Gochen Tulku Sang-ngag Tenzin Rinpoche and Stephen Small Salmon need an interpreter to understand each other’s language, but not the meaning behind their words. Small Salmon’s wife, Juanita, could see it from their first meeting, when Rinpoche shared a story of his exile from Tibet in 1981. Following a nine-year imprisonment by Chinese authorities who invaded his country, the Tibetan Buddhist leader found himself lost in the Himalayas. Then wolves appeared. The pack helped guide him to safety in Bhutan when his trail was obscured by snow.

“That’s the kind of story that Stephen completely and totally understood. … That’s the relationship between humans and animals,” Juanita Small Salmon says. “We’re all related. There’s no separation.”

Rinpoche would later find refuge in Stephen Small Salmon’s homeland in western Montana, and, from that place on the Flathead Reservation, plant a peace garden. The Garden of One Thousand Buddhas, seeded two decades ago, continues to flourish under the care of a Tibetan diaspora within the domain of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The garden is tucked into Rocky Mountains reminiscent of the snowcapped Himalayas of Rinpoche’s youth.

Small Salmon—a spiritual leader for Indigenous people in that region as Rinpoche is for his Buddhist practitioners—blessed the land the garden rests upon. A shared vision for a world that respects all life helps the garden continue to grow.

“There’s a lot of similarities between the respect for the land and balance and the spirit,” says Tom McDonald, chairman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. “There’s a lot of correlations there. There’s a lot of overlap.”

* * *

The Garden of One Thousand Buddhas rests within the tranquil Jocko Valley, a small basin between several ranges of the Rockies north of Missoula and south of Glacier National Park. Its circle of monuments and plants adorns a rural site in Arlee between green farm fields. To the northeast, the fields give rise to the Jocko Hills, and beyond, the majestic Mission Mountains and expansive Flathead Lake.

On a trip to Montana to teach the dharma, Rinpoche recognized this scenic spot from a vision he had as a child of a peace garden in a mountainous valley, and knew this was the place he should create it.

In Tibet, Rinpoche was recognized as a Buddhist leader in early childhood. He is considered the reincarnation of the Gochen Tulku, who tradition holds as the incarnation of Gyelwa Chokyang, one of twenty-five heart disciples of Guru Rinpoche. Following many years of training—including while imprisoned by the Chinese with other Tibetan lamas—he went on to found Ewam International in 1999. Its centers and monasteries in Asia and the United States, including the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas, promote the nonprofit’s mission to advance and cultivate spiritual awareness throughout the world in the tradition of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. Rinpoche also occasionally collaborates with affiliated organizations, including a Buddhist retreat center that’s also situated on the Flathead Reservation.

Rinpoche, now 69, started making plans to create the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas in 2000, after one of his students offered him a sixty-acre parcel in the Jocko Valley. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 the following year further informed his vision. With the intent to pacify evils and help restore peace and happiness, Rinpoche created a garden rich with symbolism about enlightenment connected to the Heart Sutra. Destroyed weapons and symbols of war are buried beneath some of the statues, representing a triumph of compassion over negativity.

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, planned to inaugurate the garden until the 88-year-old’s traveling schedule became more limited in recent years. After Rinpoche had a private audience with the Dalai Lama in India last year, it was decided that another high-ranking Tibetan lama would instead visit the garden this October for an official opening and consecration ceremony.

The garden is laid out in the shape of a dharma wheel, with eight spokes representing the eightfold path “which teaches that true freedom comes from living in a non-harming and compassionate way,” reads a sign welcoming visitors to the public park and botanical garden. Atop those spokes sit 1,000 Buddha statues, each a couple feet tall, representing 1,000 Buddhas prophesied to appear in this aeon. Below each is a small plaque with a beautiful name, including Light of Good Qualities, Resounding Sound, Pure Meaning, Lotus Rays, Full Moon, and Intoxicating Fire. The inclusive circle features Heart Sutra teachings in eight languages, one for each of the spokes.

The rim around them is the foundation for 1,000 similarly sized stupas, Buddhist monuments that usually house sacred relics. Each contains a small statue of the deity Tara, who exemplifies the enlightened activity of all buddhas. At the hub of the wheel sits a larger statue, a twenty-five-foot likeness of Yum Chenmo, “Great Mother.” This central figure “represents the unity of great compassion and transcendent wisdom, which is enlightenment itself.” The monuments are filled with symbols of harmony and offerings to the Earth, like precious stones, sand from all the continents, water from all the seas, medicine, and mantras.

The last Buddha statue was installed around seven years ago thanks to the generosity of sponsors. Many are named on the monuments they helped create. Other plaques instead name people important to donors, like “Sacajawea and All Women of the World,” and in some cases, beloved pets, including a cat named Slug. Others simply signed the monument they dedicated with a blessing, including “Peace, Love and Light for All.” 

Symbols of peace are endless inside and outside this mighty circle, including a still pond and 1,000 plants and trees growing as an example of “safeguarding and replenishing” the environment. Colorful prayer flags dance in the wind from a hill just above the grand dharma wheel. Smaller monuments along walking paths, such as rocks chiseled with Buddha wisdom, are no less significant. One rock reads: “Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.”

* * * 

The three tribes of the Flathead Reservation—the Bitterroot Salish, Upper Pend d’Oreille, and the Kootenai—are really friendly people, McDonald says, and that openness means “all religious groups are always welcomed here.” A variety moved onto the reservation over the years, he says, including a colony of Amish, Mennonites, German Baptists, and Latter-day Saints—making the Buddhists’ arrival not at all uncommon to tribes who have seen endless waves of newcomers over the past few centuries. 

The Flathead Reservation is beautiful country, so beautiful that Congress passed the Flathead Allotment Act in 1904, opening it up to homesteading for non-Native people, and once again breaking another treaty with tribes. Since then, McDonald says, “we’ve been a minority on our own reservation.”

Some purchase land with little thought of the tribes who still call it home. That wasn’t the case with Rinpoche, who invited spiritual leaders of the tribes to accompany him from the start, including during land rituals performed in both Tibetan Buddhist and Native American tradition. During one of those rituals, Small Salmon added his blessings from the front of a special procession at the garden.

“It makes me feel good,” the 84-year-old Pend d’Oreille man says of walking with the Tibetans. “It makes me kind of honored, you know.”

So does their keeping in touch.

“Rinpoche is always asking about me … and that’s wonderful,” Small Salmon says, “to share our stories together.”

Stephen Lozar, a former tribal council member for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, was thrilled about these Tibetan neighbors from the start.

“I actually was so excited I yelled out in the tribal council meeting,” Lozar recalled in 2011 for a PBS broadcast. “I think it’s a spectacular opportunity for cross-cultural associations that are peace-based, that are based in the holiness of this land.”

McDonald describes the Tibetans as “very low key,” interactive and respectful. “And that’s really what you ask for, right?” he says of having them as neighbors. “You want to be inclusive and be included and be respected. So it’s a two-way street, and I think that they’ve done pretty well.”

* * *

When Rinpoche is teaching at the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas, he resides in a modest home on the property. A collection of crystals and traditional Tibetan art adorn its interior, including colorful textiles and embroidered leather. Many treasures are wonderfully akin to Native American art, including the turquoise. Tibetans consider the precious stone to be “like a life force,” explains Rinpoche’s secretary, Khenpo Namchak Dorji, while serving as an interpreter for Rinpoche. 

Sitting beside them, Tsering Karchungtsang, executive director of the garden, pulls at a necklace he’s wearing, featuring a small piece of turquoise, and says Tibetans always have this sacred stone with them. Karchungtsang sees his Tibetan grandparents in the features of his Native American neighbors, including their braided hair. And while attending their annual powwows, with round dancing and the use of feathers for ornamentation, like Tibetans, he’s filled with the feeling that “my people are dancing there.”

Rinpoche says when Small Salmon blessed the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas, his smoke ritual of burning sage, drumming, and invoking ancestors was like ceremonies performed by traditional Tibetans practicing Bon, or shamanism, before Buddhism came to Tibet. And like Native Americans, Tibetan Buddhists believe in sharing prayers and offerings before starting construction, Karchungtsang says. “We don’t dig in soil right away,” he adds—consideration is first given to whether the project is OK for the land and its native inhabitants.

All these things make Rinpoche think some scientists could be right about a theory that people might have first arrived in North America through a lost land bridge connecting Asia and Alaska, making Tibetans and Native Americans anciently connected.

The similarities go beyond cultural customs. There’s also a shared understanding of what persecution feels like. Tibetan culture has been repressed in Tibet since the country was invaded by China over seventy years ago, resulting in an estimated 1.2 million Tibetan deaths. The Dalai Lama was forced to flee and has lived in exile since 1959. In the Americas, millions of Indigenous people were killed in a genocide that spanned centuries.

“The tribes are very sympathetic to anybody that’s had oppression like the tribes have had against them. We’ve walked in their shoes,” McDonald says. “A lot of our membership feel it every day as far as racism, oppression, and conformity to dominant society—that type of pressure.”

For Small Salmon, the trauma began as a boy while attending a boarding school for Native Americans. Torn away from his family, he was abused at the school and not allowed to speak his Salish language. At age 84, he’s now teaching that language to children on the reservation at a school near the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas. 

“Stephen is trying very hard to pass this language and culture on, and Rinpoche is leading his people in the same way,” Juanita Small Salmon says. “They’re working really hard at saving that culture and practicing it. Their lives are kind of parallel in a way when you look at it.”

