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Believing in words

22 April 2026 by Ben Howard

In his poem “Fly,” the American poet W.S. Merwin (1927-2019) describes himself as one who has “always believed too much in words.”

That statement would be remarkable coming from almost anyone, but it is particularly striking coming from an acclaimed poet and translator, then in his forties, whose distinguished career had been largely based on words. Profound and far-reaching, Merwin’s declaration can be understood in multiple contexts, most notably the personal, the environmental, and the metaphysical.

“Fly” appeared in The Lice (1972), Merwin’s sixth collection of poems, three years after the moon landing and concurrent with the dawn of the environmental movement. A lyric poem with a prominent narrative component, it recounts the narrator’s effort to compel an old, unhealthy, and “filthy” pigeon, whom the narrator has been keeping in a dovecote, to rally its energies and take flight:

            Fly I said throwing him into the air

            But he would drop and run back expecting to be fed

            I said it again and again throwing him up

            As he got worse

As foolish as they were futile, the narrator’s actions eventually result in the pigeon’s death. Finding him “in the dovecote dead / Of the needless efforts,” he contemplates the dead bird’s eye, “that could not / Conceive that I was a creature to run from.”

In the general scheme of human misdeeds, Merwin’s might seem minor, but to him it occasions introspection and harsh self-judgment. “So that is what I am,” he concludes, isolating that line for maximum impact. Having been presumptuous and obtuse in expecting the pigeon to obey his spoken command, he views himself as an agent of human cruelty, who has abused his dominion over beasts and fowls and caused the unnecessary death of a fellow creature.

Beyond its personal context, the narrator’s actions and his subsequent remorse reflect a broader, cultural sense of culpability. When the astronauts viewed the planet Earth from the vantage point of the moon, they were awed by its beauty, humbled by its magnificence, and made newly aware of its vulnerability. Michael Collins (Apollo 11) likened the planet to a precious jewel. James Irwin (Apollo 15) described it as so delicate that if “you touched it with a finger it would fall apart.” Those feelings were shared by many who viewed William Anders’ celebrated “Earthrise” photo, which the nature photographer Galen Rowell called the “most influential environmental photograph ever taken.” Within that cultural milieu, the episode depicted in “Fly” epitomizes the greed, arrogance, and ignorance that by the 1960s had accelerated the extinction of floral and fauna and grievously plundered the Earth’s natural resources. And Merwin’s personal epiphany represents, in small, the cultural awakening that would engender the Whole Earth Movement (c.1970), the establishment of the EPA (1970), and, in the next decades, stringent environmental regulation.

Yet, if Merwin’s poem is in part a personal confession and in part a cultural avatar, it is also the mature work of a seasoned poet who, as a steward of the English language, has come to recognize his medium’s limitations. The word the narrator has believed in is “fly,” cast in the imperative mode. Not only does its inefficacy reveal the incapacity of human speech to control wild nature. It also points toward the limited ability of language in general to represent reality. To be sure, an abiding belief in words is necessary to navigate and survive everyday life. “Stop” means “stop,” and we’d better believe it. But excessive belief in language, whether as a measure of personal importance, a defining agent of social identity, or a mirror of things as they are, can foster delusion and inflict incalculable suffering. Witness theories of a master race or false historical ideologies justifying territorial invasion.

No spiritual tradition is more aware of the frailties of language than Zen Buddhism, which from its beginnings has declared itself “not dependent on words and letters” and regarded words as “fingers pointing toward the moon,” not to be mistaken for the moon itself. Like many poets and writers of his generation, Merwin was interested in Zen, and in 1976 he moved to Hawaii to study with the Zen master Robert Aitken Roshi. Just as “Fly” anticipates Merwin’s later environmental conservationism and his founding of the Merwin Conservancy, so does his poem adumbrate his wholehearted embrace of Zen teachings, which by and large view concepts and their linguistic vehicles, namely words, as filters and impediments between our minds and concrete reality. Even honest, well-intentioned words are not to be naively trusted, insofar as they reify interdependent, dynamic nexuses into separate, static “things.” From that perspective, a skeptical attitude toward words, however beautiful or inspiring, potent or inciteful they may be, is of itself a necessary, wise, and salutary practice.

Read “Fly” in its entirety at https://merwinconservancy.org/poems/fly-by-w-s-merwin/. .

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Good neighbors

19 January 2026 by Ben Howard

As the world knows, Zen Buddhism is a practice of stillness and silence. Its iconic image is a figure sitting cross-legged in meditation. But Zen is also a practice of active questioning. And no question is more central to the practice than one a child might ask: “What is this?” Zen teachings enjoin practitioners to ask this question over and again, not only in formal meditation but throughout the day. Whether the immediate focus of attention be an orange, an iPhone, a transitory feeling, a state of mind, or what is commonly called the self, to practice Zen is to inquire deeply into whatever we encounter: to penetrate beneath its illusory surface to its “true nature.”

