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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Civil disobediences: poetics and politics in action j edited by Anne Waldman & Lisa Birman. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-56689-158-2 (alk. paper) I. American poetrY--2oth century-History and criticism. 2. Politics and literature--United States-HistorY-20th century. 3. Political poetry. American-History and criticism. 4. Politics in literature. 1. Waldman, Anne II. Birman, Lisa. PS31O.P6C585 2004 8Il' .509358-DC22 2004000683 I
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NO ONE SPOKE Chogyam Trungpa's Teachings of Dharma Art REED BYE
2003
Is there ever a moment when mind is not both perceiving something
and expressing that perception? Every experience, it seems, whether
consciously noted or not, even the experience of "nothing happening,"
involves both perception and expression. Perception is expression.
Watching a child with backpack walking to school; the feeling of being
"late"; a squirrel flicking its tail; a whiff of bus exhaust; a basketball player
shooting a free throw; "me" starring in a romantic fantasy in my mind:
all phenomenal experience involves perception and perception is
expressive. The self-expressiveness of perception lies at the heart of
Chogyam Trungpa's teachings on dharma art. These teachings were
presented in programs held at Naropa University and elsewhere in the
nineteen seventies. I
The Sanskrit word "dharma," according to Trungpa, refers to the fun­
damental norm or "isness" of phenomena (whether "subjective or "objec­
tive"), as well as to traditional Buddhist teachings on how to perceive and
relate to phenomena with openness and directness. The word "art" derives
from the Latin ars meaning "skill," and is further derived from the Indo­
European root ar-, to "fit together." Dharma art, then, refers to the ways in
which the things we make and do fit together. Dharma art begins with per­
ceiving openly and accurately and seeing the self-existing symbolism of
phenomena in perception. "Self-existing symbolism" means that the
things we experience are full of their own meaning, even if there is not a
meaning that can be abstracted from the experience.
From this point of view, the realm of the aesthetic includes the entire
range of human activity. We are in continuous engagement with the
world through our impulse to look, listen, smell, touch, taste, and think
about it. For this reason, "inquisitiveness," says Trungpa, "is the seed syl­
lable of the artist." (Calli8'aphy 24).
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Why do we look? ...Why do we listen? ...Why do we feel at all? The only
answer is that there is such a thing as inquisitiveness in our makeup. The
artist is interested in sight, sound, feelings, and touchable objects (24).
Trungpa characterizes dharma art as "genuine art" because it is based in
the self-existing symbolism of phenomena, and because, at the moment
of perception, there is no one manipulating or marketing it. He charac­
terizes it as "without aggression" because, at the moment of composition,
the sense consciousnesses in which phenomena arise in their self-existing
symbolism are not obscured by a "holding back" through which we
would like to "possess" our experience, "chew it, swallow it, and eat it up"
(DA 63). "Aggression acts like a big veil preventing us from seeing the pre­
cision of the functioning of ... symbolism (63)."
The source of sophistication that allows for us to be able to see messages
coming here and there, ordinary symbolism, is some kind of gap--that
which is free of this. Without that, we are unable to experience anything of
that nature; everything is "me" all over the place, "I am" all over the place.
Whatever you experience is only "me" talking back to you (DA 46-7).
Instead of viewing the world with an eye tethered to a stake of self-ref­
erence and expectation, the artist is willing to look into moments of phe­
nomenal being or "isness" without holding back. Training this way sharp­
ens awarenes~ which, because it is sharpened, might be pleasing or
irritating or both at once. But it is only by such direct looking at things as
they are that we see their ordinary symbolism.
If you watch a beautiful rose or if you watch a dead dog bleeding with its
innards out, the same experience of blankness takes place. That is where
symbolism actually begins to occur in your state of mind. When you first
perceive something, there is a shock of no conceptual mind operating at
all. Then something begins to occur. You begin to perceive: [you feel]
whether you like it or not, you begin to see colors and perceptions, to
open your eyes. So that non-reference point mind can become highly pow­
erful and extraordinarily sensitive .
. . . We are talking about the principles of perception. In order to
realize unconditional symbolism, we have to appreciate the empty gap of
our state of mind and how we begin to project ourselves into that non­
reference point (DA 42-43).
MEDI-mTION
To practice sitting meditation is to train mind to relax into basic open
awareness in which phenomena can be experienced simply and directly.
