This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video “Poetry And Non-Separation” with John Brehm. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by John Brehm at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
I’m delighted to be here, and thank you all for coming. It’s always a pleasure and a delight to do some practice together, to share some poems, and to talk about some poems together. So thank you so much for inviting me and for showing up with your presence this morning.
I’m going to give a talk, and then we’ll do some sitting practice together. Then we’ll spend maybe the bulk of our time actually talking about the poems. I know we have a sort of large group for discussion, but that’s where the richness is for me—when we start responding to the poems, when we start moving into them together. I like to practice where we’re shifting from the interpretive mode to the appreciative mode, and I’ll say more about that when we get to it. But I’m eager to hear your responses to the poems, so it won’t just be me talking for the whole 90 minutes today, I’m happy to say, and you’re probably happy to hear.
I chose this topic of non-separation or non-duality in part because I think we’re all feeling the wound of separation particularly strongly right now. I feel like it’s in the field in a big way for what are probably pretty obvious reasons that I won’t name, but I think you are aware of what those pressures are that we are feeling right now. And so I think the longing for healing the wound of separation is particularly strong right now. This longing for safety, a sense of stability, a sense of calm. How do we find that in these incredibly disruptive times, and how can we sustain it? What can be a reliable refuge for us in this turbulent period?
I hope today, by talking about non-separation and exploring poems about it, that we get a taste of what it can feel like to take refuge in the present moment, to take refuge in pure awareness. That is really what I’m going to talk about today—not so much separation, but the pure awareness that is beyond duality, beyond separation.
But non-duality, non-separation, is a very slippery thing to talk about. It’s of course not a thing, and any word you apply to it is inadequate. It can’t be captured. As Lao Tzu1 said in the opening verse of the Tao Te Ching2, “The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao.” And that is absolutely true. We cannot grasp the Tao, or the sacred, or pure awareness in language. Lao Tzu also said, “He who speaks does not know, and he who knows does not speak,” again emphasizing the inadequacy of language to take us close to the Tao. Because language is inherently dualistic, we will never comprehend non-duality through a dualistic lens. And yet, that’s what we’re stuck with if we want to talk about these things. So we just have to recognize that the language we use to speak about these things is inevitably inadequate, incomplete, and distorting. And so we proceed with that sort of caution.
In language, the subject is separated from the object. The subject is here looking at the object out there that is separate. So the knower is separated from the known, and our grammar emphasizes this. The subject-verb-object structure of sentences by which we make statements about the world is itself a guarantee of separation, of duality. Also, our need to name and categorize things further reifies this illusion of separation. We give names to things so that we can tell them apart, we can tell one thing from another. You can tell your shoe from your coat; it’s not confusing that each thing has a different name. But these names are purely for the sake of our convenience. They don’t accurately reflect the world, the seamless, flowing reality that is the world, which we have broken down into these separate parts.
Some of these distinctions are rather arbitrary. For example, when does a tree stop being a tree and become the earth? What is the precise barrier that separates those two things? Can it be identified? Or when does a river stop being a river and become the sea? That’s what the little haiku I included is about: “Losing its name, a river enters the sea.” It’s just beautiful, such an evocative statement and true, of course. Once the river enters the sea, it’s no longer a river. But when does that happen? So these things are fluid, and our demarcations between things can be arbitrary and falsify the seamless reality that we truly live in.
But what is non-duality? I’m going to defer to Rupert Spira3, and I think some of you may know his teachings. He’s a wonderful Advaita4 non-dual teacher, and he says, “Non-duality is the recognition that underlying the multiplicity and diversity of experience, there is a single, infinite, and indivisible reality whose nature is pure consciousness.” Nisargadatta Maharaj5 makes a similar claim. He says, “You are not even a human being. You just are a point of pure awareness, coextensive with time and space and beyond both.”
The comedian Pete Holmes, I don’t know if some of you might be familiar with him, he’s a Dharma person, he’s a meditator. In an interview, he talked about his very young daughter, an infant. He said, “You know, she doesn’t know she’s a girl. She doesn’t know she’s an American. She doesn’t know she lives here or there. She doesn’t even know she’s a human being. She just is.” And it’s that state of purity, before all the distinctions and names come rushing in to tell us who we are, to lead us astray.
Awareness, unlike attention which we can direct, is not an instrument we use to know reality; it is reality itself. We’re not separate from it, nor can we ever be separate from awareness. Awareness is foundational. It’s the invisible, ever-present, empty space of being without doing, of knowing without thinking. Awareness is unborn and undying. I mean, did you create your own awareness, or was it always already there? And how can something that has never been born die? It’s not possible. And of course, these are statements, these are approximations, but they can give us a sense of the quality of awareness. It’s formless and changeless. It’s changeless because it’s formless; it has no form that could be subject to time and change. It just is.