Yet one need not be a Zen practitioner to benefit from asking Zen’s central question. Radical inquiry is basic to pursuits as diverse as science, medicine, law, philosophy, and the visual arts. And it is also fundamental to Western meditative poetry, as in Wordsworth’s Prelude or T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, where the aim, as in Zen, is both to understand the essential nature of the object under scrutiny and to reignite an Edenic sense of awe and wonder.

Few Western poems better illustrate this process than Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” (1913), one of the most celebrated, widely anthologized, and enduring poems of the 20th century. At first glance, this readily accessible poem is a folksy, anecdotal account of a conversation between two neighboring farmers in rural New Hampshire. But on closer inspection, it reveals itself to be a profound inquiry into the nature, origins, and purpose of man-made walls. More broadly, it is an examination of the sources of division, enclosure, and territorial conflict in Western culture and the role that fixed, traditional ideas play in such conflicts.

In “Mending Wall,” two owners of adjoining farms are engaging in the annual springtime ritual of repairing a drystone wall that separates their properties. Even as they work together, the narrator (who has initiated this chore by getting in touch with his neighbor) is inwardly questioning its worth and meaning. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” he confides to the reader. Whatever that unspecified “something” may be, it has both human and natural agents: the hunters who break through the wall in pursuit of prey and the winter groundswell, which topples the carefully balanced stones. And just as these physical forces undermine the established wall, so the narrator subverts its very existence by questioning its reason for being. As he notes, there is no practical need to separate his apple orchard from his neighbor’s pine forest. Neither is harming the other. Nor are there cows to enclose. Why erect a wall at all?

In response to this mischievous but searching question, the neighbor offers a platitude, most likely derived from a 19th-century Farmer’s Almanac: “Good fences make good neighbors.” Recognizing this argument as proverbial rather than original, expedient rather than persuasive, the narrator characterizes it as his neighbor’s “father’s saying,” which the man has neither the inclination nor the imagination to call into question. And toward the end of the poem, the two neighbors merely restate their opposing positions: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” and “Good fences make good neighbors.” Whether the author is siding with one or the other remains unknown. And the question itself remains unresolved.

“Mending Wall” has sometimes been read—or misread—as a didactic poem with a simple message: “Tear down all walls.” But, given the even balance of opposing perspectives, supported by the author’s own impartiality, the poem might better be understood as a concrete demonstration of an ongoing inquiry. That the issue remains far from resolved after more than a hundred years may be seen in an episode of the TV drama Yellowstone (Season 1, Episode 7), where the cattle baron John Dutton (Kevin Costner) directs the Asian tourists who are trespassing on his property (and photographing a nearby grizzly bear) to take note of his fences and get off his land. When one of the tourists objects, asserting that the earth belongs to everyone, Dutton dismisses his argument with a memorable line: “This is America. We don’t share land here!”

In Zen practice, “What is this?” is both a question and a koan, whose purpose is not so much to produce definitive answers as to lift the veils of prejudicial concepts, freshen our perceptions, and reveal the impermanent, selfless, and interdependent nature of things we usually take for granted. Likewise, Robert Frost, at once a social conservative and a radical explorer, offers a koan of his own, inviting us to look more deeply into the nature of walls and boundaries, literal and figurative, and to ask what place and meaning such fabrications have in our daily lives.

Photo: Robert Frost

To read “Mending Wall” go to https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall

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I should have thought

3 December 2025 by Ben Howard

Many years ago, when I was still an undergraduate, I traveled from eastern Iowa to the North of England to study English literature at the University of Leeds, a so-called “redbrick” university in West Yorkshire. There I lived for a year in a village on the outskirts of that soot-laden city in a hall of residence built in 1865 from Yorkshire gritstone. Most of my fellow residents were English, but others hailed from such faraway countries as Ghana, South Africa, Iceland, and Rhodesia.

Sometimes in the evenings I would walk down the hall to have a chat with my friend Asmundur (“Asi”) Jonsson, a husky, deep-voiced, older student from Keflavik. Asi smoked an ornate Meerschaum pipe. Sometimes, after I’d offered up a fresh opinion—or, no less likely, a callow misperception—he would sit back in his chair and patiently puff on his pipe as he formulated his response. “I should have thought,” he would finally say, and proceed to address whatever I’d said. More than once, his views differed from mine. I have long since forgotten our opinions, but I recall his opening phrase as vividly as I do the sweet fragrance of his tobacco. I had never heard it before and have rarely heard it since.