* * *

Just north of the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas sits another kind of peace garden: the Bison Range, formerly known as the National Bison Range. The range is in its second year of being fully managed by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

The change restored the range to its original Indigenous stewardship. When the National Bison Range—an 18,766-acre square carved into the center of the Flathead Reservation— was established in 1908, it protected bison, or their descendants, that were brought to the reservation in the 1870s by a man named Little Falcon Robe. The Ql̓ispé (also known as Kalispel or Pend d’Oreille) man led some orphaned bison calves across the Continental Divide to the Flathead Reservation at a time when mass slaughter by white settlers put plains bison on the brink of extinction. Bison from that herd were also used to revive a dwindling population of the animals at Yellowstone National Park in the early 1900s. 

Martin Charlo, a Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribal council member, relates his tribe’s generosity with that of caretakers at the nearby Garden of One Thousand Buddhas. 

“Back to being good neighbors, we’re trying to help establish other herds in eastern Montana. … We’re always willing to share knowledge and resources if possible,” Charlo says, while gazing out upon the Bison Range earlier this summer. “I feel like the garden down there does the same.”

Beneath each of the garden’s 1,000 Buddha statues are the words, “May All Beings Benefit!” That includes even the smallest of creatures, like insects, Karchungtsang explains. He’s happy that a family of foxes found sanctuary around the garden’s prayer flag mound. The foxes are a bane to some nearby farmers. Rinpoche says that Tibetans, like Native Americans, find sacred symbolism in animals, including eagles and hawks. 

One of the most revered on the Bison Range was a rare white bison called Big Medicine, named after the gift that he was. After the creature’s death the same year the Dalai Lama was forced into exile, Big Medicine’s body was shipped to Helena, where it became a museum display. The Montana Historical Society agreed last fall—at the urging of tribal members—to send the white bison’s body home to the Flathead Reservation, which will likely happen once a new Bison Range visitor center is built.

Rick Eneas, executive officer for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, said last year about Big Medicine that “a symbol like this allows us to feel proud of who we are and will help us understand who we can be in the future.”

The same can be said of the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas. Understanding our connection to the Earth and divine source is what both groups are striving for, Juanita Small Salmon says.

“These teachings are really important, whether it’s coming from the garden or coming from Native Americans,” she says. “We all need to learn.”

The post 1,000 Buddhas on a Native American Reservation appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The Buddha woke up sitting at the base of the Bodhi tree, his hand touching the earth as his witness and support. As he began to teach, he instructed his monastics to go find a place “in the wilderness” or “at the foot of a tree” to pursue their practice. The Vassa retreats of Theravada practitioners align with the rainy season, and the poems of the early Buddhist nuns and monks are resplendent in their relationship with and delight in the natural world. Wherever we look in the dharma, it’s clear that the teachings of the Buddha are innately connected to nature as a resource for our own awakening. But how can we bring this connection with the natural world into our practice today, especially when so many of us lack access to wild nature?

For many, our introduction to the path happened indoors at classes or sitting groups held in larger urban centers, divorced from the green spaces we tend to think of as nature. Our daily practice might include the cacophony of car alarms, noisy neighbors, garbage trucks, or ambulances. As the pandemic took root, countless people also discovered the dharma online, connecting to sanghas through their computers or phone screens. These dharma doors are beautiful and life-changing. I have a particular respect today for the online offerings that have become a respite for those who are sick, disabled, or immunocompromised and find themselves all but excluded from many in-person dharma gatherings. These spaces are essential to a vibrant and inclusive dharma. But as the format and locations of our practice evolves, how can we retain the connection to nature that is an essential part of Buddhist practice?

One possible answer lies in the Satipatthana Sutta. In his instructions for establishing mindfulness in this sutta, the Buddha offers a practice of meditation on the elements—earth, water, air, fire—that can be explored and discovered in our own bodies just as they can be known in a forest, ocean, or desert. Establishing a meditation practice where we become intimate with the elements offers us a way to connect to the presence of nature within ourselves, seeing over time that we are nature, not something separate from it. This can offer many benefits, from a deeper sense of embodiment and presence to an understanding of impermanence, interconnectedness, and how vital it is to care for our planet in the midst of climate change.  

An Elements Practice 

An elements practice can be done anywhere—whether you are in a densely populated city or camping in a national forest. To begin, find a comfortable posture sitting, standing, or lying down, where you can remain alert and access a felt sense of your own body. From here, begin to connect to the elements one by one. This can be a creative, imaginative practice and you are encouraged to make it your own.

Earth: Begin by connecting with the earth element. Just like an ancient mountain, the earth element in the body is that which is solid, heavy, hard, stable, structured, or grounded. Our bones, teeth, and nails are all easy places to access the earth element in the body. You may wish to begin by envisioning a tall mountain or a large, sturdy tree. Notice the qualities that it has—its strength, connection to the earth, its solidity. Then turn toward your body. Begin at your feet, and work your way up all the way to the top of your head, scanning for the ways you experience the earth element in your own body. Feel the weight of gravity in your limbs. Notice the structure and form that your bones provide. Run your tongue over your teeth and feel their hardness. The bones in our body are composed of many of the same minerals and elements found in the skull of a buffalo, the shell of a crab, the stone we find walking in the forest. The earth element within us isn’t separate from the earth element outside of us. 

Water: Beginning with the top of your head and working your way down to your feet, start to explore the water element present in the body. Water is fluid and wet, like the moisture in your eyes, the saliva in your mouth, or the liquid in your digestive organs. But it also creates a type of cohesion or wholeness in the body. Our skin, organs, and every cell is made up of a majority of water. Even the marrow of our bones holds water. Notice as you scan the body where you can connect with the water element in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. You might call to mind the fact that all the water in your body today at some point has been inside a cloud, an ocean, a blade of grass, or the belly of an animal. Allow yourself to feel the water element in the body and remember that while this water is with you today, it will continue to travel and move throughout the earth beyond your lifetime. This water that makes up 60 percent of your being is simply a visitor.

Fire: As we continue in the elements meditation, we begin to be able to access more and more subtlety and nuance. Arriving at the fire element, start at your feet and work your way up as you notice temperature—warm or cool—present in the body. The fire element is present in the heat of the sun, and is received by the earth, plants, and animals, including you. Our metabolic processes, our ability to regulate temperature, and the nourishment we take into our body through food is all touched by the fire element. As you scan the body, allow yourself to notice heat and cold. In our climate-controlled lives we don’t experience as much variation in temperature and almost automatically associate temperature changes with a sense of vulnerability or discomfort that needs to be fixed. You might notice, particularly if you are feeling too warm or too cold, that aversion or desire begins to flare up, along with stories, planning, and more. What would it be like to momentarily drop your preferences and simply feel the fluctuation of temperature in the body? This is one of the teachings of the fire element.

Air: As we reach the air element, we find ourselves returning to familiar territory for many meditators. Allowing yourself to scan the body from the top of your head down to your feet, you will notice old friends: air touching the nostrils and moving into the throat, the rise and fall of the chest and belly, the subtle movement of the whole body breathing. The air element is present whenever we meditate with the breath, but it is also present in the rustle of leaves in the wind, the displacement of air as a deer darts across a field, and the sound of birdsong coming from the robin in the yard. As we begin to sense the air element in our bodies, we can tend to the places where the breath is felt, as well as the places where we sense any kind of internal motion or movement. You may find that it is particularly supportive to envision the air element entering your body through each inhalation, and leaving through each exhalation. As you do this, can you tell where the air element outside of you ends and the air element inside of you begins? You may notice that when you pay attention, it is very hard to discern which part of this air belongs to you, and what belongs to the trees and grasses you share it with. 

Closing your practice: As you reach the end of this practice, simply allow yourself some time to rest in what you have experienced, taking in the sensations, insights, or emotions that may have come up. Remembering your own connection to nature, you may also want to dedicate the merits of your practice to the many plants, animals, and beings who need our care and protection. 

The elements practice is simply one entry point into deepening our relationship to nature and dharma. Whether you’re a seasoned hiker or your idea of getting outdoors is a patio table at the local cafe, this practice can be yours. Nature is everywhere, and you are a part of it. As you explore new ways to bring the natural world into your meditation, you may also want to do this with the support of a community, especially if nature-based practice feels new and unfamiliar to you. There are many incredible resources available if you would like to go deeper in your exploration of dharma and nature— from wilderness meditation retreats at places like Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center and Rocky Mountain EcoDharma, to groups offering both online and in-person practice like Awake in the Wild, One Earth Sangha, and many more.

The post A Practice for Connecting with the Four Elements That Can Be Done Anywhere appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In September of 2020, I moved to a small island off the western coast of Canada. Living a rural life had never been a priority for me, but I suddenly found myself in an enviable environment surrounded by verdant forests, underutilized outdoor space, and master gardeners. It seemed that everywhere I went, veteran horticulturists were engaged in fervent conversation. I, on the other hand, was in my mid-60s with little experience even keeping a houseplant alive.  

The minute I considered joining these gardeners and embracing this new endeavor, I felt overwhelmed—a feeling with which I was well familiar. When I first devoted myself to Tibetan Buddhism in earnest, I felt similarly overwhelmed by the multitude of schools, lineages, teachings, and terminology. But I learned that untangling the vast mystery of the Vajrayana began with recognizing the path as an endless body of knowledge that spread in many directions. So when I took up gardening, I remembered that it is like Buddhism in this way. My decade of solid practice helped me recognize how consciousness is the tool we have for dealing with novelty, and that I could now put my Buddhist insight to use—in a very earthy way. Indeed, gardening demands of us many of the same traits Buddhism requires: curiosity, discernment, diligence, consistency, and patience. 

I began visiting gardens—both massive and modest—with the same inquisitiveness I first felt when picking up a bell and dorje. For the most part, I didn’t know what I was looking at, but in the same way that I’d sensed my background and nature would best mesh with the Nyingma school, I discerned which gardening path to follow. I wanted to plant food, not roses. Our island has rocky soil, a short growing season, and hungry deer. These parameters were enough to guide me toward a vegetable garden with a tall fence and sturdy containers. 