POETICS AND POLITICS IN ACTION
225
It generally takes training to stay in touch with this basic state of being.
Through sitting, we give ourselves the opportunity to let mind's surface
settle in order to be with its bigger nature, which is more or less
indifferent to the wandering thoughts and emotional swells which
occur, as entertaining or compelling as those might be. This expanded
awareness is accomplished by placing attention on the breath as it comes
in and goes out, as a continuous connection back to the openness of the
present. Openness needs an ongoing groundedness to see itself, and this
is the practice of mIndfulness. Grounded in the present, we are not so sus­
ceptible to the seduction of momentary developments and gradually
feel more and more familiarity with mind's naturally open state. We
don't tune out thoughts and sense experience, but notice them in the
space of larger awareness. Through this practice, attention becomes
more active than reactive with respect to whatever arises; and sees it on
its own terms. 2
How admirable, on seeing lightning not to think, "Life too is brief!" -BUSON
Trungpa encouraged meditation practice as a support for the practice of
dharma art. But he was clear that the main point is the further encounter
with the basic openness of mind. This kind of attention, he argued,
whether any tradition of formal practice has been involved or not, is
always present in the creation of genuine art.
What do we mean by the practice of sitting meditation? For instance,
Beethoven, EI Greco, or my most favorite person in music, Mozart-I think
they all sat.They actually sat in the sense that their minds became blank before
they did what they were doing. Otherwise they couldn't pOSSibly do it....
Some kind of mind-less-ness in the Buddhist sense has to take place (20).
When mind perceives something, for instance a crack of sound from
the sky, there is a moment of mind-less openness, an "empty gap" before
a thought-pattern kicks in and labels it: "thunder." That mind-less open­
ness is actually mind-full at the same time and you can notice the sound at
first as not separate from your mind. Energized form of some kind arises
in the meeting of sense object, sense organ, and sense consciousness. And
usually, quicker than we see it happening, the experience of the thing
becomes lost in discursive naming, thinking, and emotional reactions
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(joy, fear, etc.). All of these reactive responses tend to overwhelm the
original phenomenal experience. First there was a crack of perception.
When you first perceive something, there is a shock of no conceptual mind
operating at all. Then something begins to occur. You begin to perceive
whether you like it or not, you begin to see colors and perceptions, to
open your eyes (DA 42).
These teachings on dharma art recommend that we notice the first
crack of perception. Why? Because such moments are in contact with "real­
ity," defined in these talks as "the basic space in which we operate in our
ordinary, everyday life." In meditation and in artistic practice, one can begin
to feel the basic quality of this space and phenomenal experience arising
together. The difference between active and reactive attention to immedi­
ate experiences is made clear by Gary Snyder with the following example:
To see a wren in a bush, call it "wren" and go on is to have (self-impor­
tantly) seen nothing. To see a bird and stop, watch, feel, forget yourself a
moment, be in the bushy shadows, maybe then feel "wren"-that is to have
joined in a larger moment with the world (Space 179).
The practice of allowing awareness to extend instead of close down
exposes the tendency of self-reflexive mind to view reality as essentially
dualistic: a series of more or less problematic or joyful meetings between
self and others. The dharma of things is actually experienced before one
constructs a world out there and a singular mind in here. Our impulse
toward knowing and naming that is not the problem, but attempting to
fix it as a way of confirming this is. According to Trungpa, this impulse
involves a kind of aggression toward our own experience, and the result
for art, is deadly.
When you project toward an object, you want to capture it, as a spider
captures a fly, and suck its blood. You may feel refreshed, but that is a big
problem. The definition of dharma art ... is the personal experience of
nonaggression (DA 62).
In a lot of art there is a tendency to try to capture a glimpse of one
moment of experience and make it into a solid eternity. We have some
brilliant idea and we try to make it into a piece of art. But that is captured
art. We try to capture our artistic talent in a particular work of art.... It
seems that such an attempt to solidify one's work of art, instead of giving
birth to artistic talent, creates death for artistic talent (DA 70).
POETICS AND POLITICS IN ACTION
227
In contrast, training attention through meditation to the space before
subject and object separate, wakens every sense organ to the expressive­
ness of its immediate perceptions, and to their self-existing symbolism.
THE "PRESENT MOMENT"
This term tends to become jargon in places like Naropa University where sit­
ting meditation is practiced and discussed. It can become an annoyance to
those unfamiliar with what it points to experientially because it seems to
suggest something vaguely spiritual and immaterial, a "touchy-feely" term.