“I should have thought” is a verbal phrase cast in what grammarians call the conditional past tense. It places the action, in this case having a thought, in a time prior to the present, before a subsequent event has occurred. In this instance, the subsequent event is the voicing of a different or contrary opinion. For example, were Geoffrey to observe that “I’ve heard that it’s better to brush your teeth first, then floss afterward,” Nigel might reply, “I should have thought it was the other way around.” As this innocuous exchange illustrates, “I should have thought” provides a vehicle for polite disagreement. But even when engaged in more charged conversations, especially those concerning politics and religion, this now rare usage can serve to open the conversational space, establish an appropriate distance between conversationalists, and set a distinctive tone.

In contemporary American life, we have grown accustomed to living in cramped conversational spaces, where there is often little room for a variety of perspectives or a divergence of views. If one participant says something the other finds erroneous, ill-informed, or otherwise objectionable, the conversation may soon be abruptly over. Or worse, it might escalate into an angry confrontation.

By contrast, “I should have thought” expands the conversational arena to accommodate multiple, differing, and opposing views. And it opens the possibility of a “both/and” rather than a “right/wrong” or “either/or” resolution. Even views that stood in polar opposition at the beginning of the conversation may, by its end, prove compatible and even complementary.

By the same token, “I should have thought” widens the emotional distance between the participants in a conversation. It establishes an appropriate space between them. As the Zen teacher Norman Fischer has observed, in any relationship between two people, two components are ever present: their connection and their essential solitude. The two participants may be intimately connected by such bonds as family, friendship, country, or affiliation. At the same time, each has a private inner life that the other has no way of knowing. In the Japanese martial arts, an appropriate combative distance (known as ma-ai) is strictly maintained. Analogously, an appropriate distance in conversation honors both the speakers’ interconnection and their respective solitudes. And, as Fischer puts it, it also creates “[a] space charged with openness, silence, and mystery.”

And that is not all. In its very formality, “I should have thought” forges a link between contemporary usage, which tends to be casual and all too often careless, and the long history of the English language. Asi’s first language was Icelandic. He learned English in a school, where the old rule regarding “should” rather than “would” was still taught and enforced. According to that rule, “should” must be used when speaking in the first person. However archaic, Asi’s locution conjured a linguistic universe in which the observance of such fine distinctions imparted precision to ordinary speech. By extension, it also heightened the beauty and dignity of a conversation.

Today, no one I know would say “I should have thought,” except perhaps ironically or in a role-playing context. The phrase would come across as a pretentious affectation. But might there not be other ways by which the space, distance, and tone once created by that turn of phrase could be re-imagined, if only as a welcome alternative to the rude interruptions and abrupt dismissals, the in-your-face confrontations, and the unnecessary misunderstandings that afflict contemporary American discourse? I should have thought so.

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A peaceable heart

19 November 2025 by Ben Howard

Like the word silly, which once meant “innocent” (“the silly sheep”) but now means “foolish, frivolous, lacking in common sense,” the word contention has a distinctive history. Derived from the Latin contentio, it once meant “striving, struggle, competition.” But sometime in the sixteenth century, contention came to mean “disagreement, argument, fighting.” Unlike silly, contention has retained its earlier meaning, but today it most often conjures scenes of conflict, dysfunction, and disharmony—or, at its most extreme, mortal combat. A contentious person is someone inclined to instigate division, discord, and outright feuding—and, in the worst case, incite violent action.

In its healthiest manifestation, contention is fair-minded competition, physical or intellectual. The Bills and the Chiefs contend for victory on the playing field. Olympians contend for the gold. Nations contend in an open, if regulated, market. But in its unhealthiest forms, contention is first and last a ruthless power struggle. Fairness goes by the board, as do such norms as lawfulness, decency, and respect. Oxford debaters contend, but unless they are prepared to be disqualified, they adhere to established rules. But contending parties in an ungoverned dispute may simply fight to the bitter end, verbally or physically, with no holds barred. All that matters is winning or being in the right, or both.

Contention is often understood to be an existing condition, akin to the temperature of a room or the quality of the air. Likewise, a propensity toward contention is commonly viewed as an aspect of temperament, a trait of personality more likely to harshen than mellow with age. But from the standpoint of Zen practice, contentiousness is a mental and emotional capacity susceptible to changing conditions. With sufficient self-awareness, we can choose at any time to nourish or actively neglect it. At the same time, we can also cultivate a peaceable heart: a heart inclined toward peace.