When it came to finding the appropriate guidance, I relied on my intuition. I also relied on YouTube. The first few days I spent clicking through earnest, well-meaning gardeners who were intent on entertaining. After some sleuthing, I found someone who was as confidently eloquent, yet as straightforward and efficient, in his instructions as the lamas I have studied with. His basics became my basics. I also read articles and asked a lot of questions. Pieces of information came together to form a new foundation of understanding. 

In my Buddhist meditation practice, the successes and failures of others, whether on the cushion or off, were not my successes and failures. So, while I was happy to find dedicated gardeners sharing their stories, it was time to seek the deep, visceral knowledge of personal experience. Getting my hands dirty provided a new type of refuge.

The island where I live has an abundance of seedling sales I could have waited for, but germination was part of an experience I wanted in full. With the type of care I use to set up my meditation space, I hung full-spectrum lighting over trays of packed soil in a storage shed. Tiny seeds were pushed below the surface as the excitement of inherent potential rushed through me. Once those seeds were activated, the soil’s crust was pushed aside in the breaking-through of new life. I recalled hearing Buddhist psychology for the first time and how that grew in my mind, pushing aside previous concepts. 

One exception to germinating from seed was the purchase of a ten-inch-tall Desert King fig sapling. I sent a photo of my little bare stick to a friend, who replied that I’d bought my own Bodhi tree. Until his comment, I hadn’t consciously known what my attraction was, beyond the idea of eating figs in three or four years. Now I find myself providing it with extra care.

I tended my seedlings as they grew under the lights, but before they could be transferred to the garden, they required a hardening-off period. This transition period of days in the sun and nights in the shed reminded me of an earlier time when I was still wavering in my path. Once the seedlings were transplanted, enhanced maturation took place. They became firmly rooted with full commitment, as I had also managed to do. Moving forward with no hesitation, knowing exactly where we belonged. And, of course, that certainty is when the biggest threats appear. Curiosity, discernment, and diligence matter, but you don’t get anywhere without patience and consistency—rare commodities in our modern world.

In Buddhism, patience requires faith in the very idea of enlightenment. In the garden, it is the belief that tiny seedlings will eventually be capable of filling an entire pot and bearing fruit. Cultivating a daily practice and sticking to it set me up for enacting the same sort of care with a garden, even though my first spring was epically cold and wet. That challenging weather hung on right into June. My wilted tomato leaves were turning purple when I shook my head and wondered what Buddha would do. Should I try to germinate more seeds and abandon my suffering plants or find ways to protect them? 

I’d learned enough to produce perfect seedlings, but they were floundering. Turning my gaze to the overcast sky above, I thought of the Buddhist term “skillful means.” I grabbed wire cages, shoved them into the three five-gallon buckets, and covered them with the heaviest plastic I could find. For several weeks, I took that plastic off in the daytime and put it back on at night. I refused to give up. 

Nowhere do we encounter the transitory nature of life more vividly than in a garden. The ability to personally witness the cycle of birth, growth, and death leads to a more nuanced understanding of life itself. When inner signs of our practice show outwardly, we hear of these profound changes from others. A teacher, fellow student, or close friend might notice shifts in our temperament, but they are usually so subtle that at first, we can’t see them ourselves. We might notice our lives working better, but often we can’t see how the teachings have changed us until—like my eventually hardy tomatoes—we have grown noticeably healthier. 

Taking it one step further, tending a garden provides daily lessons in the four seals of Buddhism: four viewpoints that mark a teaching as Buddhist.

The first seal is that all compounded things are impermanent. Germinating those tomato seeds created the cause for them to sprout, but the added condition of my exertion brought forth the karma that allowed the plants to thrive, even through inclement weather. 

I also saw how the kindness I’d shown myself while struggling with my own wild emotions was now reflected in the simple equanimity I felt while tending to my fledgling tomatoes. There was no hope, fear, or other emotion that caused suffering. In that, I recognized the second seal of Buddhism.

I’ve now spent several vigilant months overseeing my plot, and the joy of harvest has begun. Cherry tomatoes, onions, basil, parsley, and chard are plentiful, my squash box is overflowing, and I look forward to uncovering the layers of tubers hidden in my potato bags under bushes of stems, leaves, and delicate white flowers. 

That sense of completion and abundance is gratifying, but the opportunity to notice the compounded elements that make up a plant during its various stages of growth has led to a deeper understanding of emptiness—that all things have no inherent existence—the third seal of Buddhism. 

My first harvest is slowly replacing the pleasures of novelty with the comfort of the familiar. I will never know enough, but with both the accomplishment of study and the activity of getting right in there and doing the work, both gardening and Buddhist practice produce big rewards. They both nourish us with knowledge and shift us toward being more loving and non-neurotic. The fourth seal of Buddhism states that nirvana is not fabricated. It is beyond concepts and cannot be held on to. In removing what obscures our innate buddhanature, we uncover what has always been present. My own little Bodhi tree is also very much present. It has grown another foot and is now adorned with a crown of leaves. I believe that someday it too will be tall enough to sit under.

The post How Buddhist Practice Helped Create My First Garden appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Shinrin-yoku, which means “forest bathing” in Japanese, is neither an ancient esoteric practice nor a swim in a woodland stream. The term was coined in 1982 by the Director of the Japanese Forestry Agency as part of a public relations campaign to encourage more people to visit the country’s national forests. In the 40 years since then, shinrin-yoku has attracted the attention of medical researchers whose studies have shown that a walk in the woods is not only pleasurable but improves cardiovascular health by lowering blood pressure and pulse rate, boosts the immune system, and brings down levels of the stress hormone cortisol. 

Shinrin-yoku also inspired the “forest therapy” methods developed by Amos Clifford, who has used them to help thousands experience the emotional and physical rewards of spending time in intimate communion with nature. Clifford, 67, began his career as a wilderness guide and trained as a psychotherapist before founding the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs. A Zen Buddhist practitioner for the past twenty years, Clifford is also one of the originators of the Sky Creek Dharma Center in Chico, California. He now lives in Prescott, Arizona, where I reached him at home to talk about shinrin-yoku, forest therapy, and the intriguing connections to Buddhist practice.

— Jeff Goldberg

What’s the difference between forest bathing and hiking? Forest bathing is more about being here than about getting there. If I was taking you on a hike, we’d probably cover three or four miles over the course of a couple of hours. If you came on a forest bathing walk with me, we’d go about 200 yards.

It’s like you’re immersing yourself in a small tub of forest. That’s right. We’re bathing our senses in the ambiance of the forest, using all of the senses. Before we begin a walk, we have the people we’re guiding take a sensory inventory. Notice your skin, how the forest is touching you, notice what you’re hearing, notice the tastes and the smells, notice how your body feels in this place. 

Then what do you do? Then, we begin walking very slowly through the forest. It’s a little like kinhin, Zen walking meditation. It takes practice. Until you’re used to it, walking slowly can be uncomfortable. It’s easy to speed up and start walking at a hiking pace. To help people slow down and focus, we ask them to pay attention to what’s in motion in the forest—trees moving in the breezes, birds flying by, the ever-changing movement of a stream. Paying attention to what’s in motion gives our minds something to engage with, like counting your breath in sitting meditation. 

Do you walk in silence? Some of the time. We do the sensory inventory and what’s in motion parts in silence, and at the end of the walk we all find a “sit spot” and sit in silence for 20 minutes. But as we walk, we invite people to share what they’re experiencing, and when it’s over, we gather for tea and talk. Sometimes we make “trail tea” out of herbs we’ve gathered along the way.

You mentioned kinhin and sitting meditation. Are there other similarities between forest bathing and Buddhist practice? As forest therapy, I think it’s important to keep the work we do secular. There’s no direct affiliation with a spiritual tradition, and we don’t frame it as a spiritual practice. But one obvious parallel strikes me. Where was the Buddha at the moment of his enlightenment? He was under a tree. It’s not just the setting for the story, the bodhi tree is an essential element of the story. And when the Buddha was awakened, he called upon the earth to be his witness. Enlightenment happens in relationship to more than the human realm; it encompasses all of nature. 

You’ve written that forest bathing also has much in common with Shinto. How so? When you’re in Japan, you really see it. You walk by these trees that are Shinto shrines, with ropes around them and prayers hanging from the ropes. There’s a shrine with a beautiful tree right across the street from the busiest train station in downtown Tokyo. In Shinto tradition, trees, rivers, mountains, and even stones have their own spirit, a sentient seed inside. Younger trees have a spirit called a kodama. When they get older, they may be inhabited by an actual god called a kami. Shintoism embodies the kind of authentic relationship with the more-than-human realm that I’m talking about. 

With all the research that’s been done on the health benefits of shinrin-yoku, what’s been the most surprising scientific finding to you? It’s all interesting. Blood pressure improves, heart rate variability improves. The studies showing that chemicals released by trees called phytoncides stimulate the immune system are really interesting, but I don’t feel surprised by any of it. The science just confirms what we already know. When we take our time and slow down and walk in the forest, or sit near the base of a waterfall, it’s good for us. 

Enlightenment happens in relationship to more than the human realm; it encompasses all of nature. 

Are the health benefits what draws people to forest bathing? In my experience, nobody comes to reduce their blood pressure or improve their heart rate variability. 

Why do they come then? They don’t necessarily know. As guides and therapists, we know they’re coming for whatever reasons they have and what they discover will be between them and the forest. Our job is to optimize the conditions for them to make that discovery.

Do they know about the science? Have they done their homework? Every now and then a guide will say some people showed up in their bathing suits because they thought they were going swimming in the forest. So no, not everyone does their homework. 

Recently, Canadian doctors were authorized to prescribe passes to the National Forests for their patients. Japan has also integrated shinrin-yoku into their healthcare system. 