For those with some familiarity with sitting practice, however, the "present
moment" indicates a particular order of experience in which the natural
awareness of mind is highlighted. In this way, our attention becomes mind­
ful. Mindful awareness is related to what Suzuki Roshi has called "big mind,"
If your mind is related to something outside itself, that mind is small mind,
a limited mind. If your mind is not related to anything else, then there is no
dualistic understanding in the activity of your mind.You understand activity
as just waves of your mind. Big mind experiences everything within itself.
Do you understand the difference between the two minds:the mind which
includes everything, and the mind which is related to something? Actually
they are the same thing, but the understanding is different, and your atti­
tude towards your life will be diferent according to which understanding
you have (Zen Mind 35).
Big mind experiences the distinctiveness and impermanence of phenom­
ena in the present moment.
Midfield, attached to nothing the skylark singing -BASHO
The present moment is obviously not Buddhist or anything else, but tra­
ditional Buddhist meditation practice is designed to draw attention to it.
The present moment may not be a moment at all but is the environment
in which moments of perception occur. Big mind is our awareness before
I-and-you, body-and-mind, past-and-future split apart.
Traditional Buddhist epistemology and pedagogy works from the
present moment as the basis for knowing oneself and phenomena. The
"three prajnas" (knowledges) of hearing, contemplating, and meditating are the
diSCiplines by which we gain this knowledge. Hearing refers to unbiased
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CIVil DISOBEDIENCES
listening and study, contemplating to mixing what one studies with daily
life, and meditating to the practice of opening to undistracted awareness.
Far from being a vaguely spiritual or psychological tag, the present
moment is regarded as profound personal experience; where reality actu­
ally takes place, in totally open space. "There is some kind of complete,
open space, ground that has never been messed up by plowing or by sow­
ing seeds-complete virgin territory" (DA 67). The present moment is
what we tend to ignore in thinking that we comprise a "me" wandering
in a world of "others." The following comment on our ordinary relation
to the present by the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Ponlop Rinpoche may
seem extreme, but it is worth contemplating:
We have never, ever lived in all these years. We think we are living. We
believe we are living.We are either in the state of having lived or will be liv­
ing, but we have never lived; we are never living.That's how our mind func­
tions in our basic world, in our samsaric world.... Our mind has never been
free to live in the present. It has always been under the dictatorship of our
memories of the past or living as a service for the future (Bodhi 3).
The term "samsaric" here refers to the world of attachment to past and
future and to the notion of a permanent self existing as the subject of that
attachment. "We have never lived" because that samsaric world is an
imagined one; there is no reality outside of the present. This does not
mean we can ·ignore the past and future, but we can see that we only can
meet them in the present and must deal with them here. We cannot see
realistically when holding the view that we are independent agents vying
for pieces of the phenomenal pie. When we look with big mind at the
world, it is a fabulous, complex game of charades. We are all acting our­
selves. Keeping one's big mind, one can work with "real world" situations
in ways that expose self-referential mind as the cause of unnecessary con­
fusion for ourselves and others. Perception and expression only happen
now. And art, everyone knows, can open mind to vivid insight, and blow
away self-referential fixation, at least momentarily.
The things we perceive and the things we do and make are vivid when
they are viewed with active attention. Phenomena are alive because they
arise momentarily; they are not other than the mind perceiving them.
Many poets have made similar observations:
William Blake:
If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his Imagination approach­
ing them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought if he could
POETICS AND POLITICS IN ACTION
229
Enter into Noah's rainbow, or into his bosom or could make a Friend &
Companion of one of these Images of wonder which always intreats him
to leave mortal things as he must know then would he arise from his Grave
then would he meet the Lord in theAir & then he would be happy General
Knowledge is Remote Knowledge it is in Particulars that wisdom consists
and Happiness too.
("Vision of the Last Judgement")
John Keats:
If a sparrow come before my Window I take part in its Existence and pick about the Gravel. (letter, November 22, 1817)
Emily Dickinson:
I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold,
Like the Chestnut Bur-and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the
Guest leaves ....
When I state myself, as the Representative of theVerse--it does not mean
-me--but a supposed person
(letter, June 7, 1862)
Matsuo Basho:
However well-phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural­
if the object and yourself are separate--then your poetry is not true
poetry but merely your subjective counterfeit.
