Monday, September 19, 2016

Tibetan Literature

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Journal Éveillé is an Informal Exploration of the Natural Mind in the Arts of Language and Poetics

Click Here to View the Main Index

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"Despite a literary tradition going back thirteen centuries, Tibet generally has had a culture in which many important types of knowledge—not just of personal experience, but of history, philosophy and science, too—were transmitted orally..... "Verse"—metrically regulated composition—is an excellent mnemonic device, and so it should not surprise us that a tremendous amount of Tibetan literature is in verse. From among the vast number of versified works found in their language, Tibetans have separated out certain pieces because of their greater concentration of rhythm, image and meaning, their heightened "imagery" (gzugs), "vitality" (srog) and "ornamentation" (rgyan). These works are designated in Tibetan by at least three separate terms: glu (songs), mgur (poetical songs) and snyan ngag (ornate poetry).

Poetry: "a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm" (Webster's: 887a) that in the West we call "poetry," .....

"Glu, mgur and snyan ngag are interrelated in subtle and important ways, but they are distinguishable. Indeed, one may see the movement from glu to mgur to snyan ngag as reflecting both the evolution of "poetry" in Tibet from ancient to more recent times and the spectrum of poetic styles, from that of popular, oral, indigenously rooted works, to that of monastic, literary, Indian-inspired compositions."

The Gesar epic (sgrung).

"Glu, mgur and snyan ngag (along with the Gesar epic corpus) together roughly comprise the Tibetan poetic canon. Glu, which remains in Tibetan as a general term for "song," is the earliest, most indigenous, most secular, and most orally and musically oriented of the genres. mGur, which originally was either a synonym or a subdivision of glu, came eventually to denote a more Buddhistic type of "song," and might be either Tibetan or Indian in its inspiration, oral or written in its style. sNyan ngag, "speech [agreeable] to the ear," is an ornate, written, Indian-inspired type of Buddhist (and occasionally secular) poetry that did not appear until the thirteenth century, well after the other two genres."

Excerpts are from: Tibetan Literature...Studies in Genre, pp. 368-392....by Roger R. Jackson http://www.thlib.org/encyclopedias/literary/genres/genres-book.php#!book=/studies-in-genres/b22/

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"The Tibetan script was developed from an Indic script in the 7th century during the Tibetan Imperial period......Chinese authorities impose Lhasa Tibetan on Amdo Tibetan speakers, because they are both considered part of the same language for political reasons.....Throughout most of Tibetan history, its literary works have been strongly influenced by Buddhist thought: they are mostly religious, historical, and biographical texts, or a mixture of these genres. There are also collections of folktales (for example, those involving the trickster figure Akhu Tönpa), and works dealing with the ancient Bön religion, which preceded Tibetan Buddhism..... The Gesar epic in particular is the key subject of study by the Chinese state, and was revived with the end of the clergy's monopoly on political power, since the Gelugpa monasteries forbade the epic literary genre......The most popular Tibetophone literary magazine in Qinghai, "Light Rain" (Drang Char), was founded in 1981, popularizing the short story genre in Tibet....... The influence of Chinese poetry, and of Western poetry in Chinese translation, began to make itself felt after the Four Modernizations. Despite these influences, critics and editors gave priority to stories and poems with traditional settings. Most new work takes the form of poetry."....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_literature

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The Language Divide: Identity and Literary Choices in Modern Tibet ...by P Schiaffini - ‎2004

The Exotic Other and Negotiation of Tibetan Self: Representation of Tibet in ... By Kamila Hladíková

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

Northern New Mexico

September 2016

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Friday, September 16, 2016

Rudaki (c. 880 -941 AD) ... Father of Persian Poetry

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Journal Éveillé is an Informal Exploration of the Natural Mind in the Arts of Language and Poetics....

Click Here to View the Main Index

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"Rudaki......(Persian: ابوعبدالله جعفر ابن محمد رودکی‎‎, Tajik: Абӯабдуллоҳ Ҷаъфар Ибни Муҳаммад, entitled آدم الشعرا Ādam ul-Shoara or Adam of Poets), also written as Rudagi (858 - c. 941), was a Persian poet, and is regarded as the first great literary genius of the Modern Persian, who composed poems in the "New Persian" alphabet. Rudaki is considered a founder of Persian classical literature. His poetry contains many of the oldest genres of Persian poetry including the quatrain..... Only a small percentage of his extensive poetry has survived....He was the first who impressed upon every form of epic, lyric and didactic poetry its peculiar stamp and its individual character. He is also said to have been the founder of the diwan, or the typical form of the complete collection of a poet's lyrical compositions in a more or less alphabetical order, which all Persian writers use even today. He was also very adept singer and instrumentalist.".... Sassan Tabatabai, "Father of Persian Verse: Rudaki and His Poetry", Amsterdam University Press

"Abu 'Abdollâh' Jafar ibn Mohammad Rudaki (c. 880 CE-941 CE) was a poet to the Samanid court which ruled much of Khorâsân (northeastern Persia) from its seat in Bukhara. He is widely regarded as "the father of Persian poetry, for he was the first major poet to write in New Persian language, following the Arab conquest in the seventh and eighth centuries, which established Islam as the official religion, and made Arabic the predominant literary language in Persian-speaking lands for some two centuries. In the tenth century the Caliphate power, with headquarters in Bagdad, gradually weakened. The remoteness of Khorâsân, where Rudaki was based, provided a hospitable atmosphere for a "renaissance" of Persian literature. Persian poetry-now written in the Arabic alphabet-flourished under the patronage of the Samanid amirs, who drew literary talent to their court. Under the rule of Nasr ibn Ahmad II (r. 914-943), Rudaki distinguished himself as the brightest literary star of the Samanid court. This book presents Rudaki as the founder of a new poetic aesthetic, which was adopted by subsequent generations of Persian poets. Rudaki is credited with being the first to write in the rubâi form; and many of the images we first encounter in Rudaki's lines have become staples of Persian poetry.".....Father of Persian Verse: Rudaki and His Poetry (Iranian Studies Series) ......by Sassan Tabatabai (Editor)

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Ju-yi Muliyan

The Ju-yi Mulian we call to mind,
We long for those dear friends long left behind.
The sands of Oxus, toilsome though they be,
Beneath my feet were soft as silk to me.
Glad at the friend's return, the Oxus deep
Up to our girths in laughing waves shall leap.
Long live Bukhara! Be thou of good cheer!
Joyous towards thee hasteth our Amir!
The moon's the prince, Bukhara is the sky;
O Sky, the Moon shall light thee by and by!
Bukhara is the Mead, the Cypress he;
Receive at last, O Mead, thy Cypress tree!

Abu Abullah Rudaki (d. AD 940)

Translated by A. J. Arberry, 1958

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

Northern New Mexico

September 2016

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Thursday, September 15, 2016

Longchenpa (1308-1364)....Natural Perfection and Radical Dzogchen

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Journal Éveillé is an Informal Exploration of the Natural Mind in the Arts of Language and Poetics....

Click Here to View the Main Index

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Longchenpa (Tib. ཀློང་ཆེན་པ་, Wyl. klong chen pa), also known as Longchen Rabjam (Tib. ཀློང་ཆེན་རབ་འབྱམས་, klong chen rab 'byams), ‘Infinite, Vast Expanse of Space’, or Drimé Özer (1308-1364), was one of the most brilliant teachers of the Nyingma lineage. He systematized the Nyingma teachings in his ‘Seven Treasures’ and wrote extensively on Dzogchen. He transmitted the Longchen Nyingtik cycle of teachings and practice to Jikmé Lingpa, and it has since become one of the most widely practised of traditions.

The Natural Freedom of the Nature of Mind (Tib. སེམས་ཉིད་རང་གྲོལ་, Semnyi Rangdrol; Wyl. sems nyid rang grol) - part of Longchenpa's Trilogy of Natural Freedom. It has three chapters, related to the Ground, Path and Fruition, and it contains the oft-quoted lines:

Since everything is but an illusion,
Perfect in being what it is,
Having nothing to do with good or bad,
Acceptance or rejection,
One might as well burst out laughing!