Do you think forest bathing could become integrated into the American healthcare system? It could happen here. When I first started the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs in 2012, I met with some people at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland to see if they’d consider coverage for forest therapy in their healthcare plans. I was really fired up thinking what it would be like if we could mobilize the largest healthcare network in the country to connect people with nature.

What did Kaiser say? They said, “Well, we might be interested when you’ve trained guides in every market that we serve nationwide.” I was, like, okay, I’m going to train a thousand guides. Now, we’ve trained over 1,600 guides in 65 countries. 

Are you covered by Kaiser now? Not yet. 

Do people have deeply emotional experiences on your walks, flashes of satori? They wouldn’t describe it as satori, but they can have very intense experiences.

What kinds of experiences? They may experience awe, they may experience grief, they may experience a sense of deepened curiosity about the world around them, they may experience disorientation. Often people will break down in tears. Their experiences can be very different. My goal is to open their senses and open their hearts. I know nature can do that—and when people have those kinds of intense experiences, I feel like their hearts have opened, and that nature and I have succeeded.

♦

The post An Interview with Amos Clifford: Your Guide to Forest Bathing appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“There’s a tendency in all fields but particularly in art for people to charge ahead. But that’s generally not a good way to proceed,” says John Huddleston, a photographer and retired art professor at Middlebury College in Vermont. “Artwork needs to have freshness and newness, but we get caught up in cliched internal dialogue.” Twenty years ago, to tap into that “freshness and newness” at a time when he felt stuck, Huddleston returned to a meditation practice that he had originally found in college decades earlier when he was first introduced to Buddhist teachers like Chögyam Trungpa. Since then, he’s been meditating every day. Huddleston also brought meditation into his art classroom, where he found that a ten-minute, secular meditation on the breath helped settle his drawing and photography students so that they could become more aware of their own process. Eventually, he taught full-semester mindfulness courses to students across disciplines.

“When you see yourself and your prejudicial thinking, you can let it go, and then you can become aware of other things,” Huddleston says of mindfulness, which has been especially helpful for his photography. “Mindfulness helps with letting go of internal dialogue, which helps you respond to where you are. It helps me be present in an intuitive way instead of a calculating way. It allows physical presence to take charge.” This is important for photography, he explains, because it allows the photographer to connect with the broader context of whatever is behind the lens. “I think photography should reflect a larger context instead of just zooming in. You avoid repeating yourself and working off preconceived ideas that way, and get much closer to truth and reality.”

Huddleston’s latest book, At Home in the Northern Forest, published in February 2020, captures his unique approach to photography, including the influence of his mindfulness practice, and his appreciation for the Vermont woods he has been exploring for thirty years. Below, find an excerpt from At Home in the Northern Forest along with some of the “time composite” photomontages that represent unity in time and space. — Tricycle 

***

Vermont’s woods are my home. I walk with the camera nearly every day along the logging roads and deer runs in this second-growth forest. As I photograph, I work to keep the pictures straightforward, specific, and unromantic—just recorded moments from the lives of the trees.

Our core sense of beauty arises from our deep connection to the natural world. We humans are of the forests, and our urbanity rests upon them. Trees produce oxygen, paper, building materials and fuel. They retain rainfall, reducing floods and droughts. They provide clean watersheds, prevent erosion, moderate the climate, recycle nutrients, store carbon, and are home to insects, birds, and animals. But these forested landscapes are provisional, for all are managed, working timberlands—under private, state, and national care. Most of the productive forest in Vermont was once farmland, and all of it has been logged repeatedly.

With the decline and demise of Vermont’s hill farms during the late nineteenth century, the forest reasserted its presence on the land. In 1870, forest covered about a quarter of the state; today, more than three-quarters is woodland. This remarkable turnaround has taken place on what is overwhelmingly private property. Timber harvesting takes place on a regular basis in a long, agricultural-like cycle, which is not to say these lands are unsightly or provide impoverished habitat. The vigorous conditions of the Northeast naturally produce a diverse and lush forest.

Although the so-called “natural world” is neither more real or true than is the human-made environment, it may give us more space to consider our own nature. The human world is so intentional and manipulated that we easily become reactive and discursive; some distance from society usually allows us to see and contemplate with more clarity. The forest offers an interconnected complexity and vastness that give us perspective and balance. Our psyche needs the forest, in the immediate sense of connecting with the sights and sounds of an unfolding walk and in the abstract way we imagine into the deeply mythical space of the forest. The former sensations can be paradoxically relaxing and exciting, resulting in a calm but precise hunter’s awareness. The latter archetypes may be spiritually ascendant or physically terrifying, but all reveal ancient foundations of human experience.

Although the so-called “natural world” is neither more real or true than is the human-made environment, it may give us more space to consider our own nature.

Trees give a proportion to our human life, even in the city. Like us, they are suspended vertically between Heaven and Earth. The trees are not there without the space around them. Likewise, the photograph is not there without the  frame around it and the space around the frame. The components of the photograph are lost in their relation to one another and in relation to all they are not. One of the appeals of photography is that it unifies and puts everything into relation within the frame. The underlying reality of the photograph is the unity of the parts.

Philosopher Gaston Bachelard writes that, despite physical facts, the space of the forest extends infinitely in our minds. This immensity is within us. We respond with a visceral poetry to the soaring, variable, and interdependent forms of trees. The complexity of the forest encourages a realization of process, of ourselves in the process, and of the direct quality of our experience in the present.

The root of romanticism is the accurate realization that we humans are not separate from the world. In the romantic moment, we discover a joy in shared existence. But our conceptual minds quickly follow to form an idea of that event that we can hang onto. This mental construct is abstracted and isolated from the original, free-flowing touch with reality. The concept is not the experience. This difference makes the mental formulation of romantic ideals and standards rather deadly.

Analytical thinking often discourages a perspective of the whole. We tend to compare, and we do so through isolating subjects with thought. Contents are identified and separated from their context by thought. Subject and ground can be seen as one only without comparison and identification. Beauty is holistic, connected, and experienced without thought. Our existence is no different. We may be able to think we are on our own, but our reality is highly relational, contextual, and dependent upon all aspects of our environment.

After many years of living in Vermont, I still find the forest’s seasonal changes startling. These dynamic transformations are integrated in the two sections of “time composite” photomontages that open and conclude the photographic sequence in my book, At Home in the Northern Forest. Past, present, and future coexist in a time cycle incarnate. These photomontages attempt to materialize that notion of the past and the future existing in the present moment, in the present form. Our fascination with photography is grounded in such accords: In the unity of time, the photograph presents a moment of the past right now; in the unity of space, the photograph places all its contents onto the same surface and into relationship; and in the unity of time and space, the photograph shows that these elements are not separate. The time composites are embodiments of such change. They arise from the brutalist instinct of throwing things together, the Hadron Collider impulse. I have worked on variations of this change-in-the-landscape theme for more than twenty years. I think this current approach works well, because both continuity and change are immediately evident in the images.

Our psyche needs the forest, in the immediate sense of connecting with the sights and sounds of an unfolding walk and in the abstract way we imagine into the deeply mythical space of the forest.

Our conceptions of time and seasonal change may be challenged by the specificities of the yearlong chronology of straight, single-exposure photographs. In particular, ideas of spring and autumn are often simplistic. Vermont gives these preconceptions a good shake. The northern locale, combined with the mountainous terrain, produces a highly variable weather cycle. The elevations of my pictures vary by as much as 2,500 feet, which can affect a two-week difference in climatic conditions. As writer John Elder has observed, “The weather extremes demand a constant reorientation from New Englanders.” I am sure he would include wearing a warmer coat in this adjustment, but he points to more encompassing changes of attitudes.

♦

For more on the wisdom of nature and our impact on the environment, check out Tricycle’s Buddhism and Ecology Summit. In honor of Earth Day 2022, Tricycle is bringing together leading Buddhist teachers, writers, and environmentalists—including Joanna Macy, Roshi Joan Halifax, David Loy, Paul Hawken, and Tara Brach—for a donation-based weeklong virtual event series exploring what the dharma has to offer in a time of environmental crisis. Learn more here.

The post At Home in the Northern Forest appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

On a crisp fall day last year, I brought a group of second graders into the woods behind the school where I teach, armed with clipboards, paper, and pencils. Our activity was a “mindfulness walk,” and as we strolled we paused at various points along the trail so that the students could perch on rocks and logs and pay attention to the sights, sounds, smells, and feels of nature (tastes were precluded for obvious reasons). Afterward we circled up in a field and debriefed about the sensory highlights we’d just experienced, from the wind rustling through the trees to the hawk that thrilled us with a startlingly close flyby, as if assessing the potential of carrying off a second grader for a very large snack.

When I first began to teach over a dozen years ago, mindfulness still carried a certain allure. It hadn’t quite entered the zeitgeist, so students didn’t really know what to expect when it was time for a mindfulness activity, and that sense of delving into the unknown captured the spirit of a practice intended to awaken and enliven. Shunryu Suzuki, the Soto Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen in the US, famously said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” All my students had beginner’s minds in those days. Now, however, mention of a mindfulness activity may elicit groans and eye rolls. Too often it has been used as a method of control, or even punishment, with stillness and silence prioritized over radical presence. For many of my students it has the unfortunate stigma of being, in a word, boring. 

But mindfulness practice, as Willa Blythe Baker, the founder of the Natural Dharma Fellowship, points out, began in nature. The Buddha, after all, attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. “There’s so many examples in meditation texts of yogis and monks seeking forests and rivers and lakes as their inspiration for practice,” explained Baker when we connected on the subject of mindfulness and nature in 2017. Monks traditionally did not have permanent residences. They often dwelled in forests or caves, except during the monsoon season, when they gathered to practice as a community. It was this season of gathering that ultimately led to the establishment of monasteries and to what some scholars have called the “domestication” of Buddhism. Originally, to be a mindfulness practitioner was to ramble, and practice itself was not limited to the seated posture.