Gertrude Stein:
The thing one gradually comes to find out is that one has no identity, that
is when one is in the act of doing anything. Identity is recognition, you know
who you are because you and others remember anything about yourself
but essentially you are not that when you are doing anything.
("What Are Master-peices and Why Are There So Few ofThem")
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Gerard Manley Hopkins:
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.
("God's Grandeur")
George Oppen:
Surely infiniteness is the most evident thing in the world.
One must not come to feel that he has a thousand threads in his hands, He must somehow see the one thing: This is the level of art.... ("Of Being Numerous") James Schuyler:
Open the laundry door. Press your face into the
Wet April chill: a life mask. Attune yourself to what is happening
Now, the little wet things, like washing the lunch dishes.
("Hymn'to Life")
Allen Ginsberg:
A thought like a poem begins you can't tell where then it gets
big in the mind's eye an imaginary universe and then
Disappears like a white elephant into the blue or "as a bird
leaves the imprint of its flight in the sky"
("Meditation and Poetics")
"FIRST THOUGHT BEST THOUGHT"
Trungpa and Allen Ginsberg came up with the slogan "first thought-best
thought" while composing a poem together in the early years at Naropa
University. "First thought" refers to that which comes out of the blue,
from a gap in reflexive thinking ("that thought which is fresh and free" DA
II). It is not necessarily the first thing you come up with, which could be
merely discursive commentary. First thought is free of reactive manipu­
lation or oversight.
POETICS AND POLITICS IN ACTION
23!
When open attention allows space into a situation, lively, fitting, and
surprising things may occur. This is what Ginsberg and Trungpa called
first thought and, for Ginsberg, it was a quality he associated with good
writing in general, and with the work and teaching of his friend Jack
Kerouac, whose inclination toward spontaneous composition made an
important bridge between Ginsberg's poetics and the spirit and principles
of dharma art.
Perfect moonlit night marred by family squabbles -KEROUAC
Haiku is a poetic form focusing on immediate perception and its extension
into a minimal verse form. Unlike longer literary forms, haiku aim at
momentary presence with perception and extending engagement with
that perception's symbolism.
A salted sea-bream showing its teeth lies chilly at the fish shop -BUSON
Haiku, in translation at least, are usually displayed in a three-line visual
form as in the above example. This presentation may emulate or reflect a
three-fold movement which, according to Buddhist psychology, is inher­
ent in perception itself. This three-fold movement happens in increments
so small they are not normally seen. First, it is said, there is a simple sense
of being; then comes a "flicker" or projecting of attention toward some­
thing in our thought or sense-fields. And third, there is communication
between the the sense of being and the sense object (DA 56).
This threefold process of perception can be explored in relation to
artis.tic creation by a) sImply noticing one's sense of being at any given
moment, b) noticing as attention goes out to something arising in
mind, and c) making a gesture to communicate with or from that
thing. In the above haiku by Buson, for example, we can feel a) the
space in which the event is noticed (the fish shop), b) the focal object of
attention (the teeth of the sea-bream), and c) the feeling quality of the
two together (chilliness) as further communication. The poet's attention
is given over to the object of perception in order to feel its self-existing
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CIVIL DISOIlEllIENCES
symbolism. Trungpa speaks of this kind of perceptual giving-over in
terms of relaxation:
If we are able to relax-relax to a cloud by looking at it, relax to a drop of
rain and experience its genuineness-we see the unconditionality of real­
ity, which remains very simply in things as they are.... When we are able
to look at things without saying "It is for me or against me;' "I can go along
with this;' or"l cannot go along with this," but when we can simply look at
things very thoroughly and directly, just simply on the dot, we begin to
develop some sense of awareness and precision. We are not moved by
hope and fear; therefore we do not run away from things and we do not
cultivate them either (Shambhala 101).
In one of his talks on perception, Trungpa emphasizes a distinction
between the activities of lookinB and of seeinB. In this contrast, lookinB takes
place without any bias in its view. One looks out of open curiosity, as at the
moon or the teeth of the chilled sea-bream. SeeinB, on the other hand,
implies a more developed view of this thing in relation to others. "First we
look and then we see." (Calliaraphy 23). We see the relation between the
moon and the tension of the family squabbles, the fish's teeth and the
chilliness of the fish shop. Looking involves surrender or relaxation into
perception; seeing has a sense of expansion that comes from looking.
