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Guided Meditation: Delight; Dharmette: Poetry of Practice III (3 of 5); Mindful - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 25, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Good morning, welcome everybody. This is the third in this series I'm doing on the Poetry of Practice. Something I'd like to say about the power of poetry, and maybe part of the reason why some of us don't appreciate it—I certainly did not appreciate poetry earlier in my life; I thought it was frivolous and I didn't understand it—is that it lets us see things in a different way. Or maybe even just see different things that we might ordinarily ignore or not notice. Poetry often points us to see things from a different perspective, and sometimes this is a surprising perspective, a little bit different one.

Maybe there's often this very subtle sense of delight, like, "Oh, I never thought of that," or, "Oh, isn't that interesting?" This subtle sense of delight is not so different from the delight that we get when we finally align ourselves with reality and are mindful and present for what's actually happening in that moment. Even if what's being experienced is not pleasant, if it's uncomfortable, there's this subtle sense of, "Yeah, okay, it's like this," instead of trying to convince ourselves differently or gaslight ourselves in some way.

So, this subtle sense of delight that poetry allows is similar to mindfulness—being present for whatever is happening, whether it's ordinary, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. With that as a short little introduction, let's do some meditation. For those of you who have been here earlier in the week, you know that I'll guide us a little bit in some meditation, and then I'll drop in a poem, and then I'll talk a little bit about the poem after the meditation.

Guided Meditation: Delight

Is there a way that we can bring a sense of collectedness, like bringing in all the different aspects of our experience to be here? Sometimes the mind is in one place while the body is in a different place. Can we combine them and be here?

Maybe it makes sense to have the imagery of dropping into the body. Like the mind joins the body and drops in, or something like that, so that we inhabit this bodily experience, so that we're present for whatever there is to be present for right now, right here.

Feeling connected and supported with our sitting surface. You shouldn't underestimate how helpful and supportive it can be to feel grounded, connected.

Allow the posture to rise out of the groundedness, the foundation. Connectedness.

Placing the attention on the experience of breathing. Not the idea, but the experience, the felt sense. Feeling, for example, the stretch with the inhale and the release of the stretch with the exhale.

However the body is experienced this morning, today, right now, this moment. Can you be okay, just for this session? Can you be okay with however the body is at this moment?

If the mind wanders, it doesn't have to be a problem. It's what minds do. Just very simply, gently begin again with the sensations of breathing.

So, I'd like to offer a poem. You don't have to do anything with this poem. It's just an offering. Allow it to be experienced. You don't have to figure it out or understand it or look it up or anything like this. Just allow it to join you in your meditation.

This poem is called "Mindful" by Mary Oliver.

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for—to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world— to instruct myself over and over in joy and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant— but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these— the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean's shine, the prayers that are made out of grass.

I'll read this poem again. "Mindful" by Mary Oliver.

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for—to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world— to instruct myself over and over in joy and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant— but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these— the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean's shine, the prayers that are made out of grass.

Dharmette: Poetry of Practice III (3 of 5); Mindful

Thank you for meditating together.

Continuing on this theme of poetry as practice, I'll say a little bit more about poetry. In poetry, you find this compression of expression, where a lot gets said in a few words. And maybe there's a certain amount of directness, but maybe not in the directness that we often think about in prose. It's pointing with some cleanness or clarity, but the manner of pointing is not direct. Direct would be to say or label something specifically. This clarity is similar to a non-distracted mind. When we're meditating, there's a certain clarity of the mind, and in the same way, poetry has this clarity in the way that it points to things.

The way that poetry points is through what we might say is the magic of metaphor or the use of other senses—the way things smell or how they look. Maybe there's a way in which they highlight different ways of experiencing things, but it's pointing towards experience. Another thing I want to say about poetry here is that it can shine a light towards something that maybe otherwise we just wouldn't see, or the light helps us to see things differently, with a different perspective. This is part of what I'm calling the "Poetry of Practice." It's how poetry and practice have this relationship, not only using poetry as a support for practice, but in ways in which the experiences share some elements.

So this morning, during the guided meditation, I introduced this poem called "Mindful" by Mary Oliver. Many of you know she's an American poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize in the mid-80s, and this poem she wrote got published in 2005 when she was 70 years old. I just love this. She was in the later season of her life, and she was still writing poetry, still offering things of beauty to the world. This is meaningful for me, that it's not like we have only one season of our life in which we're offering things of value.

Here's this poem again:

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for—to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world— to instruct myself over and over in joy and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant— but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these— the untrimmable¹ light of the world, the ocean's shine, the prayers that are made out of grass.

