This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Just Be Here; Poetry of Practice 4 (4/5): Thoughts on Thinking. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Diana Clark at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
This idea of using poetry as a support for practice is just this recognition that having malleability or flexibility in the way in which we support practice—I would say in which we approach or engage with anything in life—is tremendously helpful, can even be transformational. If we’re so used to thinking that we have to engage with our experience in one particular way, that really limits us, limits our experiences, limits our interpretations or ways in which we can work with whatever is arising in our life.
So my hope, my wish, is for these days working with poetry to point to another way than perhaps our usual way of engaging with, being with, interacting with our experiences, and certainly our meditation experiences, our spiritual life.
Maybe part of the reason why I appreciate so much these “Poetry of Practice” days is that some of you know that I was trained as a research scientist, spent years working in the laboratory—test tubes, white lab coat, gloves, the whole thing. And so I thought that life was just one particular way and had it solved and became good at thinking through things. And then it was just with practice that I realized, yes, that’s valuable what I had been trained to do, but it’s not the only way. In fact, to have this flexibility, to have this malleability is invaluable, not only to have freedom in our lives but to have a rich, full life.
So with that as an introduction, I’ll do a little bit of a guided meditation this morning to help us maybe get settled, and then I’ll drop in a poem, and then I’ll talk about the poem after the guided meditation. So again, as these poems get dropped in, you don’t have to think about them. You don’t have to figure them out. You don’t have to understand them. You don’t have to look them up. You don’t have to Google them and get the title and all that. You can do that later. The invitation here is just to experience them.
I like this word “shimmer.” Maybe there’s a sentence, a word that shimmers for you. And what is that experience like of having some shimmering? Some alternatives to this word shimmer: maybe it strikes a chord in the heart or mind, or maybe you remember something about it, something like that.
Okay, maybe with a big exhale, setting the intention to turn towards meditation. This exhale allowing some tightness and tension to maybe be released, allowing a certain amount of arriving.
Opening to the sounds that are in your environment. What would it be like if they are not distractions or problems, but just part of the present moment experience?
Feeling the feet on the ground. This can be such a support in all areas of our life, daily life, meditation, just feeling the feet touching the ground or whatever they’re touching. We are here, just here.
Feeling the pressure against the body where it’s connected to, in contact with, the sitting surface. And gently moving up the body. If the back is against the backrest, to feel the pressure, the contact. And feel into the bodily experience, lower back and the upper back. Is there a sense of uprightness, figuratively or literally?
And can we let the arms hang from the spine, relaxing the shoulders? Maybe the shoulders move just a tiny bit back and out, a very, very, very small movement that allows the chest to become more available, maybe less guarded, less armored. And our beautiful bellies can maybe relax, open, spacious.
And our hands, feeling what they are touching. Are they warm or cool, smooth or rough?
And then we’ll check in with the face, a place we often hold tension or tightness. Can we just bring some kindness to the face, some warmth, some caring attention, allowing any tension to slip away?
And you be in this body, this moment, just as it is. Just this moment.
And resting the attention on the sensations of breathing.
And when the mind wanders, it doesn’t have to be a problem. Just very simply, gently begin again with the sensations of breathing. And you just be here, this moment, this experience.
And to drop in a poem. You don’t have to figure it out. You don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to understand it. You don’t have to like it. And you be here with the experience of it.
The poem is called “Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins.1
I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.
I’ll read the poem again. It’s titled “Introduction to Poetry,” author is Billy Collins.
I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.
Thank you for your practice, for sitting together.
So this poem, “Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins. I’ll say that Billy Collins was the Poet Laureate for the United States from 2001 to 2003. His poems kind of use simple language, and they often have a certain whimsy to them, and I appreciate them very much. He’s currently a professor and has been a professor for different universities during his career. So “Introduction to Poetry,” we can imagine, is a course that he was teaching.
Wow, this last line: “They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.” Quite something, right? A certain violence of trying to figure things out. I don’t know, it makes me chuckle because how many times did I do this with my experiences in the world, trying to figure everything out, using my mind to figure everything out instead of the senses, right? That Billy Collins is pointing to: listening, waterskiing on the surface, kind of like feeling and waving at the author’s name instead of looking up their biography and figuring out everything and all this kind of stuff. I just love this.
Here’s something about Billy Collins that he writes about his process of writing poetry. He says, “I try to create a hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem because stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong.” I just love this idea. Stepping from the title to the first line is like stepping in a canoe; it could be a little bit out of balance. So this is a reminder that for this poem, the title and the first few lines are: “Introduction to Poetry. I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light.” So right, this feels tangible. “Take a poem and hold it up to the light.” He makes it accessible.
But I also want to say something about Ada Limón,2 who is the current Poet Laureate for the United States. She talks about the relationship between poetry and noticing, which is arguably what Billy Collins is pointing to as well. This relationship between poetry and noticing, and I would say, the relationship between poetry and practice. It’s about noticing. So this is Ada Limón. She says, “We find it hard to settle our brains down, and poetry offers us that silence, that quiet space that allows us to reconnect with ourselves or with an idea or with an emotion. It’s almost as if poets are offering a religion of noticing things or a religion of paying attention. And it’s nice that it doesn’t have any connotation other than that. Just notice, just pay attention, just be here.”
I’d like to build on this idea of “just be here” or “just notice,” because what are we doing if we’re not just being here and just noticing? And that is, we’re often lost in thought. As Billy Collins says, “beating the poem with a hose,” which, oh gosh, it just feels so painful, right? Trying to get a confession or trying to understand things.