When sense objects and sense perceptions and sense organs meet, and
they begin to be synchronized, you let yourself go a little further; you open
yourself. It is like a camera aperture: your lens is open at that point. Then
you see things and they reflect your state of mind (Calligraphy 25).
The point is to relate to the phenomena of our experience directly,
with openness and without trying to make something out of them.
The phenomenal world is not all that pliable. Each time we try to grasp it,
we lose it, and sometimes we miss it altogether. We might be trying to hold
on to the wrong end of the stick. It's very funny, but it's very sad too
(Calligraphy 23).
First thought gets in touch with the "humor [that] exists within the
cosmic world. With that kind of humor, we begin to see through the sep­
arateness of me and others, others and me" (DA 67). First thought could
come as a word, a wave, a honk, a spontaneous song. However it arises, it
remains in touch with a nondualistic moment of perception and commu­
nication, and we can notice and speak from that.
POETICS AND POLITICS IN ACTION
233
There has to be a sense of vision taking place in one's state of mind. Such
vision comes from a state of mind that has no beginning and no end. We
could call that vision first thought-best thought. First thought does not
come from subconscious gossip, it comes from before you think anything.
In other words there's always the possibility of freshness (DA 104).
The following haiku by Issa is a good example of first thought, best
thought:
No one spoke­ the host, the guest, the white chrysanthemum. -ISSA
Is the dharma or isness of a particular moment rendered here? Is there
freshness, humor, and a feel of open vision? The three non-speakers of the
poem seem to agree that there is. And the threefold process of perception
mentioned above---sense of being, flicker of noticing, communication-is
apparent in the poem's perception, execution, and form. In Trungpa's
teachings on dharma art, these three joints ofperception correspond to the
three-part universe of classical Taoist philosophy and aesthetics: Heaven,
Earth, and Human. This dynamic relationship inherent in any experience is
central to Trungpa's teachings on how to make and perceive artistically.
HEAVEN. EARTH. AND HUMAN
Since dharma art comes from the live space of eternal possibility and from
the uncertainty, apprehensiveness, and upliftedness encountered at its
threshold, we don't know what will occur as we execute. This not know­
ing is the artist's state of mind.
As Basho said of haiku, "the composing must be done in an instant, like
felling a massive tree, like leaping at a formidable enemy, like cutting a
watermelon, or biting into a pear."
In traditional Chinese Taoist terms, that live space of possibility is
called heaven and it provokes both vision and apprehension. Vision needs to
make contact with earth, the ground on which its potential might be real­
ized. Heaven and earth are jOined by the human, which actualizes vision
through art. The basic movement of perception itself and its expression of
self-existing symbolism are analogous to the artistic gesture that brings
heaven, earth, and human together. A passage from the Tao Teh Ching may
help to give a feel for the dynamic of the heaven-earth-human relation:
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CIVIL DISOBEDIENCES
Between Heaven and Earth There seems to be a Bellows: It is empty, and yet it is inexhaustible; The more it works, the more comes out of it. No amount of words can fathom it: Better look for it within you. (Wu II) The heaven-earth-human relationship in artIstIc creation is a central
principle in the practice of ikebana, traditional Japanese flower arranging.
In this tradition, the artist comes from "big mind" or heaven with the place­
ment of one branch or flower, makes a relation between that and earth
with placement of a second stem, and "joins heaven and earth" with a
third placement, the human, so that the whole communicates vision and
practicality at once. Trungpa, who studied ikebana in England before
coming to the u.s., felt that these relations also describe the process of
poetic composition, as epitomized in haiku poetry. The poet begins with
empty mind and a simple sense of being. From that something comes up,
a "flicker" of thought or perception. Having noticed it, one extends to the
thing and writes. Then, having written, one feels the play between origi­
nal empty space, still present, and the thing noticed. And then, perhaps,
there is one thing more to say.
It is a question of writing your own mind on a piece of paper. Through
poetry, you could find your own state of mind. You learn how to express
that. Of course to begin with you have to be familiar with the language, but
beyond that poetry is writing your own state of mind .... People shouldn't
be too dilettantish or artistic, but they should write their own state of
mind on a piece of paper. That's why we say, "first thought, best thought."
We have to be very careful that we don't put too many cosmetics on our
thinking. Thoughts don't need lipstick or powder (Chbgyam Trungpa,
Interview).
