A personal koan
Hello friends. My poem “A Personal Koan” is a way of addressing my relationship with my brother George. I dealt with our differences in another poem, “Selving,” with ended with the words “let mystery remain.” That is primarily the nature of a koan — a mystery, a riddle. In many ways, our lives can be seen as a great riddle, a koan, that may or not be solved. For those unfamiliar with the concept of a koan, I would like to share a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, and then present the poem afterward. Best, Gene.
A koan is a mediation device, a special kind of Zen riddle. Koans are solved not with the intellect but with the practice of mindfulness, concentration, and insight. A koan can be contemplated and practiced individually or collectively, but as long as it remains unsolved, a koan is unsettling. It is like an arrow piercing our body which we cannot take out; as long as it is lodged there we can neither be happy nor at peace.
A koan cannot be solved by intellectual arguments, logic or reason, nor by debates such as whether there is only mind or matter. A koan can only be solved through the power of right mindfulness and right concentration. Once we have penetrated a koan, we feel a sense of relief and have no more fears or questioning. We see our path and realize great peace.
A Personal Koan
He went right, I went left.
He climbed financial heights, I did religion,
a tainted liberal spurred by visions Jesuitical.
For him the great collapse of the Sixties –
nothing sacred, nothing stable,
decent working-class neighborhoods
swamped by rabble:
steel doors, double locks, nothing safe,
serial marrying, wife swapping, drugged rapists,
child molesters and entitlements.
Native priests, les bien pensantes, pious cheeks aglow,
joined facial-hair academics and cynical media
to ruin America.
Thus the tirade inflated with fury,
compressed into a black hole
sucking in rising emotion around the table.
Counter-argument falling like fuel on fire,
exiling the guilty into oblivion.
No Christmas or birthday cards,
dead internet, phone silent, enjoy Siberia.
Put aside the surge of rational replies.
Let us go into quiet not-knowing.
Then at a family reunion an unexpected hand extended,
blood thicker than argument?
The paradox still flammable yields a truce
without words, a koan beyond mind.
