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  • Wayfaring Poet Profile: Ryōkan Taigu
    2023/12/23

    A Wayfaring Poet Profile of the Zen hermit-poet Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)



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    46 分
  • Wayfaring Poet Profile: Yosa Buson (1716-1783)
    2023/11/30

    A Wayfaring Poet Profile of another interesting figure in the Japanese branch of the Wayfaring tradition, Yosa Buson (1716-1783), master artist and haiku poet



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    36 分
  • Wayfaring Poet Profile: Chiyo-ni
    2023/10/18

    In this episode of The Poet’s Dreamingbody, we are taking a look at the female haiku master of the Edō Period (1603-1868): Chiyo-ni.



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    19 分
  • Wayfaring Poet Profile: Baisaō
    2023/09/02

    One of the most compelling figures in the Japanese branch of the Wayfaring lineage, Baisaō - “The Old Tea Seller” - is significant for his unique expression of “going his own way,” in the spiritual sense, but also his role as an innovator in the practice of Tea as a way-within-the-Way. Add to this his love of Nature, his embodiment of the Wayfaring life principle of simplicity, and the precision of his flowing brush in the realms of poetry and prose, and it made him a much beloved “rascal” to numerous artists, tea practitioners, and Zen-minded folk in 18th-century Kyoto.



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    44 分
  • Red Dust Syndrome, Wholesale Belonging
    2023/08/29
    in memory of the beloved Wayfarer Timothy Duncan McCallum (1965-2023)Greetings Good Travelers and Wayfarers,I hope this note, posted in between Wayfaring Poet Profiles, finds you well and that your spirit is vital in these uncertain, perplexing, sweltering, and increasingly unhinged times.On this end, I have had a very busy month but I did manage to squeeze in a few days away with family spent at higher elevations. In all honesty, I wish we could have stayed longer but even small sips from the Great Source of Nature can carry a Wayfarer’s soul for a while. It is this topic of “sipping from the Great Source of Nature” that I want to briefly discuss. I want to discuss it in the context of being an exceedingly important antidote for the times we are living through, thus, a practice, and not just a fleeting pastime. I’ve had many conversations over the last few months with people who’ve reported that they are struggling with feelings of being overwhelmed. Phrases I’ve heard include: “I’m burned out,” “I feel weighted down,” “I feel disconnected from something vital,” “I’ve lost my inspiration for my art,” “I have no energy,” “I’m beside myself,” “I need renewal.” For some of these good “Travelers” (a term my late teacher used for anyone who is attempting to tend their inner life), the source of these sentiments is varied, ranging from internal shifts and experiences of an initiatory nature to the impact of personal losses and tragedies (grief). Some are traversing the territory mentioned in the often quoted Dante line: Midway along the journey of life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path. Translation: The experiences of midlife, what Jungian author James Hollis calls “The Middle Passage.” What often gets left out when citing this quote is the end of the phrase: …But if I would show the good that came of it, I must talk about things other than the good. And, so, alongside the topic of “sipping from the Great Source of Nature,” I want to talk about the ‘other than good’ — though I also hold the view that some of our challenges can ultimately be good because they lead us to where we need to be.In many of the instances previously mentioned — namely, people experiencing overwhelm — there has also been an additional dimension that people are reporting as a contributing factor and this is a general exhaustion of the soul from the conditions of modernity. Some of these feelings stem from what has been called “eco-anxiety,” which the American Psychological Association defines as: “the chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change and the associated concern for one’s future and that of the next generation.” This is a phenomenon you won’t find in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition), but it is being reported more and more to therapists, chaplains, and spiritual companions around the world. For others, it’s a combination of other factors: feeling spread thin from a high-velocity lifestyle, fear and unease generated from the media spin and barrage of bad news of the day, and — in addition to the climate of the planet — the current climate of culture, politics, and society. It can lead to intrapsychic conditions colored by feelings of futility, irritability, and some of the other symptoms mentioned above. Drawing upon an ancient concept of the Wayfaring poets, I have begun to call this Red Dust Syndrome.THE CONCEPT OF THE RED DUSTThe term “red dust” comes down to us from early Tao (Dao)-oriented Wayfaring poets from thousands of years ago in China — tao/dao being a word that translates as “Way or Path” but which is nothing less than an ecologically-oriented ontology, a participatory spiritual cosmology.The early Wayfarers used this imagery of the red dust to refer to the noisy, bustling life of worldly strife of the city and the many delusions and capacities for senseless destruction contained therein. In my path and way of seeing, I think of this as an “energy-residue” — a palpable psychospiritual state of strain brought on by overexposure to such conditions. In contrast, the primal (meaning original) Wayfarers were classically drawn to the quiet, the slow, the peaceful, the natural, the rural, the realm of cultivated gardens, and the wilderness of forests and mountains. They were always contemplating the inner-pattern of life and gauging whether they were living in true accord with it. They were always attempting to cultivate a sense of harmony with self, other, Nature, Cosmos. Being deeply influenced by this Tao (Dao) concept / cosmology / experience, the same calling, or orientation of consciousness, led Wayfarers in Korea and Japan to seek out their own mountains, forests, tea houses, and gardens of contemplation as well. Intuitively, the loose ...
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    39 分
  • Wayfaring Poet Profile: Matsuo Bashō
    2023/07/30

    In this Wayfaring Poet Profile, we explore the life and a few of the verses of Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694). We discuss a range of topics in this episode including haiku poetry, haibun travel writing, the influence of Taoism, Shinto animism, and Zen on his path, the inspiration he drew from certain Wayfarers that preceded him, and some of his unique experiences that hint at the phenomenon of the dreambody — a concept first coined by Jungian-trained consciousness explorer Arnold Mindell.