ཐམས་ཅད་མཉམ་རྫོགས་སྒྱུ་མའི་རང་བཞིན་ལ། །
བཟང་ངན་བླང་དོར་མེད་པས་དགོད་རེ་བྲོ། །

thams cad mnyam rdzogs sgyu ma'i rang bzhin la//
bzang ngan blang dor med pas dgod re bro//

Translation: Longchen Rabjam, The Practice of Dzogchen, translated by Tulku Thondup, Snow Lion, 2002

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

Northern New Mexico

September 2016

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Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Poetry and the Practice of Discovering Space

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Journal Éveillé is an informal exploration of awakened mind in the art of poetry....

Click Here To View The Main Index

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"The everyday practice of dzogchen is simply to develop a complete carefree acceptance, an openness to all situations without limit. We should realise openness as the playground of our emotions and relate to people without artificiality, manipulation or strategy.....When we engage in the practice of discovering space, we should develop the feeling of opening ourselves out completely to the entire universe. We should open ourselves with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind. This is the powerful and ordinary practice of dropping the mask of self-protection.....Vast unoriginated self-luminous wisdom space is the ground of being - the beginning and the end of confusion. The presence of awareness in the primordial state has no bias toward enlightenment or non-enlightenment. This ground of being which is known as pure or original mind is the source from which all phenomena arise. It is known as the great mother, as the womb of potentiality in which all things arise and dissolve in natural self-perfectedness and absolute spontaneity. All aspects of phenomena are completely clear and lucid. The whole universe is open and unobstructed - everything is mutually interpenetrating..... The nature of phenomena appears naturally and is naturally present in time-transcending awareness. Everything is naturally perfect just as it is. All phenomena appear in their uniqueness as part of the continually changing pattern. These patterns are vibrant with meaning and significance at every moment; yet there is no significance to attach to such meanings beyond the moment in which they present themselves...This is the dance of the five elements in which matter is a symbol of energy and energy a symbol of emptiness. We are a symbol of our own enlightenment. With no effort or practice whatsoever, liberation or enlightenment is already here.....The everyday practice of dzogchen is just everyday life itself. Since the undeveloped state does not exist, there is no need to behave in any special way or attempt to attain anything above and beyond what you actually are. There should be no feeling of striving to reach some "amazing goal" or "advanced state.".... We are intrinsically enlightened and lack nothing......All phenomena are completely new and fresh, absolutely unique and entirely free from all concepts of past, present and future. They are experienced in timelessness.....Our experience becomes the continuity of nowness. Why bother with attempting to establish an illusion of solid ground?"

Dzogchen Practice in Everyday Life
by HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
http://www.nyingma.com/dzogchen1.htm

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"The relationship of mahasukha, great bliss, to vajra passion?.....It is the meeting point, ultimate communication. There is no chaos to the dance any more....Vajra passion doesn't particularly inspire you to fill the space at all, rather than use the space....in terms of limitless passion, I don't think you can do anything at all, because you become completely powerless....Vajra passion, open passion, transcendental passion...doesn't inspire you to fill the space immediately at all....It inspires you to create more space. So you don't decesssarily have to do anything immediately... instead you enjoy the space more.....Passion contains wonderful, skillful communication...we feel completely natural and open...it is like pure gold because you don't see only the surface, you see the whole way through...Applying passion with wisdom, you could see the whole process and not only be fascinated and overwhelmed by the exterior alone...."(Volume Two: The Path Is the Goal...page 621)
..."...the ground or canvas on which experience is painted....the canvas had never known colors yet, it's an open canvas. Even if you paint on the canvas, it remains white, fundamentally speaking. You could scrape off the paint."... Volume Six: Glimpses of Space ...(page 34)

"....Complete trust in confusion...seeing the confused quality as the truth of its own reality...that is the ground. You begin to develop space."...... Volume Six: Glimpses of Space ...(page 35)

The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa

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"The Longde (klong-sde) or "Space Series" of Dzogchen teachings.....Longdé is translated as "Space Division" or "Space Series" of Dzogchen and emphasises the emptiness (Wylie: strong pa) or spaciousness (Wylie: klong) aspect of the Natural State...... the basic primordial state; the nature of mind-itself (which is contrasted with normal conscious mind). .....

Excerpted from Space, Awareness, and Energy: An Introduction to the Bonpo Dzogchen Teachings of the Oral Tradition from Zhang-zhung, by John Myrdhin Reynolds, Snow Lion Publications

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Dzogchen Poem from "Eye of the Storm"

The Revelation of All Things As One:
The Root of All Experience

As one, completely free of attributes,
the yogin is like the flight-path of a bird in the sky;
in the unstructured, unoriginated, matrix
how can there be any inflated projections?

The Identity of Samsara and Nirvana:
The Fallacy of Inner and Outer

Inner and outer are one, the inner the outer itself,
so there is no ulterior field to realize;
under the power of a mistaken dichotomy,
samadhi lacks ultimate sameness.

The Reality of Vajrasattva

Vajrasattva, vast exalted spaciousness,
in the all-good expanse of existential space,
is the utterly pristine, dynamic process of liberation,
never begun, never-ending and conceiving nothing.

Complete and Perfect Dzogchen

Totally complete, nothing excluded,
unchanging, Dzogchen is simply present;
boundless, like space,
nothing is dependant upon anything else.

Immediate and Spontaneous Enlightenment

In the field of ordinary understanding lies pure pleasure,
which itself is the pristine purity of mundane existence;
through the concentration of finite light focused therein
the entire ten directions of space are illuminated.

These are the first five verses of the Dorje Sempa Namkhache Lung in the order given in the Dochu and translated accordingly to the Dochu commentary.... The Namkha Che is the realization of Garab Dorje who recited it when a child. It was given to Pagor Vairochana by Shri Singha in Oddiyana and was one of the first five translations of the Semde tantras made at Samye in Tibet. It is considered to be the root text of the Semde Series.

Eye of the Storm: Bairotsana's Original Transmissions
by Keith Dowman

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"The Buddha, wandering in the forest one day, was approached by a man who was struck by his countenance, and who asked, "What are you? Are you a saint, a yogi, a savior?" And the Buddha replied: "I am awake."....This simple original wakefulness is empty of all fixed qualities other than its own nature...This is "basic space'.....Longchenpa: "Everything is the adornment of basic space and nothing else."

Moonlight Leaning Against an Old Rail Fence: Approaching the Dharma as Poetry

(2015).....By Paul Weiss

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"Lungta and the four dignities symbolize the play of the five elements, out of which all phenomena are formed. The lungta symbolizes space, the ground of all manifestation; in fact, in astrological texts lung ta is sometimes spelt ཀློང་རྟ་, longta, 'horse of space'. "

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

Northern New Mexico

September 2016

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Sunday, September 11, 2016

Dzogchen Texts, Clear Perception & Poetic Expression

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Journal Éveillé is an informal exploration of awakened mind in the art of poetry....

Click Here To View The Main Index

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"The mark of one's speech at this point is that one's voice is soothing and enchanting, like songs sung by the children of kumbhandhas. In addition, various words of Dharma, legends, and knowledge of linguistics, poetry, and composition naturally emerge."...Dudjom Lingpa (1835-1904)

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"In general, the Dzogchen teachings are found only in the old unreformed Tibetan schools of the Buddhist Nyingmapas and the non-Buddhist Bonpos. In both cases, these teachings are substantially the same in meaning and terminology, and both traditions claim to have an unbroken lineage coming down to the present time from the eighth century and even before. Both of these schools assert that Dzo gchen did not originate in Tibet itself, but had a Central Asian origin and was subsequently brought to Central Tibet by certain masters known as Mahasiddhas or great adepts.".....http://vajranatha.com/articles/traditions/dzogchen.html

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Heart of the Great Perfection: Dudjom Lingpa's Visions of the Great Perfection......By Dudjom Lingpa (1835-1904)...
"This is the citta lamp of the flesh and whose trunk is the hollow crystal kati channel. The term fluid distant lasso lamp is collectively given to all three, which are known as the three lamps of the vessel ...The Lamp of the Flesh, Citta (Tibetan: tsitta sha'i sgron ma) is located at the heart......

Naked Awareness: Practical Instructions on the Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen.....By Karma Chagme:
"Inside it is the so-called "lamp of the empty bindus," and it is like the ... the citta lamp of the flesh, located in the heart; the lamp of the hollow crystal kati channel, ..."

