T'ao Ch'ien

T'ao Ch'ien  (Y'ao Yuan-ming) (365-427 A.D.) was one of those educated and  literary Chinese officials who fell out of favour and took refuge in country parts.  One senses in these poet-recluses that they were  square pegs in a round holes to start off  in government service. Their poetic sensibilities made heavy going of the shrewd and ruthless politics of the day.   Unlike some who create a poetic pose of their poverty T'ao Ch'ien did fall on hard times.  He was a farmer on a modest holding.  He loved playing the lute, reading, visiting friends and drinking home brewed wine. Apparently this drinking was limited to just the amount of  wine necessary to become relaxed and mellow - and no doubt soften the soul for some more poetry.  T'ao Ch'ien poems (in translation) come across as quite modern and natural.  This is remarkable given he was born in 365 A.D. Despite his hardships there is an joy in life in the poems and a counter point of stoic resignation.  It is the same attitude one finds in Taoism of Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu.  If we can only simplify ourselves (meaning empty ourselves of conditioning and contradictions) then all will be harmony under a beneficent Heaven.  Here is a favourite poem from the translations of David Hamilton in his book The Selected Poems T'ao Ch'ien. I often wonder what happened to his sons. 


SCOLDING MY SONS

My temples covered all in white. I'm
slack-muscled and loose-skinned for good. 

now. And though I do have five sons, 
not one of them prizes paper and brush. 

A-shu is already twice eight, and who's 
ever equalled him for sheer laziness?

A-hsuan is fifteen, time studies began, 
but he's immune to words and ideas. 

Yung and Tuan are both thirteen now, 
and they can't even add six and seven. 

And T'ung-tzu, who's almost nine, does 
nothing but forage pears and chestnuts. 

If this is heaven's way, I'll offer it 
that stuff in the cup. It needs a drink. 

Thoughts on Schweitzer

Black Swans near Lake Burley Griffin 

About every two weeks and in all seasons I drive a short distance  to Lake Burley Griffin and take a morning walk. I like to see happy families away from work, computers, televisions and shopping malls. I also see lots of dogs in all shapes and sizes glad to be walking beside their human friends. I also enjoy observing the black swans, the darters drying their wings in the sun, the busy sea gulls, water birds pecking in the lush grass with curved beaks. 

We are more human when we share our lives benevolently with animals. There is a co-mingling of being, a communion of spirits.  

On my walks around the lake I often recall Albert Schweitzer's ethic of reverence for life. Schweitzer thought that ultimately we can know very little about the cosmic meaning of life but it is plainly evident that the being in us, which is also will-to-live, is present in others and in animals and plants.  Will-to-live means not only basic survival  but species potential. At a higher level it is will-to-love. Schweitzer died in 1965. He is not very fashionable now. Perhaps he is forgotten. His reputation was not helped by writing most of his life as a theologian and a philosopher of an non-academic sort. He was probably a non-theist.  He also mixed this up with medical missionary work in central Africa and got into trouble for not keeping up with medical technology. He was also a bit colonial and paternalistic in this thinking (being essentially a 19th century man). These in combination were bad for his posthumous career. He made his central ethic reverence for life  and this ethic in a dynamic way he termed ethical mysticism. There is nothing mystical or supernatural about it. It is the mysticism of  the kindly touching of other beings because we are at some level of the same stuff. 

A Very Cute Family 

Book Binding Ends

I acquired a pious book titled Fathers, Martyrs and Queen of the Holy Rosary from a relation I located while doing my family history. She knew my grandparents and had met me in Melbourne with my parents when I was an infant. I do not remember the meeting. She was happy to  pass it over to me as I was a closer relative than she to the original owners.

It is perhaps a Roman Catholic alternative to a Protestant family bible.  I tend to call it 'the bible'  in the absence of a suitable name for it. As a non believer the contents do not speak to me and I suspect for present day believers it represents a fervour of another time. It is inscribed with births, deaths and marriages of some of my 1800's ancestors. 

 It was handed over in a pretty poor state, the cover boards falling off, end papers torn and spine spit in two. At the time I was learning craft book binding and took it to my recreational class as a project. It took all of one semester to repair the book. The teacher was somewhat intimidated by having to advise on the job until I assured her I was repairing it not restoring it. 
  
Recently I decided to relinquish my book binding craft. The pastime had being in abeyance for some time and I had passed on to new things. The paraphernalia of bookbinding have charm: pretty book cloth, colourful and marbled endpapers, trusty pieces of hard board, spine tape in various hues, brushes and glues. It was a little hard to bundle some for donation and some for disposal.  

A legacy of the craft is the 'bible' as well as the books I have re-covered in my library, all with a personalised sticky label attached to the end boards. I attained no great heights of bookbinding.  I lacked the dexterity, the artistic talent and drive for perfection. As well I only had a small part-time work desk and none of the larger machines or implements for proper book binding.  My projects  were salvaged old books or good quality paperbacks rendered more pleasant to look at and handle. 

I hope I have ensured that the 'bible' survives another hundred years and is still in the possession of a relative and that he or she may pause a moment to read the legend 'tipped' into the endpapers telling of its discovery and repair by the distant relative long gone. 

The Best State to Read Poetry

I find that my best experience with reading poetry comes early in the morning just after I have completed a short meditation session.  For that matter if you want to write poetry it seems to flow best in this post-meditative state.  Later in the day when you are jaded with experience, coarsened with talking and all the petty trivia of life, the poetic experience seems to flee as if in fright.  I suppose you do not have to meditate to experience this heightened receptivity; it could be garnered from being quiet and mindful for a while. So much poetry is introduced to people in the scholastic setting. The poem becomes an object to be analysed and intellectually consumed, it becomes a useful thing, a adjunct to identity.  Not much of the gist of the poem survives this process although it may have some use to put poetry into a cultural context. I do not much like poetry to be spoken aloud, formally recited or 'performed'  for I find that the poem treated in these ways becomes often just noise lost in the air. There are exceptions as when a trained actor with a beautiful voice recites a poem or when a poem is written in a style with metre and rhyme specifically to be spoken aloud.