In my view, in this time of accelerating upheaval and disruption, we can find peace and stability in unchanging awareness. We can take refuge in it. We typically try to take refuge in all kinds of things that don’t really work. We take refuge in our relationships, or we take refuge in the ideas and opinions and beliefs that we hold, sometimes too stridently. Or we take refuge in drugs, in distraction or entertainment, social media, the various enchantments of the mind. But these are all impermanent escapes, and so they inevitably fail. But they work well enough or long enough, some of them, that we keep coming back for more. We keep thinking, “Ah, this relationship or this job or this new thing in my life, whatever it might be, this will provide not temporary happiness, but lasting happiness.” And of course, that turns out not to be true. But these things work just well enough that we keep trying. We keep thinking, “Ah, this time maybe it will hold.”
We do this until we become exhausted, and we begin to long not for excitement, but for peace; not for distraction, but for presence; not for pleasure, but for joy. And we shift. We begin to let go of these impermanent escape routes and begin to settle into a different way of being in the world.
I was on a retreat at Spirit Rock last year, and there’s a wonderful Tibetan teacher, Anam Thubten6. One of the things he said that struck me as so true and profound, it’s really stayed with me. He said, “Awareness is already enlightened.” He didn’t elaborate on that, interestingly. He just kind of let it hang in the air. But I think it’s true because awareness is free of grasping and aversion. Awareness doesn’t need anything to be different than it is. It doesn’t want one thing and not another. It has no preferences. It makes no demands. It is just a pure knowing.
And we all have this. We are all already awake; we’ve just forgotten. We’ve gotten caught up in samsara7. But awareness itself is not something that we have to go searching for. It’s not outside of us. We have it, we are in it all the time. And so that’s enormously encouraging. It doesn’t require some search or huge effort. It’s a relaxing back into who we really are.
It often happens for me, and I suspect for some of you as well, that as we get older, you look in the mirror sometimes and you are surprised, or possibly even shocked, at how much your appearance has changed—your face, your body. It happens. But at the same time, you might feel in those moments some intangible aspect of yourself that feels exactly the same as it did five years ago, or even 50 years ago. I wonder if that’s true for you. I suspect that it is. I have felt it very strongly, and it’s a curious thing to feel like, “Oh my God, I look so much older,” but there is this other thing—and of course, it’s not a thing—that is unchanging, that has not aged, is exactly the same. And that is where we can find peace and stability.
But until we realize that we’re already enlightened, we need reminders. We need pointers. And of course, our meditation practice is a form of reminding us of our true nature. When we rest in empty knowing, non-directed knowing, when we can be with the arising and passing away of each moment without grasping or pushing away, we are reminded of who we really are. And we get a glimpse of this pure awareness. For most of us, it is only a glimpse. It can pass rather quickly, and yet it’s always there. It’s always available.
I think poems can be another way, another form of reminder. Poems can remind us of our true nature because they arise from the poet inhabiting their true nature as they write the poem, as the poem comes into being. Poems are not born from our egoic response to the world. If they are, they fail, and we can sense it. I think when a poem comes from ego, it gives off a certain kind of odor, we might say, and you can sense it. But when a great poem arises from inspiration, from the poet becoming a conduit for the sacred, for the divine, for the Tao, for pure awareness—whatever inadequate words you want to put to it—then the poem becomes a reminder. It becomes a space where we too can make contact with the sacred, with pure awareness. And that can be so nourishing and refreshing.
I want to share a quote from the poet Ruth Stone. She’s in both of my anthologies, a wonderful poet. When she was asked about her creative process, she said that she didn’t write her poems; she received them. She said, “Even as a child, I would hear a poem coming toward me from way off in the universe. I wouldn’t hear it, I would feel it. And it would come right toward me. If I didn’t catch it, if I didn’t run in the house and write it down, it would go right through me and back into the universe.” I love that she feels it coming towards her first. She says, “I hear it,” but then, “No, I feel it coming toward me from way off in the universe.” Like, “I didn’t create this. It came from some other realm. My job is to receive it, is to run into the house before it vanishes.” And I think that’s the way inspiration works. And so poems that come from that source can remind us of who we really are and can bring us into contact with that source as well.
So poems and meditation, and particularly the joining of poems and meditation, can really take us deeply into our awareness, pure awareness. Not all poems do, of course, but great poems can embody this quality of awareness. And when we enter the poem rather than hold it at arm’s length, when we enter it imaginatively, when we try to get inside the poem rather than just think about it, we collapse the boundary between ourselves and the poem, between ourselves and this quality of awareness that I’ve been speaking about.
But the first step is to dissolve the boundary that can so easily separate us from the poem when all we’re trying to do is think about it, figure it out, say what we think it means. That takes us away from the richness and immediacy of the experience of the poem. Because what we want is not greater understanding of the poem, but greater intimacy with it. Intimacy rather than understanding. Understanding can come later, but it can’t be the primary thing. It can’t be first and most important. First and most important is entering and becoming intimate with the poem.
