Comments on: 52. Looking deeply

By: Barry Briggs

Barry Briggs — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:59:47 +0000

I’m trying writing right now!

In some sense, any activity provides the ground for deep introspection – washing dishes, brushing teeth, writing, daydreaming.

But writing calls upon us to examine our words (and what lies beneath the words) with sufficient care that our expression serves our intention.

I suspect that’s why Right Speech is one of the steps on the Eightfold Path, whereas Right Tooth Brushing is not.

By: Fionnchú

Fionnchú — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:03:13 +0000

I’m curious if Heaney has commented on his craft being honed as “meditative practice,” and how his influences have drawn from such sources as you cite as predecessors. Understandably not as directly inspired in print by Buddhist themes as the Irish poets you wrote about in “An Sionnach,” yet this post makes me wonder. I admit not being immersed in the mass of Heaney criticism that may record this contemplative connection, but you seem particularly attuned to such resonances, and thanks for this fine tuning, “like a child’s voice echoing in a well.”