The Metta Sutta, a Buddhist sutta on loving kindness, states, “Standing, walking, sitting, or lying down/As long as one is devoid of torpor/One would resolve upon this mindfulness.” In his commentary on this verse, Buddhist scholar Andrew Olendzki wrote, “These four [positions] are meant to cover all the positions one can place the body in, thus conveying the idea that both loving kindness and mindfulness can be practiced at all times, without exception.” As University of Virginia religious studies professor Erik Braun explained in a 2014 Tricycle article, the widespread popularity of mindfulness as a seated and still activity in a climate controlled setting might in fact be due to the British invasion of Burma in 1885, and the last ditch efforts of Ledi Sayadaw and others to preserve Buddhism by spreading the practice to the laity. Prior to that moment, Braun wrote, meditation was considered appropriate “for a rare few living in the isolation of jungles or mountain caves.” 

It’s time to rewild mindfulness.

Adam Ortman, the Mindfulness Director at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Austin, Texas, favors utilizing something that is often left out of the modern mindfulness equation: fun. A guiding question for Ortman is, “What feels alive in the classroom and can we give space to follow it?” In order to promote this sense of aliveness, Ortman uses a teaching style unlikely to be mirrored in a traditional monastic setting. He listens with delight, asks follow up questions, and tries to be unreservedly positive about his students’ experiences.

“The more ‘authentically sourced’ strands of mindfulness are going to fall flat in a school community because they are derived from systems of training that are meant for monastics who are intentionally trying to separate themselves from the flow and chaos of lay life,” Ortman told me when we connected over Zoom. But “if something’s working in the lived experience of an individual, then it’s authentic.”

Rather than treating mindfulness as a separate entity removed from the fabric of the school, Ortman will often weave it into other subjects. He has conducted “mindfulness labs” in science classes, assessing how essential oils impact energy and mood. Or, if an English class is doing a poetry unit, Ortman might spend time with them at a local wilderness area tuning deeply into the senses to get the creative juices flowing.

Unsurprisingly, it is precisely this kind of embodied awareness in nature that has been a gateway to practice for so many. Dr. Christopher Willard, a psychologist and teacher at Harvard Medical School who has written a number of books on mindfulness for children and parents, found this out by asking adults at workshops to recall their first experience of being mindful before they heard the word “mindfulness.” Over the years he began to notice a consistent theme to these responses. “No one’s ever like, ‘I was playing a video game by myself or scrolling on Facebook,’” Willard told me. “It’s often something sensory. Nature always comes up. Digging in the garden and smelling the soil; looking at the embers of the fire; hearing the sound of the rain during a lightning storm.” 

All of these moments, in which someone was able to connect through sensory awareness to the greater world around them, were not overly structured or still. They occurred naturally and often in nature. They also taught many of the people that Willard has worked with that mindfulness is not something exotic or inaccessible. 

As Baker told me, “Many of the goals that we have in meditation practice are accomplished just by being in the natural world, especially in wild environments. A goal of meditation practice is to help us find space between our thoughts so we’re not glued to our mind as the most important part of our experience. The natural world does that too. It awakens us to our senses and our body.”

Indeed, a study by Stanford Researcher Gregory Bratman found that walking in nature, like meditation practice, can interrupt our tendency to ruminate. In nature we become embodied, focusing on our footfalls and the rush of sensory information that is less noticeable when practice occurs in our comfort (i.e. boredom) zones. Stepping outside those zones and into the great outdoors primes us to be present.

This isn’t to say there isn’t a place for teaching seated and still mindfulness techniques. Rather, those techniques may be most effectively taught when they are one arrow in a varied and vibrant quiver. Reducing mindfulness to its most sedentary posture is a surefire way to turn off a generation that could benefit immensely from a tool that can support them in so many ways, from reducing anxiety to boosting resilience and satisfaction. Rewilding mindfulness can open us once again to the many ways and manifold places in which it is possible to cultivate embodied awareness.

When walking in the woods with his own kids, Willard might let them know that the quieter they are, the more likely it is they will see animals. This can lead to the playful activity of “walking like a ninja,” with a high degree of focus. In his book The Way of Mindful Education, therapist and mindfulness expert Daniel Rechtshaffen explains that he often tells students they are going to “play” mindfulness: “There’s no homework, there’s no tests, and no way you could possibly get it wrong.” 

On the debrief from my walk in the woods with my own students last fall, the responses to the activity ranged from silly to profound. Several students shared that they had smelled their own breath (it was mid-pandemic and everyone was masked), and we had a laugh, since this was definitely not wrong. And they felt many things, from the leaves crunching beneath their feet to the rough bark of a log upon which they sat. But one of the most memorable responses was also one of the simplest: one student reported feeling “happy.”

The post A Case for Rewilding Mindfulness: Removing the Stigma of Stillness and Returning to the Enlivening Roots of Practice appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss once observed that the difference between societies with writing and those without written language was that the former wrote almost entirely about themselves—the human story of the rise and fall of empires—while the latter, so-called “primitive” people, had vast oral lore about plants and animals. They experienced themselves in constant conversation with all kinds of beings, not just humans.

Each of the winning and honorable mention poems for last month’s challenge honored that “conversation” with the creatures of the natural world.

• Susan Tamara Darrow alludes to a famous cricket haiku, offering an implicit critique of anthropocentric ways of thinking. 
• Alex Lubman asks his daughter what she likes about haiku and gets an answer that goes to the very essence of the art.
• Shelli Jankowski-Smith finds her “inner cricket” after the temperatures drop and, finally, they all go quiet.

Congratulations to all! To read additional poems of merit from last month’s challenge, visit our Tricycle Haiku Challenge group on Facebook.

You can submit a haiku for the November challenge here.

***

Fall Season Word: Cricket

WINNER:

Black lacquer armour
Becomes his burial urn –
Samurai cricket

— Susan Tamara Darrow

Japanese haiku often employ literary allusions to suggest meanings not explicitly contained in the poem. Haiku in English seldom do. This is largely a result of how haiku, like the proverbial message in a bottle, first washed up on Western shores.

During the first half of the 20th century, Japanese haiku was dominated by the literary theory of a single poet. Influenced by Western realism, Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) advocated a style based on the objective description of nature. “What you see is what you get!” summarized Shiki’s approach to haiku.

Because haiku arrived in the West when Shiki’s influence was at its peak, English language poets developed the idea that a haiku should limit itself to the concrete description of the thing itself. Their haiku became “little islands of now” that seldom referenced anything outside of themselves.

The winner of this month’s challenge breaks that pattern by alluding to one of the most famous poems in Japanese literature: a haiku written by Bashō on September 8, 1689 and recorded in his masterwork The Narrow Road to the Deep North:

Oh, how pitiful!
beneath the ancient helmet
a cricket chirping

Visiting the Tada Shrine in Komatsu, Bashō saw the helmet of the 12th-century samurai Saitō Sanemori. At 73, Sanemori was the oldest warrior to die fighting for the Taira clan in its battle against the Genji. Sanemori dyed his white hair black so that he would not be spared by virtue of his advanced age—a ruse that was discovered only after the fact.

Sanemori’s story was told in the 14th-century epic The Tales of the Heike and, later, in a Noh drama that bears his name. The opening line of Bashō’s haiku comes from the play. Sanemori’s decapitated head is brought to the victorious general Higuchi Jirō, who exclaims, “Oh, how pitiful!”

And so, this month’s winning poem alludes to a haiku by Bashō. . . which alludes to a Noh play. . . which dramatizes an even older tale. It isn’t easy to compress eight centuries of literary history into 17 syllables. It is even harder to do so in a poem that balances pathos with play.

Crickets stop singing when the evening temperatures drop below 50 degrees, then die in the late autumn cold. But they may expire from other causes, including disease, predation, pesticides, or contact with environmental toxins. In recent decades, their numbers have been heavily impacted by habitat loss.

In 2017, Jean-Christophe Vié, deputy director of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Global Species Program, predicted that “the sound of crickets in European grasslands could soon become a thing of the past.” Given its funereal tone, the collapse of global insect populations is the necessary backdrop for the poem.

The use of capital letters to begin each line, the British spelling of “armour,” and the somewhat somber, dirge-like rhythm—all suggest a formal lament. Only the final line preserves the essential humor of a good haiku.

The words “Samurai cricket” call Sanemori to mind—but with a twist. Their purpose is not to memorialize the human warrior, as Bashō did. Driven by anthropogenic factors like climate change, the Sixth Extinction is a battle between Homo sapiens against all other species on Earth. The cricket is the warrior now.

You can’t come at a critique like this without employing humor. A truth that big is impossible for humans to take in. So the poet reduces its dimensions to those of a single cricket, a fallen warrior in the battle for the soul of a planet. . . whose own body “becomes his burial urn.”

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

I ask my daughter
what she likes about haiku—
she answers…“crickets!”

— Alex Lubman

They’ve all gone quiet 
I guess I’ll just have to be 
my own cricket now

— Shelli Jankowski-Smith

♦

You can find October’s season word and haiku tips below:

Fall season word: “Cricket”

Scraping together
a small living: the crickets
make it sound easy

You don’t need everything to make a life for yourself. It is possible to live well and live small. From the way they sang, the crickets were doing just that.

I wanted the poem to acknowledge the difficulty of a life lived on the margins. At the same time, it had to preserve the lightness and humor of a good haiku. That meant there had to be puns.

Submit as many haiku as you wish that include the fall season word “cricket.” Your poems must be written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively, and should focus on a single moment of time happening now.

