The Bodhisattva Vow As Taken By Robert Creeley
An exceptionally incisive poem by Robert Creeley, ending with a glorious New Englander's version of the Bodhisattva vow, written around 1970:
ON VACATION
Things seems empty
on vcation if the labors
have not been physical,
if tedium was rather
a daily knot, a continuum,
if satisfaction was almost
placid. On Sundays the restlessness
grows, on weekends, on
months of vacation myself grows
vacuous. Taking walks, swimming,
drinking, I am always afraid
of having more. Hence a true
Puritan, I shall never rest from my labors
until all rest with me, until I am
driven by that density home.
--Robert Creeley, The Collected Poems 1945-1975, University of California Press, 2006, page 485
The Bodhisattva Vow (as taken by Creeley):
". . . I shall never rest from my labors
until all rest with me, until I am
driven by that density home."
Has the word "density" ever sounded so immense yet fragrant and served as such a personal synonym for the collective weight of our humanity? Has the word "home" ever resonated with such a sense of a final resting place short of and far other than the grave? Slowly but surely we draw to the ineluctable, irreducible condition of our oneness and common Godliness--by dint of that perceived unity and felt substance. Paradise is glimpsed and often gained in that sighting. And our lives become a fulfilled prophecy of heaven on earth through fully awakened sentience. By continued watchfulness, we stay rooted and resident in that place.
The only rescue from the continuing sagas of neurosis and worse, it seems to me now, is to feel the Puritan's pangs for violations of that commonness, to welcome guilt for the various crimes of wanting satisfactions short of the wholesome (whole-sum) all of us.
Reading Creeley this morning, I was reminded of how my teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen once chided two students for playing tennis instead of using their leisure for meaningful exertion on behalf of others. He was a Puritan in the best sense.
What the grace-filled gracious Puritan knows is, as Herschel said about true worship, that it is sabbath at every second and we stand together on the commons of our community, the common ground which I call God. Creeley took me there this morning and I wanted to share the peaceful, redemptive place for which his vow-sealed poem is habitat.
ON VACATION
Things seems empty
on vcation if the labors
have not been physical,
if tedium was rather
a daily knot, a continuum,
if satisfaction was almost
placid. On Sundays the restlessness
grows, on weekends, on
months of vacation myself grows
vacuous. Taking walks, swimming,
drinking, I am always afraid
of having more. Hence a true
Puritan, I shall never rest from my labors
until all rest with me, until I am
driven by that density home.
--Robert Creeley, The Collected Poems 1945-1975, University of California Press, 2006, page 485
The Bodhisattva Vow (as taken by Creeley):
". . . I shall never rest from my labors
until all rest with me, until I am
driven by that density home."
Has the word "density" ever sounded so immense yet fragrant and served as such a personal synonym for the collective weight of our humanity? Has the word "home" ever resonated with such a sense of a final resting place short of and far other than the grave? Slowly but surely we draw to the ineluctable, irreducible condition of our oneness and common Godliness--by dint of that perceived unity and felt substance. Paradise is glimpsed and often gained in that sighting. And our lives become a fulfilled prophecy of heaven on earth through fully awakened sentience. By continued watchfulness, we stay rooted and resident in that place.
The only rescue from the continuing sagas of neurosis and worse, it seems to me now, is to feel the Puritan's pangs for violations of that commonness, to welcome guilt for the various crimes of wanting satisfactions short of the wholesome (whole-sum) all of us.
Reading Creeley this morning, I was reminded of how my teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen once chided two students for playing tennis instead of using their leisure for meaningful exertion on behalf of others. He was a Puritan in the best sense.
What the grace-filled gracious Puritan knows is, as Herschel said about true worship, that it is sabbath at every second and we stand together on the commons of our community, the common ground which I call God. Creeley took me there this morning and I wanted to share the peaceful, redemptive place for which his vow-sealed poem is habitat.
posted by David Federman @ 6:03 AM
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