With heaven, earth, and man naturally collaborating in composition,
the communication within the work and from the work out will have the
chance to be lively and open. The work will hold its own intelligence and
humor, even if focused on the most mundane experience.
The bottom of my shoes are wet from walking in the rain -KEROUAC
POETICS AND POLITICS IN ACTION
235
Trungpa distinguished the heaven, earth, and human experience of the
viewer of a work of art from that of the creator. For the creator, as men­
tioned, heaven is the space of uncertainty and potential, the blank page.
For the viewer, heaven occurs in the first glimpse or moment of percep­
tual connection with the work. So here, in this Kerouac haiku, is a
moment of that, in which the "initial perception breaks through your sub­
conscious gOSSip" (Cailisraphy 25). The dharma of the moment is presented
and fitted together by the artist who noticed the condition of his shoes.
Heaven, earth, and human are undifferentiated in essence, but felt as a
three-fold process, they offer an explanation of poetic composition that
includes space, particularity of momentary perceptions, and the natural
impulse to communicate their symbolism truthfully.
RELATED VIEWS Of" ART
There are many aesthetic crossovers between dharma art and estab­
lished Western theories of art and aesthetics. The poetics of the mod­
ernist and postmodernist periods especially seems to have many basic
points of agreement with the premises of dharma art. This is not a sur­
prising historical coincidence given the past century's intense curiosity
and investigations into time, space, consciousness, and identity. An
example of such a crossover aesthetic principle is that of ostranenie, the
"defamiliarizing" or "making strange" power and purpose of art: its way
of interrupting habituated responses and bringing attention back to
actual experience. Ostranenie was a central point in the poetics of Russian
"formalism" in the early twentieth century and the classic statement on
it is Victor Shklovsky's:
Habitualization devours works, clothes, one's wife, and the fear of war....
Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one
feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sen­
sation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known.The tech­
nique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar" ("Art as Technique" 751).
The defamiliarization Shklovsky is speaking ofis an effect of experience
momentarily left unguarded by our habit of reflexive self-referencing. We
could compare this statement to Basho's classic one on the need for the
poet to meet phenomena directly:
Your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have
become one-when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see
something like a hidden glimmering there. However well-phrased your
poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural-if the object and yourself are
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CIVIL DISOBEDIENCES
separate--then your poetry is not true poetry but merely your subjective
counterfeit (from notes; source unfound at time of this writing).
Another Russian modernist literary theorist and linguist, Roman
Jakobson, drew attention to the natural semantic ambiguity of language
functioning poetically. In performing this function, he argued, the lin­
guistic sign draws attention to its own phenomenal event, relegating its
referential implications to a lesser importance. This, I think, makes a lin­
guistic corollary to the notion of the self-existing symbolism of phenom­
ena experienced directly, when, as discussed, they are sensed and seen in
their primary being or "isness." The experience of meaning is then imme­
diate and ambiguous rather than determined.
Ambiguity is an intrinsic, inalienable character of any self-focused message ....
a corollary feature of poetry. Let us repeat with [William] Empson;"The
machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry:' Not only
message but also its addresser and addressee become ambiguous
(Language 85).
Many of the Anglo-American modernist poetic credos of the twenti­
eth century also suggest a dharma poetics-like emphasis of perceptual
immediacy: William Carlos Williams's "No ideas but in things"; Ezra
Pound's definition of the image as "that which presents an intellectual or
emotional 'complex' in an instant of time; Marianne Moore's poetic man­
date for "imaginary gardens with real toads in them"; Gertrude Stein:
"the business of Art is to live in the actual present"; and, more recently,
Robert Creeley: "A poem denies its end in any 'descriptive' act, I mean any
act which leaves the attention outside the poem."
In his poetics statement called "Hunting is not those Heads on the Wall,"
Amiri Baraka (then Leroi Jones) writes of the "doing, the coming into being,
the at-the-time-of ... Contemplating the artifact as it arrives, listening to it
emerge. There it is. And there." Baraka is also distinguishing art arising
through active attention from that made out of subjective processing.