"The quintessence of the apertures is called the fluid Lasso lamp. That consists of three kinds of lamps of the vessel. Although the three kinds of lamps of the vessel are given three names, in reality they refer to the same thing, like a root, trunk, and fruit. Thus, in the context of the path, they are simply called the fluid lasso lamp....The mark of one's speech at this point is that one's voice is soothing and enchanting, like songs sung by the children of kumbhandhas. In addition, various words of Dharma, legends, and knowledge of linguistics, poetry, and composition naturally emerge. Appearances arise as symbols and as scriptures, and the meaning of all oral transmissions and practical instructions flows forth like the current of a river. Words of melodious songs and so on inspire others' perceptions of the world, and their minds are blessed."...Dzogchen: Thodgal (Leap-Over) Instructions by Dudjom Lingpa... ....http://www.theopendoorway.org/Dzogchen-Thodgal.htm

"Quoting from the Jinzhu jing .. or Tantra of the Golden Pearls (Tib. gSer phreng), Fahai on the basis of the Dayuanman guanding (82a) explains thus :
From the Jewel Palace of the Heart (xin baogong) to the Ocean of the Eyes [yanhai, i.e., the pupils] there is a connecting vessel which is called in Tibetan "Kati." It is opalescent, transparent, and soft. Empty in its interior (neikong), it is not engendered by the mother’s red blood and the father’s white semen (fumu hongbai jingxue), which "some people call sun and moon." ...http://texts.00.gs/rDzogs-Chen_in_China.htm

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John Myrdhin Reynolds. The Golden Letters, p. 307......kati: “a crystalline translucent nerve or channel connecting the heart with the eyes.” John Myrdhin Reynolds. The Golden Letters, p. 307.

Crystal Kati Channel....."According to the custom of some teaching traditions, you are first introduced to the view, and upon that basis you seek the meditative state. This makes it difficult to identify awareness. In the tradition presented here, you first establish the meditative state, then on that basis you are introduced to the view. This profound point makes it impossible for you not to identify awareness. Therefore, first settle your mind in its natural state, then bring forth genuine quiescence in your mind-stream, and reveal the nature of awareness.

Position your body with the seven attributes like before. Steadily fix your gaze in the space in front of you, into the vacuity at the level of the tip of your nose, without any disorderliness or duplicity. This is the benefit of this gaze: in the center of the hearts of all beings there is the hollow crystal kati channel, which is a channel of primordial wisdom. If it points down and is closed off, primordial wisdom is obscured, and delusion grows. Thus, in animals that channel faces downwards and is closed off, so they are foolish and deluded. In humans that channel points horizontally and is slightly open, so human intelligence is bright and our consciousness is clear. In people who have attained siddhis and in bodhisattvas that channel is open and faces upwards, so there arise unimaginable samādhis, primordial wisdom of knowledge, and vast extrasensory perceptions. These occur due to the open quality of that channel of primordial wisdom. Thus, when the eyes are closed, that channel is closed off and points down, so consciousness is dimmed by the delusion of darkness. By steadily fixing the gaze, that channel faces up and opens, which isolates pure awareness from impure awareness. Then clear, thought-free samādhi arises, and numerous pure visions appear. Thus, the gaze is important.

In all treatises other than the Tantra of the Sun of the Clear Expanse of the Great Perfection and the Profound Dharma of the Natural Emergence of the Peaceful and Wrathful from Enlightened Awareness, the hollow crystal kati channel is kept secret, and there are no discussions of this special channel of primordial wisdom. This channel is unlike the central channel, the right channel, the left channel, or any of the channels of the five chakras; it is absolutely not the same as any of them. Its shape is like that of a peppercorn that is just about open, there is no blood or lymph inside it, and it is limpid and clear. A special technique for opening this is hidden in the instructions on the natural liberation pertaining to the lower orifice, great bliss, and desire. The lower yānas do not have even the name of this channel.

Thus, while steadily maintaining the gaze, place the awareness unwaveringly, steadily, clearly, nakedly, and fixedly, without having anything on which to meditate, in the sphere of space. When stability increases, examine the consciousness that is stable. Then gently release and relax. Again place it steadily, and steadfastly observe the consciousness of that moment. What is the nature of that mind? Let it steadfastly observe itself. Is it something clear and steady, or is it an emptiness that is nothing? Is there something there to recognize? Look again and again, and report your experience to me! Natural Liberation: Padmasambhava's Teachings on the Six Bardos Paperback – June 15, 1998

Note: kati: “a crystalline translucent nerve or channel connecting the heart with the eyes.” John Myrdhin Reynolds. The Golden Letters, p. 307.

Golden Letters: The Three Statements of Garab Dorje, First Dzogchen Master by John Myrdhin Reynolds (Translator)

"The teachings of Dzogchen, which directly introduces the practitioner to the Nature of Mind, were first expounded by Garab Dorje in the country of Uddiyana and later went to India and Tibet. The essence of Garab Dorje's message is "The Three Statements that Strike the Essential Points." Patrul Rinpoche wrote a brilliant commentary, together with practices entitled "The Special Teaching of the Wise and Glorious King"

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The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism by Keith Dowman (Translator)

Translations of four sacred texts of the Dzogchen tradition: Secret Instruction in a Garland of Vision, The Flight of the Garuda, Emptying the Depths of Hell, and the Wish-Granting Prayer of Kuntu Zangpo.

Flight of the Garuda conveys the heart advice of one of the most beloved nonsectarian masters of Tibet. Ordained as a Gelug monk, the itinerant yogi Shabkar was renowned for his teachings on Dzogchen, the heart practice of the Nyingma lineage. He wandered the countryside of Tibet and Nepal, turning many minds toward the Dharma through his ability to communicate the essence of the teachings in a poetic and crystal-clear way. Buddhists of all stripes, including practitioners of Zen and Vipassana, will find ample sustenance within the pages of this book, and be thrilled by the lyrical insights conveyed in Shabkar's words.

Along with the song by Shabkar, translator Keith Dowman includes several other seminal Dzogchen texts. Dzogchen practice brings us into direct communion with the subtlemost nature of our experience, the unity of samsara in nirvana as experienced within our own consciousness. Within the Nyingma school, it is held higher than even the practices of tantra for bringing the meditator face to face with the nature of reality.

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Exerpt of an interesting discussion online via dharmawheel.net.....Ordinary Mind, Thamal Gyi Shepa and 'Baby Rigpa'......

Post By monktastic.....
"Hello, me again with questions regarding the natural state :) (As a disclaimer: I attended Norbu Rinpoche's teachings online last week, and will be visiting Lama Yeshe next year, so I'm not trying to avoid formal instruction!)......It has been said that one's initial experiences of rigpa may deserve the title "baby rigpa," and even before that, perhaps "natural mind" or "ordinary mind". Tsoknyi Rinpoche says:
"This short moment of recognizing can surely be called mind essence. You can also name it natural mind or ordinary mind, although natural mind is better in this case. It might be a little too early to call it the rigpa of the Great Perfection. But as this state gets more clarified -- you could say more refined -- and becomes the authentic state of rigpa according to Dzogchen teachings, then at that point it will deserve its name. On the other hand, it is also possible that someone might recognize the state of rigpa from the very beginning.

In the beginning, just let it be whatever it is, however it is; just let whatever is known be that, without hope and fear. We call this continuity, however brief it might be, Baby Rigpa. … In the same way, whatever is initially seen as being the view is exactly what you allow to continue.

Dzogchen meditation is to sustain the continuity. It is to give Baby Rigpa breathing space. Up till now, he has been suffocating...

In the Dzogchen tradition, of course, it is imperative to get a pointing out instruction first. In Mahamudra (particularly in the style of Thrangu Rinpoche, who was my first Mahamudra teacher), one may arrive at a first glimpse of thamal gyi shepa via vipashyana meditations. It is my understanding that this initial glimpse may not be as "deep" a recognition as one may receive from a full-blown pointing-out, and that this is okay. With the tiniest glimpse of ordinary mind, one may refine one's view by repeatedly allowing oneself to recognize it, as well as by deepening it with further vipashyana meditations (e.g., coming to experience more deeply that perceptions are mind, that thoughts are mind, etc.)."