Toward that end, classic Zen teachings offer a practice known as the Four Great Efforts, an aspect of the Noble Eightfold Path. Practitioners are encouraged to “water the seeds” of such “wholesome” states of mind as mindfulness, patience, kindness, and wisdom, as distinguished from such “unwholesome” states as greed, hatred, and vindictiveness. The first “effort” is to cultivate wholesome states that have already arisen. The second is to nourish wholesome states that have yet to arise. The third is to allow unwholesome states that have already arisen to languish. And the fourth is to do the same with unwholesome states that have yet to arise. These efforts are to be conducted methodically, their aim being the perfection of character. In monastic settings, the practice of the Four Great Efforts may include the recitation of vows and the contemplation of such virtues as patience, kindness, and compassion. For lay practitioners, it may be enough to regularly stop whatever one is doing and check one’s heart for currents of aversion. Bringing contemplative attention to such currents can lessen their destructive power and forestall future harm.

Robert Thurman, an emeritus professor of Indo-European Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, once noted that throughout our everyday lives we are feeding one state of mind or another. We may be doing so habitually and unconsciously, with neither a beneficent nor malevolent intent. But whether we are listening to a quiet, contemplative piece of music or watching a violent, blood-drenched action film, we are directing our attention to a particular object. We are engaging, as it were, in a form of meditation. In the first instance, the mental state being fueled is one of tranquility, harmony, and accord. In the second, it is one of destructive, ego-driven action. But whatever our present state of mind may be, for good or ill we are at once sustaining and strengthening it.

In an old Jewish story, a man is strolling along a sandy beach when a bottle floats by. Out pops a genie, who invites the man to make a wish. Without hesitation, he blurts out, “world peace.” “Oh, I’m sorry,” replies the genie. “A lot of people ask for that, but I’m afraid it’s out of the question. Please make another wish.”

Not everyone would agree with that genie. In the views of such prominent peace advocates as Desmond Tutu, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton, and the Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh, peace between peoples and nations is an attainable, if distant, objective. But, as Thich Nhat Hanh often reminded ardent pacifists back in the 1970s, any serious effort toward peace must begin with ourselves. At any moment, we can examine the presence of contentiousness in our hearts and minds, and, if we so choose, deprive it of favorable conditions. We can practice what the Dalai Lama has called “inner disarmament,” even as we tend a peaceable heart.

Image: Fred Easker, Mississippi Meditation

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The practice of veneration

22 October 2025 by Ben Howard

In the closing line of his poem “Sandstone Keepsake,” the Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney describes himself as “one of the venerators.” That line is striking, not only because the verb venerate has largely disappeared from everyday discourse but also because the spirit of veneration itself, like water in certain parts of the world, is becoming as scarce as it is precious.

Veneration derives from the Latin root veneratio¸which means “reverence or profound respect.” In his poem, which was written during the Troubles, Heaney depicts himself wading on a beach on the Inishowen Peninsula, at the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. There he finds a “chalky, russet” chunk of sandstone, which he subsequently likens to the “long venerated” heart of a 13th-century martyr. And he portrays himself as a humble countryman, out for an evening walk and no threat to the wary British authorities of Northern Ireland, who may well be watching him with binoculars.

Humility is an essential component of veneration. It can be expressed physically through the acts of bowing, kneeling, or prostration. No less important than these outer forms, however, is a mental attitude of selfless regard. In Zen parlance, this attitude is sometimes described as “lowering the mast of the self.” Often it is accompanied by silence, stillness, and a profound sense of gratitude.

In formal religion, the objects of veneration have most often been spiritual leaders, saints, martyrs, texts, statues, and sites regarded as sacred. A short list might include the Cross, the Shroud of Turin, the Torah, the Koran, Bodh Gaya, Mecca, and Bethlehem. Informally, however, those unaffiliated with organized religion can elect to venerate an art such as painting, sculpture, or poetry; an institution, such as higher education, medicine, or law; a trade, vocation, or profession; the wild natural world; blood or spiritual ancestors; or, not least, the person or persons standing before them. In traditional Asian cultures, an attitude of veneration may be expressed by pressing the palms of one’s two hands together and making a nod or bow. More subtly, it can be expressed by offering a friend a gift with both hands.

In the Zen monastic tradition, a sense of veneration extends to the familiar objects of everyday life, such as one’s cushion, eating bowls, garments, and utensils. Beyond that, it also encompasses such tasks as cooking, cleaning, gardening, and temple maintenance. And in Japanese Zen, it is closely associated with two specific practices.

