{"id":28432,"date":"2021-04-19T01:05:19","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T08:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=28432"},"modified":"2021-04-19T06:21:34","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T13:21:34","slug":"poetry-beginners-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2021\/04\/poetry-beginners-mind.html","title":{"rendered":"Poetry & the Beginner’s Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Poetry & the Beginner\u2019s Mind<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n
Poetry, the beginner\u2019s mind, the kingdom of heaven, & the power of community<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n
Matthew Sherling<\/a><\/p>\n
A sermon delivered at
\nthe First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles<\/a><\/p>\n
April 18, 2021<\/p>\n
There was a time in my life when I had to start unlearning all the ideas & beliefs I had inherited from the past \u2013 from my parents, from my church, from TV & movies. About what matters, about history, about myself, about God, love, happiness, suffering.<\/p>\n
Growing up in the south, there was a lot to unlearn, to decondition, to deprogram.<\/p>\n
As I look back I realize a huge help in this process was reading books & being challenged & inspired by my English professors in college who became some of my heroes.<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\nBooks took me places I had never been, & getting into characters\u2019 inner worlds made me feel less alone in my own head. I remember reading James Baldwin\u2019s short story \u201cSonny\u2019s Blues,\u201d where the two main characters begin emotionally distant from each other, the main character unable to understand why his brother Sonny plays jazz or has gotten caught up in heroin, & end with the narrator going to see Sonny play music for the first time, which causes him to finally see Sonny in all his humanity. Sonny\u2019s music made the narrator actively listen. By the end Baldwin writes, \u201cFor, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn\u2019t any other tale to tell, it\u2019s the only light we\u2019ve got in all this darkness.\u201d<\/p>\nStories like this stirred compassion in me, revealing that attention is a form of love, that one of the most sacred things we can do is to try to understand each other.<\/p>\nThe books I was reading helped me start developing my own values of personal agency, open mindedness, the prime significance of human relationships, & necessary forms of rebellion. But it took me a couple years before I really embraced poetry.<\/p>\nI eventually realized that poetry could do similar things but in a smaller space, & therefore could be even more explosive. Poetry makes us look at ourselves, others, the world, the universe, & perhaps most importantly our own assumptions, with fresh eyes. Therefore, among other things, poetry is a powerful tool to cultivate what some Buddhists call the Beginner\u2019s Mind.<\/p>\nIn Suzuki Roshi\u2019s 1970 classic Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind<\/em>, he writes, \u201cIf your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner\u2019s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert\u2019s mind there are few. \u201d<\/p>\nWhen we act like we know everything, reality can be easily obscured. We don\u2019t see clearly. We see thru a narrow tunnel vision, a skewed lens. When we act like we know everything we forget we don\u2019t know much of anything. When I sit down to write poetry, I feel like I don\u2019t know anything, but feeling this way opens up something fertile inside me.<\/p>\nWhen I was in the MFA poetry program at San Francisco State, I had a few revelations about poetry as i began to see it freshly for myself:<\/p>\n1) I realized it was more authentic & rewarding to write poetry that I\u2019d wanna pick up & read rather than what I assumed my professors would think is good poetry. Unfortunately, I had been doing mainly the latter up to that point. It seems like common sense, though: Why would we want to write something we wouldn\u2019t want to read?<\/p>\n2) I realized, after reading poets like James Tate & Russell Edson, that playfulness & humor could be brought into poetry. Becoming aware of these two things, I was poetically reborn. I began to enjoy poetry that was not trying too hard to sound like poetry, & I kept telling people that I wanted to write like a smart kid would.<\/p>\nWhen word got to Socrates that the famous oracle of Delphi said he was the wisest person in Greece, he wanted to prove her wrong by asking all the supposedly wisest people around town questions to show how much wiser they were than him. What he realized tho was that the more he asked them questions, the more that, unlike him, they claimed to know what they did not know. His questions would uncover the shaky ground their assumptions rested upon. Perhaps this is why the Oracle said he was the wisest person in Greece.<\/p>\nIn my view, that\u2019s also why Jesus said we have to become like children again to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. To me this Kingdom is the infinite surplus of love, wisdom, energy, & creativity inside of us that we can tap into & express outwardly.