Climb The Joyous Mountain (February 2019)
Pyramid Poetry
Haiku, the Japanese 17-syllable poems, have become exceedingly popular in the West. Many translations (some in rhyme and some not) of Basho, Buson, Issa and other poets have appeared. Frequently, Westerners have attempted to write in the familiar three-line (five syllable, seven syllable, five syllable) manner, but they have discovered that haiku does not lend itself readily to original works in English.
The Japanese language has a different construction from English; traditionally, Japanese syllables (hiragana) rather than Chinese writing (kanji) are used in haiku. Seventeen syllable poems in English usually appear stilted and without impact.
To meet this difficulty, I have invented a form I call Pyramid Poetry. (Actually, the shape of the poem is more like a diamond.) The first line has one syllable, the second two syllables, the third three and the fourth four. Then the fifth line has three again, the sixth only two, and the seventh and last line has only one syllable. Ideally, the last line should be explosive, or at least put a powerful climax to the poem.
The construction looks like this:
__
__ __
__ __ __
__ __ __ __
__ __ __
__ __
__
An example:
the
stif_ling
heat is gone
how wel_come is
the sud_den
sum_mer
This, perhaps stronger, poem has a more powerful last syllable:
try
to pray
keep_ing naught
but thoughts of God
and no more
thought of
you
These are fun to make and seem to be relatively easy in English or Japanese. At times students and I have spent an entire evening composing, and reading aloud, these Pyramid Poems. I recommend this activity very highly. Turn off the television and come to life, offering a little creativity. We have gotten so used to spectator sports and television dramas that actual participation may require a particular effort. No matter. Let some experience come to the surface and try to express it in this one, two, three, four, three, two, one syllable form. You may surprise yourself.
oh
restless
saffron monk;
just what do you
hope to gain?
you must
die!
how
can we
hope to build
a better world
unless we
change our
selves?
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
Joy is Man’s Heritage
Pleasure is a reaction. You have just fulfilled some desire, experienced a sensory or psychological gratification, or had some suffering lifted from your shoulders. In each case the pleasure is temporary, and must be renewed again and again if we are to pursue the familiar pleasure-pain syndrome throughout our lives. Where the pleasure has been achieved in an illicit manner, it is an invitation to future pain. Pleasure and pain are the two sides of the same coin, and we cannot eliminate one while we endlessly experience the other.
Besides, just as the Chinese yang eventually turns to yin, pleasure indefinitely extended becomes pain. To want something and not get it is painful; to acquire it and then worry about losing it, as in jealousy, is even more painful. There is no up without down, and there is no pleasure without pain.
Joy is your natural state, although it is usually clouded over. When the Mind returns to its natural condition, you are joyful. Such Bliss is not the result of anything. “To the Mind that is still the Universe surrenders.” The Life Force itself is joyous. All we have to do is get ourselves out of the way and enjoy it. This is not difficult for animals and plants, but few humans achieve the natural and the spontaneous.
As our lives become more and more artificial, we depart from our natural state of mind and become devious, seeking to manipulate what really cannot be manipulated. The search is for ease, and endless inventions lead us in the mistaken search for such ease. We cease to make effort and become totally undisciplined. Granted untold leisure, we make the search for diversion our total goal, hoping thereby to affect a state of continuous gratification where we do not have the pain of facing ourselves.
We search for such gratification in objects and status, just as we search for knowledge by always looking outward. The scientist, with the aid of modern telescopes, pushes the frontiers of the universe back, totally neglecting to ascertain who it is that is looking through the telescope. So in the search for outer knowledge, the mind is clouded over and we lose our natural heritage of joy. The worship of words and facts goes on to the point where we have the radio, television and computers talking to us twenty-four hours a day, stunting our sensibilities with an outpouring of inane language about so-called news. (Any act of the human condition becomes “news.”)
Education is envisaged as a storing up of great masses of words, as though life experience only exists in terminology. If we cannot define it, if we cannot isolate it in words, it does not exist. Most scholars have reached the point where they seriously believe anything can be achieved with words. Philosophers play intramural games with each other, and theologians seek to pinpoint that which has not become part of their own existence. God is drowned in a sea of words, often by clergymen speaking of the poverty of the son of man while being careful to keep their expensive custom-made suits immaculate. A Sufi teacher wears a rough, mended cotton costume over his Parisian clothes, elegant buckled shoes sticking out incongruously from under the hybrid costume.
All are full of words, although they cannot teach their listeners to have the electric experience of entering the crucible. We take away words from sermons and classes and are lost as to how to implement the experiences we have heard about. Rare is the teacher who leads his pupils to their own experience, giving them the tools whereby they can achieve the disciplined state necessary to allow the mind to return to its natural condition.
We repeat the mantra of knowing, as we read it in a weekly magazine, but we do not become the mantra. Today we are drowning in words. It would be a blessing to destroy all televisions and computers and do away with freeways, and to once more turn back to the heart of the universe for our guidance.
How many allow themselves the pleasure of hearing rustling leaves and honking wild fowl? We pay homage to Thoreau, but we follow the example of Babel.
We usually employ the excuse that we have no time. But we have made our lives. We can be joyous if we are worthy of it. We must always remember the lesson: without changing the causes, we cannot expect a different result.
Pyramid Poems
Silence
From a TCC Retreat with Carmen Brocklehurst, Albuquerque, New Mexico
calm
still grace
feel your heart
alive awake
move with ease
mindful
bliss
– Chris Rotella
with
silence
comes quiet
no chatter here
only sound
nature
now
– Brock
shhhh
listen
silence calls
only heart beats
overflow
my cup
peace
– CR
clear
blue sky
my footsteps
and the bird’s song
in such sync
alive
one
– Carmella
sigh
silence
all quiet
eyes meeting eyes
speaking love
running
deep
– Denise Clemen
the
silence
coming from
deep inside us
deafening
roaring
sound
– Robert
I
welcome
silence time
to reflect and
stop listen
feel and
be
– Gail Horlick
let
silence
wash over
your whole being
deep freeing
inside
you
– Caroline Guilott
oh
justin
how you bless
universal
love showers
freeing
us
new
silent
energy
clearing the way
making peace
inside
me
– Sandra Lawson
still
grounded
expansive
endless quiet
deeply feel
inside
be
– Mary R.
once
silence
deafening
now all quiet
comforting
inner
friend
– Joyce K. Veerkamp
the
silence
without is
nothing compared
to silence
within
peace
– D.W.
more
aware
of judgements
and surroundings
internal
chatter
calm
– Vincent
be
still and
listen hear
life growing from
within soft
gentle
life
– M
be
gestures
expressions
compensation
privacy
chatter
mind
– Anonymous
moon
silent
in the night
why can’t my mind
let me be
just that
still
– Jerry
shhhh
quiet
it is hard
no rudeness; peace
hear nature
no noise
be
– Teresa
life
is here
life is now
in all ways now
embrace life
embrace
me
– Leya
soft
noises
solitude
contemplative
little sounds
made big
nice
– Lauren P
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