The first of those practices is known as ma, which roughly translates as “giving [an object] appropriate space.” Whether the activity be the tea ceremony, flower arranging, calligraphy, or one of the martial arts, this principle enjoins the practitioner to honor both the objects of attention and the space around them. In his notebooks the writer and Zen practitioner Peter Matthiessen spoke of the “fierce cleanliness” of Dai Bosatsu Zendo, the monastery where he learned the practice of Zen. Having trained there myself, and having washed its windows, vacuumed its tatami mats, and washed its floors by assuming a deep crouch and running down its Tasmanian oak floors with a wet cloth, I can attest to the cleanliness of its interiors. But equally important were the austerity and minimalism of its décor. The objects to be dusted and meticulously arranged were few and far between, and the spaces between them felt as present as the objects themselves. Both their presence and the space between them embodied the “Way” of ma.

As the conscientious, if temporary, steward of those objects, I learned to embody the second principle of veneration, known in Zen as menmitsu-no-kafu. Derived from roots meaning “interwoven” and “family,” menmitsu refers to a warm, wholehearted, and intimate quality of attention to the objects in one’s care. However humble or precious, those objects are to be treated with what is sometimes called “grandmother mind,” as though they were members of one’s family. Whether the items in question be the three bowls used in oryoki (formal Zen meals), the towels folded and placed on the beds of incoming guests, the exact, woodpecker-like striking of the han (wooden block) to initiate a sitting, or the placement of one’s hands when engaged in zazen (seated meditation), the Way of menmitsu may be understood as a form of kinetic, daily veneration.

John Daido Loori Roshi, an American Zen master, once noted that it was impossible to bow in gratitude and complain at the same time. Analogously, it is difficult, if not impossible, to nurture the spirit of veneration while in pursuit of riches, importance, power, and conquest. The two sets of values are incompatible. But even at a time when our cultural ethos has sharply veered toward the latter way of being, it is still possible to become, like Seamus Heaney, one of the venerators. At any given moment, it is still possible to choose.

—–

To read the full text of “Sandstone Keepsake,” see https://voetica.com/poem/7555.

Photo: Dai Bosatsu Zendo

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Decent ordinary life

8 July 2025 by Ben Howard

If you follow the national and international news, you may be forgiven for concluding that current political, economic, and military developments are the most important things in this turning world. Next to them, the ordinary activities of daily life may seem slight, undramatic, and banal. But two paintings, both of them focused on everyday life, suggest otherwise.

Johannes Vermeer’s A View of Delft (c. 1660-1663) is by common consensus a great work of art. When Marcel Proust, author of Remembrance of Things Past, viewed the painting in a museum in the Hague, he pronounced it “the most beautiful painting in the world.” Over the past two centuries, the collective estimate of art critics and historians has not been far behind.

A View of Delft is a cityscape. The painting portrays the city of Delft, Holland, as seen from a southeastern perspective. From the position of the sun, it is evident that the time is early morning. In the foreground is the harbor, normally a bustling venue, but at this hour it is nearly empty, with only a stationary barge, two herring boats, and a few sailing vessels occupying its waters.  In the middle distance, the walls of the city’s brownstone and brick buildings are darkened by shadows. Its famous gates and fortifications, one of Delft’s distinctive features, are also enshadowed, their rough textures rendered by dots of paint. Higher up, however, the morning sunlight bathes the city’s roofs and steeples. Most striking is the white spire of Nieuwe Kirk, where Vermeer was baptized, a spiritual center of a thriving commercial city. Above the city are scudding clouds.

As the critic Karl Schutz has noted, A View of Delft, for all its masterly illusionism, has the feeling of a snapshot. Unlike a tranquil pastoral landscape, such as John Constable might have painted, Vermeer’s picture conveys a sense of activity frozen in time, an illusion created in part by the momentary ripples in the waters of the harbor. And though the painting possesses a serenity of its own, it is that of normal, everyday life. That effect is further enhanced by the presence of human figures in the immediate foreground, near the water. On the left, two well-dressed burghers, accompanied by two women, are waiting for the barge; not far away, two women in peasant attire are engaged in conversation. I have a reproduction of A View of Delft in my study, and whenever I stop to look at it, I am drawn to the image of those men and women and the activity they represent: casual human interaction, unhindered by the currents of political and social conflict.

James McIntosh Patrick’s The Tay Bridge from My Studio Window (1948) conveys a similar impression. McIntosh Patrick’s paintings are well-known in his native Scotland, and this picture is his most iconic work. Set in the city of Dundee, where McIntosh Patrick lived and worked, it balances a sense of intimacy against a panoramic vista.

