I spent the day with the Poets.
I was heading into a second twist and turn over the Gita's enigmatic Chapter Eight. I do a first pass, then a deep second. Sanskrit never fails you. There is always more even when it is _this_ familiar. To make the familiar unfamiliar is the first step in seeing what we do not remember.
So before that deep second pass I was just sitting here, by the fire, thinking again about the Poet.
The Poet is the soul of Chapter Eight, the breath of the argument, the very center of yoga.
Then I thought of an old book and spent the early morning reading Milosz' The Land of Ulro. Ulro is a reference he makes to Blake.
Blake once wrote,
"They rage like wild beasts in the forest of affliction
In the dreams of Ulro they repent of their human kindness."
Milosz warns us that this book of his was not meant for the reader but as a personal whim, "to give free rein to my meditations and not try to reach anyone in particular." That sounds like just want I was looking for. I think that is what Krishna is doing in this chapter, however it seems didactic or otherwise. Unlike other chapters that start by telling us how clear he is going to be, he does no such thing here. This is why he doesn't fail from the start, he wants truth this time around. His Poet will be no longer limited by any terms but his own engagement, his yoga, because the rest is only to be remembered, not learned.
I first read this Milosz before Vivisvant taught yoga to Manu, I mean a long, long time ago and _somehow_ it just came to mind this morning as the Poet, as Krishna's knower of the heart. Milosz was a student of great poets and he does not hesitate to comment on them as if he were teaching himself what's on his mind, this writing being more a form of thinking aloud what he is thinking within. This too is much like Chapter 8 of the Gita where the argument turns to death, to poetry, to the power of engaging with life, and above all to that inner Poet. This Poet is the ancient, it is our soul collecting all that has ever been so that it can enter the unfinished realm of Ulro, to ask what is real about the world. The heart rages like wild beasts and there we dream of the Poet. We long to be the Poet, or so Krishna says we could. Milosz has something to say about all this too. He demystifies the Poet's quest so that we savor more the feelings of being alive. Krishna follows suit.
Milosz does this by writing about his Poet, William Blake. I think that is why I remembered this book this morning. I was thinking about what Blake would say about those verses written in trishtubh meter, 8.9-11. (I remember this story every time I think of him too, "Mr Blake is not at home today, Sir, he is with the Angels. ---Mrs Blake to the Times of London reporter knocking on their door, right on time for his scheduled appointment)
I share with Milosz and Blake their mutual dislike for the word "mystery" because there is something so real we might taste if don't begin by telling ourselves what we can and cannot do.
Milosz writes,
"Blake was not an advocate of Mystery as something inaccessible to reason, as something circumscribing the narrow circle of our knowledge. The word "Mystery" has a negative connotation in his vocabulary: it is a terrorizing of the mind through the religion and philosophy of Urizen. The world around us is real, not illusory: neither can it be divided into that which can be discovered and that which awaits discovery by the human mind, but only into the true, or that which is contained by the Imagination, and the false, the "vegetative mirror" which is a parody of the former. This is for man a living heaven, the second a living hell, the Land of Ulro...In the Wheel of Death, in Ulro man reduces other men to vacant shadows, to creatures of chance quickly consigned to oblivion; unable to believe in their reality, he becomes a captive of ego, of the "Spectre..."
Milosz then quotes Blake's Milton at some length, the passage in Blake ends: "To take off his filthy garments & clothe him in Imagination..."
Krishna's Poet clothes us in imagination not to remove death from our sight but to put it right before us, so that we can live more richly listening to the creativity inside. That is where he wants us to go, to that place where what we hear inside ---what he calls the OM that "remembers me"--- in ways we have made real for ourselves in every day's task. Today's task was to remember the Poet that Krishna invites us to become. That's every day's task. More soon.
I was heading into a second twist and turn over the Gita's enigmatic Chapter Eight. I do a first pass, then a deep second. Sanskrit never fails you. There is always more even when it is _this_ familiar. To make the familiar unfamiliar is the first step in seeing what we do not remember.
So before that deep second pass I was just sitting here, by the fire, thinking again about the Poet.
The Poet is the soul of Chapter Eight, the breath of the argument, the very center of yoga.
Then I thought of an old book and spent the early morning reading Milosz' The Land of Ulro. Ulro is a reference he makes to Blake.
Blake once wrote,
"They rage like wild beasts in the forest of affliction
In the dreams of Ulro they repent of their human kindness."
Milosz warns us that this book of his was not meant for the reader but as a personal whim, "to give free rein to my meditations and not try to reach anyone in particular." That sounds like just want I was looking for. I think that is what Krishna is doing in this chapter, however it seems didactic or otherwise. Unlike other chapters that start by telling us how clear he is going to be, he does no such thing here. This is why he doesn't fail from the start, he wants truth this time around. His Poet will be no longer limited by any terms but his own engagement, his yoga, because the rest is only to be remembered, not learned.
I first read this Milosz before Vivisvant taught yoga to Manu, I mean a long, long time ago and _somehow_ it just came to mind this morning as the Poet, as Krishna's knower of the heart. Milosz was a student of great poets and he does not hesitate to comment on them as if he were teaching himself what's on his mind, this writing being more a form of thinking aloud what he is thinking within. This too is much like Chapter 8 of the Gita where the argument turns to death, to poetry, to the power of engaging with life, and above all to that inner Poet. This Poet is the ancient, it is our soul collecting all that has ever been so that it can enter the unfinished realm of Ulro, to ask what is real about the world. The heart rages like wild beasts and there we dream of the Poet. We long to be the Poet, or so Krishna says we could. Milosz has something to say about all this too. He demystifies the Poet's quest so that we savor more the feelings of being alive. Krishna follows suit.
Milosz does this by writing about his Poet, William Blake. I think that is why I remembered this book this morning. I was thinking about what Blake would say about those verses written in trishtubh meter, 8.9-11. (I remember this story every time I think of him too, "Mr Blake is not at home today, Sir, he is with the Angels. ---Mrs Blake to the Times of London reporter knocking on their door, right on time for his scheduled appointment)
I share with Milosz and Blake their mutual dislike for the word "mystery" because there is something so real we might taste if don't begin by telling ourselves what we can and cannot do.
Milosz writes,
"Blake was not an advocate of Mystery as something inaccessible to reason, as something circumscribing the narrow circle of our knowledge. The word "Mystery" has a negative connotation in his vocabulary: it is a terrorizing of the mind through the religion and philosophy of Urizen. The world around us is real, not illusory: neither can it be divided into that which can be discovered and that which awaits discovery by the human mind, but only into the true, or that which is contained by the Imagination, and the false, the "vegetative mirror" which is a parody of the former. This is for man a living heaven, the second a living hell, the Land of Ulro...In the Wheel of Death, in Ulro man reduces other men to vacant shadows, to creatures of chance quickly consigned to oblivion; unable to believe in their reality, he becomes a captive of ego, of the "Spectre..."
Milosz then quotes Blake's Milton at some length, the passage in Blake ends: "To take off his filthy garments & clothe him in Imagination..."
Krishna's Poet clothes us in imagination not to remove death from our sight but to put it right before us, so that we can live more richly listening to the creativity inside. That is where he wants us to go, to that place where what we hear inside ---what he calls the OM that "remembers me"--- in ways we have made real for ourselves in every day's task. Today's task was to remember the Poet that Krishna invites us to become. That's every day's task. More soon.
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