Source:..http://dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?t=10283

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"Discovering drala is indeed to establish ties to your world, so that each perception becomes unique. It is to see with the heart, so that what is invisible to the eye becomes visible as the living magic of reality." (Trungpa: Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior ....1984..pg 105)

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"The Nature of Mind is not only ... primordial purity (ka-dag), but it is equally characterized by a luminous clarity (gsal-ba) and intrinsic awareness (rig-pa)……the light of awareness that illuminates our world. ... This inner light (nang >od), the light of awareness, resides in the hollow space inside ... a maroon-colored carnelian stone decorated with white crystals ... . This inner light of awareness proceeds from the hollow space ..., moving upward through the kati channel, to the two ... lenses to focus this light. The two ... are the gateways for the emergence into outer space of this inner light of awareness…..Thus, this light and the images that appear in this light, are actually something internal ..., but here they manifest in the empty space in front of oneself. The light ... is projected ... out through the lenses of the two eyes into the space in front, much like one is watching a cinema show. This process may be compared to a magic latern or a projector. ...The objects that appear are not really outside oneself. ……http://texts.00.gs/Practice_of_Dzogchen_in_the_Zhang-Zhung_Tradition,_2.htm…..Practice of Dzogchen in the Zhang-Zhung Tradition of Tibet: Translations from the The Gyalwa Chaktri of Druchen Gyalwa Yungdrung, and The Seven-fold Cycle of the Clear Light By:John Myrdhin Reynolds (translator)

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

Northern New Mexico

September 2016

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Friday, September 9, 2016

Shabkar (1781-1851) The Flight of the Garuda: Khading Shoklap

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Journal Éveillé is an informal exploration of awakened mind in the art of poetry....

Click Here To View The Main Index

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Flight of the Garuda (Tib. མཁའ་ལྡིང་གཤོག་རླབས་, Khading Shoklap; Wyl. mkha' lding gshog rlabs) — a poetic composition on Trekchö and Tögal by Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol.
Translations:
Erik Pema Kunsang, The Flight of the Garuda (Kathmandu: Rangjung Yeshe, 1984)
Keith Dowman, The Flight of the Garuda (Boston: Wisdom, 1993)

Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol (Tib. ཞབས་དཀར་ཚོགས་དྲུག་རང་གྲོལ་, Wyl. zhabs dkar tshogs drug rang grol) (1781-1851) — studied with masters of all schools, receiving Dzogchen teachings from his principal root guru Chögyal Ngakgi Wangpo (a Mongolian king and disciple of the First Dodrupchen), who had spread them widely in Amdo. Shabkar was a prolific writer, said to be able to compose a hundred pages a day, and amongst the more popular of his writings is his poetic composition on Trekchö and Tögal, Khading Shoklap—Flight of the Garuda.

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Flight of the Garuda ... a poetic composition on Trekchö and Tögal by Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol.

How to Stop
When all I do is think about reality
And let awareness undermine itself --
I must stop.

When I let go
Of fighting, loving, dealing,
Prostrating, circumambulating,
Sacred dance and gesture --
I am alone and independent.

When I let go
Of mundane chatter,
Chants, prayers,
Psychic-energetic recitation --
I am in silence.

When I let go
Of muddled mundane thought,
Faith, compassion,
Esoteric practices --
I’m open, vivid.

Why?

When you stop running --
The body’s at ease,
When it’s at ease,
Nerves are settled,
When they’re settled,
Mind energy’s settled,
When it’s settled,
Thoughts stop by themselves,
Luminous intelligence erupts.

(The yogi’s never sick
Because his body’s undisturbed.)

When you stop language games --
Wordless concentration starts,
Free flowing energy inside
Nerves of kati’s crystal hollow
Intensifies the light.

(The yogi’s life is long
Because his energy’s at ease.)

When you stop thinking --
The twists and turns of thought stop,
You break free.

Shabkar -- From the Flight of the Garuda: Thod rgal: 37b, iii - 38b, i., 1825. Translated by Stephen Batchelor, 1998.

http://www.stephenbatchelor.org/index.php/en/how-to-stop

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Note: kati: “a crystalline translucent nerve or channel connecting the heart with the eyes.”
Golden Letters: The Three Statements of Garab Dorje, First Dzogchen Master....p. 307
by John Myrdhin Reynolds (Translator)

"Dzogchen: Thodgal (Leap-Over) Instructions by Dudjom Lingpa....there are three kinds of lamps of the vessel. The quintessence of the body is the citta lamp of the flesh at the heart, the inside of which is soft white. This is called the lamp of the channels, the quintessence of the channels, and hollow crystal kati channel. It is a single channel, one-eighth the width of a hair of a horse's tail, with two branches that penetrate inside the heart like the horns of a wild ox. They curve around the back of the ears and come to the pupils of the eyes. Their root is the heart, their trunk is the channels, and their fruit is the eyes."....http://www.theopendoorway.org/thodgal.html "Discovering drala is indeed to establish ties to your world, so that each perception becomes unique. It is to see with the heart, so that what is invisible to the eye becomes visible as the living magic of reality." (Trungpa: 1984..pg 105) "The Nature of Mind is not only ... primordial purity (ka-dag), but it is equally characterized by a luminous clarity (gsal-ba) and intrinsic awareness (rig-pa)……the light of awareness that illuminates our world. ... This inner light (nang - od), the light of awareness, resides in the hollow space inside ... a maroon-colored carnelian stone decorated with white crystals ... . This inner light of awareness proceeds from the hollow space ..., moving upward through the kati channel, to the two ... lenses to focus this light. The two ... are the gateways for the emergence into outer space of this inner light of awareness…..Thus, this light and the images that appear in this light, are actually something internal ..., but here they manifest in the empty space in front of oneself. The light ... is projected ... out through the lenses of the two eyes into the space in front, much like one is watching a cinema show. This process may be compared to a magic latern or a projector. ...The objects that appear are not really outside oneself." ……http://texts.00.gs/Practice_of_Dzogchen_in_the_Zhang-Zhung_Tradition,_2.htm…..Practice of Dzogchen in the Zhang-Zhung Tradition of Tibet: Translations from the The Gyalwa Chaktri of Druchen Gyalwa Yungdrung, and The Seven-fold Cycle of the Clear Light By:John Myrdhin Reynolds (translator)

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"The teachings of Dzogchen, which directly introduces the practitioner to the Nature of Mind, were first expounded by Garab Dorje in the country of Uddiyana and later went to India and Tibet. The essence of Garab Dorje's message is "The Three Statements that Strike the Essential Points." Patrul Rinpoche wrote a brilliant commentary, together with practices entitled "The Special Teaching of the Wise and Glorious King"—here translated with notes, commentaries, and a glossary of terms.

The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism
by Keith Dowman (Translator)

Translations of four sacred texts of the Dzogchen tradition: Secret Instruction in a Garland of Vision, The Flight of the Garuda, Emptying the Depths of Hell, and the Wish-Granting Prayer of Kuntu Zangpo.

Flight of the Garuda conveys the heart advice of one of the most beloved nonsectarian masters of Tibet. Ordained as a Gelug monk, the itinerant yogi Shabkar was renowned for his teachings on Dzogchen, the heart practice of the Nyingma lineage. He wandered the countryside of Tibet and Nepal, turning many minds toward the Dharma through his ability to communicate the essence of the teachings in a poetic and crystal-clear way. Buddhists of all stripes, including practitioners of Zen and Vipassana, will find ample sustenance within the pages of this book, and be thrilled by the lyrical insights conveyed in Shabkar's words.

Along with the song by Shabkar, translator Keith Dowman includes several other seminal Dzogchen texts. Dzogchen practice brings us into direct communion with the subtlemost nature of our experience, the unity of samsara in nirvana as experienced within our own consciousness. Within the Nyingma school, it is held higher than even the practices of tantra for bringing the meditator face to face with the nature of reality.