<\/p>\nChildren are the best poets.<\/p>\nThis poetic beginner\u2019s mind, this seeing from a childlike openness, is described by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay \u201cThe Poet.\u201d He wrote, \u201cThis insight, which expresses itself by what is called Imagination, is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees; by sharing the path or circuit of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.\u201d<\/p>\nThis is one of the beauties of poetry: not only can it put the poet in a state of beginner\u2019s mind, where all things can be seen unencumbered by habitual thought, but can put the audience in that state as well. It\u2019s an act of transmission. Sometimes with just one phrase, the poet can make this way of seeing, this way of being, \u201ctranslucid to others.\u201d<\/p>\nIn Albert Flynn DeSilver\u2019s wonderful book Writing as a Path to Awakening<\/em>, he writes that this open state is similar to what ancient Indian sages called pure consciousness or pure potentiality. He says \u201cthis state makes language possible, makes experience possible, makes consciousness itself possible.\u201d<\/p>\nSo when we cultivate the beginner\u2019s mind thru poetry, we access & activate a space within us that allows language to be possible, & when we have emptied our automatic ways of being, new connections start naturally being made, unexpected dots start being connected.<\/p>\nForrest Church, the celebrated UU minister who our very own Keola got fortunate enough to see speak several times, said that the religious attitude is one of awe & humility \u2013 awe in the sense of How does any of this exist, & humility in the sense of I don\u2019t know much about anything at all.<\/p>\nThis spiritual attitude, which I ascribe to the notion of rebirth that so many traditions speak about, can be easily transferred to poetry. One of Fernando Pessoa\u2019s heteronyms Alberto Caiero captures this well in this quote: \u201cI feel myself being born in each moment, \/ In the eternal newness of the world.\u201d<\/p>\nPessoa claims he was massively inspired by Walt Whitman, & Walt Whitman was massively inspired by Emerson. In fact after Whitman saw Emerson speak in New York for the first time, he said that he had been simmering & Emerson brought him to a boil. Emerson inspired him to embody the type of new poet that Emerson imagined.<\/p>\nIn college I painted this quote from Whitman on one whole wall of my apartment:<\/p>\n\u201cStop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, \nYou shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) \nYou shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look \nthrough the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, \nYou shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, \nYou shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\nA little dramatic to have painted on my wall, & maybe even antithetical to the soul of the quote, but it set the tone for how I wanted to live.<\/p>\nAfter I started writing poetry, the process became a spiritual practice that could empty my mind & let spontaneous intuition flood onto the page. This principle is applied to the Zen poetry workshop I attend at the Angel City Zen Center, where we freewrite & share without judgment, & in the Monday night writing group I host for this church, where we are not trying to be experts. We are just trying to explore where our language leads us. That\u2019s why from the start, I made a point to call it the Writing Group & not the Writers Group.<\/p>\nOn a more grounded level, a beginner\u2019s mind, fostered by writing or otherwise, can lead us to empty ourselves of the stereotypes & prejudices & judgments & even fears we may carry inside of us. We begin to see the worth & dignity of each person, to honor their free & responsible search for truth & meaning, & to acknowledge the interdependent web of which we are a part.<\/p>\nWhitman puts it this way: \u201cEach of us inevitable, Each of us limitless\u2014each of us with his or her right upon the earth, Each of us here as divinely as any is here.\u201d<\/p>\nAny one given life is just as important as mine. Any one given person\u2019s search for truth & meaning is just as important as my own. Pluck any given factor out of the infinity of factors that allowed me to be born, & I obviously wouldn\u2019t be here. Same goes for you, & for every stray phenomenon you see today.<\/p>\nEverything is connected whether we want it to be or not, so we may as well act like it, harnessing the power of our togetherness rather than our perceived separateness.<\/p>\nWhen the kingdom of heaven is revealed within us, it\u2019s also revealed outside of us. We see it in other people, & we want to create relationships & communities that honor it. We want to bring it from the inside out. As Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas, \u201cWhen you make the two into one, and make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower\u2026then you\u2019ll enter the kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\nThis bringing together of seeming opposites or different poles is what poetry is all about too \u2013 Lynn Ungar expressed this point beautifully in her sermon here a couple months ago.