Guided Meditation: The Poetry of Practice; Poetry of Practice (3 of 5): Planting a Tree

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Poetry of Practice (3 of 5) with Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 16, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: The Poetry of Practice

Okay, I think I'll begin now. Welcome. It's such a pleasure to be practicing together these mornings. Or, as I said, maybe it's not morning for you, or maybe you're watching these later. It's meaningful to practice together. Today is the third day of the series on the poetry of practice. As I mentioned a little bit on the first day, there's a way in which we can practice where there's a lot of specificity of directions, like we're following the instructions as precisely as we can. Maybe we hear the echo of a Dharma teacher or some reading in a Dharma book, maybe even a podcast that we heard, and we're really trying to follow the instructions with a certain amount of striving, or maybe even some straining, with some directionality—like, "I'm going to go this direction and I'm going to do this." That can be tremendously helpful and valuable as a support for practice.

Alongside that type of practice, there's also another way to practice that is maybe a little bit more diffuse and softer. So it's more of a feeling, sensing our way, maybe tuning into and becoming sensitive to what's happening, and feeling into where the next moment of freedom, ease, or well-being can be found. So rather than going one particular direction, we're feeling into what's needed in the next moment to help support this opening, softening sense of well-being, contentment, peace, and freedom to arise. So we're still practicing with the same intentionality, but in a different way.

In this series, The Poetry of Practice, I'm pointing to the second way. There's more of this sense of sensitivity, attunement, and feeling into what needs to be next, maybe with less of a sense of following instructions and more just feeling our way to the next moment.

And maybe I'll just add this before we begin this guided meditation: The Buddha spoke about, right before his awakening, that his mind was malleable. So I'd like to think of this word "malleable" as a way in which there's this sense of feeling into, becoming sensitive to, as well as the sense of directionality and intentionality. So that is an introduction. I'll guide us a little bit during this guided meditation, and then I'll drop in a short poem, and I'll talk about it a little bit after the guided meditation.

So we'll take a moment to settle in, feeling the experience of taking a meditation posture, and feeling the body in this meditation posture. What does it feel like to sit, or whatever posture you're in, and to know that you are in that posture? What does it feel like becoming sensitive, attuned to the body in this particular configuration?

In particular, we might tune into the sensations of being connected, grounded to that which is supporting us. It might be the sensations of the feet on the ground, the legs in connection with the chair, the mat, the couch, the bed—wherever we are, whatever we're doing. Feel the buttocks being in connection with the seat cushion or chair, feeling the pressure against the body, feeling this connection with that which is supporting us.

Opening to the uprightness of the body, the spine. And if you're using a backrest, feeling the pressure of the chair against the back.

Bringing some attention to the face. This is a place with so many nerve endings, and the face has so many different ways it can be expressive, but there's also a way in which the face can hold tension or tightness. Check in with the sensations around the mouth, the jaw, and the eyes.

Tuning into any tension or tightness and allowing any softening that might occur with this attention. It's okay if it doesn't soften, but if it does, just allowing that opening, that softening to arise.

And then tuning into the sensations of breathing, the experience of the body breathing. Feeling the sensations at the nose, the chest, the belly—whatever feels comfortable and accessible for you right now.

What does it feel like to have an in-breath? What are the experiences? What does it feel like to have an out-breath? What are those experiences? And of course, the transitions between in-breaths and out-breaths, what is that like?

And setting the intention for the remainder of this meditation to be one of openness, softness, sensitivity to what's happening, as best we can. As best we can.

As it's apt to do, we just very simply, gently begin again, tuning into the sensations of breathing.

So now I'm going to drop in a poem. Absolutely no need to do anything with this poem. Just allow it to enter, and that's all.

The poem goes like this:

It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house.

Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose.

That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.

Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

Thank you.

Poetry of Practice (3 of 5): Planting a Tree

So again, welcome. Welcome to everybody. It's lovely to practice together.

So, this idea of the poetry of practice. There's a way in which poems—prose does as well, but poems—often use metaphor in a really evocative way. And this is part of what can make poetry be so powerful, maybe speaking directly to the heart because it's using metaphor. So maybe not the usual concepts, or labels, or language that we would use to describe something, but instead, sometimes in poetry, there's a way in which there's a pointing to something rather than saying it or labeling it directly.

So maybe there's a way in which the heart and the mind have to look in a particular direction in order to understand what the poet is pointing towards. And we might say, in some ways, all we're ever doing when we speak about something is pointing towards it. There's a difference between the labels and the words that we use and the actual objects or experiences. And there's something about poetry that doesn't try to pretend that it's not doing that, whereas in our usual language, we might think that the map is the territory, for example, that the concept or the word is the actual thing that's important. So in some ways, we might even say that practice, this meditation practice, this Buddhist practice, is so much about highlighting the difference between the words, the labels that we assign to something, and the actual experience of that something.

So here's the poem that I read during the guided meditation. I'll name the poem and the poet at the end here this morning, but for now, just feel into this poem.

