"Why I Am Not a Buddhist"

I love desire, the state of want and thought
of how to get; building a kingdom in a soul
requires desire. I love the things I've sought-
you in your beltless bathrobe, tongues of cash that loll
from my billfold- and love what I want: clothes,
houses, redemption. Can a new mauve suit
equal God? Oh no, desire is ranked. To lose
a loved pen is not like losing faith. Acute
desire for nut gateau is driven out by death,
but the cake on its plate has meaning,
even when love is endangered and nothing matters.
For my mother, health; for my sister, bereft,
wholeness. But why is desire suffering?
Because want leaves a world in tatters?
How else but in tatters should a world be?
A columned porch set high above a lake.
Here, take my money. A loved face in agony,
the spirit gone. Here, use my rags of love.

Molly Peacock
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I came cross this poem on a blog, and it immediately struck a chord so I printed it off to keep. I found myself rereading it with real pleasure every time I "accidentally" came across it again in my big box of "might-be-useful-one-day" print offs and cuttings. And since I couldn't chuck that poem out, I clearly needed to blog about it!

I am a great admirer of Buddhism, and certainly went through my Buddhist phase in my late teens. (I've tried on and failed at almost all of the world's principal religions in turn!) I liked that the starting point of the religion was not belief (which I have terrible problems with, as one of nature's unredeemable cynics) but observation and reason. Four noble truths? Fine. An eight-fold path? It made sense but I couldn't quite get round to implementing it in my own life.

And whilst I can see that all suffering in the end comes from attachment, I couldn't even imagine not being attached to things and people.

Isn't loving and getting our stupid hearts broken, trusting and getting let down and disappointed, what makes us human, and in the end makes us grow? How do we experience joy without desire?

The speaker in the poem has a quirky and idiosyncratic list of the things that she would find it hard to let go of. I think that any one of us could supply our own list and it would be, like hers, composed of both the petty and the overarchingly significant. Desire is, as she says, ranked. Not everything we want has equal weight.

How else but in tatters should a world be?

This is the pivotal question of the poem, and of course, rhetorical. How could any of us begin even to know how to answer it?

I have some difficulty with the last three lines. What is "the columned porch" to which she refers? Why does she offer money? How does the face in agony fit with the idea of desire? I'm not sure this ending works (dare I say?).

But the last image: "my rags of love" is effective. This is all I can give you, but you're welcome to it.

And I love the conversational tone and the flow of the piece. As if the speaker is talking to us directly to her lover, building up her argument thought by thought, piling on thoughts as they come to her. And I think this is a case worth making!

"Fasting in Ramadan"

God, what am I
But a pale copy
Of the true ascetics?

A lesson in humility.
Only under such heat, such thirst,
Does the soul realise,
The body is just a mirage.

Forgive me, God, for
Crossing the dates on the calendar,
Numbering thirty days of abstinence;
For observing how much
Temptation surrounds me.
The tap's mouth glistens, even though
It is only my eye that has polished it.

And it is only my longing
That saturates the colour of apples,
That turns a passing scent into form,
Like breaths sculpted in cold weather.

Feasting before dawn,
Each sunrise I fade,
Reduced to a mouth, source
Of desire, of original sin.
And at each sundown, a glassful of water
Travels down my gullet
And turns me solid again.

God, when you breathed life
Into the first man, was that
What answered his craving?
Or did he know then, that
As you fed him, you also gave him
Hunger, a crumb of that world
That you will cast him down into?

by Alfian Sa'at
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This poem is reproduced with Alfian's permission. I met him a few days ago at the Ubud Readers and Writers festival, and among the books on sale, I found his A History of Amnesia (2001, Ethos Books).

Somehow the book fell open at this page, which I think means the poem wants to be blogged about. There's timeliness too, a poem about fasting during this month of Ramadan. The poem is in itself a prayer, and a very moving and human one.

What is fasting all about? I think Alfian explains it so clearly "a lesson in humility" a reminder that the physical body is "just a mirage".