It’s late afternoon. Long, parallel shadows thrown by a wrought-iron fence traverse the lawn in the foreground. At the gate of the fence stands the painter’s wife, who is returning from her errands. On the street, a cyclist (identified as the artist’s son) is pedaling past. A greengrocer making deliveries in his horse-drawn cart has momentarily paused. His horse stands still. On the sidewalk on the far side of the street, a man is walking his dogs, and a mother is pushing a stroller. Beyond them lies a wide sward known as Magdalen Green. Above it, the Tay Railway Bridge winds like a serpent above the Tay Estuary, where a cargo ship is making its slow passage across the water. Two locomotives pulling trains send white plumes of smoke into the overcast sky.

As the essayist Chris Arthur has observed, McIntosh Patrick’s painting creates a compelling illusion of arrested activity. In Arthur’s words, the picture leaves “a strong impression of capturing a moment.” The figures and objects in motion in the painting, particularly the cyclist, the dog walker, the cargo ship, and the steaming locomotives, though “captive in paint,” are “replete with a sense of movement.” McIntosh Patrick’s art “emphasizes the interruption of a flow.”

That it does. But like A View of Delft, it also honors the beauty waiting to be discovered in daily activities and common things. It is no accident that I also have a framed reproduction of McIntosh Patrick’s painting on my wall, where it quietly reminds me of the dignity of everyday life. The social, political, and economic ethos within which these paintings were created was no less fraught than our own, if not more so. But just as Zen monastics train themselves daily to remain in the present and to attend respectfully to ordinary things, the creators of these timeless paintings invert the news media’s conventional hierarchies of interest and value, giving precedence not to the mighty, the rich, and the warlike but to decent ordinary life.

Karl Schutz, Vermeer: The Complete Works. 45th ed. (Taschen, 2021).

Chris Arthur, What Is It Like to Be Alive? (Eastover Press, 2024), 237-258.

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The inside story

27 May 2025 by Ben Howard

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Wrens’ nests

30 April 2025 by Ben Howard

In the opening lines of his poem “Gauze,” Ted Kooser, a former Poet Laureate of the United States, asks a provocative question: “Can a man in his eighties, with cancer, / be happy?” In the remaining lines, he provides a tentative answer:

                        It seems that he can, cutting

            yesterday’s gauze dressing in pieces

–

            to scatter over the grass for the wrens

            who’ve come back again after another

            long winter and are building their nests

–

            in his birdhouses built with old boards

            that he salvaged in happiness, which he

            hammered together in happiness too.

If Kooser’s response to his own question sounds surprising, even startling, it is probably because it runs athwart conventional assumptions. In contemporary Western culture, old age is not commonly regarded as a time of exceptional happiness. On the contrary, it is often characterized as a kind of sunset: a time of loss, regret, physical indignity, and relative incapacity. Likewise, a critical, if not incurable, disease would seem incompatible with a general mood of happiness. Kooser’s pivotal use of the verb seems suggests that even he cannot quite believe what he is experiencing.

            From the vantage point of Zen teachings, however, Kooser’s experience of happiness amidst adverse conditions is not all that unusual. It seems entirely plausible. This is because Zen teachings sharply distinguish between external events and our internal responses. The former are often well out of our control. The latter are often a matter of choice, however conscious or unconscious.

            Usually, this distinction is framed as the difference between pain and conditioned suffering. Pain is what happens to us. Conditioned suffering is what we inflict upon ourselves through our reactions and responses, as when we catastrophize without sufficient evidence or engage in fearful speculation. Classical Buddhism likens the pain attendant to harsh external conditions to an arrow piercing our bodies. Our negative, conditioned responses are like a second arrow shot into the open wound.

            With respect to aging, anyone of a certain age can confirm that the first arrow and its impact are all too real. Beyond the maladies already mentioned, there may be cognitive impairments, the risk of taking a life-altering fall, or the eventual need for joint replacements, to name a few. These and other infirmities can make the lives of elderly people challenging, to say the least.

            At the same time, we have a choice. We can deny, resist, exaggerate, or otherwise worsen our afflictions.  Or we can acknowledge them, seek treatment, and, if possible, accept them for what they are. If the former response is akin to the second arrow, the latter affords at least a possible end to conditioned suffering.

            With respect to illness and disease, true acknowledgment and acceptance may be a far more complex and difficult matter. And it is also an individual one, dependent on temperament, overall health, and many other variables. For those with high pain thresholds and a cultivated tolerance for the uncertain and the unknowable, it is one thing. For those with neither, it is quite another.

            What Ted Kooser’s poem distinctively reflects is an open and curious but realistic sensibility discovering, as if for the first time, that happiness can co-exist with the realities of aging and the presence of a serious illness. It is not as if he is fully accepting either. Rather, he is implying that what Zen teachings would call contentment is ultimately not determined by externally imposed conditions. Its sources are within.

