Wild Fox Zen
We’re always connected in some way, of course, even perched in the eagle’s nest. I found William LaFleur’s thoughts on the dharma poet, Saigyo, particularly ripe on this point. Here’s a selection.
Saigyo’s sensitivity to the irony in human affairs is related to his awareness of what goes off track when we dichotomize reality. He was forced to see that even his own attempts to “leave the world” were, if naively misconstrued, attempts to find private peace in another such dichotomy. To transcend that habit of mind became the project of both his Buddhist practice and his writing of poetry during the later decades of his life. The “world” he had left behind was the world that bifurcated all things into what one subjectively liked or wanted on the one hand and what one disliked and disowned on the other. Therefore, even solitude had become tolerable and in its own way an aspect of reality to be cherished. This insight seems to lie behind the following poem:
An ancient field
and in the sole tree starkly
rising to its side
sits a dove, calling to its mate:
the awesome nightfall.
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