"Flight of the Garuda conveys the heart advice of one of the most beloved nonsectarian masters of Tibet. Ordained as a Gelug monk, the itinerant yogi Shabkar was renowned for his teachings on Dzogchen, the heart practice of the Nyingma lineage. He wandered the countryside of Tibet and Nepal, turning many minds toward the Dharma through his ability to communicate the essence of the teachings in a poetic and crystal-clear way. Buddhists of all stripes, including practitioners of Zen and Vipassana, will find ample sustenance within the pages of this book, and be thrilled by the lyrical insights conveyed in Shabkar's words.".....https://www.amazon.com/Flight-Garuda-Dzogchen-Tradition-Buddhism/dp/0861713672

"Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol (Tib. ཞབས་དཀར་ཚོགས་དྲུག་རང་གྲོལ་, Wyl. zhabs dkar tshogs drug rang grol) (1781-1851) — Shabkar Tsodruk Rangdrol (1781-1851), the great Tibetan yogi who espoused the ideals of vegetarianism.......Shabkar’s attitude toward the different schools of Tibetan Buddhism was unclouded by even the slightest trace of sectarian bias. No doubt this was due primarily to his free and independent lifestyle, uncomplicated by institutional allegiances or dependence on benefactors. He lived an entirely hand-to-mouth existence. He had no fixed abode and reduced his own needs to an absolute minimum.........http://www.dhammawiki.com/index.php?title=Shabkar....

Matthieu Ricard, 'The Writings of Zhabs dkar Tshogs drug Rang grol (1781-1851): A Descriptive Catalogue' in in Ramon N. Prats ed. The Pandita and the Siddha: Tibetan Studies in Honour of E. Gene Smith, New Delhi: Amnye Machen, 2007 (also published as The Writings of Shabkar, Shechen Publications, 2005)

Shabkar Tsogdruk Rangdrol, The Life of Shabkar: The Autobiography of a Tibetan Yogin, translated by Matthieu Ricard, SUNY, 1994

Shabkar, Food of Bodhisattvas: Buddhist Teachings on Abstaining from Meat, Shambhala, 2004

Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol, Songs of Shabkar, translated by Victoria Sujata, published by Dharma Publishing, 2011. ISBN : 0898000009

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

San Francisco

September 2016

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Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Journal Éveillé Index

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Journal Éveillé is an Informal Exploration of the Natural Mind in Literature and Painting

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Cezanne: The Pseudoscopic Content... The Cubists' indebtedness to Cezanne is obvious enough and well- documented. What is not obvious, is that the distinctly pseudoscopic handling of space in his paintings, destroyed and revised the classical role of virtual space within the picture plane....

The Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich (1395 AD)...Julian's optimistic theology speaks of a loving and merciful God and of God as our mother...the first published book in the English language to be written by a woman.

Celtic Bards & Central Asian Gesar Singers ...There are at least five theories that attempt to explain the extraordinary connections and resemblances that can be found between European and Indian languages and culture...

Friedrich Schiller (German: 1759 – 1805) ....Schiller sketches a future ideal state, where everyone will be content, and everything will be beautiful, thanks to the free play of Spieltrieb.

Drukpa Kunley (Bhutan: 1455–1529) The Divine Madman ....Known for his crazy methods of enlightening other beings, mostly women

Shams Tabrizi (1185–1248 AD) ....The spiritual instructor of Rumi

Jane Austen . (1775-1817 AD) ....Austen used comedy to explore the individualism of women's lives and gender relations

Goethe and Hafiz: West–Eastern Diwan & The Ghazal...The encounter of Goethe (1749-1832) with Hafiz's ghazals became so inspiring to Goethe, that he produced his own West-östlicher Diwan

Zarathustra, Zoroaster and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844- 1900) ....Nietzsche’s concern with Persia is well reflected in his choice of “Zarathustra” as the prophet of his philosophy

Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol... (Tibet: 1781-1851)...Poetic Composition on Trekchö and Tögal

Rainer Maria Rilke... (1875 – 1926)...German-Austrian Poetry ... Lyrically Intense and Mystical

Rūmī ...(1207 – 1273)..Persian Poet and Sufi Mystic.

Rabia Balkhi ...(c. 914-943)...Poetess of Balkh ...

Matsuo Bashō ... (1644 – 1694)... Famous Poet of the Edo Period in Japan

Hafiz... (1325–1389)...A Pinnacle of Persian Literature

Ono no Komachi ... ( c. 825 – 900)...One of the Greatest Women Poets of Japan

Shakespeare.... (c. 1564-1616)...Magic and Illusion: The Tempest

Elizabeth Bishop... (1911 – 1979) ...... American Poet: Highly Detailed and Objective Point of View

Po Chü-i... (772–846) ....Renowned Chinese Tang Dynasty Poet

Lalleshwari ...(1320–1392)... Mystic of the Kashmiri Shaivite sect. She was a creator of the mystic poetry called vatsun or Vakhs, literally "speech" (Voice).

Gerard Manley Hopkins... (1844 – 1889)...English Poetry: Inscape and Sprung Rhythm

Tao Yuanming... (365–427 AD)... the greatest poet during the centuries of Six dynasties Chinese poetry

Rudaki... (880-941 AD)...... Father of Persian Poetry

Anna Akhmatova... (1889 – 1966)...Russian Modernist Poetry: Meditations on Time and Memory

Kālidāsa... (c. 5th Century)... the greatest poet and dramatist in the Sanskrit language. His plays and poetry are primarily based on the Hindu Puranas

The Vermillion Journal

Tsangyang Gyatso... (1683 – 1706)... The Sixth Dalai Lama: Drinking,the Company of Women, and Writing Love Songs

Paul Éluard... (1895 – 1952)...French Surrealist Poetry

Kshemendra... (990 – 1070)...Kashmirian poet of the 11th century, writing in Sanskrit.

Longchenpa... (1308-1364)....Natural Perfection and Radical Dzogchen

Pema Lingpa ...Bhutan...1450-1521 AD

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Dzogchen Texts, Clear Perception & Poetic Expression

Poetry and the Practice of Discovering Space

Ancient Central Asian Poetry & Language

Boundless Space & Unconditional Love

Tibetan Literature

Poetic Magic: Mantra, Mathra, Incantare, Dharani

Sanskrit to Persian Translators of Central Asia

The Avestan-Language and Bactrian Sanskrit...2500 BC

The Origins of Vedic Sanskrit and The Metrical Hymns of the Rigveda Samhita

Central Asian Poetry & Language

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Dzogchen Explorations

Journal Éveillé Index

Okar Research.....August 2015 - May 2016

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John Hopkins.....Northern New Mexico

January 2017

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Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Rabia Balkhi (c. 914-943 AD) First Poetess in the History of New Persian Poetry

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Journal Éveillé is an informal exploration of awakened mind in the art of poetry....

Click Here To View The Main Index

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Balkh is also known as the home of Rabia Balkhi...Rābi'a bint Ka'b al-Quzdārī (Persian: رابعه بنت کعب‎), popularly known as Rābi'a Balkhī (رابعه بلخی) and Zayn al-'Arab (زین العرب), is a semi-legendary figure of Persian literature and was possibly the first poetess in the history of New Persian poetry. References to her can be found in the poetry of Rūdakī and 'Attār. Her biography has been primarily recorded by Zāhir ud-Dīn 'Awfī and renarrated by Nūr ad-Dīn Djāmī. The exact dates of her birth and death are unknown, but it is reported that she was a native of Balkh in Khorāsān (now in Afghanistan). Some evidences indicate that she lived during the same period as Rūdakī, the court poet to the Samanid Emir Naṣr II (914-943).

She was one of the first poets who wrote in modern Persian, and she is, along with Mahsatī Dabīra Ganja'ī, among a very few female writers of medieval Persia to be recorded in history by name. When her father died, his son Hāres, brother of Rābi'a, inherited his position. According to legend, Hāres had a Turkic slave named Baktāsh, with whom his sister was secretly in love. At a court party, Hāres heard Rābi'a's secret. She is slashed and left in a hamam, a steam bath, to bleed to death! Her last poem to Baktash is written in blood on the walls of the hamam.

Rābi'a bint Ka'b al-Quzdārī (Persian: رابعه بنت کعب‎‎), popularly known as Rābi'a Balkhī (رابعه بلخی) and Zayn al-'Arab (زین العرب), is a semi-legendary figure of Persian literature and was possibly the first woman poet in the history of New Persian poetry. References to her can be found in the poetry of Rūdakī and 'Attār. Her biography has been primarily recorded by Zāhir ud-Dīn 'Awfī and renarrated by Nūr ad-Dīn Djāmī. The exact dates of her birth and death are unknown, but it is reported that she was a native of Balkh in Khorāsān (Afghanistan). Some evidences indicate that she lived during the same period as Rūdakī, the court poet to the Samanid Emir Naṣr II (914-943).