            For Kooser those sources would appear to include the pleasures of making and making do with what is at hand; the sense of being an integral part of nature rather than merely an outside observer; the exercise of imagination in returning a manufactured, disposable fabric to the natural world; and, not least, the neighborly company of wrens, one of the most comely and sonorous of North American birds.

—

Read the full text of “Gauze” in Raft (Copper Canyon Press, 2024), Ted Kooser’s most recent book.

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It’s about the music

2 April 2025 by Ben Howard

Andres Segovia once called the classical guitar a small orchestra. Traditionally, its back and sides are made of rosewood, its soundboard of spruce or cedar. Together with these resonant woods, its six nylon strings, three or four of them wire-wound, can produce a rich variety of tones, ranging from the velvety to the brilliant, the smoky to the metallic. Depending on where the player’s right hand is positioned, the guitar can imitate instruments as diverse as the clarinet, the cello, the flute, and the snare drum. Notes on the so-called open strings (E, A, D, G, B, E) can be played on multiple places on the fingerboard, each placement creating a distinctive timbre. Notes can also be played as harmonics, natural or artificial. Like stops on a pipe organ, these technical options greatly expand the expressive potential of the classical guitar. At the same time, they make it one of the more difficult instruments to play well. And for some players, that difficulty is only compounded when an audience is listening.

For many years, I taught classical guitar at Alfred University. I also took part in the Performing Arts Division’s annual faculty recitals. Most often I played solo pieces from the Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic, and modern repertoires. But one year I invited an advanced student to join me in a duet. For our offering I chose “My Lord Willoughby’s Welcome Home” by John Dowland (1563-1626), a stately, lyrical piece originally composed for Renaissance lute. The arrangement for guitar included an optional second part, which I asked my student to learn. That the second part was optional proved crucial to our public performance. Halfway through, my student lost his way and had to drop out, leaving me to finish the piece alone. As we left the stage, he whispered, “I’m sorry, Ben.”

There was no need to apologize. Stage fright is far more common than one might think. It has afflicted not only inexperienced amateurs but also seasoned professionals of the stature of Frederic Chopin, Vladimir Horowitz, Glenn Gould, Laurence Olivier, and Pablo Casals, to name a few. And it can strike when least expected. Those who suffer from chronic stage fright can either cease to perform publicly, as Gould chose to do, or find reliable ways to settle their nerves. Proven stratagems include controlled breathing, yoga, Tai Chi, and the repetition of a mantra.

For performers who are also Zen practitioners, the daily experience of zazen (seated meditation) can also create a foundation for dealing with stage fright, not so much by enabling a performer to “conquer” it as by learning to integrate anxiety and its physical symptoms into one’s present experience. The deep breathing developed during sitting meditation can of course be beneficial. It stimulates the vagus nerve and helps the body relax. No less important, however, are three practices intrinsic to Zen meditation, namely the cultivation of awareness, the development of presence, and the discipline of selfless contemplation.

Zen practice trains us to bring awareness to every moment of our lives. This begins with mindfulness of breathing, posture, and state of mind, but it also extends to the immediate environment: its temperature, lighting, ambient noises, and so on. For a performing soloist, the experience of stepping on stage and suddenly facing a darkened, hushed auditorium can all too easily precipitate anxiety. Becoming aware of it as soon as it arises can forestall its spiraling into a debilitating attack. Conversely, being caught unawares, as my student evidently was, can subvert and even abort the most well-rehearsed performance.

Zen practice also cultivates presence: the capacity to be continuously present for the present moment. David Russell, a contemporary master of the guitar, once noted that audiences rarely hear every note being played. It is the guitarist’s job to direct attention to the notes that matter most. And to do that, performers must themselves remain present for every note, phrase, and cadence they are playing. Doing so can make the difference between an anxious, lifeless performance and a fresh, expressive one. And because fear is so often future-based, returning to presence can also be a potent antidote to stage fright.

And last, Zen practice teaches us to align the self with things as they are, however pleasant or unpleasant. “When it’s hot, be completely hot,” one Zen master put it. In the case of musical performance, this means aligning ourselves with such intricacies as the crescendos and decrescendos, the legatos and staccatos, and, not least, the points of rest in the music we are playing. Under the pressure of performance, it is easy to forget that the activity in which we are engaged is not ultimately about ourselves. It’s about the music. And to the degree that we can forget ourselves and listen, selflessly and contemplatively, to the music’s pulse and flow, we will not only enhance our performance and garner deserved applause. We will also share with our audience the music’s inherent depth and beauty.