SELF-EXPRESSION
Art is often spoken of as "self-expression." For dharma art, a question is,
What self is expressing/being expressed in a work? To what extent does
the experience of stony-ness that Shklovsky mentions require an inde­
pendent self to experience its phenomenality and make art out of the
experience? As Gertrude Stein wrote, "Identity is recognition, you know
who you are because you and others remember anything about yourself
but essentially you are not that when you are doing anything." Robert
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237
Creeley likewise, "I want to give witness not to the thought of myself­
that specious concept of identity-but rather, to what 1 am as simple
agency, a thing evidently alive by virtue of such activity." Does the self of
self-expression exist before, after, and/or during perception? What does
the practice of meditation have to do with such questions? Poet and med­
itator Gary Snyder writes,
Meditation is the problematic art of deliberately staying open as the myriad
things experience themselves. Another one of the ways phenomena 'expe­
rience themselves' is in poetry. Poetry steers between nonverbal states of
mind and the intricacies of our gift of language (a wild system born with
us.) ("Language" 113).
Here "selves" would seem to be only self-reflexive moments in the general
space of awareness. The notion of a singular self as perceiver of phenome­
na might be just a habit of discursive thought. From the point of view of
the practice of meditation, this is not so much a tangled metaphysical
problem as a matter of direct experience, investigated by simply sitting
and observing the ongoing processes of mind and our tendency to identify
with them. Returning attention to the breath and space into which it
goes, we come back to the open present with a loosened sense of self.
When we practice zazen our mind always follows our breathing. When we
inhale, the air comes into the inner world. The inner world is limitless, and
the outer world is also limitless. We say "inner world" or "outer world"
but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat
is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone pass­
ing through a swinging door. If you think,"1 breathe:' the "I" is extra (Suzuki
29).
When attention is trained in this way, we begin to see that all experi­
ence-vocal patterns on the telephone, leaves swirling in the street,
someone gassing up a car in the rain, a tree in a field with a broken limb,
a broken heart-have self-existing vividness that needs no embellish­
ment. "Things are symbols of themselves," Trungpa says. And things
"experience themselves," Gary Snyder says, both in meditation and in art.
Chogyam Trungpa's teachings on dharma art have many correlations
with views of others who have looked into the artistic process with a prac­
titioner's mind. The basis of these views can be said to be a nondualistic
attitude toward experience. With confidence in the powerful "isness" of
things as they are, all activity is dharma art. Trungpa was not interested in
promoting an aesthetic theory with these teachings; but was concerned
238
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCES
about the role of art and artist in the world. His view was that genuine art
is free of the aggression which comes from neurotically holding ourselves
back from encounters with the phenomenal world, and he passionately
wanted to discuss this problem and ways through it with his students in
these talks.
Bibliography:
Jakobson, Roman. "Linguistics and Poetics." In Lan8ua8e and Literature. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1987.
Ponlop Rinpoche, Dzogchen. "The Four Foundations of Mindfulness." In Bodhi maga­
zine. Issue number 3.
Snyder, Gary. "Language Goes Two Ways." In A Place in Space. Washington,
Counterpoint, 1995.
- - - . "A Single Breath." In A Place In Space. Washington,
DC:
DC:
Counterpoint, 1995.
Shklovsky, Victor. "Art as Technique." In Critical Theory Since Plato. Hazard Adams, ed.
Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1992.
Suzuki, Shunryu. Zen Mind, Be8inner's Mind. New York: Weatherhill,
1980.
Trungpa, Chi5gyam. The Art of Calliwaphy. Boston: Shambhala, 1994.
- - - . Dharma Art. Boston: Shambhala, 1996.
- - - . "Reflections on the Cosmic Mirror." In Shambhala Sun, July 1995.
Notes:
Although only one of these programs was entitled Dharma Art, the name serves as a
useful overall title for the ideas and practices presented in all of them. These talks
have in common a general focus on art and the artistic impulse from the viewpoint
of Buddhist perceptual psychology. Since they have been gathered from a variety of
programs and seminars, the talks in the book, while thematically arranged, were not
progressively sequential in their original presentation. Dharma Art is the obvious
overall title for the collection but the talks actually come from programs with titles
such as Mudra Theatre Intensive, Art in Everyday Life, Milarepa Film Workshop,
Iconography of Buddhist Tantra, and Visual Dharma. Many of these talks have been
edited and collected in the volume Dharma Art. Boston: Shambhala, 1996.
2
I take the term in sense of "active attention" from Ken Mcleod in his book Wake Up to
Your Life: Discoverin8 the Buddhist Path of Attention. HarperSanFrancisco, 2002. Mcleod con­
trasts active with passive attention in a similar way to "active" and "reactive" here.
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