Not Two
A Year-End Reflection, William Bronk, and Pattiann Rogers
Darkness is creeping (though now receding) these days, at least here in Wisconsin. The sun sets between four and five o’clock. Suddenly, it feels as though it were nine or later when, in actuality, the time is much closer to a typical dinner hour.
This morning, it was still dark after seven. I panicked when I looked at the bedside clock. Had I forgotten to change the time? We already “fell back,” right? Was I unaware of a great winter storm’s onset? No, Yes, and No—I am only unaware of the rhythm of things in this part of the country.
Much the same is the case for our lives: there are periods of creeping and predominant darkness that alternate with periods of increasing, widespread luminosity. I find that I cannot tell which period I am in until I am well into it.
Dogen Zenji, in Shobogenzo Genjokoan, writes that we do not call “winter the beginning of spring, nor summer the end of spring” because winter, spring, summer, and the not-mentioned fall are each complete in themselves. Yet, we also do not call “winter the beginning of spring” because the boundary between the two is fuzzy at best and likely wholly ungraspable. Similar to darkness and luminosity, it is not clear that I am in a specific season until that season surrounds me. Then—Aha! Yes! The crunch of stiff grass underfoot!—it is unmistakable.
Gradual change allows for doors to remain open long past our notice.
If you have been reading my writing for a while—perhaps you are among the few who have read for the last thirteen months—you may sense, as I feel, that this life is moving in the direction of darkness. Here, “darkness” means not-knowing and spaciousness, exploration and uncertainty, a greater sense of agency and wonder. This list is not exhaustive. It serves, rather, to outline the shape and highlight some of the textures of the field in which I am walking around. Maybe “wandering around” is a better way to describe my present activity.
See, for instance, this post on Dongshan’s Five Ranks or this one on Bodhidharma’s dialog with Emperor Wu, with whom I felt an intimate connection when expanding his and Bodhidharma’s reported conversation.
Then there is the poem “The Summer Airs” by William Bronk, which I am sitting with because it reflects how life feels near home.
and even before that, there was such a one, and he did thus and so. It was much the same. It needed such deep concentration, so many hands he thought that if they ever let go all this would be lost. And it was lost. They lost it. It was a long time. And before him also, there was one. Who can remember the final losses? Earth vagues the firmest bones interred. See, here, where we are always, in a particular, no particular time where the summer airs flow past and over as the congregations in the air of birds.
Things are happening, but without that fervently desired determinacy and direction. Am I able to be all right with that? And if not, is that all right, too?
I observe that the poem’s impersonality is punctuated as it progresses: from an anonymous “him” to an unidentified “we” to freely-moving summer airs.
How much of it all is about us, ever?
Sometimes, I celebrate all that comes with periods of darkness. Other times, I fret. I try to force the rising of the light. So much for letting things pass in their own time and tending to what is immediate.
That last may strike you as unduly critical, another example of perfectionism run amok. But its cold brush intends a reminder of how confidence and trust are essential in this life: trust in others, trust in ourselves, and (for this specific person) trust in the Dharma.
Continuously creation runs her loom and shuttle, Weaving an ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring
writes Hongzhi Zhengjue.
For that reason, I chose to end this year by sharing Pattiann Rogers’s poem “As Even Ever.” In its own way, Rogers’s professed strangeness about the sun reminds me that I need only say “not two.”
For in “not two” all things are united, And there is nothing not included.
Please take good care of yourself. I will see you in the New Year. In these final days of 2024, find a time and place to pause.
As Even Ever, by Pattiann Rogers
Everybody knows the sun, every
body in the whole world, no matter who.
Even the month of the moon knows the sun
it holds, just as a mirror holds the silver
it knows as its own light. And the hairy-
tailed mole and the silver-haired bat
know the sun to avoid it.
The sun may even be the very first
thing any one of us knows, apprehending
the full light of the boundless air. The full
light of the boundless air is always today.
I am strange about the sun,
how it is massively stupefying
no matter where it is in the sky. It burns
and blinds and roils wildly white heat
like boiling lava. It rends with rash
and constant explosions that spew
and arc, bellow and roar and sear
and make known against the blue
in all directions right above the serene
siestas of the quiet trees, the calm dozings
of the dogs. I have flinched, cowered
before the sun more than once.
Every language has a word
for the sun. Even dead languages
speak of the sun today within its full
light filling the boundless air. I like
its word, a foundation word, a core
thought. Even one-seed junipers
and water pipits and spur-throated
grasshoppers pronounce sun in the form
of their own languages. The sun
might even be the only song the
ever sing in constant unison.
I know the sun isn’t god. But the sun
does initiate distinctions—the feathers
of the palm cockatoo from the father
plumes of the sea lily from the feather
barbs of the walking catfish, for instance.
And it creates union. Green
needlegrass, white sweet clover,
and grey lark sparrow, by the sun,
become one gold in a clear dawn.
And the sun gives equally to each
its own shadow, thus establishing
a model for justice, even to the blind
dog a shadow, even to the earth.
The sun touches us, but we can
never touch the body of the sun
with our hands (the way we like
to touch). I am strange about the sun,
how it is blood of my blood, how
it creates the daylight in my sleeping
dreams. Even in the deep night
inside my doubts, it is solely
by the moon’s source of light
that I see.You may also enjoy:
these words~ medicinal ❣️ thank you