It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books. Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

So this poem begins with: "It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house." This poet grew up in the Bay Area—actually, I don't know if they grew up in the area, but certainly lived in the Bay Area and practiced at the San Francisco Zen Center. And this role of trees—for the Buddha, it was the Bodhi tree^[1], but for this poet, it's a redwood tree. In ancient India, these Bodhi trees were majestic. And certainly, here in California, redwood trees have this same sense of majesty or might or dignity. There's a way in which being in a grove of redwood trees, as any of you who have been there know, there's a sense of it being in a cathedral. So this poet is pointing to trees, the powerfulness of trees, as well as the specialness, the dignity, the powerfulness of trees. And we could say in this poem, it represents practice.

So, "It is foolish to let a young redwood tree grow next to a house." We could say that a house represents the self—that which we build and create, and feel like we have to support, and hide behind, or hide within, or get lost within. And the Buddha certainly used this in some other poems that we can find in the Dhammapada^[2], talking about the housebuilder being the self, and the house itself being the self. But a house can also represent our attachments, those things that we are tangled up with. So a house can literally be a house, but maybe not necessarily.

And then in this line, "It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house." "Foolish"—in Pali, this word for foolish is the same word as "child." So it's a way of just not knowing better yet. And the Buddha called people fools who didn't recognize that what they were doing was a source of suffering. So this idea of planting a redwood tree right next to a house, a sense of self.

Then the poem continues: "Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose." This notion of—maybe I'll just say, some of you might know that IMC, Insight Meditation Center, is in Redwood City. There's a reason why it's called Redwood City. There are a number of reasons, but one is the redwood trees there. And in the front of IMC is this really big redwood tree, maybe, I don't know what the diameter is, maybe eight feet or something. It's really big. And this redwood tree over the years has been growing and growing, and the sidewalk around it was buckling, and it was really getting distorted and was creating a tripping hazard for people.

So IMC worked to level out the sidewalk, and they had to call the city to help with this. I love this so much: the city came in, looked at this redwood tree, looked at the sidewalk, and they just decided to reroute the sidewalk around the tree. Just recognizing that trees are powerful, and they grow, and there's no stopping them, no matter how much concrete you put down on a sidewalk. In the same way, maybe this poet knew this, had this experience for themselves, and it was the same way in which practice grows. It's the nature to grow, and it disrupts our sense of self, disrupts our attachments.

So this idea that if you don't want anything in your life to change, if you don't want any disruptions, then don't plant your practice next to it.

So this poem continues by saying, "You will have to choose between that great calm being and this clutter of soup pots and books." That great calm being—we could say is awakening, we could say it's practice, we could say it's just regular meditation. And then "this clutter of soup pots and books"—maybe this poem is a little bit autobiographical; maybe the poet has a lot of books and likes to cook. But clutter is the opposite of calm. Maybe there's a sense of things not being cared for or being neglected. And we might ask ourselves, what in our life is the opposite of calm? What have we filled our life with, our sense of self with, that's the opposite of calm?

So this poem is not asking us to let go of our soup pots and books necessarily, but I would say it's asking us to let go of our grasping to them, our clinging or craving, our compulsion to shift our relationship to the objects of the world, and allow that relationship to be disrupted by this growing practice, this growing tree. And maybe it's asking us to soften and let go of all the ways that we limit and define ourselves, and to let go of those objects and experiences that we're using to bolster, protect, and maybe even inflate the sense of self that we have.

So this disruption, of course, it doesn't have to be violent. It doesn't have to be some big, giant painful thing. It might just be this simple, gentle dismantling of this house, this sense of self that we're so trying to hold on to. So maybe it's something as simple as the softening of resentment or a grudge, and starting to feel and see more clearly how this leads to suffering. Or maybe it's about softening our preferences for how we think other people should behave, or how we should behave—the ways in which we're dismantling a little bit of this sense of self.

Then this poem continues: "Already the first branch-tips brush at the window." I love this. You know, the branch tips—this is what's visible above the ground. It's maybe obvious when it's the roots of the trees that disrupt the sidewalks often, and they're not so visible, but there's a way that just brushing at the window... maybe there's this way that sometimes we can just really feel practice leading our life. It's not necessarily always pleasant, and maybe it only happens under certain conditions, just like the branch tips brush only when it's windy, for example. But is there a way that we can become sensitive to and notice, or maybe we've already noticed, the way that practice is affecting our life?

Or maybe this is a question: In what ways has practice brushed up against your life? Maybe you're not cursing at the driver that's going too slow in the lane in front of you, or cuts you off, or doesn't use their blinker, or whatever it might be.

And then this poem ends with: "Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life." Immensity—without limits, vastness without a sense of how things should be, maybe without a sense of self, with no limits. First, the practice is brushing against the window, and then it's tapping—a little bit more insistent, in a way that we can't really maybe ignore it.

So maybe there's this shift in emphasis, and maybe we're starting to choose "that calm being," the tree, practice, versus "this clutter of soup pots and books."

So I'll read this poem one more time here:

It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books. Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

This poem is called "Tree" and it's by Jane Hirshfield. I'll say this again, the poem is called "Tree" and it's by Jane Hirshfield. And I offered my interpretation of this poem, but what's your interpretation? I offered one way we can look at this, but part of the beauty of, I would say, practice and poetry is that we each find our own way. Nobody's way is exactly the same. Nobody's interpretation of this poem will be exactly the same. What is your interpretation? How is this poem relevant to your life today?

So thank you. Thank you for your practice, and I'll see you tomorrow.