Todayand#8217;s Dharmabyte: Reality as Change and#8211; Poetry and Impermanence is from a thoughtful and sympathetic talk by Srivati on the most delicate of tasks in any life and#8211; how to live in the present moment. Exploring the subtle aspects of past and present, of memory and expectation, we encounter impermanence as the touchstone of our experience through the practice of writing and#8211; especially poetry. Dharmabyte selected from the talk, and#8220;Becoming a Citizen of the Present.and#8221;
Talk given to the Western Buddhist Order national Order weekend, 2001
[music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. [music] As I try to write poetry, I find it enhances my delight and appreciation. And in attending more closely, I seem to see a bit more clearly how impermanent everything is. I know that everything changes. We discuss this. Intellectually it makes sense. We even witness it. The weather changes, things break, seasons pass, people die. But for many of us most of the time, we do not act as if we know this. I was annoyed when my camera broke recently. I felt let down when a Mitra friend forgot our date last week. I felt cheated when it rained and was cold on part of the convention. In my mind, the camera shouldn't break. I should be able to rely on my friend turning up when I've cooked for them, and the order convention should always be sunny. Why was I so disappointed? Because I wanted and expected things to turn out a certain way, which is particularly foolhard in relation to objects, people and the weather. They are all subject to change, but sometimes I only know this in my head. But I can know this with my whole being if I simply attend to my senses, and writing helps me to do this. Then I start to see a glimpse of the truth as put by Bante in an essay in the path of the inner life. It is not so much that reality changes as reality is change. What is also important is that as in naming the hindrances in meditation, finding the right words for poem, I get to name my own desires and fears. For example, I describe my partner sleeping while I'm still awake, and I find myself writing that I'm not ready for his death. I write about Vermeer's painting "Young Woman with a Water Picture" and what I attribute to her, her lips part with the taste of uncertainty, is a fundamental flavour of my experience. I even saw how I use writing to deflect direct experience when I was in Tuscany and wrote about the night sky. Against the loneliness of the owl cry and the weight of invisible stars, I build this house of words. For me, writing is like meditation. Meditation is like life, and they are all hard to do. Because I get distracted, I want things to be otherwise than they are, and I simply look away. And as I said in a verse from a poem from a few years ago called "Copper Beach", "Can I allow the magpie of the moment to fly into me like the bird to the tree to store its bright treasure?" Looking back over the things I have written, I found that a number of times I have written about this search for the present moment, and I have expressed a lot of doubt about doing that, and admit to the ways that I trip myself up. Yet the present moment, often because I am writing, presents itself anyway. Practice. To quieten my mind, I sit with my thoughts, and I am deafened by the noise. Trying not to achieve anything, I am trying to achieve something. I want to relax into the moment, and I am tense with the effort. Yet, over the grass, beneath the trees, evening sun shines through golden spray from the sprinkle and water falls. What do I end up with after all this writing? Pieces of paper. But it is not just paper, it is the record of various individual moments. And of course these pieces of paper are precious to me because they are my moments. I worry. What if there is a fire, and my scribblings and computers should be lost? That image of leaves of paper curling up in flame feels relevant here, because of course here I am finding that writing aids my appreciation of the present moment, and simultaneously I want to fix those experiences. Although I hadn't consciously thought it before, these scraps are aware of cheating death, because if I am lucky, some of them might outlive me. So then I remember that the paper was once a tree, now long gone, and that I am no different, but this is just an exercise saying that, because I know I am writing this to say to all of you, and what you think matters, because I desire your approval and then stop. Where are my sitting bones? Where are my feet? A black bird suddenly presents itself to my hearing, and even though I am in London in August, I can smell burning leaves and autumn. This is this present moment, and it is already over. This is reality. It is not somewhere else. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [music fades out] [ Silence ]