Photo: My 2023 Masaki Sakarai guitar

Listen to my rendition of J.S. Bach’s “Sleepers Awake” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4YbhKkq9Wk

Listen to “My Lord Wlloughby’s Welcome Home” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzYHqiZDUG4.

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An unexpected lightness

19 March 2025 by Ben Howard

In the summer of the year 2000, I had the good fortune to be spending the month of June in Ireland, where I was teaching Irish literature to American students at Trinity College, Dublin. One sunny afternoon, as I was walking down Nassau Street in central Dublin, I stopped to browse at a sidewalk bookstall.

Enclosed in wooden trays were dozens of used books, including hefty, well-worn volumes on Irish history, culture, literature, and topography; slim, tattered collections by obscure Irish poets; dated anthologies of Irish drama, short stories, and essays; and biographies of such luminaries as Michael Davitt, Michael Collins, and Éamon de Valera. Finding many books of interest but none I cared to buy, I was about to leave, when another book caught my eye. Lo and behold, it was a book of my own: my verse novella, Midcentury, which my Irish publisher, Salmon Poetry, had released three years earlier.

Midcentury is a book-length, blank-verse meditation, narrated by a middle-aged American lexicographer living alone in Ireland in the nineteen-forties. Down on his luck and overly fond of Irish whiskey, he is seeking solace in the Irish landscape and Ireland’s wartime neutrality. His dominant themes, interwoven through six, interrelated sections in the manner of a string quartet, include impermanence, dispossession, forgiveness, the roots of language, Ireland’s tragic history, and his own spiritual deracination and renewal.

I began the  the first section, “The Word from Dublin, 1944,” while in residence at Yaddo, the writers’ retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York. The remaining sections were written in multiple venues over the next three years. I completed the book in 1995 while staying at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Annaghmakerrig), the Irish writers’ retreat in Co. Monaghan. Before I had even begun this project, I might add, months of historical research into mid-twentieth-century Irish history and culture had laid its foundation. And there it was, my magnum opus, for sale on a Dublin sidewalk for less than a pint of Guinness.

“All conditioned things,” the Buddha is reported to have said, “are of the nature of vanishing.” Where books are concerned, those conditions include the vagaries of publishing, marketing, aesthetic fashion, critical opinion, and time itself, which can be cruel to unprotected ink and paper. With obvious exceptions, most authors should not be surprised to see their books vanish or be forgotten in due time—and often sooner rather than later. (With Midcentury I’ve had better luck: according to WorldCat, the worldwide library database, the book is currently in 89 libraries, here and abroad). No matter how many hours went into the making of a book, it can disappear quickly and with scarcely a trace, taking with it whatever ephemeral acclaim it might have accrued. In his poem “Provide, Provide!” Robert Frost puts the matter succinctly: “No memory of having starred / Atones for later disregard.”

What I am speaking of, of course, is the reality of impermanence, which the Zen teacher Norman Fischer has called the “cornerstone of Buddhist teachings and practice.” For Frost, the remedy was to “make the whole stock exchange your own,” which might increase the chances of having interested parties at one’s bedside as the end draws near. “Better to go down dignified,” he advised, “With boughten friendship at your side / Than none at all.” From the perspective of Zen teachings, however, the issue is neither so materialistically defined nor so easily resolved. Nor is impermanence something we can deal with later. It is immanent, if not always apparent, in things as they appear to us in the here and now. And, as Fischer puts it, “to understand impermanence at the deepest level, and to merge with it fully, is the whole of the Buddhist path.” Mindfulness, the central practice of Zen meditation, is “not a way to cope with or overcome impermanence. It is the way to fully appreciate and live it.”

That is more easily said than done. A lifetime of Western conditioning militates against it. But having practiced Zen for more than three decades, I can report that eventually one can get the hang of living within, rather than outside, the reality of impermanence. And should that happen, you may find yourself experiencing an unexpected lightness of being. As the Vietnamese master Thich Nhat Hanh often noted, we suffer not because things are impermanent but because we expect them to be permanent when they are not. Truly releasing that expectation can lift a self-inflicted burden, offer a fresh way of seeing, and open a gate to the next new experience. And for Zen practitioners who are also creative artists, living in alignment with impermanence rather than habitually resisting it can both facilitate the process of artistic creation and make it far more enjoyable. “Long live impermanence!” Thich Nhat Hanh, a poet and the author of more than a hundred books, delighted in saying, with only the gentlest irony in his tone.

Norman Fischer, When You Greet Me I Bow (Shambhala, 2022), 99, 102.

Photo: “At the Bookstall,” by garryknight (Creative Commons)

 

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