of the mind resulting in creative outlets for and creative outputs
of poetic expression. In an interview with Jeffrey Side, Lazer points out,
“I think that at a fundamental level we are talking about ways of thinking
and living that remain open, that are not so much fi xated on answers as on
process. In the case of Buddhism, I suspect that it is its non-dogmatic (or
non-totalizable) nature that many American poets (particularly those of an
innovative or experimental affi nity) have found so appealing.”7 Postlanguage
poets, characterized by their refusal of fi nality, have embraced Eastern
notions such as those of Zen Buddhism (and some of Taoism) because these
forms of spirituality are open to process (wu-wei) and avoid absolutes.
An Off-Rhyme Relationship
However, while nontotalizability is important in discussing Zen
poetry, it does not explain the entire correlative nature between Zen and
contemporary North American poetics. A historical perspective is also
necessary. In April of 1987, about thirty poets and zennists met at Green
Gulch Zen Center north of San Francisco for a weekend of Zen and poetry.
The gathering was called “The Poetics of Emptiness: A Collaborative
Gathering of Poets who Meditate.” Among those in attendance were Gary
Snyder, Norman Fischer, Philip Whalen, Anne Waldman, Charles Bernstein,
Gail Sher, and Jane Hirshfi eld. Schelling writes about this event in the
preface to his anthology, “Over that weekend a collection of nine writers
– some of them urban based experimental writers, some representative of
7 Lazer, Hank. Interviewed by Jeffrey Side. The Argotist Online. 1 July
2006 <http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Lazer%20interview.htm>
Zen Buddhism
The University of Alabama McNair Journal
56
rural or backwoods poetry styles, others with no particular affi liation to a
school or scene – meditated together, ate together, and spent the days and
evenings thinking and talking about Buddhist practice and the discipline of
writing Buddhist poems” (xiv). Many of the conversations and speeches that
occurred at Green Gulch were documented in an edition of Jimmy and Lucyʼs
House of “K” called “The Poetics of Emptiness.” These talks illustrate the
off-rhyme relationship of Zen and poetry, drawing on discipline, practice,
and mindfulness as congruous connections.
Writing poetry demands awareness, an intensifi ed level of consciousness
more transcendent than the average mode of the mind. It occurs in a moment,
the poetʼs mind conversing with the world through the pen and onto the
page. In her new book The Public World/Syntactically Impermanence, Leslie
Scalapino attempts to unravel the metaphysical and metatemporal aspects
of poetry in order to illustrate the connectedness of Zen and writing. She
writes, “the syntax and the structure duplicates the process of the readerʼs
own mind-phenomena … the nature of the present is only disjunctive,
the times occurring separately are at the same time” (4).8 She refers to “a
moment” as the conjunction and disjunction of past, present, and future
merging together but occurring separately simultaneously. Despite the
circuitous and convoluted wording, her argument is sensible in that she is
discussing metatemporality in terms of the Western linear approach to time.
One of Scalapinoʼs contemporaries, Norman Fischer, Zen priest and poet,
seems to arrive at the same conclusion but in a less tortuous manner in the
preface to his new volume of poetry I Was Blown Back. He writes, “I never
date my poems, imagining them I suppose to exist in some extra-temporal
zone, which is how it feels when I am writing them, as if the words were
coming from elsewhere, or at least nowhere.”9 Scalapino also argues a sort
of binary relationship between mindfulness and mindlessness which occurs
in writing, “The poetry is ventriloquism that … is actual conversation. … It