Her name and biography appear in 'Awfī's lubābu 'l-albāb, 'Attār's maṭnawīyat, and Djāmī's nafahātu 'l-uns. She is said to have been descended from a royal family, her father Ka'b al-Quzdārī, a chieftain at the Samanid court, reportedly descended from Arab immigrants who had settled in eastern Persia during the time of Abu Muslim.

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Rabia Balkhi or Rabia Qozdari is a famous princess who lived in the city of Balkh and at the court of samanids during the 9th century AD. Beside her physical beauty, she loved writing verses of poem. Her talent in poetry was concentrated on love and beauty. Her poems were not recited publicly during her life time.....Her tomb still exists in Balkh......For centuries young Uzbek girls and boys treated her tomb with saint-like devotion and would pray there for success in their love affairs. After the Taliban captured the region, they placed her tomb out of bounds...."

Love
By Rabia Balkhi

I am caught in Love's web so deceitful
None of my endeavors turn fruitful.
I knew not when I rode the high-blooded stead
The harder I pulled its reins the less it would heed.
Love is an ocean with such a vast space
No wise man can swim it in any place.
A true lover should be faithful till the end
And face life's reprobated trend.
When you see things hideous, fancy them neat,
Eat poison, but taste sugar sweet."

"Among the film reels saved from the Taliban was the country's first feature film, Rabia Balkhi, which told the true story of the eponymous first and only queen of Afghanistan, who wrote Sufi poetry infused with erotic allegories, fell passionately in love with a court slave and was murdered by her jealous brother.....'Rabia Balkhi' became a sensation upon release in 1965 and was shown countless times in theatres and on television. But by 1996 it exemplified everything the Taliban feared and detested: a lavish historical epic with an enchanting queenly figure at its centre who could be seen, most dangerously, as the embodiment of the sexually liberated, politically emboldened woman. Fuelling the Taliban's ire, the role was played by the sultry Afghan actress Seema, clad in sumptuous, tightly tailored costumes, who was cast opposite Abdullah Shadaan, also the director of the film. The pair met and fell in love on set, marrying soon after. (They now work for the Pushto section of the BBC World Service in London).......During the Soviet occupation, the country's Mujahudeen disapproved of the film and by 1990 it had ceased to be shown. When the Taliban was defeated in 2001, a sense of unease about the queen's morality hung in the air. Even though the hidden reels were discovered in 2002, the film has still not been shown to the public in Afghanistan since then, perhaps because its combination of erotic poetry, romance and female leadership is likely to touch on the unresolved status of Afghan women today.....Now, two decades after it was last played before a cinema audience, the epic is to be shown tomorrow at the Tricycle Theatre in London as part of the Afghanistan Film Festival, an event that is little short of momentous for the wartorn country's film-makers. It is the first time the film is being shown in Britain, and the first time it has had subtitles attached.".......http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzEMEnYf14Y....http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/jewel-of-afghan-cinema-saved-from-the-taliban-1681824.html

Known for her beauty and for being the female pioneer in the New Persian Poetry, Rabia Balkhi was born in a royal family and was a native of Balkh in Khorasan (which is now in Afghanistan). Her father, Ka’b al-Quzdari, was a chieftain at the Samanid court.

"Greater Balkh was at that time a major center of a Persian culture and Khorasani Sufism had developed there for several centuries. Indeed, the most important influences upon Rumi, besides his father, are said to be the Persian poets Attar and Sanai.[ Rumi in one poem express his appreciation: "Attar was the spirit, Sanai his eyes twain, And in time thereafter, Came we in their train" and mentions in another poem: "Attar has traversed the seven cities of Love, We are still at the turn of one street". His father was also connected to the spiritual lineage of Najm al-Din Kubra.......

History of the Persian language:
Proto-Iranian (ca. 1500 BC)...Southwestern Iranian languages
Old Persian (c. 525 BC - 300 BC)....Old Persian cuneiform script
Middle Persian (c.300 BC-800 AD)....Pahlavi script • Manichaean script • Avestan script
Modern Persian (from 800 AD)...Perso-Arabic script

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

Northern New Mexico….May 2013

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Matsuo Bashō (1644 – 1694) ... The Most Famous Poet of the Edo Period in Japan

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Journal Éveillé is an informal exploration of awakened mind in the art of poetry....

Click Here To View The Main Index

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Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉?, 1644 – 1694), was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku (then called hokku). Matsuo Bashō's poetry is internationally renowned; and, in Japan, many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites. Although Bashō is justifiably famous in the West for his hokku, he himself believed his best work lay in leading and participating in renku. He is quoted as saying, “Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses.”

Bashō was introduced to poetry young, and after integrating himself into the intellectual scene of Edo (modern Tokyo) he quickly became well known throughout Japan. He made a living as a teacher; but then renounced the social, urban life of the literary circles and was inclined to wander throughout the country, heading west, east, and far into the northern wilderness to gain inspiration for his writing. His poems were influenced by his firsthand experience of the world around him, often encapsulating the feeling of a scene in a few simple elements.

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Oku no Hosomichi (奥の細道?, originally おくのほそ道, meaning "Narrow road to/of the interior"), translated alternately as The Narrow Road to the Deep North and The Narrow Road to the Interior, is a major work of haibun by the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, considered "one of the major texts of classical Japanese literature."

The text is written in the form of a prose and verse travel diary and was penned as Bashō made an epic and dangerous journey on foot through the Edo Japan of the late 17th century. While the poetic work became seminal of its own account, the poet's travels in the text have since inspired many people to follow in his footsteps and trace his journey for themselves. In one of its most memorable passages, Bashō suggests that "every day is a journey, and the journey itself home." The text was also influenced by the works of Du Fu, who was highly revered by Bashō.

Of Oku no Hosomichi, Kenji Miyazawa once suggested, "It was as if the very soul of Japan had itself written it."

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月日は百代の過客にして、行かふ年も又旅人也。舟の上に生涯をうかべ馬の口とらえて老をむかふる物は、日々旅にして、旅を栖とす。古人も多く旅に死せるあり。予もいづれの年よりか、片雲の風にさそはれて、漂泊の思ひやまず、海浜にさすらへ、去年の秋江上の破屋に蜘の古巣をはらひて、やゝ年も暮、春立る霞の空に、白河の関こえんと、そヾろ神の物につきて心をくるはせ、道祖神のまねきにあひて取もの手につかず、もゝ引の破をつヾり、笠の緒付かえて、三里に灸すゆるより、松島の月先心にかゝりて、住る方は人に譲り、杉風が別墅に移るに、 草の戸も住替る代ぞひなの家 面八句を庵の柱に懸置。

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The months and days are the travellers of eternity. The years that come and go are also voyagers. Those who float away their lives on ships or who grow old leading horses are forever journeying, and their homes are wherever their travels take them. Many of the men of old died on the road, and I too for years past have been stirred by the sight of a solitary cloud drifting with the wind to ceaseless thoughts of roaming.....English translation by Donald Keene

Donald Keene (b. 1922) is an American-born Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature. Keene is University Professor Emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, where he taught for over fifty years.

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Basho ...Haiku....

Don’t imitate me;
it’s as boring
as the two halves of a melon.

"So simple, elegant; and, at the same time, mundane and ordinary. But isn’t that it? Isn’t the point of creativity to lead us back into our lives, give us back again the truth of our ordinariness: our ordinary lives in the mundane, day to day activities, where for the most part we act unconsciously, automaton like; and, in this awakening of the power of poetic or conceptual revelation to once again help us realize that, yes – that’s it exactly: to wake up and be blessed by the truth of our ordinary lives, our lived moment, the traveling of this road that is our singularity? No longer to live unconsciously, but to cherish even the triviality of spliced water melon, or a conversation, or the flight of a bird? This is where the natural occurrences break across an awakened mind…"
https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/basho-1644-1694/

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

San Francisco

September 2016

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Monday, September 5, 2016

Hafiz (c.1325–1389) ... A Pinnacle of Persian Literature

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Journal Éveillé is an informal exploration of awakened mind in the art of poetry....