Be straightforward in your description and try to limit your subject matter. Haiku are nearly always better when they don’t have too many ideas or images. So make your focus the season word and try to stay close to that.

REMEMBER: To qualify for the challenge, your haiku must be written in 5-7-5 syllables and include the word “cricket.”

HAIKU TIP: KEEP IT LIGHT!

Lightness is an essential virtue in haiku. If we try to say something too serious in so short a poem, it will usually come out sounding ponderous or forced. By keeping things lighter, paradoxically, we nearly always accomplish more. So try hard, but not too hard—and always remember to preserve the spirit of play.

In haiku, we learn to say things simply. If a thing is true, it can be stated in 17 syllables—that is our primary article of faith. It’s what gives us the confidence to tackle difficult emotions or complex issues, knowing that we will be able to winnow out what is distracting or evasive and get to the pith of the matter.

Lightness and humor are closely related in haiku. That is why the character HAI (俳) in haiku is sometimes translated as “comical” or “not taking itself too seriously.” But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t struggle to get at the truth you want to convey in your poem. It just means handling that truth in the simplest, easiest way.

Learning to stick with the idea for a poem until that has happened is the greater part of mastering the art of haiku. That is why each month we focus on a single seasonal theme. This kind of training will stand you in good stead as a haiku poet. It is also good training for life.

A note on crickets: Crickets are found in tropical to temperate zones, where they have adapted to diverse habitats, including grasslands, marshes, forests, beaches, and even caves. Primarily nocturnal, they are known for the chirping songs of their males, produced by scraping their wings against a harp-like membrane that amplifies the sound. They chirp at differing rates depending on their species and the temperature. Crickets have frequently appeared as characters in literature, especially in children’s books. In poetry, they are most often appreciated for the beauty—and sometimes sadness—of their song. Crickets stop singing when the temperature drops below 50 and typically die shortly afterward.

The post Best of the Haiku Challenge (October 2021) appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a troubling time frame for global warming that pointed to a catastrophic and unavoidable temperature increase of 1.5°C by the year 2040 due to global carbon emissions. A dizzying parade of emergency alerts followed. Wildfires, heatwaves, droughts, floods, and superstorms pummeled the planet at an unrelenting pace. It felt as if this blazing, brutal season offered a glimpse into the approaching abyss. 

These are fraught and anxious times. It seems obvious that no amount of meditation will forestall the disasters that are already baked into the climate equation. Yet, much remains to be salvaged and transformed, including in our own hearts and minds. 

The breakdown of our ecological and climate systems poses many questions for Buddhist practitioners. What is the most appropriate response given the nature, scale, and pace of the crisis? How does one stay grounded when it feels as if the ground beneath us is giving way? What can Buddhism offer us at this overwhelming time of fear and loss? 

Tricycle asked three dharma teachers—David Loy, Roshi Joan Halifax, and Mark Coleman—to share their wisdom for responding to the challenges of the climate crisis.

***

David Loy calls for engaged activism 

Zen teacher and Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Center founding member David Loy says the climate crisis might be the greatest challenge Buddhism has ever faced. “If we can’t respond to this,” he says, “Buddhism will become irrelevant.” Loy’s recently published book Ecodharma explores the relationship between the Buddhist path and the ecological crisis.  

Though the Buddha’s original teachings don’t directly address climate change, he believes the dharma, particularly the path of the bodhisattva, is a rich resource for activists and all those answering the call for change. Our task now, Loy says, is to do the very best we can without knowing if it will make any difference whatsoever. To vow to save our planet despite knowing that it is impossible to alleviate all of the harm we’ve already inflicted. “We can’t be attached to results. We should act because it’s the right thing to do.” 

Loy calls for a more capacious reading of the teachings where social transformation through activism is as important as anything that happens on the cushion, and believes the communities we form through engaged activism will serve as our strongholds. “We need to address and challenge the institutions of incredible complexity and power whose policies impact the environment and climate,” he says. “Individual action isn’t sufficient. Just as it’s not enough to focus on our own carbon footprint.” 

To anyone feeling outrage or anxiety about our teetering ecosystems, Loy offers a three-part contemplation to prepare people with tools for engagement as the challenges deepen.

1. Ruthless Self-Evaluation. Make a thorough assessment of all you have to offer the world. Consider your education, skills, interests, abilities, languages, life experience, networks, geography, assets, job, health, and age. 
2. Realistic Opportunities: Explore all possible opportunities for engagement and service that align with your assets, identity, and skillset. 
3. Recognize Passions Use contemplative tools such as meditation to tune into your heart’s desire. Reflect on which possibilities for engagement make you come alive and feel passionate. If you follow the energy of the heart, you’re less likely to burn out. It’s important to find some joy in the work in order to develop resilience and sustainability. 

Roshi Joan Halifax says show up with compassion 

When Roshi Joan Halifax, founder and abbot of Upaya Zen Meditation Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, became active in the social movements of the sixties, she says nobody ever anticipated that our problems would be as widespread, problematic, and conflicted as they are now. “We thought a lot about personal responsibility,” she explains. “We didn’t think in terms of global responsibility. We never anticipated the scale of what’s now happening with the climate catastrophe and the political turn across the globe.

Her Buddhist practice and decades of hospice work have helped her cope and respond to this new era. As a former hospital chaplain, Halifax sees all forms of death as a sacred rite of passage that merit our tending. She believes we can bring a quality of presence, dignity, and service to our work with grief and loss around the climate crisis. “In hospice care, there’s this notion of coming alongside. That’s what a chaplain does,” she says. “It’s not a matter of going into emptiness or falling into futility. Compassion means to attend to things as they are, to be present, to experience concern, to consider what will really serve.”

She considers this current moment in time a profound apotheosis and opportunity to “come alongside” the suffering around us. “We can no longer bypass what’s happening to the planet,” she says. “We’ve been sheared off from the old way of life in a radical and sudden way. This process of separation and dissolution is an incredible opportunity to show up with compassion and turn toward the truth of suffering and its causes of greed, hatred, and delusion.” 

Buddhism can be particularly powerful at this juncture, she says, because it offers us tools to track our moment-by-moment experience and course-correct even in the most difficult of times. “We can continue to ask ourselves what we’re learning and how we can use that knowledge to deepen and grow,” she says.

To develop skills for sustained compassionate service around social and ecological transformation, Halifax teaches a practical intervention with the acronym GRACE to help practitioners remember the sequence.

1. G stands for gathering attention. Here we use the tools of mindfulness to ground in the present moment. The quality of our attention is essential. Our attention should be panoramic, inclusive, unperturbed, non-judgmental, and reflective like a mirror. 
2. R reminds us to recall intentions. We set your focus on the area of concern and create clarity around our purpose. Our intentions should ride on a felt sense of connection and concern for the wellbeing of others. 
3. A signals us to attune to our own embodied experience. The body is a repository of so much information that we often disavow. Take a moment to connect with the sensations of the breath and the physical body, the affective stream of feelings emanating from the heart, and the mind’s thoughts that come in the form of aversions, attractions, and biases. 
4. C asks us to consider what will best serve. Determine the most appropriate response based on unselfish intentions. We can touch into our vulnerability with an attitude of humility to take perspective and see a variety of causes and conditions. From there, we sense into what might best serve. 
5. E suggests we engage in ethical action. We do our very best to engage, serve, and act for the greater good, while letting go of selfish concerns and any attachment to outcomes.

Mark Coleman encourages a deeper relationship with the natural world 

Mark Coleman, a senior meditation teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and author of Awake in the Wild, responds to the ecological crisis with the assumption that people work to protect what they’ve grown to love. For over a decade, he has led wilderness retreats with the aim of helping meditators foster a loving connection with the natural world. One of Coleman’s upcoming “Awake in the Wild” retreats, scheduled to take place at Mount Shasta, had to be relocated suddenly due to wildfire concerns, underscoring the urgency of this work. 

“In California, we can’t go outside without seeing evidence of the fires. Everywhere I go, I think it’s going to burn,” Coleman says. “This is the reality now. We have to be fluid and resourceful in order to cope and adapt.” 

He hopes that his retreats help foster a deepening love for life on Earth and usher in a sense of stewardship, care, action, and concern. He finds the principles of dharma almost effortlessly accessible when he brings retreat participants into natural settings. Examples of impermanence and interdependence are abundant and obvious once we step outside, he says. In nature, we have more access to both grief and gratitude, which helps build resilience and connection at this time of great upheaval. “It’s harder to access our grief sitting indoors,” Coleman says. “We need to be able to feel and process the emotions so we don’t become paralyzed. Nature helps provide the container to feel and work through those feelings.” 

Practicing outdoors helps us experience more prosocial feeling states such as intimacy, wonder, awe, reverence, and, ultimately, love. “We may find ourselves falling in love with a hawk, or a caterpillar, or a rock, and our hearts open,” he says. These states help us cultivate a sense of inner stability so we don’t simply drown in negative news. “The data can be paralyzingly bleak,” Coleman adds. “If we exist in a mind state of despair, we’ll miss the beauty of a blue bird’s wing or the small jasmine flower. We may forget there are still daffodils in the spring.” 

Coleman shares a few practices from his book to help us step outside and deepen our relationship with the natural world. 

