Category: ethics

• June 24, 2013

  The top of the inhalation… the bottom of the exhalation–

  The top of the inhalation is a fold, the bottom of the exhalation is a cut. The fold returns the breath to its downward course, the cut extinguishes it. The cut is the surprise of death, the cleanest mark of impermanence. The beginning of the inhalation is the first dawn, the very edge of the…
• June 21, 2013

  Pei-chien on action and stillness

  The collection, ‘Summer: Collages of Desert Pieties (2013),’ is now visible at andrewjamestaggart.com. There are beautiful photos of summer Daoist travels on each page. Enjoy. * This morning after watering the plants, I meditated upon Zen master Pei-chien’s words (1185-1246). I then put them into a more poetic form: Let your actions be like the…
• June 20, 2013

  Basho’s poetic spirit: A mode of radiance

  For Basho (1644-1694), in whose hands the haiku form achieves its essence, the poet must submerge himself within a natural object, to perceive its delicate life and feel its feelings, out of which a poem forms itself. A poem may skillfully delineate an object; but, unless it embodies feelings which have been naturally emerged out…
• June 19, 2013

  Summer morning: Redwood haiku

  A haiku marries sincerity with accuracy, reintroduces simplicity to lightness. There is no time for parody, satire, or irony. One’s poetic concentration is on the thing, on its relations to what is felt or unseen, and on the world’s radiating significance. R.H. Blyth states that a haiku ‘expresses some realm of the human spirit in…
• June 18, 2013

  ‘Why is Tu Fu sad?’ asks the master

  ‘Why is Tu Fu sad?’ asks the master. A Poem About Radiance ‘It is obvious,’ replies the first pupil. ‘It is, as Tu Fu says: the longest bough has been broken.’ A second pupil differs: ‘The world is unjust: the violent and strong will always crack and break the weak and frail. Had we not…