Click Here To View The Main Index

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Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī (Persianخواجه شمس‌‌الدین محمد حافظ شیرازی‎‎), known by his pen name Hafez (حافظ Ḥāfeẓ; 1325/26–1389/90), was a Persian poet who "lauded the joys of love and wine but also targeted religious hypocrisy." His collected works are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature and are to be found in the homes of most people in Iran and Afghanistan, who learn his poems by heart and still use them as proverbs and sayings. His life and poems have been the subject of much analysis, commentary and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other author.
Hafez, who was a 14th-century poet in Iran, is best known for his poems that can be described as “antinomian” and with the medieval use of the term “theosophical”; this term theosophy in the 13th and 14th centuries was used to indicate mystical work by “authors only inspired by the holy books” (as distinguished from theology). Hafez primarily wrote in theliterary genre of lyric poetry that is the ideal style for expressing the ecstasy of divine inspiration in the mystical form of love poems.
Themes of his ghazals are the beloved, faith, and exposing hypocrisy. In his ghazals, he deals with love, wine and tavern, all presenting the ecstasy and freedom from restraint, whether in actual worldly release or in the voice of the lover speaking of divine love. His influence in the lives of Persian speakers can be found in "Hafez readings" (fāl-e hāfezPersianفال حافظ‎‎) and the frequent use of his poems in Persian traditional music, visual art, and Persian calligraphy. His tomb is visited often. Adaptations, imitations and translations of his poems exist in all major languages.

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It Felt Love

____________

How

Did the rose

Ever open its heart

And give to this world

All its

Beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light

Against its

Being,

Otherwise,

We all remain

Too

Frightened.

__________

Source: Hafiz from The Gift Poems by Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky

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Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī (Persian: خواجه شمس‌‌الدین محمد حافظ شیرازی‎‎), known by his pen name Hafez (حافظ Ḥāfeẓ; 1325/26–1389/90), was a Persian poet who "lauded the joys of love and wine but also targeted religious hypocrisy."... His collected works are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature and are to be found in the homes of most people in Iran, who learn his poems by heart and still use them as proverbs and sayings. His life and poems have been the subject of much analysis, commentary and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other author.

Hafez, who was a 14th-century poet in Iran, is best known for his poems that can be described as “antinomian” and with the medieval use of the term “theosophical”; this term theosophy in the 13th and 14th centuries was used to indicate mystical work by “authors only inspired by the holy books” (as distinguished from theology). Hafez primarily wrote in the literary genre of lyric poetry that is the ideal style for expressing the ecstasy of divine inspiration in the mystical form of love poems.

Themes of his ghazals are the beloved, faith, and exposing hypocrisy. In his ghazals, he deals with love, wine and tavern, all presenting the ecstasy and freedom from restraint, whether in actual worldly release or in the voice of the lover speaking of divine love. His influence in the lives of Persian speakers can be found in "Hafez readings" (fāl-e hāfez, Persian: فال حافظ‎‎) and the frequent use of his poems in Persian traditional music, visual art, and Persian calligraphy. His tomb is visited often. Adaptations, imitations and translations of his poems exist in all major languages.

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The Great religions are the Ships,

Poets the life Boats.

Every sane person I know has jumped Overboard.

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Partial Translation by ― Daniel Ladinsky

Daniel Ladinsky (born 1948) is an American poet and interpreter of mystical poetry......He has written four works based on poetry of 14th-century Persian Sufi poet Hafiz: I Heard God Laughing (1996), The Subject Tonight Is Love (1996) The Gift (1999), and A Year With Hafiz:Daily Contemplations, (2011) as well as an anthology, Love Poems from God:Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West (2002), and The Purity of Desire:100 Poems of Rumi (2012). In introductions to his books, Ladinsky notes that he offers interpretations and renderings of the poets, rather than literal or scholarly translations. His work is based on conveying and being "faithful to the living spirit" of Hafiz, Rumi, as well as other mystic poets.

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616 AD) Magic and Illusion in The Tempest

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Journal Éveillé is an informal exploration of awakened mind in the art of poetry....

Click Here To View The Main Index

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William Shakespeare (1564- 1616 AD)....... English poetplaywright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language.
Shakespeare's Sonnets is the title of a collection of 154 sonnets by William Shakespeare, which covers themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man; the last 28 to a woman.
The sonnets were first published in a 1609 quarto with the full stylised title: SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS. Never before Imprinted. (although sonnets 138 and 144 had previously been published in the 1599 miscellany The Passionate Pilgrim). The quarto ends with "A Lover's Complaint", a narrative poem of 47 seven-line stanzas written in rhyme royal – though some scholars have argued convincingly against Shakespeare's authorship of the poem.

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“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”

― PROSPERO....The Tempest....Act 4, Scene 1

"Prospero is central to The Tempest’s narrative...... Prospero generates the plot of the play almost single-handedly, as his various schemes, spells, and manipulations all work as part of his grand design to achieve the play’s happy ending. Watching Prospero work through The Tempest is like watching a dramatist create a play, building a story from material at hand and developing his plot so that the resolution brings the world into line with his idea of goodness and justice. Many critics and readers of the play have interpreted Prospero as a surrogate for Shakespeare, enabling the audience to explore firsthand the ambiguities and ultimate wonder of the creative endeavor.....His possession and use of magical knowledge renders him extremely powerful and not entirely sympathetic...."....http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/canalysis.html

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"I like your silence, it the more shows off
Your wonder..."
WintersTale_ACT_V_SCENE_III

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The sonnets are almost all constructed from three quatrains, which are four-line stanzas, and a final couplet composed in iambic pentameter. This is also the meter used extensively in Shakespeare's plays.

The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. Sonnets using this scheme are known as Shakespearean sonnets. Often, the beginning of the third quatrain marks the volta ("turn"), or the line in which the mood of the poem shifts, and the poet expresses a revelation or epiphany.

Iambic pentameter is a commonly used type of metrical line in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm that the words establish in that line, which is measured in small groups of syllables called "feet". The word "iambic" refers to the type of foot that is used, known as the iamb, which in English is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The word "pentameter" indicates that a line has five of these "feet".

Iambic rhythms come relatively naturally in English. Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry; it is used in many of the major English poetic forms, including blank verse, the heroic couplet, and some of the traditional rhymed stanza forms. William Shakespeare used iambic pentameter in his plays and sonnets.

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"Harold Bloom's book, "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human," to see if I could detect multiple voices in some of the works, as Rylance suggests.....Even in the comedies, the works reveal a number of Zen-like meditations on the "seed bearing powers of nature"(Measure for Measure), that left me wondering if there's been any Buddhist analysis of Shakespeare's work. Google turned up a plethora of essays comparing Hamlet's despair to the Eastern experience of Satori, then this ... a full analysis of the works with praise from no lesser expert than Harold Bloom: "Whacking Buddha: The Mysterious World of Shakespeare and Buddhism.".....http://spiritualriches.blogspot.com/2008/05/shakespeares-buddha-nature.html

"Whacking Buddha: The Mysterious world of Shakespeare and Buddhism" (2005).....by Mark Lamonica
Whacking Buddha is a unique comparison of the works of William Shakespeare and the world of Buddhism....The author, Mark Lamonica, is willing to argue that Shakespeare knew of the Buddha and his teachings.....