But to do that, we have to drop what my favorite poet, Elizabeth Bishop, described as “the immodest demand for complete comprehension.” We want to know everything, and we want to know it right now. And if we don’t, we get frustrated. “I don’t understand this line. What is this word? What’s happening?” And we get so caught up in that that we lose our immediate engagement with the poem. And so we have to let that go. Like, it’s okay I can’t say what this line means. There are poems that I’ve read a hundred times, and there are still lines that baffle me, and it absolutely doesn’t bother me. So we have to relax around that, and that can help us shift from the interpretive mode to the appreciative mode. And that’s what really takes us deeply into the poem.
It’s a very simple method. We just let ourselves be drawn towards what we most like about the poem, what feels most alive, what feels most lit up, what really resonates with us, without worrying so much about why or what that might mean. We just notice, “Oh my gosh, I love this image,” or “This metaphor is incredible,” or “This line here really gets me every time.” It might be a stanza, it might be what Wallace Stevens described as “a lucid, inescapable rhythm,” or it might be the tone of voice in the poem, or it might be the whole journey it takes us on. Whatever it is, the practice is to savor it, to linger with it, to savor the pleasure that you’re experiencing, and then let that take you where it will. Let that be a guide. So instead of directing your mind to work with the poem, you follow the impulse, you follow your sense of appreciation, and then you see where it takes you. And it will take you somewhere. It will take you more deeply into the poem, for one thing.
Reading poems in this way can remind us of our true nature, who we really are beyond our conditioning, beyond the historic self that moves through time and is scarred by time and change, and bring us back to this pure awareness that can never be scarred by time and change. Even our most painful traumas have no effect whatsoever on awareness. They may affect us in every other way, but awareness will not be changed by whatever we happen to have to go through. And again, I think that’s why we can take refuge there. And it may just be for a moment. You may practice throughout the day of just stopping what you’re doing, maybe letting the eyes close, and just have a minute of knowing without thinking. And it can be incredibly accessible and incredibly nourishing to take those pauses throughout the day and just step back from the contents of the mind to naked perception, pure awareness itself.
So we can practice with meditation, and we can practice with poetry.
I’d like to do some practice with you now. I’d like to do some sitting practice with you, and then we’ll look at some poems together.
…
Staying in your meditative state, I’m going to read a poem, and then we’ll let the poem resonate in silence for a few moments before we come out of the meditation. This poem is called “Ask Me” by William Stafford.
Sometime when the river is ice, ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say. You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
And as you’re ready, just let your eyes gently open, and we’ll bring our meditation practice to a close with a bow. Let’s bow together to acknowledge our practice.
Okay, thank you so much. That felt really rich to sit in that silence with you.
So now we’re going to start looking at these poems together and talking about them. The way I like to approach these poems is just by going towards what we like, what feels really rich about the poem. It may be a line, a word, an image, a particular turn or movement in the poem. Just naming what we like, what feels alive in the poem for you. It can really be anything.
…
Let’s do the next poem in the group, “A Blessing” by James Wright. It has been requested that I read the poems twice, and I will happily do that.
A Blessing by James Wright
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom.
…
Let’s do the Rilke8 poem. This is from the Sonnets to Orpheus.
See the flowers, so faithful to Earth, we know their fate because we share it. Were they to grieve for their wilting, that grief would be ours to feel.
There’s a lightness in things, only we move forever burdened, pressing ourselves into everything, obsessed by weight. How strange and devouring our ways
must seem to those for whom life is enough. If you could enter their dreaming and dream with them deeply, you would come back to a different day, moving so
easily from that common depth. Or maybe just stay there: they would bloom and welcome you, all those brothers and sisters tossing in the meadows, and you would be one of them.
…
I wish we had more time to talk about the other poems, but thank you so much. I so appreciate everything that you offered and our practice together.
Lao Tzu: An ancient Chinese philosopher and writer, credited as the author of the Tao Te Ching and the founder of philosophical Taoism. ↩
Tao Te Ching: A classic Chinese text written around the 4th century BC, fundamental to Taoism. It outlines the concept of the Tao (or Dao), the ineffable, natural order of the universe. ↩
Rupert Spira: A contemporary English teacher of the “direct path,” a method of spiritual self-inquiry. His teachings are often associated with non-duality and Advaita Vedanta. ↩
Advaita Vedanta: A school of Hindu philosophy and spiritual practice, which posits that the true self, Atman, is the same as the highest metaphysical reality, Brahman. The core tenet is non-dualism. ↩
Nisargadatta Maharaj: A 20th-century Indian spiritual teacher and philosopher of Advaita Vedanta, known for his direct and uncompromised teachings, primarily captured in the book I Am That. ↩
Anam Thubten: A Tibetan Buddhist teacher and author who teaches in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He is the founder of the Dharmata Foundation. ↩
Samsara: A Pali and Sanskrit word that means “wandering” or “world,” referring to the cycle of death and rebirth to which life in the material world is bound. In Buddhism, it is characterized by suffering (dukkha) and is contrasted with nirvana. ↩
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926): A Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets. The poem is from his Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows. ↩