I wrote this poem many years ago, probably around 1990 or so, inspired by reading one of Chogyie, the Vajracharya's pieces from his 108-poems collection First Thought Best Thought, published, I believe, in 1987.
It went through a lot of incarnations, countless re-writings actually, before it popped up again, to my own surprise, in this version today, with a new beginning and new ending of which I cannot make heads or tails either, rationally. But there is its own logic to it that requests to be honored. Actually, I had already discarded the poem, and removed it from the folder with the pieces that I see fit for sharing with the public one day when I'll be a little older and maturer… Ha!
I know, I know: Why sharing poems when the site is supposedly dedicated to informing about or spreading of Buddhist yoga?! Yes, I can hear you. But, not really. Compartmentalization doesn't work. Yoga here, poetry there. Too much separation. And too many baskets for the dirty laundry of the intellect. Poetry, when done in the spirit needed, IS yoga. And yoga when properly applied, IS poetry. No doubt.
Especially, Buddhist yoga is not one separate thing, something you can use like a toothpick to remove the remains of the steak (sorry, my vegan friend, or the broccoli) you had for lunch from the gaps between your teeth. No, you and I cannot remove karma just like that. You and I need the whole deal. The vision. The feeling tone. The arts, the philosophy… the many superfluous aspects of mind - to finally get to the heart of the question that is, in a way, the only question worth contemplating and solving: the question of life and death.
The dharma is about understanding and expressing and living, in your/my own way: the crucial question of life and death. As Red Pine says in the introduction to his translation Hui Neng's Platform Sutra: "Life is important. And death is important. This is something we all deal with sooner or later, but it isn't something we all deal with equally well."
So, today, let's deal with it in a poem, if you're interested that is.
*****
Before any birth can occur
A death must have happened.
Before a tiger can be born
A tiger has to have died, or a mouse.
Hazy image fading from the
fringes:
A man supine on the ground
His shirt stained red in the chest
Where the heart was still beating
seconds ago…
Now eyes are turned up.
Glazing over as breath has already
left.
Yet the rocks of the cliff
Keep humming their prayer-like
chant.
At least some things
Never change.
This prayer will continue,
Until the eon ends.
In fact, the ashen face displays
Just mild surprise:
Ah, such is the reality of this
life
Which is death!
*****
What an animal!
Tiger is:
Stalking through thickets of
bamboo,
Paying his evening visit to the
water hole,
Sniffing nonchalantly
Around hoof prints
Left by a family of gazelles
When they ran away in flight.
What a simpleton!
Tiger is:
Roaring to challenge
All folks in the jungle
Except for elephant and snake
And then grooming his whiskers
Lost in the pleasure,
Very meticulously.
What an image!
Tiger is:
Striped energy pure,
Color of tropical dawn
Parted by streaks of
The black of tree trunks
And the shades of leaves.
What a destiny!
To be born tiger:
To instill fear
Not really trying to
But only pointing out
The joy of living and the chase
On the wild side
Even for those who are prey.
What a pleasure!
Tiger takes in the small things:
Driveling in reminiscence of
This hearty chunk of meat
That used to jump
Over bushes and grassy knolls
Carefree paying the price.
What nonsense they come up with!
To regulate tiger out of the
jungle:
Of course, he is anything
But your reasonable kind of guy.
Yet he has honor.
Reason being beyond his grasp,
He’s often in trouble, alas.
He’s got paws. He’s got claws.
No planes cleverly laid out, except
very short term.
He’s got eyes. He pricks up his
ears,
And acts on impulse.
That’s my tiger!
In fact, he is the humblest of
creatures!
Tiger is:
Content with himself,
Loving whatever he encounters,
With a roar or a burp,
Or by not paying attention at all.
*****
Naturally, this one too,
Will have to go on a fine day
When it is good to die
Vanish like the previous mirage
From whose roars and runs of love
He emanated as slightly befuddled
compassion
A slayer of mostly females but
always
Elegantly and according to
etiquette.
Born indeed in the year of the
tiger
In lands so flat and grey and
alien,
Absurdly unreal, and mental in
their disorder
That no one there appears to have
any idea
About a true tiger’s grotesquely
playful tigerness
That knows not of any ultimate
prison.
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