".....an interesting coincidental illustration of the Eightfold Noble Path from Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which Polonius provides instruction on living a good life. This excerpt is from the book Whacking Buddha: The Mysterious World of Shakespeare and Buddhism, by Mark Lamonica, with Patrick McCulley (by way of Tricycle, Winter 2005):
There are eight precepts in Polonius's speech, interchangeable (depending on how you interpret them) with the Buddha's Eightfold Path:
Polonius: There; my blessing with thee! And these few precepts in thy memory see thou character.
1. Give thy thoughts no tongue, / Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. (right thought)
2. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. (right mindfulness)
3. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, / Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel, / But do not dull thy palm with entertainment / Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. (right livelihood)
4. Beware / of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, / Bear't the opposed may beware of thee. (right action)
5. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice. (right speech)
6. Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. (right concentration)
7. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, / But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; / For the apparel oft proclaims the man, / And they in France of the best rank and station / Are of a most select and generous chief in that. (right effort) 8. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, / For loan oft loses both itself and friend, / And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. / This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man. (right understanding)
.....http://rsparlourtricks.blogspot.com/2006/04/shakespeare-and-buddhism.html

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"One of Shakespeare’s abiding themes is what happens to people when they lose the props they have relied on for their sense of identity. How do they crumble? What is revealed by their disintegration? There is much more to say about Richard’s fall, but I want to pause to make a connection with Buddhism.
Selfhood, identity and beliefs were central concerns for the Buddha. We construct a sense of selfhood, he said, by taking refuge in three great delusions (viparyasas or ‘topsy-turvy views’). We tell ourselves that the things we experience are permanent when all we know is impermanent; that they are substantial when everything we examine turns out, on closer inspection, to be insubstantial; and that they are capable of giving us true satisfaction when the truth of our lives includes suffering and an unavoidable sense of unsatisfactoriness. The driving force behind these delusions, the Buddha said, is craving; and the process that allows us to believe them is the construction of beguiling yet false views (ditthis). These views present themselves as concepts and ideas, but their intellectual content is tied to emotions. In the Brahmajala Sutta the Buddha enumerates 62 such wrong views and says that, at root, each one is merely ‘the feeling of those who do not know and do not see … the agitation and vacillation of those who are immersed in craving.’ These views concern religious beliefs, but the same forces guide secular beliefs and political philosophies.
That returns us to Shakespeare and Richard II, which systematically deconstructs the beliefs surrounding kingship. More important than the story is the experience of Richard himself. He asks himself, what is kingship if it can be transferred so simply and, more acutely, what is he. As he watches his power dissolve, he indulges a distinctly Buddhist fantasy of renouncing worldly life:

"The king shall be contented: must he lose
The name of king? o’ God’s name, let it go:
I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage
My figured goblets for a dish of wood,
My sceptre for a palmer’s walking staff,
My subjects for a pair of carved saints
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little little grave, an obscure grave;

Nothing comes of that impulse because it evades his emotional attachment to his role – and it also ignores political reality. Beneath it lies Richard’s perplexity at the dissolution of his position; and beneath that is the question, ‘If my identity can change so swiftly, who am I?’ He toys with the idea of renouncing identity altogether:-

‘Make me, that nothing have, with nothing grieved’,

But his real emotion is amazed bafflement, which he dramatises by calling for a mirror and asking, as he gazes at his reflection:

Was this the face that faced so many follies,
And was at last out-faced by Bolingbroke?
A brittle glory shineth in this face:
As brittle as the glory is the face;
(Dashes the glass against the ground)
For there it is, crack’d in a hundred shivers."

That’s a vivid image of a man discovering anatta – the lack of a fixed selfhood."
http://www.wiseattention.org/blog/2012/07/20/shakespeares-wisdom-the-buddha-and-richard-ii/

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Shakespeare: English or British?....."The union of the two crowns of England and Scotland, dynastically achieved with the accession of James in 1603, but politically and legally established only a century later.... Shakespeare’s writing career straddles, and reflects on, a turbulent period of transition from an England under the sign of Rome — dismantled by Henry VIII in 1534 — to an England under the sign of Britain — willed by James I in 1603 but politically and legally achieved only in 1707....Shakespeare...apart from the histories, they are more often than not located outside England....Shakespeare’s vignettes of the English are not flattering: in The Merchant of Venice Baron Falconbridge is a monolingual ‘dumb show’, dressed up in a ridiculous ensemble of foreign fashions with nowhere to go; in Hamlet the English are accounted as mad as the eponymous hero; in Othello they are ironically eulogised as Europe’s drinking champions; and in The Tempest, they are, again ironically, portrayed as uncharitable consumers of exhibits of exotic, preferably dead, ‘others’.....The one comedy located in England, The Merry Wives of Windsor, is undoubtedly concerned with the character of England and the English. But if it includes a celebration of an inclusive, heterogeneous community, there is also exposure of the exclusions and internal divisions generated by a narrow class-inflected ideology of the English — epitomised in the emergent, protestant, bourgeois aspiration to a normative linguistic ‘King’s English’, which Shakespeare evokes here only to subject it to ironic interrogation."

'Shakespeare, neither simply English nor British'....by WILLY MALEY and MARGARET TUDEAU-CLAYTON

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

Northern New Mexico

September 2016

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Ono no Komachi (c. 825 – c. 900) ... One of the Greatest Erotic Poets of Japan

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Journal Éveillé is an informal exploration of awakened mind in the art of poetry....

Click Here To View The Main Index

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Ono no Komachi (小野 小町?, c. 825 – c. 900 AD) was a Japanese waka poet, one of the Rokkasen — the six best waka poets of the early Heian period. She was renowned for her unusual beauty, and Komachi is today a synonym for feminine beauty in Japan. She also counts among the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals.

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"If you make your heart the seed and your words the blossoms, If you will steep yourself in the fragrance of the art, You will not fail to accomplish true poetry."

From the preface to the Kokinshu.

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"The words of poetry will never fail. They are enduring as evergreen boughs of pine, Continuous as trailing branches of willow; For poetry, whose source and seed is found In the human heart, is everlasting. Though ages pass and all things vanish, As long as words of poetry remain, Poems will leave their marks behind, And the traces of poetry will never disappear."

Based on lines from the Kokinshu preface.

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"Kokinshū, (“Collection from Ancient and Modern Times”) the first anthology of Japanese poetry compiled upon Imperial order, by poet Ki Tsurayuki and others in 905 AD. It was the first major literary work written in the kana writing system. The Kokinshū comprises 1,111 poems, many of them anonymous, divided into 20 books arranged by topic. These include six books of seasonal poems, five books of love poems, and single books devoted to such subjects as travel, mourning, and congratulations......The best verses in the Kokinshū are flawlessly turned miniatures that captivate the reader with their perception and tonal beauty"

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PRIEST:
And the Heart's Mirror
KOMACHI:
Hangs in the void.

The Nō Plays of Japan (Page 119)....by Arthur Waley

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Was I lost in thoughts of love
When I closed my eyes? He
Appeared, and
Had I known it for a dream
I would not have awakened.

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Sotoba Komachi

Noh Drama....SOTOBA KOMACHI....

A group of monks from Mount Kōya comes near Abeno in Settsu Province (or Toba in Yamashiro Province) on their way to Kyoto. Then the monks notice an old homeless woman sitting on a rotten wooden stupa*. This old woman is the famous Ono-no-Komachi, once renowned as a raving beauty and for having a number of love affairs. Since the leader monk assumes that sitting on a stupa is disrespectful to Buddha, he starts preaching her to move away from it. However, the old woman replies with words pregnant with deep meanings and talks the monk down at the end. Learning that she is not an ordinary woman, the monk accords his every courtesy to her.

The old woman confidently creates and recites a poem and impresses the monk even more deeply. When the monk asks her name, she reveals finally that she is the lady once called Ono-no-Komachi. She reminisces about her youth when she was stunningly beautiful and bemoans her current aged self. Then, she goes frenetic because the vengeful spirit of Fukakusa-no-Shōshō (Shii-no-Shōshō), who once loved her, possesses her. In the past, when he confessed his love to her, she told him to visit her for 100 nights and if he could complete this mission, she would accept his love. Shōshō visited her every night until the 99th night, but he passed away before completing the last one night. Since he could not be successful in his mission of love, the obsessed ghost of Shōshō curses and afflicts the aged Komachi. In a demonic state, Komachi restages the scenes when Shōshō visited her every night. Eventually she regains her sanity, tells humans that they should pray to become a Buddha after death, and she determines to live in order to reach enlightenment.

This is one of the five pieces in the “Rōjo-mono (Old Women)” category, including Sekidera Komachi, Higaki, Obasute, Oumu Komachi, and this one, Sotoba Komachi. These pieces in the Old Woman category are considered outstandingly difficult to perform for Noh actors. They all focus on the theme of “aging” that every living thing must face one day. Their stories consist in drawing your mind to the issue of what your life is, are rich philosophically, and have deep religious connotations.

http://www.the-noh.com/en/plays/data/program_069.html

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"Kan'ami Kiyotsugu (1333 – 1384 AD) was a Japanese Noh actor, author, and musician during the Muromachi period....Sotoba Komachi by Kanami.....The original work, Sotoba Komachi written by Kan'ami, was originally a conversation between two priests and a 99-year-old lady at a Buddhist shrine. She later admits that she is Ono no Komachi (one of the six great waka poets in Heian period)."

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

Northern New Mexico

September 2016

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