For the first time in a long time I can't find this poem. It's a shame since the poem itself, without my marks on it, has a good narrative flow to it. The poem is a back and forth between a roshi and a follower: both trying to figure out what Zen is.
"The universe was not made in jest but in solemn / incomprehensible earnest." The quote by Anne Dillard sets up the whole tone of the poem. How what is made wasn't to be made fun of, but was made and then made fun of.
Like the first tercet: "My roshi tells me not to think / but look at pretty girls and chant: Every beautiful woman is a corpse." Humanity, frailty, with a bit of a humorous point of view is taken to the absurd to made fun of. yes, even pretty girls die, but to think about life that way is very morbid in a funny way.
Every beautiful woman is a corpse,
My roshi says one koan is enough if
if you have a Buddha mind, though one koan
will also suffice if you are an idiot:
Note how the roshi says a frustrating duality: enlightenment and idiocy. How does one straddle the line with one saying, one riddle? That is more of the question that it realizes. The jest or the incomprehension.
"How do you experience God with a stick? / is all I get. My roshi chain-smokes, // drinks Berlour. "Buddha's blood," he calls it" The speaker's incredulous comes forth as they are unable to get confirmation of on koan is in jest or just an incomprehension. The second koan is followed by a humanization of the roshi: a chain smoking drinker with a cute name for his drink "Buddha's blood." Humor in the incomprehensible, or seriousness in the jest of it all?
"My roshi sweats halos under the armpits / of his black robes and quotes many ancient // Zen masters without attribution." The divine description of armpit sweat and mystical quotes without reference makes me believe the speaker is fed up or is in respect of his roshi -- as it should be in zen. But note that's all I'm feeling -- the actual scene is a discussion of one to the other parsing the confusion.
"The lone lamp / of the death house is all the Zen you need" A saying without attribution. A similar point of "if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound." What type of actualization happens without recognition.
The next lines come to the climax of such confusion, "When the roshi asks a question, I answer // HA! HA! HA!" Note how it is the sound of a laugh but not the emotion of a laugh. There's no further development of the speaker, rather the reaction of he roshi, "He clasps his hands / over his belly and smiles back to let me know / I am his one, his true successor." This makes me go back to the poem to see how human the roshi is -- not some divine priest, but rather a person who sweats and smokes and drinks trying to make sense of it all, just like the speaker.
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