A Girl Writing Poetry On the Bus

               On the way to meditation session tonight, I saw a girl writing small letters in a purple leather-bound case, in what appear to be poetic lyrics. I started to reflect, after getting off the bus, that I should get back to poetry writing again. But part of me began to wonder, who writes the poem and who reads the poem? And in that moment as I was gazing at the pages, was that not an encounter between the reader and the writer? At the moment I am reading the poem, where does the poem take place? In whose mind does it originate? Of course, most would agree that it is the writer who allows meaning to unfold. But I also believe that without the reader, the poem would just be a series of random letters strung together. And there are some who might make the case (Emerson, for instance) that the meaning of the writing is created entirely by the reader.

              

                I get a feeling that I am driven by a Puritan ethic that places a lot of emphasis on producing something. I worry that if I myself am not producing, I am somehow missing all the fun that goes into a work of art. The art of producing, however, also requires a kind of receptiveness and appreciation. Some people might say this is about connecting to the elements of life. A good producer has to be a good receiver of the things around her or him. One example I read from David Michael Levin was the crafts-person who designs things out of wood. Without the ability to be familiar and intimate with the quality of wood, it is hard to really enjoy the act of creating. Our creations would only be blueprints. But I think the deeper implication of this is that creation never comes from a ‘me’ or even a single brain. The brain is just one condition for many seeds to come together and make the full creation.

 The inclination in modern times is to ascribe things to the physical matter of the brain. I hardly realize how complicated the process of creation really is, when I stick to my ‘brain narrative’. In reality, the brain narrative gives bonus points to the field of psychology, which tries to measure states of being in terms of reliable variables. But as the Surangama Sutra relates, the consciousness and brain are just organs. They are there to receive a creation that basically unfolds everywhere. Rather than only seeing what “I” do, I can see the process of what “I” do as part of an unfolding co-creation in the universe. For example, a poem would not be understood unless there is a reader. The poem involves more than one sense, and even requires reading and revision as it is being written. To try to narrow the act of writing a poem to one ‘faculty’ of the brain is to overlook the subtle and interconnected processes of writing and understanding a poem. This is interdependence.

The other reflection I had while walking to meditation class: is all productive work necessarily good for the soul? I think the answer is obviously not. Sometimes what I do is an unconscious bolstering of a fixed and ‘enduring’ illusion of self. If I am working in order to bolster a false sense  of security, is this healthy work, or does it only create illusion? Or is my work an exploration and expression of my growing sense of interconnection? Does my work open space for exploration, or does it limit me to fixed habits, answers and desires? I wonder if, before I embark on a project, I need to ask myself whether the process of work might be putting me in a fixed pigeon hole. That doesn’t mean that I should not embark on the work itself, but it is a caution for me to reflect on the true meaning of work. It is also a reminder for me to not get caught in stuck notions that I am a single being bound to a cycle of production in order to survive and legitimate my being.

My last reflection: I wonder, who wrote this? Is it ‘me’ or is it the universe writing?  Or is it the universe struggling to write itself through this body and this set of conditions?