So often we have this habit of just trying to figure everything out, which is appropriate and helpful a lot, but not 100% of the time. If we have this hammer—we have these beautiful brains, these minds that can analyze and figure things out—but it doesn’t mean that everything in our experience is a nail. And part of, I would say, living a full life, a rich life, and part of what poetry offers us, and part of what practice, meditation practice, mindfulness practice offers us, is this recognition there’s more than one way. There are things that aren’t nails that don’t require the hammer of figuring things out. But instead, maybe they are butterflies, or maybe they are blue skies, or maybe it’s the soft touch of a kitten that comes up and nudges your hand.
There’s this way in which analysis removes us from our experience. We kind of lose contact with what’s being experienced, what’s being heard, what’s being seen, and what’s being felt—felt literally with the body or with our emotions. And we want to just get in there and think about it. It’s not surprising that we do this because we’ve been conditioned to do this. We’ve been rewarded to do this. Certainly, I, and probably many of you just like me, our professional lives were so much about figuring things out. And it feels nice, right, to have a problem and then solve it, or maybe even just have a problem and think about it and try to solve it.
And maybe I’ll say also, there’s a discomfort with not knowing, of feeling confused, like, “I don’t get it.” People don’t like to have that feeling, “I don’t get it,” and so they will do a lot of things to try to make sure that they don’t have that experience.
So I don’t want to say that practice is about never thinking. But what I do want to say is our life, practice included, is not only about figuring things out. There’s a way that we can feel our way into experience. Another trap we can fall into is that with meditation, we might think that we have to get rid of thoughts or have to get rid of all thinking. “There shouldn’t be any thoughts,” or something like that. That’s a trap too.
So I would say poetry and practice are offering us different ways to be with experience. And I’ll just say a few things about practice with thinking. We can have aspirations, or we can even recognize that there are these different types of relationships to thinking that we can have. There’s more than one way to be with thinking.
One is, can we not feel harassed or harangued by our thoughts? Or can we not be deluded by our thoughts? So there’s this way, can we have thinking and feel free, recognize the freedom while thinking is happening? That’s maybe one way that we can have as a direction to go if we’re not there already with our relationship with thoughts.
A second one is, can we develop the ability to think well? That is, to reflect clearly, maybe even boldly, to have some creative, some original thoughts, as opposed to simply agreeing or disagreeing with what we’re presented with by the media or by others or Dharma teachers or something like this. But instead, can we engage and ask questions and allow what’s being presented to us in whatever format—reading, podcasts, talks, social media, all these types of things—can we develop the ability to actually think things through and have this commitment, “Wait, I want to understand this and think it through,” as opposed to just passively consuming stuff and allowing ourselves to be impacted by it?
And a third way is, can we discern when thinking is unhelpful and when is it helpful? Because it’s both, right? Sometimes it’s very helpful, required, and needed, and sometimes it’s not so helpful. And can we have room for both in our life? To notice, “Yeah, this type of thinking, it’s not so helpful,” and we recognize it and, as best we can, let it go. When we see so clearly how it’s unhelpful, often this letting go happens naturally.
And then maybe I’ll just say briefly, the Buddha talked about in his own path towards awakening that he recognized, “Oh, there is helpful thinking and unhelpful thinking.” Unhelpful being defined as what causes affliction or agitation or uneasiness in oneself and/or in others. So what is the type of thinking that doesn’t support greater freedom, greater well-being, either for ourselves or for others? In a simplified way, thoughts of cruelty or harming, thoughts of ill will, thoughts of sensual desire reliably do not lead to greater freedom, peace, ease, and well-being. So when we notice that this is happening, is there a way that we can soften or let go? And part of the way is maybe to recognize the dukkha3 of that type of thinking, the way that our minds get constricted, and there’s this closed-mindedness and this tightness that gets associated with that.
There’s a lot more that could be said about this, but just to recognize that there are different ways we can have this relationship with thinking. Can we be free with thinking, not to be harassed by it? Is there a way that we can recognize and be able to think well, to think through something and have a certain commitment to, “Okay, I want to stay with this and see if I can get to a conclusion,” or maybe there’s a way of creating a new understanding. So, have a commitment to think through things. And then the third is to recognize, “Oh yeah, when is it helpful and when is it not helpful? What are the topics that are helpful and the topics that are not helpful with our thinking?”
And I’d like to say Billy Collins and his poem are kind of pointing to this: there’s more than one way we can use our mind, more than one way we can use our experience. I’ll read this poem one more time.
“Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins.
I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.
So thank you. Thank you for joining me on this fourth day where we’re talking about poetry. And maybe I’m beating a poem with a hose to find out what it really means. I don’t know, what do you think? Thank you.
Yeah, Bob writes, “Reminds him of years as a Zen student working with koans,4 trying to figure them out, then just being with them.” Thank you, Bob. That’s exactly right. There’s a way in which koans, right, can’t be figured out.
Teresa writes, “Poetry and meditation are cousins.” Very nice. It’s kind of a fun way to think about it.
Bill writes, “Waterskiing across the surface. So right on. You still need to practice, but it’s freeing to fly.” Wow, thank you. Waterskiing, right? Like we’re still holding on to the rope, so the poem is maybe taking us somewhere, but there is this delight, right, when we waterski. I don’t think I’ve ever waterskied, but I can imagine it looks like it’s delightful and fun.
Looking forward to practicing with you all tomorrow. Thank you.
Billy Collins: An American poet who served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is known for his conversational and often humorous style. ↩
Ada Limón: An American poet who is the 24th and current Poet Laureate of the United States. ↩
Dukkha: A Pāli word often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It is a central concept in Buddhism, referring to the inherent suffering in all conditioned existence. ↩
Koan: A paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment. ↩