This poem just makes me happy. Each time I read it, I have new ideas about it. For me, this is something I love about poetry—that there's this depth to it. It's not one-dimensional, one way to interpret or understand it. Those of you may know I've also taught a lot of sutta study through the years, both in the academic setting and in the Dharma setting, and this is also something I love about the suttas. There's such a depth and a breadth of meaning. It's not like the first time we understand it, it's, "Okay, I got it, next." It's not like that with poetry or with suttas.

So I'll offer some things here about this poem, but maybe you found something different that was helpful and meaningful for you. The encouragement here is to take what's useful and just leave behind what isn't.

I appreciate that she's pointing to the uplift of the heart and mind. She's saying, "kills me with delight," "instruct myself over and over in joy." She's using these obvious words, but she's also using less direct language, like "this is what I was born for." There's an uplift of the heart when we feel like, "Oh, this is what I was born for." So she's pointing to brightness.

But I love that she's not assigning this to some peak experience. She's not saying, "There's delight because I got what I wanted," or "because I am feeling love in some particular way with a person." It's not the perfect relationship or the perfect job or perfect anything. She's pointing to the ordinary. The very first line of this poem is "Every day." This is the ordinary stuff that happens every day.

And then there's this expression in the poem: "Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant." When I was reading that just now, it occurred to me, "Oh, this kind of sounds like the news." Something else that is every day, but the exceptional, fearful, dreadful, and extravagant—this is what makes it into the news these days. "If it bleeds, it leads." If it's going to provoke us and poke us in some kind of way, that's what gets in the news. And that's not what Mary Oliver is pointing to here. Instead, she says explicitly, "the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations."

I think she's encouraging us not to wait for something that's extraordinary, not to wait until something "noteworthy" shows up before we start to feel some delight, to feel some of this uplift. And I appreciate that she's not denying that the fearful, dreadful, and extravagant exists. She's not pretending that it doesn't exist, but she's encouraging us to look towards the ordinary, the daily things.

Also, there's something about this ordinary in the last line of this poem: "the prayers that are made out of grass." I scratched my head a little bit. "Prayers that are made of grass, what is this?" But maybe there's this way we can think of grass as one of the most common and maybe unremarkable things on this planet. There's grass everywhere, different types of grasses in so many different ecosystems, and grass shows up in so many ways, even between the cracks in the sidewalk. The prayers that are made of grass—so bringing something, maybe this connection with the Divine, or maybe a prayer represents something heartfelt and meaningful, or something about devotion that is as ordinary and everywhere as grass. Maybe we can consider grass as a connection to something bigger than ourselves.

And here's something that I think is so important in this poem, and that is oblique in its pointing: how she's pointing to this delight, this uplift and connection with the ordinary, by no longer being the exact center of everything. There's a lack of self-centeredness in this poem. There's a lack of "I finally got what I wanted," a lack of "I finally made the world work the way it should."

Here are some of the oblique ways in which she's pointing to this. She writes, "Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight." So, "kills me." There's a sense of the "me" going away, and it's just delight. It's not that, "Oh, I'm finally happy, I'm finally feeling something good." It "kills me with delight." And the next line is, "that leaves me like a needle in the haystack." A needle in the haystack, right? It's one thing that's just like the other. So no longer having to be the center of attention, but happily being with the other things, indistinguishable.

And then she also has this line, "It was what I was born for, to look, to listen, to lose myself." "Lose myself." Often, when we feel like we're at the center and everything is all about "me, me, me," it's because there's something not quite right. We're trying to fix something or we're trying to get something. But part of this delight is being part of the universe, not being the center of the universe. And for some of us, that might feel like, "No, no, no, I need to be the center of the universe because I have all these needs that are not being met."

I think Mary Oliver here is pointing to how so much of the uplift of the heart can happen if we can soften, if we can let go, if we can not cling so tightly, but allow our experience to be part of the universe. Maybe in the same way that she's talking about this "untrimmable light of the world" and the "ocean's shine." I would say these are pointing to radiance, things that are moving out and being shared indiscriminately with everybody, everything. Things that are boundless, they're untrimmable, they shine, they're just going out and don't have an end. This is part of the way that we can show up in the world. We can find the delight, we can experience the delight, and share the delight and joy of the world—this boundless radiance that she's pointing to.

I'll read this poem one last time. "Mindful" by Mary Oliver.

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for—to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world— to instruct myself over and over in joy and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant— but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these— the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean's shine, the prayers that are made out of grass.

My wish for you is may you find joy and delight in the untrimmable light of the world and maybe even the ocean's shine. Thank you.