Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte is by the lovely Vajradarhini speaking again on poetry in the Buddhist tradition. and#8220;Dew in Zen Poetryand#8221; is a beautiful exploration of this well-loved image of impermanence.
From the talk and#8220;The Transitoriness of Life and the Certainty of Deathand#8221; given as part of a series on the and#8216;Four Mind Turningsand#8216; of the Tibetan tradition given at Tiratanaloka Retreat Centre, 2005.
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for Your Life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. [music] But first of all, I'm going to talk a bit about due drops. I'm going to talk a little bit about a kind of image of impermanence from the Zen tradition and from Zen poetry. So I'll start with a little poem. The electioners can cut like blades sometimes, while the due drop world is the due drop world. But yet, but yet. So the electioners can cut like blades sometimes, while the due drop world is the due drop world. But yet, but yet. This is a poem by somebody called Issa who lived in the 18th century, Japanese poet. And he had just had this really difficult life where his mum died when he was very young and then he had a stepmother who sort of made his life hell. So he left home as soon as he could. And eventually he married when he was about 50 and he had four children and they all died in infancy. And then his wife died in childbirth. And then his house burnt down. And then eventually he married, he remarried when he was quite old. And he finally had a daughter who lived, but she wasn't born till after his death. So he died when he was 65. So it's a little kind of life story of Issa. And if you read his poems, he just writes the most beautiful, simple, sad poetry. And he has this quality of empathy. So he often writes about things like flies. You know, you're right about a fly. With this huge amount of kind of empathy that he's really like put himself in the position, you know, in the fly's shoes. So to speak, they don't really have shoes, do they? It's just these beautiful sort of simple poetry filled with empathy. This world of due is nothing but a world of due and yet and yet. So I'll just come back to that in a minute, this world of due. I was also reading a book about Dogen's poetry. And he's the same in that he uses this image of due and due drops. And he lived in the 13th century and is on our refuge tree, one of the teachers on our refuge tree. His mother and father both died when he was very young. And he had quite a strong, I suppose, insight, really, as a very young boy into the whole of life being a very fragile, this kind of loss and grief. And he decided to become a monk when he was about 14. And he writes, "Due drops on a blade of grass, having so little time before the sun rises, let not the autumn wind blow so quickly on the field." So if you read this Zen poetry, Japanese poetry, and if you read about it, you realise there's all these kind of scenes, which are quite definite, they mean definite things. And they're reoccurring. So like one is the seasons, you always get the seasons, poetry about the seasons, and each season is a symbol for something else. And it's interesting because we're in the season of death, of death and impermanence, being autumn. And also, apparently, in this poetry, due, whenever due appears as an image, it also means autumn, interestingly. So it's like this kind of fleetingness. It's like a sort of something disappearing in the due. So you have this image of due being an image of impermanence, really, an image of sort of transience of things. And there's a little saying or something that goes which will last longer, the master or his dwelling. And it's said to be like asking which will last longer, the due on the morning glory, or the morning glory itself. And we've got this Christmas planted this morning glory. So I keep thinking about it because these flowers come out, and they don't last a day, do they? They last about half a day. So in a way, when we ask a question which lasts longer the due or the morning glory, it's like, well, maybe the due will fade before the flower does, or maybe the flower will fade before the due does, but either way, by evening time, they'll both be gone. So that's that sort of image. And then you also have another image to do with due, which is due frost. So I've just come across this idea of due frost. And if you go out very early in the morning, on a morning, I don't know what weather conditions cause this, but sometimes there's just lots of june, isn't there? It's very kind of wet, so you get those kind of misty mornings. And if you go up by the reservoir, where there's, I mean, I particularly notice it here, but by the reservoir, there's these fences or these kind of, yeah, kind of like open sort of fence. And it's full of cobwebs, you know, which are presumably there, well, they're obviously there all the time, but you don't normally see them. But because they're covered in this due frost, I suppose it's the same as a sort of frost, you can see all these kind of forms out in nature that you don't normally see. So again, this due frost is used as a sort of symbol of things being insubstantial, so it's as if we need to reflect that we are as insubstantial as that kind of due frost. Those kind of forms made of june, made of nothing, you know, that will fade as the sun comes out. And then the image of due drops, so in this poetry, when he talks about the due drop world, well, the image of due drops is an image for tears. So it brings in the kind of whole emotional, the emotions that go with these reflections on impermanence and insubstantiality, that kind of reflection has got a certain kind of flavour, and the flavour is sadness. And so these, these due drops, they represent tears, so it's a kind of sort of painfulness. And I think you know it's quite interesting because it's the three lecturers, so due is impermanence, the due frost is insubstantiality, and the due drops is sort of painfulness, yeah, suffering, sadness. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donnie, and thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [music fades out] [BLANK_AUDIO]
