Musings on the Tao & Pyramid Poetry

In Climb the Joyous Mountain: Living the Meditative Way, Justin Stone introduces us to his invention of Pyramid Poetry. He described the form like this:

“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.”

Like T’ai Chi Chih (TCC), Pyramid Poetry is a prescribed form. My own poetry inclines toward free verse and prose poems so I tend to bristle a little at counting syllables and lines. Yet I have been pondering the gifts found in the pyramid-shaped (or more accurately, diamond-shaped) set of words.

Can we think of the pyramid form as a reflection of the yin-yang cosmology?

Can we see that the prescribed form keeps the poem in harmony and balance — just like the goal of bringing the yin and yang elements into balance through TCC?

Can we think of the first three lines as moving upward? (“Heaven was created by the accumulation of yang” and “the yang ascends to heaven,” wrote Professor Huang.)

Can we think of the last three lines as moving downward? (“The earth was created by the accumulation of yin” and “yin descends to earth,” wrote Professor Huang.)

And we can think of the middle line as “Mankind”? — the wedding of the yang of heaven and the yin of earth.

“Single pointedness” can be found at the very top and very bottom of the poem.

And finally, can we imagine everything outside of the pyramid poem as the “ten-thousand things” (the world of phenomena)?

We know that the Tao cannot be fully described or understood through language. (“I become lost in no-words” wrote poet Tao Yuanming.) Yet, perhaps through the metaphor and imagery of poetry we can get glimpses of the ineffable.