January 21, 2022
I was at Elena Secota’s Third Friday of the Month poetry reading, which usually happens in the Rapp Saloon in Santa Monica, earlier this evening when Peggy Dobreer announced that Thich Nhat Hang died earlier today. It was appropriate that I learn of this news from another poet, for it was the poet Peter Levitt who first mentioned his name and poetry to me, in Ocean Park, in the mid-1970s.
LINKS TO MEMORIAL SERVICES, FUNERAL, and Thich Nhat Hanh reading “Please Call Me by My True Names.”
https://plumvillage.org/memorial/
https://plumvillage.org/memorial-practice-resources/
https://plumvillage.org/gratitude-for-thich-nhat-hanh/
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Saturday, January 22, 2022:
8 pm eastern 5 Pacific, live streaming from Plum Village, carrying the teacher’s body to rest:
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“Please Call Me By My True Names.
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OBITUARIES:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/22/thich-nhat-hanh-revered-zen-buddhist-monk-and-peace-activist-dies-at-95
https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/thich-nhat-hanh-dies/
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/religion/story/2022-01-21/obituary-thich-nhat-hanh-zen-master-and-political-reformer-dies-at-95
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/22/thich-nhat-hanh-influential-buddhist-monk-dies-at-95
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/21/1074977884/thich-nhat-hanh-dead
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“You learn how to suffer. If you know how to suffer, you suffer much, much less. And then you know how to make good use of suffering to create joy and happiness.The art of happiness and the art of suffering always go together.”
“The peace we seek cannot be our personal possession. We need to find an inner peace which makes it possible for us to become one with those who suffer, and to do something to help our brothers and sisters, which is to say, ourselves.” (from “The Sun My Heart”)
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Thanks to an invitation by my friend, Kathryn McMahon, years ago, I was able to attend a lecture by Thich Nhat Hang. Several years afterwards, I wrote the following poem, which first appeared in an issue of POOL magazine, edited by Patty Seyburn and Judith Taylor.
ARS POETICA
I wasn’t on a path or near a creek or lake.
In the gray light of a smoldering storm,
I heard the rotted wood of toppled trees
wait for my noise to loosen incandescent spores.
Once, hurrying through the thicket of a mountain,
I saw a glowing tube of threads like a mashed globe
suspended, taut, creased with undulant shadows.
A tent caterpillar, a man explained as sparks
from a fire pit decanted. But that name
did not suffice: those syllables only blurred
the motionless reverence of the tiny span
the chrysalis allowed itself as galactic cusp.
The next day a monk talked of cycles
of evasive desire. As he spoke, I rubbed
the small tear in a padded finger
of the left hand of my motorcycle gloves.
I’d hit the pavement hard, but jutted
back up. No broken bones, no lacerations.
I’m easily distracted: not much chance
to escape the sticky wheel of suffering.
As he walked past, he smiled delightfully,
though not at me as such. He had no other blessing
to disperse. Yet he’d grown up poor, I thought,
those teeth needed work when he was young.
About Bill Mohr