1. Lovingkindness Nature Walk. Go for a walk in the woods, a park, or along a shore. Approach that which draws your attention, perhaps a maple tree, lupin, flower, waves on the shore. Notice what attracts your interest. Let yourself be fascinated and absorbed in relationship to the subject of interest. Attune to your breath, your footfalls, your heart rate, and the temperature of your skin. Recall the classic mantra of lovingkindness. May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you be happy. (If you wish, you can also create your own mantra tailored to your specific intentions.) Send these wishes of lovingkindness to a beloved honeysuckle, bullfrog, or cherry tree. Allow everything you see to open your heart in this way. Finally, offer yourself the same blessings you offered others on the path. 
2. Become an Engaged Participant. Find a quiet place outdoors to contemplate, perhaps a meadow, or on a log beside a stream, or a stretch of beach. Take a moment to regard the place as a casual observer. Walk around with your headphones on or let your mind make lists or plans for later. Note how that detached experience feels. Then remove your socks and shoes. Feel your feet and toes on the earth. Register the pressure and density of your body on the ground. Feel the subtle shifts in weight, the temperature of the soil, the grasses tickling your skin, your toes sinking into the sand. Now dig your hands into the earth. Note the texture and smells. Like a child, let yourself play with the soil, the sand, the grasses, the stones. Draw or make shapes on the ground with a stick. Observe how your senses come alive. Now sit with that open sense of awareness. Drop all agendas and stories in your mind. Reflect on how this sensual and intimate contact has changed your relationship with the life around you. 
3. Attune to the Song of the Land. This is a practice to help you develop intimacy with your favorite place in nature. It’s helpful to spend time in this place each day or at least once weekly. Visit the place like you would a good friend with whom you’re having an ongoing conversation. During your visit, listen to what the land might be saying. For example, tune into the sound of birdsong in the canopy or skittering on the forest floor. Observe animal tracks or skat on the trails. Experience the place with your eyes both open and closed. Lie on the ground and gaze skyward. Note the changes in light, weather, temperature, seasons. Feel the energy of the place and trust your response to it. Take your time there, without rushing. Sit with the silences between the sounds. As you sit, notice what you bring to the relationship with this place and how that might change or deepen over time.

The post How to Stay Grounded and Motivated in the Face of Our Climate Crisis appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The season words of haiku lend “weightiness” to an otherwise slight, often lighthearted poetic form. A haiku might sail off into triviality or pointless humor without the paperweight of the season word to hold it down. Once grounded in the season, poets are free to reveal what is in their hearts.

Each of the winning and honorable mention poems for last month’s challenge explored the possibilities for self-expression in English language haiku, using only 17 syllables and a season word.

• Linda Papanicolaou offered a dark “conversation starter” about 2021 in her question to this year’s cicadas.
• Lorraine A. Padden mixed hope with melancholy in her poem about an empty cicada shell “defeating” the end of summer.
• Erin Langley made a comical, bittersweet comparison between cicadas and poets who toil in obscurity to perfect their craft.

Congratulations to all! To read additional poems of merit from last month’s challenge, visit our Tricycle Haiku Challenge group on Facebook.

You can submit a haiku for the September challenge here.

***

Summer Season Word: Cicada

WINNER:

what are you thinking
of the world you’ve found this time,
cicada brood X?

— Linda Papanicolaou

Of the fifteen “broods” of periodic cicadas in the continental United States, Brood X (or “Ten”) is the largest. Appearing at intervals of 17 years, it surfaces along the East Coast from Georgia to New York and as far West as Illinois, reaching its peak at midsummer.

The last emergence of Brood X was in 2004. After this year, it won’t reappear until 2038. Periodic cicadas are invulnerable to massive predation, since any predator that relied upon them as a principal food source would starve in the interval before their reappearance.

All of which contributes to a remarkably economical turn of thought in this month’s winning haiku. The poet has simply posed a question: What do the Brood X cicadas think of 2021?

In most years the effect of this would be humorously topical. In 2004, for instance, the conversation might veer toward: What do you think of Facebook? What about The Da Vinci Code? Who knew Nehru jackets would be back in style? This year it’s a different story. Pandemic. Insurrection. Nazis. Climate chaos. The list could go on.

The opening line establishes a strangely intimate tone. “What are you thinking?” is not a question we ask of strangers, but of those whose inner life we keep tabs on so that we know what they are feeling. The middle line unexpectedly broadens the subject of that question to take in the world as a whole. The last offers that little twist we expect at the end of a good haiku. The poet is speaking to cicadas who, after 17 years below ground, have resurfaced to a different world.

Or have they?

The poet knows what she thinks of 2021. At this point, everyone knows. In asking the cicadas, she is, in effect, asking for a second opinion from the nonhuman world.

With nothing but our imaginations to go on, we can’t say exactly what the cicadas’ answer would be—only that their perspective must be radically different from ours. It feels impossible for us to agree as a species on how to address our problems. For the cicadas, oneness of purpose is not a problem. We can’t stick to a five-year plan. The cicadas can go for seventeen. Perhaps there is something to learn from them after all.

Whatever answer the poet got from the cicadas, it will have to do until they reappear in 2038. And what will the world look like then? That dark question lies at the bottom of this extraordinarily simple, emotionally nuanced poem.

A further note on the language of the poem: Words often do double and triple duty in a haiku, suggesting additional meanings that come through with repeated readings of the poem. Apart from its literal meaning, the term “Brood X” is especially powerful for its secondary associations, brood meaning “to worry or fret over” and X representing an unknown variable in mathematics.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

fragile cicada
whose shell is the only thing
that defeats summer

— Lorraine A. Padden

seventeen long years
cicadas toil underground
poets, probably

— Erin Langley

♦

You can find August’s season word and haiku tips below:

Submit as many haiku as you please using the submission form below. Just be sure to include this month’s season word.

Summer season word: “Cicada”

Cicada children—
buried immediately
after they are born

As cicada season wound down, I knew that they must be laying their eggs. So I consulted a nature guide to discover what that might entail.

I learned that a female cicada lays her eggs in the small grooves of tree limbs. Upon hatching, her offspring fall and immediately burrow into the ground, feeding on the roots of their host tree for up to 17 years before reemerging as adults.

This knowledge filled me with wonder, but also with sadness—although I knew the sadness wasn’t justified. The cicada’s “children” were quite happy tunneling their way through the mycorrhizal network below the tree where they were born. It was meaningful work that benefitted the cicadas, the tree, and probably the whole forest. That network was where they belonged.

In the end, I decided that my sadness was for myself. I did not belong to the world as fully as the cicadas did. Or, at least, I did not experience my belonging to it as fully. 

It was then, after almost five decades of writing haiku, that I felt I had finally begun to understand Matsuo Bashō, [Japan’s most celebrated haiku poet].

Submit as many haiku as you wish that include the summer season word “cicada.” Your poems must be written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively, and should focus on a single moment of time happening now.

Be straightforward in your description and try to limit your subject matter. Haiku are nearly always better when they don’t have too many ideas or images. So make your focus the season word and try to stay close to that.

REMEMBER: To qualify for the challenge, your haiku must be written in 5-7-5 syllables and include the word “cicada.”

HAIKU TIP: BELONG TO THE EARTH, NOT THE SKY!

Haiku is the only poetic form in world literature that takes the seasons as its primary subject matter. Like most forms of poetry, haiku favors self-expression. The difference is, in haiku, we express ourselves using 17 syllables and a season word.

As haiku poets, we never forget that our lives are embedded in the cycles of birth, death, and regeneration that govern all life in the natural world. As modern humans, however, we are likely to feel some dissonance with those cycles. Civilization teaches us to resist them, or to rise above them—as if we could live in the sky.

A poem written by Bashō in 1693, the year before he died, demonstrates that feeling of disconnection:

The morning glory:
this is another thing that
cannot be my friend

Western writers have gone to great lengths to find a spiritual message in this, but no Japanese critic I have read interprets the poem that way. A comment by Bashō scholar Iwata Kurō (1891-1961) is fairly typical:

It was a time when Bashō was deeply depressed, and even the beautiful flowers of the morning glory could not lift up his heavy heart; he sank into still more intense grief and loneliness.

Bashō’s mature haiku convey a yearning for oneness with nature. And yet, nature often eludes him. His morning glory haiku reveals the inner gulf that lies, not just between Bashō and the flower, but between modern humans and the natural world.

Bashō’s contemporary, the French mathematician Blaise Pascal, unknowingly sums up the problem in his Pensées:

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a “thinking reed.” There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour [i.e., a virus], a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.

A smart man, Pascal, but not much of an ecologist. Sentient awareness does not make human beings superior to nature. If anything, our capacity for self-absorption has made us a danger to the natural world. We are the slayers now.

Nowhere in Bashō’s writings do we find the idea that human beings are inherently wiser or more enlightened than nature. Quite the opposite. Bashō regarded nature as the one true teacher. That is why he wrote, “There is a single spirit that flows through all great art, and that is a mind to follow nature, and return to nature.”

If we summed up Basho’s core teaching on haiku as simply as possible, it might go something like this: Get yourself grounded! Belong to the earth, not the sky!

A note on cicadas: Best known for their whirring drone in mid to late summer, cicadas generate that sound with tymbals, corrugated exoskeletal structures in their abdomens. Cicadas emerge annually, although their larval stages may last from one to 17 years. One North American genus, Magicicada, emerges at predictable intervals, earning them the name periodic cicadas. 

Cicadas have been used for food and medicine for thousands of years and appear often in myth and folklore, where their ability to exit their shells in molting is often remarked upon. Over 3,000 species of cicada can be found in tropical to temperate regions around the world.

The post Best of the Haiku Challenge (August 2021) appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Historically speaking, haiku has its roots in premodern ways of thinking about the natural world. That is why nearly every formal haiku contains a season word like “swan.” Between our lives and the lives of other beings, even inanimate beings like the “summer moon,” there is no dividing line.

Each of the winning and honorable mention poems for this month’s challenge breached the invisible barrier between the human and non-human worlds, revealing the fundamental oneness that exists between them.

