A dialogue with the poet Grace Wells, in relation to her latest book of poetry, The Church of the Love of the World (https://www.dedaluspress.com/). Grace is an award-winning eco-poet and nature writer living on the West Coast of Ireland. Nature, spirit-of-place and environmental concern are the large themes of her writing. She is an organic gardener and orchard-planter who hosts The Little Sanctuary a small retreat space for human, plant and creaturely species, and she regularly volunteers with Hometree a native woodland charity, which looks after biodiversity and encourages the reforestation of large landscape areas.
We speak about wonder, grief, the sacredness of the world, the fierceness of love, and the mysteries of grasses. A few references from our dialogue:
Grace refers to the name the Irish call themselves: Tuath Dé. Long before the publication of her book, Grace and I spoke about this name, and I elaborated it briefly in an essay—an elaboration Grace enjoyed very much, so here it is:
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As the poet Grace Wells recently reminded me, the indigenous Irish called themselves Tuath Dé—one of the most wonderful things a human people have ever called themselves, for the word “Tuath” signifies both people and place, and “Dé” signifies the goddess. Therefore, in a gesture of intimacy, in a gesture of wisdom, love, and beauty, they called themselves “the people of the goddess” and simultaneously called themselves “the place of the goddess”. They wonderstood power and place, wonderstood rootedness in place and intimacy with the vast Cosmos.
They wonderstood that Sophia abides as landscapes, as ecologies, as the sacred powers and inconceivable causes flowing as “power-and-place,” and they wonderstood that when we attune with sacredness and with living places, Sophia abides in us, through us, as us. Meanwhile, the dominant culture seems characterized by, as Underhill put it for us, those who “stand apart, judging, analysing the things which they have never truly known.”
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https://dangerouswisdom.org/dw-blog/who-is-sophia
The fuller contemplation of, “Who is Sophia?” may resonate with you.
We also discuss Dōgen and his insights into, and pointings toward, the teachings of the world—all beings, including supposedly “insentient” beings—and the essence of meditation. These insights and pointings appear in Keisei Sanshoku—Velley Sounds, Mountain Forms—and Jisho Zanmai. That latter term resists translation, signifying something like Self-Experience or Self-Verifying of Well-Put-Togetherness, or, Well-Put-Togetherness of Self-Experience or Self-Verifying. It is like the meditative state of self-arising experience, not dependent on subject or object, or the self-verification of the mystery of the cosmos by means of intimacy—the mystery verifying or experiencing itself.
The following essay discusses this meditative state in relation to other themes of the dialogue between philosopher and poet, including the seductions of Indo-European languages and worldviews, and the need for all of us to reindigenize:
https://dangerouswisdom.org/dw-blog/hologram-ecogram-mandala-part-iv-drawing-closer-to-visionary-lovewisdom
Dōgen offered related lessons that we can work with as an elaboration of, and invitation into, the special meditative mind that allows us to fully receive the teachings of the world, and receive the magic and medicine of the world as well. Dōgen there refers to the properly well-put-together mind as 自受用三昧, which has to do with the well-put-togetherness of our true mind. 自 (ji) means self—specifically a kind of “so-of-itselfness” or joyful spontaneity. It’s the same as the “ji” above, in Jisho Sanmai. 受 (ju) means receive, accept. 用 (yu) means use. Putting all these characters together, we get a wondrous medicine.
We can’t be certain how Dōgen meant it, but we could translate the full phrase as “the meditative state of the self joyfully and spontaneously receiving and accepting its use”. I always find that simply marvelous. It usually brings the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre to mind, because he said, “Man is a useless passion.” But Dōgen would say to Sartre, “Nonsense, my friend. You simply have refused to receive and accept your use—and that will lead to suffering for you and countless others.” Our use belongs neither to ourself nor to others. In a way, the use of our life is the place of our life. Dōgen gives us something fresh here, something arising always in transcendence of current concepts but still sensitive to the facts, something that refuses ossification in ideas—a living marrow, living flesh, living skin, living mountains and rivers.
Dōgen says that this meditative state “performs great and wide-ranging” work, a sacred work, a magical and mysterious work that itself arises as the teachings of the sacred. Our practice of place is our fundamental teaching of wisdom, love, and beauty. We don’t just go to a place a sit like some driveller. Rather, we enter the place fully, and let it enter us. We enter into this joyful and profound meditative state, and our activity performs the great and wide-ranging work of placemaking, which manifests the teachings of the sacred, the lessons, prayers, songs, and celebrations of wisdom, love, and beauty.
When we practice like this, Dōgen says,
"The trees, grasses, and land involved in this all emit a bright and shining light, preaching the profound and incomprehensible Dharma; and it is endless. Trees and grasses . . . expound and exalt the Dharma for the sake of ordinary people, sages, and all living beings. Ordinary people, sages, and all living beings in turn preach and exalt the Dharma for the sake of trees, grasses, wall and fence . . . Because of this, when just one person [meditates] even one time, [they become], imperceptibly, one with each and all of the myriad things and [they thus permeate] completely all time, so that within the limitless universe, throughout past, future, and present, [they perform] the eternal and ceaseless work of guiding beings to enlightenment."
Our practice of a sacred place becomes the activity of guiding all beings into mutual liberation, by means of our entrance into mutual nourishment and mutual illumination.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, one of the greatest voices of the 20th century, reportedly said, “We do not sing; we are made to sing.” If we see eye to eye with Dōgen, feel heart to heart with him, we can savor this lovely turn of phrase. Similarly, if we savor this phrase deeply enough, we may see eye to eye with Dōgen, feel heart to heart with him and with profoundly wise, loving, and beautiful sages of all traditions. Can we sense that? We do not dance; we are made to dance.
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You can find these reflections elaborated in previous and forthcoming work (I have largely copied from those works for these episode notes). For how this meditative state relates to art and life, you might try this essay that uses dance, especially tango, as a metaphor for all life and art:
https://dangerouswisdom.org/dw-blog/tangoart-as-pathway-to-bliss
Other reflections wisdom, love, beauty, place, culture, and education will come out with the publication of What Will We Become: An Outline and Handbook of Wisdom-Based Learning.
We also mentioned how bread illustrates the pattern of insanity that has us all in its grips. You can read more about that here:
https://dangerouswisdom.org/dw-blog/the-mandala-of-mutual-nourishment-the-story-of-bread-and-its-relationship-to-time-and-language