Fasting is (necessarily) tough, a real test of both mental and physical strength. The speaker recognises his own weakness. He crosses dates of the calendar, admits his temptation ... and begins to notice just how much of it surrounds him.

The first year I tried fasting, I was amazed at how heightened the senses become when one is deprived of sustenance. Colours are brighter, smells are so much sharper, and so it seems, is the recollection of taste. (There is also a "getting high" effect, which surprised me.) I remember standing in the supermarket, watching a Chinese couple eat guava. It was a fruit I'd never much liked before, but as they ate, I could almost feel and taste the sweet juicy crunchiness in my own mouth, and desired it so very much. (Since then, I've loved guava!)

Something similar happens when the speaker notices the more deeply saturated colour of the apples, and the scent of them that conjures up their form.

There are images I love in the poem - the scent of apples being like "breaths sculpted in cold weather", the eye polishing the mouth of the tap, a glassful of water turning the speaker solid again at dusk.

I love too the ending of the poem. the idea that God gave men hunger as "a crumb of that world / That you will cast him down into." A small taste of suffering that so many have to endure as a fact of their daily existence.

"Things Standing Shall Fall, But The Moving Ever Shall Stay"

Vachana 820
by Basava

The rich
will make temples for Siva.
What shall I,
a poor man,
do?

My legs are pillars,
the body the shrine,
the head a cupola
of gold.

Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers,
things standing shall fall,
but the moving ever shall stay.


- translated from the Kannada by A.K. Ramanujan in Speaking of Siva (Penguin Classics)


~~~

I chose this poem not only because I have found it deeply moving for years, so much so that it made me want to pen spiritual verse myself, but because of how increasingly relevant it has felt to me in recent times, in light of the ongoing spate of temple demolitions here in Malaysia.

Its relevance, today, is startling and beautiful. The last stanza captures so well what it means to hold on to faith under fire.

The above vachana is by the 12th century poet-saint and political activist Basava (also known as Basavanna, meaning "Basava the Elder", and Basaveshwara). Vachanas are "religious lyrics in Kannada free verse; vachana means literally, 'saying, thing said' " (from the introduction in the book which contains this translation). I have previously highlighted Ramanujan's translations on this blog, here.

Siva is a major Hindu god, and Basava's recurring epithet for him was "lord of the meeting rivers". This poem can be interpreted from both political and spiritual angles. Due to Basava's own political work, particularly his dream for a classless society, the vachana can be read as a polemic piece, emphasising the equal power of the downtrodden in the eyes of God. "The rich/will make temples for Siva./What shall I,/a poor man,/do?", the poem opens, contextualising it within a distinctly class-based setting. The question is rhetorical; the reply comes in the form of the second stanza, in which the poet/poor man persona details how he, too, is capable of what the rich man can do.

But the profoundness of the the final stanza moves it beyond the political, into the realm of the deeply spiritual. "[T]hings standing shall fall,/but the moving ever shall stay" -- captured by these breathtaking lines, it suddenly seems ridiculously reductionist to think of it as a sociopolitical poem. These are lines which describe the nature or the soul itself, its endurance through turbulence. These are lines which reaffirm, and reveal.

Basava was a controversial figure in his time, and his mysterious disappearance upon his return to Kudalasangama ("the confluence of rivers"), where he began his career, sparked off the imaginations of many, who variously co-opted him to suit their own ideologies: whether this meant ascribing divine qualities to him, or holding him up as an icon for social revolution.
Prior to his disappearance, he had been a minister in the court of King Bijjala, and his defiance of caste rules had been the cause of much political dissent and dispute.

For those interested in Basava's work, I recommend one of the novels I'm presently reading: Githa Hariharan's In Times of Siege. The book explores unsettling questions of identity, minority, invasion, imperialism, religion and spirituality through a fictional account of a middle-aged professor who finds himself having suddenly become a pawn used to fuel the fire between polarized secular and fundamentalist groups, when a lesson on Basavanna he writes for a correspondence course on medieval history turns controversial.