• John Hawkhead leads us to the edge of a moonlit cataract, inviting us to contemplate the larger implications of “falling apart.”
• Mary L. Tigner-Rasanen finds in the water of an abandoned bucket a world big enough to hold the moon…and mosquitos, too.
• Laurie Haynes’ moon is a shape-shifter able to enter any body of water—even one as small as a tear.
• Lynda Zwinger transports us to a meditation hall where dark-robed monks “glide to stillness” like black swans on a quiet lake.
• Shelli Jankowski-Smith offers a bittersweet portrait of life-long monogamy in the image of swans floating “both together and alone.”
• Alex Lubman’s sleeping swan rests weightlessly atop the water outside of a museum…like a beautiful statue set adrift.

Congratulations to all!

You can submit a haiku for the August challenge here.

***

Summer Season Word: Summer Moon

WINNER:

standing at the edge
a summer moon falls apart
in the cataract

— John Hawkhead

Haiku has been called “the art of the unsaid.” We can’t say everything in 17 syllables—in fact, we can say very little—so haiku poets become adept at suggesting meanings that aren’t explicitly contained in the poem. The reader intuits those meanings based on the poet’s use of rhythm, word choice, imagery, or idiom.

On a summer night, the poet steps to the edge of a rushing stream where he sees the moon “fall apart” in the water—a poetic conceit that echoes a famous Japanese haiku by Chōshū (1852-1930):

Moon in the water
broken over and over—
and yet there it is

In Volume 3 of HAIKU, his magnum opus of translations with commentary, R.H. Blyth wrote about this poem: “The astounding persistence, the faithfulness of things, their law-abidingness [in the sense of dharma], is felt in deep contrast to the waywardness of life.”

Blyth was interned as an enemy alien by the Japanese government during World War II, and so he would have experienced the devastation of the Allied Forces’ repeated bombings that left over 600,000 civilians dead and millions homeless. In his comment on Chōshū’s poem, perhaps there is some awareness of those losses and the way that the Japanese people rebounded from them after the war.

And yet, by 21st century standards, Blyth was an innocent. Chōshū, too. Both men experienced loss and hardship. But neither could have conceptualized the collapse of civilization in its entirely.

The opening line of this month’s winning poem strikes a different pose. This is no Buddhist reflection on the resilience of the cosmos. There is nothing whatsoever poised or pious about it. Rather, the poet gives us the feeling that he is about to fall over the edge.

This is a masterful poem in its pairing of emotional honesty with extreme simplicity. The poet takes us to the edge of a moonlit cataract and invites us to gaze into it. “Stand right here, and you will see what I saw,” he seems to be saying. “But watch your step. There is no sense in falling before we have to. In the meantime, there is beauty.”

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Abandoned bucket.
The water holds mosquitos
and the summer moon.

— Mary L. Tigner-Rasanen

summer moon held by
the pond, the puddle, her tear
shape-shifting to fit

— Laurie Haynes

***

Winter Season Word: Swan

WINNER:

in the sitting hall
black swans gliding to stillness
saving all beings

— Lynda Zwinger

The term “black swan event” originated from the Western belief that all swans were white—an assumption that was proved false in 1697 when Dutch explorers discovered black swans in Australia. In modern parlance, the term has come to refer to statistically improbable, “extreme outlier” events—especially those with a disproportionate effect on history, science, finance, or technology. The winning haiku for this month adds religion to the mix with its allusion to the bodhisattva ideal of “saving all beings.”

The “black swans” of the poem are not actual swans, but black-robed bodhisattvas—monks at the end of their walking meditation, “gliding to stillness” before their cushions in preparation for another period of zazen. In Japanese haiku, season words are rarely used metaphorically. A swan…is a swan…is a swan. In Western poetry, which is deeply rooted in figurative language, such constraints would be too limiting. And so, the poet offers us the vision of monks in a meditation hall as swans on a quiet lake.

The style of the haiku is elegant, its image graceful and even dignified. Had the poet meant to undercut the idea that we can save others by sitting on our butts, the effect would be funnier—a bit like Sengai’s inscription on his sumi-e painting of a smiling frog: “If by just sitting one becomes a Buddha…” But no. The comparison between saving all beings and a black swan event is meant to suggest the nonlinearity of that event. The fact that it disrupts our basic narrative about religion, ourselves, and, well…almost everything.

What does it mean to save all beings in a planetary ecosystem where all matter and energy are being endlessly recycled and recirculated? 

What does it mean to embrace the bodhisattva ideal while participating in ecocide and climate apocalypse? 

To answer such questions requires us to think, not outside of the box of the planet, as if we could solve our problems by migrating to Mars or nirvana, whichever comes first. Rather, it requires us to think ever more deeply and profoundly from inside of it.

Surely, this is what the poet’s “black swans” are doing in the lake-like stillness of their meditation hall. It had better be what they are doing if they want to make good on their vow.

A masterful English language haiku in the modern mode, with a hidden eco-spiritual message.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Floating in tandem 
both together and alone 
swan monogamy

— Shelli Jankowski-Smith

a statue adrift
outside the art museum
the swan is asleep

— Alex Lubman

♦

You can find July’s season words and haiku tips below:

For July 2021, you may submit poems on two different season words. One is a summer word meant to encourage you to draw inspiration from the world around you. The other is a winter word to challenge your poetic imagination.

Summer season word: “Summer moon”

I toss a pebble
at the quiet pond: my fling
with the summer moon

A perfectly still, round moon sat atop on the surface of the pond. I wanted to wade out to her, but the water was too deep. So I tossed a pebble instead.

I watched until the ripples were gone, and then it was over: my fling with the summer moon.

Submit as many haiku as you wish that include the season word “summer moon.” Your poems must be written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively, and should focus on a single moment of time happening now.

Be straightforward in your description and try to limit your subject matter. Haiku are nearly always better when they don’t have too many ideas or images. So make your focus the season word and try to stay close to that.

REMEMBER: To qualify for the challenge, your haiku must be written in 5-7-5 syllables and include the words “summer moon.”

HAIKU TIP: MAKE THE MOST OF A SINGLE WORD!

Haiku often make use of wordplay. Because a haiku is so short, words must sometimes do double-duty. Otherwise, it is difficult to generate what Bashō called “surplus meaning”—messages that go beyond the literal meaning of a poem. One of the most common methods for generating surplus meaning is the use of puns.

The language of everyday life is filled with surprising possibilities, for which reason the haiku poet looks for meanings that veer off in unexpected directions. Used as a verb, the word fling means “to throw.” Used as a noun, it refers to “a short, casual sexual relationship.” A pun, yes. But not a very satisfying one . . . until it is combined with tossing a pebble at the summer moon.

Haiku poets are always playing with words and images, mixing and matching them until they come out just right. If someone tells you that haiku is a serious business, you can be sure they don’t know anything about writing haiku. The lighter and more carefree we are in handling the words and syllables, the more likely we are to arrive at something that really works. 

The difference is often the matter of a single word. Finding that word is the task of the haiku poet, but to fulfill that task we have to stay alert to the subtle nuances of spoken language—and stay playful most of all.

A note on summer moon: In keeping with the weather, the tone of summer moon haiku is usually somewhat mild. The summer moon is associated with love and romance, and with a refreshing feeling of coolness at the end of a hot day.

***

Winter season word: “Swan”

The swan is a heart
to which wings have been added
so it flies away

A swan beat the water with her wings as she rose into the sky. I couldn’t help but think of the hunter who married a shapeshifting swan maiden, hiding her “feather-skin” so that she could no longer become a bird. In most versions of the story, the maiden recovers her swan’s wings and flies away, leaving him heartbroken in the end.

Submit as many haiku as you wish that include the winter season word “swan.” Your poems must be written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively, and should focus on a single moment of time happening now.

Be straightforward in your description and try to limit your subject matter. Haiku are nearly always better when they don’t have too many ideas or images. So make your focus the season word and try to stay close to that.

REMEMBER: To qualify for the challenge, your haiku must be written in 5-7-5 syllables and include the word “swan.”

HAIKU TIP: STUDY THE KOANS OF THE HUMAN RACE!

The Swan Maiden is one of the oldest legends in the human repertory. Part of a story genre called “the animal wife,” it seems to have originated in prehistory before traveling across the world. Variations on the same tale exist in cultures wherever swans appear. As a mythic figure, the Swan Maiden is often allied with shamans and connected to the ancestral realm.

In 1951, as an anthropology student at Reed College, the poet Gary Snyder wrote his undergraduate thesis on a version of the tale told by the Haida people of the Pacific Northwest. In it, a chief’s son falls in love with a goose girl, then loses her and finally follows her into the sky, turning into a seagull.

In He Who Hunted Birds in His Father’s Village, Snyder uses the Haida story as a reference point for exploring mythic transformations in versions of the Swan Maiden from cultures around the world. He writes:

To go beyond and become what—a seagull on a reef? Why not. Our nature is no particular nature; look out across the beach at the gulls. For an empty moment while their soar and cry enters your heart like sunshaft through water, you are that, totally. We do this every day. So this is the aspect of mind that gives art, style, and self-transcendence to the inescapable human plantedness in a social and ecological nexus. The challenge is to do it well, by your neighbors and by the trees, and that maybe once in a great while we can get where we see through the same eye at the same time, for a moment. That would be doing it well. Old tales and myths and stories are the Koans of the human race.

To my knowledge, Snyder has never stated that season words are also koans—texts embodying the deepest truths about life and the world we live in. But this is true in many cases. The season words of haiku trace their origin back to an earlier way of seeing and knowing whereby human beings were able to experience their lives as fundamentally united with the natural world.

A note on swans: In his entry on “swan” in Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac, William J. Higginson explains: “Most swans move from inland ponds to open saltwater and brackish marshes when the freshwater freezes up in late winter, gathering in substantial flocks; this probably accounts for the traditional assignment of late winter for the topic.”

The post Best of the Haiku Challenge (July 2021) appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.