    With gratitude to all of the translators who have brought forth their own unique perspectives and understandings of Bashō.

    BOOKS

    The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, & Issa, edited by Robert Hass

    Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings, translated by Sam Hamill

    Basho: The Complete Haiku, translated, annotated and introduction by Jane Reichhold

    The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa

    A Zen Wave: Basho’s Haiku and Zen, by Robert Aitken

    The Essential Basho, translated by Sam Hamill

    Basho’s Journey: The Literary Prose of Matsuo Basho, translated by David Landis Barnhill

    The Master Haiku Poet: Matsuo Basho, translated with commentary by Makoto Ueda

    The Art of Haiku: Its History Through Poems and Paintings, by Stephen Addiss

    On Haiku, by Hiroaki Sato

    The Essential Chuang Tzu, translated by Sam Hamill and J.P. Seaton

    HAIKU: The Last Poetry of Richard Wright, introduction by Julia Wright

    Descended From A Travel-Worn Satchel: Haiku and Haibun, by Chris La Tray

    SOUNDSCAPES

    Emergence / Bushido (Alcvin Ryuzen Ramos and Nori Akagi)

    Mesmer / Roy Mattson

    Music of the Smoky Rainbow / Roy Mattson

    Watching Sunlight Fall Through Crowns of Trees / Lougi Verona

    Tactile Ground / Robert Rich

    Shingetsu / “Namu Amida Butsu” / Bronwyn Kirkpatrick

    The Poet's Dreamingbody is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



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    55 分
  • Wayfarer Quotes
    2023/07/16

    Greetings Good Travelers and Wayfarers.

    There are so many Wayfarers of the past that deserve a mention on The Poet’s Dreamingbody, whose paths were undoubtedly oriented to the Wayfaring Life, but who aren’t slotted to become a stand-alone Wayfaring Poet Profile in this first phase of the podcast. One of these is Zeami Motokiyo (世阿弥 元清).

    Motokiyo was an innovator of Noh (a classical form of dance-drama-storytelling in Japan — often with distinctive masks — that inspired such Western poets as Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats).

    He was a prolific and celebrated playwright who wrote over 50 plays. He was a lay Zen monk, and a scholar-practitioner who cultivated a deep life-embodiment of various aesthetic principles inseparable from most of the Wayfarers such as wabi (rustic, solitary living in nature, remote from society, with full comprehension of the transience of life) and sabi (lean, minimalism, voluntary simplicity).

    Another one of these core aesthetic principles that guided Motokiyo’s life is yūgen (幽玄), which sometimes translates as “mysterious”, “deep”, “awe-inspiring”, “non-obvious”, or “grace and subtlety” — a quality that pervades many of the Japanese arts.

    If we look at the actual kanji of this term yūgen, we get a bit more insight into the term: (幽 - secluded, confined to a room, deep, profound tranquility, calm; and, 玄 - mysterious). In essence, yūgen could be said to be a state of consciousness or even a practice — one of withdrawing from the mundane world and entering the ineffable.

    Yūgen is sometimes said to be ‘that which is felt but cannot be said’. In a sense, this term yūgen points to the ever-present Taoist, Zen, and poetic conundrum:

    We have a profound experience — deep, mysterious, awe-inspiring. However, human language and artistic expression fall short of expressing the fullness or totality of the profundity of the experience.

    The opening line of the Tao Te Ching (a root text of the Taoist tradition that shaped so much of Zen) even says: “The Tao (Way or Path) that can be expressed is not the Eternal Tao (Way or Path).”

    Yet, in the words of the late Sōtō Zen master Dainin Katagiri (1928-1990), “You have to say something.”

    So, Zeami Motokiyo is one of these Wayfarers of the past who experienced the profundity of Nature, poetry, artistry, the interconnectedness of humanity, and heart-mind embedded within The Created, and — knowing full well the inherent limitations of expression…expressed nonetheless. Here is but one of his many quotes:

    If you’d like to learn more about the life and writings of Zeami Motokiyo, I highly recommend William Scott Wilson’s translation of The Spirit of Noh: A New Translation of the Classic Noh Treatise, the Fushikaden on Shambhala Publications.

    To explore the soundworld in the background of this post, visit Roy Mattson’s album MESMER



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    9 分
  • Wayfaring Poet Profile: Ikkyū Sōjun
    2023/06/30

    In this episode of The Poet’s Dreamingbody, we explore the iconoclastic Wayfarer Ikkyū Sōjun (1394-1491), a.k.a. “Crazy Cloud”

    BOOKS MENTIONED

    Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers, by Perle Besserman and Manfred Steger

    Zen Masters: A Maverick, a Master of Masters, and a Wandering Poet (Profiles of Ikkyu, Hakuin, Ryokan), by John Stevens

    Unraveling Zen’s Red Thread: Ikkyu’s Controversial Way, by Dr. Jon Carter Covell and Abbot Sobin Yamada

    Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, translated by John Stevens

    Wind in the Pines: Classic Writings of The Way of Tea As A Buddhist Path, by Dennis Hirota

    SOUNDSCAPE

    The Eagle and the Ocean / Riley Lee

    The Poet's Dreamingbody is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



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    53 分