Keeping a Watch on our Cultural Gatekeepers: a short reply to Cynthia Ozick

Dear Editor: 

I think a brief response is in order to this Sunday’s cover essay in the NYT book review, The Novel’s Evil Tongue by Cynthia Ozick.  The gist of Ozick’s essay is to suggest how all of literature is somehow derived from the impulse to gossip, which in turn can be traced right back to the serpent’s blandishments to Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat of the Tree of Knowledge.  So Ozick concludes – “The instant Eve took in that awakening morsel of serpentine gossip, Literature in all its variegated forms was born.”  You can read the rest of Ozick's essay here.

Oh please.  I have enjoyed Ozick’s short stories from time to time, and this essay too is written with her usual flair.  But talk about wrapping yourself up in self-justificatory myth. In this case Ozick pulls the coverlet down over her eyes and better judgment, as she tries to draw a direct line from the opening chapters of Genesis on down the line through the entirety of world of literature, briefly touching down on Austen and Proust and a few of her other favorites, to establish all of literature’s direct descent from Biblical creation myth.

The problem, of course, is that this is a completely myopic view of literature, closed off from the slightest attempt at understanding or accounting for literary traditions other than our own.  There are more things in heaven and earth, and in literature too, than are dreamt of or carried around in our own cultural baggage.

Has Ozick ever heard of Bhagavad Gita, I wonder, or Li Bai or Haruki Murakami, for that matter?   I thought by now the NY Times Book Review would be well beyond promoting such a limited conception of what literature is or means.   For those who are curious to learn about traditions other than those derived from our favorite serpent, I would direct your readers’ attention to the wonderful compendium Readings in Chinese Literary Thought by Stephen Owen, which provides a very cogent explanation of how one great literary tradition (truly as vast as ours) has evolved from creation myths and world views entirely different from our own.

Joe Lamport

http://www.lampoetry.com 

A Short Note to Non-Self

The quantum of spiritual energy

Is smoothly dispersed across

A wide range of meditative states
From benign mindfulness to tantric bliss

We gain entree to this vast dim realm
Where self just sits and sits  

Until one day quite suddenly 
From basement to firmament
The landscape becomes bathed
In a sufficiency of light
As non-self discovers its tongue
 And gives voice to a wordless hymn

On the Emptiness of life

Poem First Written as a Tweet

This is a poem I first wrote as a tweet after stumbling out of the garden with this treasure in my hands - a gnarled Catalpa root:

Even the lowliest root may partake 

Of the soaring majesty of a Brancusi 

Given the right light place and time

Poem Written After Sunset Looking East While Standing on the Bank of Weesuck Creek

Perched for

Another beatitude

Or two on the edge

Of the guard rail

At the ass end of our street

Reality takes on

Its ink stained aspect

The dim ripples demonstrate

Time stretching out

Towards the horizon

A heron settles on its nest

A dog barks nearby

Ready for supper and 
While the mind expatiates
There's darkness
For all the rest

Meditation in the Center Island Parking Lot with the Radio Playing (aka Dashboard Buddha #2)

After a two month or two year
Discontinuity but also marking
The return (in the form of a song
from long ago reheard just now)
Of a longer wave cycle
So I found myself sitting
In a parked car once again
Given over to deep repose
No discernible forward progress
Having been made yet
Only this intermittent sitting
And doing nothing
Not merely idle but
Powered down like
The engine itself
As if I had already
Been meditating
For an eternity or two
On the blueness of
The bluest of mats


**********************************

I've noticed lately how the habit of meditating can be contagious, inasmuch as the meditating frame of mind spreads and begins to assert itself even when you're not formally engaged in meditation.  This poem is about precisely such a moment of contagion that happened earlier today.  If you find this poem interesting you might also like to read this prior poem, which at least partially explains what I was thinking about when I wrote the first few lines of the poem above.

Yongjia - a poem in celebration of Bodhi Day

Head bowed in perfect repose
Awareness fully dispersed

Tranquil at the center of being
Arriving at the root of peace

Being both easy and severe and
Unique in neither having or lacking

A radiance that illuminates everything
Down to the finest particle of dust

* * * * * * *

永嘉禪宗

稽首圓滿遍知覺
寂靜平等本真源
相好嚴特非有無
慧明普照微塵剎

* * * * * * *

Song of Enlightenment (trans. of classic Chan verse by Yongjia Xuanjue)

Abandoning study

Foregoing action

Remaining idle

And following the Dao

Neither avoiding delusion

Nor seeking out truth

Ignorance is

Our real state of nature

In the Buddhist faith

Our temporal bodies once emptied

Become a sacred place

In our sacred body we

Awaken utterly dispossessed

Returning to the origin

In a simple state of grace

The five realms of experience

Are empty and fleeting

Like clouds drifting by

And so too our passions

Which dissipate like steam

Over a boiling cauldron

Looking at things as they really are
Not merely as fancied under human law
In an instant everything can be extinguished
Or consigned to hell on earth

If this sounds like nonsense
Or a deceit upon all living things
Then yank out my tongue
And pile it high with gravel and dust 
For an eternity

For just as suddenly when
We awaken to Suchness
In a meditative state we attain completely
The Six Perfections and
Ten thousand good deeds

It’s as if we are dreaming 
That’s how clearly we come to see 
The Six Paths of Reincarnation
And only after Awakening thus
Do we confront true Emptiness
Devoid of all Ten Thousand things

**********

永嘉大师证道歌



绝学无为闲道人     不除妄想不求真
无明实性即佛性     幻化空身即法身
法身觉了无一物     本源自性天真佛
五蕴浮云空去来     三毒水炮虚出没
证实相 无人法       刹那灭却阿鼻业
若将妄语诳众生     自招拔舌尘沙劫
顿觉了如来禅        六度万行体中圆
梦里明明有六趣    觉后空空无大千

**********

Time Made Visible in the Transport of Shadows Passing Across a Van in Front

A balmy November day 

The scraggly oaks

Have been stripped bare 

Long before now so 

As we're driving

Down Montauk Highway

Their shadows scroll by

On the back of the Cor J

Delivery truck just in front

But on the ground

They're fixed in place

More or less or

Only moving at the sun's

Sluggish pace

So you can read your speed

By the rate the shadows pass

Across the back of the van

But don't take your

Eyes off the road

Or otherwise you

Might run aground

In some ditch

Instead of 

Enjoying the 

Display of Time (equal

to Rate divided by Distance)

Rushing by right

In front of your eyes 

Sent from my iPhone