Merwin the mighty

MERWINOne of the great privileges of my life — aside from being a husband and a father, of course — was meeting W.S. Merwin. He was eager to get home to Hawaii, to his wife, to his gardens, but we talked for about an hour while he was visiting Claremont McKenna College a few years ago. I had my connections to the college, and my identity as a rep for a large newspaper, and that created the kind of opportunity that only seems possible in a dream. But I was also forewarned that he was leery of interviews and suspicious of reporters because they routinely mangled the currency of his craft and took his comments out of context. I was reminded of that warning after reading a comment included in a Huff Post article about a new film of the poet's life. Merwin sounds like a person whose life is characterized mainly by "I don't...":

"He said 'I'm not going to talk about Buddhism and I'm not going to talk about my writing process,' and on top of that, he's just a deeply private person," the filmmaker says in the article. Merwin  "put some creative parameters on what the film is."

Initially, I felt the same parameters. Especially when he eyed the digital recorder in my shirt breast-pocket. He told me not to use it. What could I do?  I tried so hard to keep up with the flow of his thoughts, but I couldn't scribble fast enough.

I knew his work pretty well, especially his Purgatorio translation and early poetry, and the lovely little book about his years in Provence. I asked him question after question. Maybe that made a difference.

I also started expressing my  frustrations over the fate of a manuscript, and he didn't hide his irritation at the whole marketing process, either. It was a revelation. The whole thing bothered him--Him!--too. When he talked about visiting Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeth's, it felt like a flash-bomb had gone off in my face -- Pound, for God's sake, he knew Pound!

He was as generous to me, and as passionate about his work, as the young Princeton student who once talked poetry with John Berryman:

I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write

And suddenly I heard those words that I'd never expected to hear. He pointed at my recorder and said,  "ok, you can let it run a little."

 

RELATED: MERWIN AND ME

The zen of sleep: new in bookstores

Zzzzzzzzz: Joseph Emet applies Buddhist principles where we need them the most. Every day, we're at war. The mind has plans, the body has different plans. The time when we're most aware of this war is when we climb in bed at night.

Buddhist practices are applied to just about everything in a flood of new books--and is that a good thing? I'm not always sure. I worry that too many Zen-is-the-answer books will dilute the beautiful appeal of Buddhism.

On the other hand, one book that I do recommend, in spite of its self-helpish-sounding title, is "Buddha's Book of Sleep: Sleep Better in Seven Weeks with Mindfulness Meditation" by Joseph Emet (Tarcher/Penguin). This is a book we'd all benefit from reading (and it's short -- about 142 pages).

In case you don't agree, start keeping a tally of TV commercials for Ambien, Tylenol PM, etc. That might change your mind.

Emet's focus is simple. He offers breathing exercises and meditation techniques; he also provides some insights (but never lectures) about the human condition. Take, for example, the following:

"The mindfulness mantra 'Be here now' is as appropriate as a practice theme at night as it is during the daytime. It is our thoughts that keep us awake. When we are in the past or in the future, we are in our thoughts. When we are here now, we are in our senses."

So, the point is "to be in the now" when you shut your eyes -- not review the day's events or worry about a big presentation tomorrow.

"The mind is constantly taking over from the five senses. That's how we end up being mentally somewhere else. The mind is like the bully in the playground: evolution gave us this bully. Our large and powerful brain has many advantages, but it also has a downside. The bully body checks the five senses, it takes over, and before we know it, we are in the past regretting something, or reliving some experience that happened five years ago. We might also be in the future imagining things, worrying about what might happen, or daydreaming about a pleasant possibility."

I've never thought of my mind as "the bully" before, have you?

Emet's book isn't an intensive exploration of Buddhist practices: If you want something more rigorous, you should go elsewhere. On the other hand, he's trained with Thich Nhat Hanh in France and is the founder of a mindfulness center in Canada. Very respectable.

That's why I suggest his book as  -- ah, forgive me for this pun -- ideal reading for your bedside table.

Namaste, beloved friends.

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Battle of the Buddhas: new in bookstores

Standing in a retail line on this infamous day, Black Friday, I heard someone (couldn't help hearing) on their cellphone behind me.

"It's crazy, but I'm good. I've done a lot of shopping," the person said. "I'm just trying to be Zen about it."

That's a great goal for dealing with the shopping madness, but what does it mean to be Zen?

Ask Donald S. Lopez Jr., and he'll probably tell you that most of us really have no idea what it means.

His new book, "The Scientific Buddha: His Short and Happy Life" (Yale University Press), is all about how a scientific version of the Buddha has belly-bumped the authentic, ancient one into a corner.

"The Scientific Buddha is a pale reflection of the Buddha born in Asia," the author writes as he explores the Buddha's original teachings and how they've been misunderstood in the West. The real Buddha, he adds, "entered our world in order to destroy it."

Instead, he's the one who's getting destroyed:

  • by the self-help movement
  • by the gospel of mindfulness - a term found on the tips of tongues everywhere
  • by discussions of mindful eating, mindful children, mindful coffee breaks .... on and on.

The tone of Lopez' book isn't judgmental -- with his academic bonafides, he certainly could preach if he wanted to -- it's measured and careful. A chapter on Buddhist meditation is stunning: Lopez guides us through the meanings of bhavana, a word usually translated as "meditation" that Lopez says means so much more: "cultivating, producing, manifesting, imagining, suffusing, and reflecting."All of this, he points out, gets lost in translation.

That's Lopez' argument, and we should all listen to him because he's a big deal in the world of Buddhism scholarship. His book (very brief: about 130 pages) is fascinating, powerful, enlightening, necessary ... and a little irritating.

Fine, the person behind me in line may not know anything about why Siddhartha Gautama sat down under the bodhi tree -- or maybe he does, how can I assume? -- but the important thing is that he was trying to stay calm and civilized while I was impatiently biting on my fingernails. I admire that.

Can't simple steps lead to deeper insights? Anyone trying to "be Zen" in the checkout line at the department store may one day get much closer to understanding the insights in Lopez' excellent book.

For now, at least, they're coping with Black Friday much better than I did.

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