<\/p>\nPutting two things side by side that usually don\u2019t go together makes us look at both things differently. That\u2019s why we love metaphor, which compares two different things as if they were the same. That\u2019s why we love paradox, which says more than one thing at one time, or expresses the multisidedness of anything that might appear singular upon first glance.<\/p>\nPoetry closes the gap or dissolves the boundaries between the big & the small.<\/p>\nOr as Alan Watts wrote, \u201cYou are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.\u201d<\/p>\nWith a beginner\u2019s mind, a simple color can be absolutely extraordinary. A glass of water can be. The taste of strawberries can be. Poetry shows us this.<\/p>\nIf we only see the sacred in what transcends the ordinary, we lose touch with the vividness of our everyday world, which is where we spend most of our time. If we have a breakthru experience or insight, we still have to wake up & brush our teeth, respond to emails, cross off items on our to-do lists, & wash the dishes. This is why I love poetry that\u2019s not afraid of talking about things like fried eggs or shampoo.<\/p>\nAlso if we get lost in what transcends the ordinary, we lose sight of the real suffering in the world.<\/p>\nBut poetry thrives on this tension. It reveals both the emotionally difficult & emotionally ecstatic. It makes us look at what is hard to look at with unflinching eyes, & to see it with courage & humility.<\/p>\nWhen I read poetry, I experience a delightful disorientation that knocks my feet off the track just enough to realize I had been stuck in the first place, or as Emily Dickinson put it, \u201cIf I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.\u201d<\/p>\nWe are blasting thru infinite space at 67,000 miles per hour on a tiny blue marble \u2013 on Spaceship Earth as Buckminster Fuller called it \u2013 in one galaxy out of billions in a seemingly infinite universe.<\/p>\nThis realization is humbling & inspiring, because tho it shows how small we are in the context of everything, it shows us how lucky we are to exist on a planet that\u2019s a perfect distance from our sun. This miracle of existence is what Whitman celebrated most often & what led him to see not only the cosmos as sacred but each of us, & not only our spirits & minds but also our bodies.<\/p>\nAs Emerson wrote, \u201cI can believe a miracle because I can raise my own arm. I can believe a miracle because I can remember. I can believe it because I can speak and be understood by you.\u201d<\/p>\nAnd despite the miracle of existence, we are each of us heroic for dealing with a life that is hard as hell, a world as chaotic as our own. Any ways we find to skillfully navigate it are blessings. Poetry has been one of my ways of navigating it. One of my blessings.<\/p>\nIn Joseph Campbell\u2019s model of the hero\u2019s journey, which is a story structure seen in stories throughout the whole world, the protagonist leaves \u2013 literally or figuratively \u2013 their familiar world to enter an unfamiliar world full of trials, challenges, & new revelations that all help the protagonist return to the familiar world transformed with something useful to bring back to the group.<\/p>\nA poet is this protagonist, an artist is, & each of us is, as we\u2019re faced with new challenges & blessings every day on micro & macro scales. The pandemic has felt like a hero\u2019s journey for lots of us, I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\nWe reach a point in the journey, multiple times since the journey is cyclical & not linear, when it\u2019s wisest to have a beginner\u2019s mind, to embark upon the process of unlearning, emptying ourselves so that we may see reality as directly as possible. The unfamiliar \u2013 another personal\u2019s inner life, the novel, the uncomfortable, the new terrains we inevitably traverse throughout our lives \u2013 forces us to reimagine our values, our notions of truth & meaning, & our own sense of empowerment.<\/p>\nAnd we might as well do this together, & how better do it than with poetry? The poetry of conversation, of gratitude, honesty, & beauty hidden in plain sight, as we are reborn each moment as a smart kid.<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/l6SNYmQ-MOU\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 \u00a0 Poetry & the Beginner\u2019s Mind Poetry, the beginner\u2019s mind, the kingdom of heaven, & the power of community. Matthew Sherling A sermon delivered at the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles April 18, 2021 There was a time in my life when I had to start unlearning all the ideas & beliefs I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Poetry & the Beginner's Mind<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Poetry & the Beginner's Mind Poetry, the beginner\u2019s mind, the kingdom of heaven, & the power of community. 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