How To Live, Part Twenty-Seven: Equanimity

I began this series of posts back in August of 2010.  I neglected to note at the outset of the series that I am completely unqualified to provide any advice on "How to Live."  I have never harbored, and will never harbor, any such presumption.  Hence, any advice that appears here is solely attributable to the poets and their poems.  I am merely the befuddled messenger.

A further disclaimer:  as I have stated in the past, I do not believe that the purpose of poetry is to edify.  A poet who sets out to write a poem aimed at teaching us something is doomed to failure.  Thus, for instance, that contradiction in terms known as "political poetry": a soi-disant "poem" that purports to instruct us on the rightness or wrongness of a political belief (left, right, or Martian) does not, under any circumstances, qualify as poetry.  Self-regarding propaganda, yes. Poetry, no.

That being said, we do read poetry for its Beauty and its Truth.  Well, at least I do, although I may be wholly misguided.  Accordingly, the poems that appear in this series are in the nature of memoranda to myself:  they are reminders of the possibilities that Beauty and Truth open up for us.

Here, then, is a bit of good advice about how to live:

                               Precept

Dwell in some decent corner of your being,
Where plates are orderly set and talk is quiet,
Not in its devious crooked corridors
Nor in its halls of riot.

James Reeves, The Questioning Tiger (Heinemann 1964).

Charles Holmes (1868-1936), "Bude Canal" (1915)

Note that Reeves acknowledges that each of us does have "devious crooked corridors" and "halls of riot" within us.  Given that we are wont to hold overly flattering views of ourselves, the recognition that these corridors and halls exist is in itself an important first step.  But this is often a matter of one step forward, two steps back.  Still, most of us try to do our imperfect best.

And once I knew
A hasty man,
So small, so kind, and so perfunctory,
Of such an eager kindness
It flushed his little face with standing shame.

Wherever he came
He poured his alms into a single hand
That was full then empty.  He could not understand.
A foolish or a blessed blindness,
Saint or fool, a better man than you.

Edwin Muir, in Peter Butter (editor), The Complete Poems of Edwin Muir (The Association for Scottish Literary Studies 1991).  The poem is untitled.  Muir wrote it in the final years of his life, and did not publish it during his lifetime.

Perfection is not in the cards for any of us, and the sooner we realize this the better.  "A foolish or a blessed blindness" that leads to the practice of kindness is certainly not a bad thing.  If nothing else, it suggests the presence of humility, which, it seems to me, is a good place from which to begin.

                         From the Latin (but not so pagan)

Blessed is he that has come to the heart of the world and is humble.
He shall stand alone; and beneath
His feet are implacable fate, and panic at night, and the strumble
Of the hungry river of death.

Hilaire Belloc, Sonnets and Verse (Duckworth 1938).

Yes, "there will be dying, there will be dying,/but there is no need to go into that."  At least not yet.

Charles Holmes, "The Yellow Wall, Blackburn" (1932)

We live our lives in "the vale of Soul-making."  In that vale, exalted alpine heights and expansive seaside vistas -- and their wide perspectives -- are few and far between.  Most of our time passes in the manner of an ordinary Wednesday afternoon, waning towards evening, half-lit.  And yet.  Just over a year before writing of "the vale of Soul-making," Keats wrote this:

"I scarcely remember counting upon any Happiness -- I look not for it if it be not in the present hour -- nothing startles me beyond the Moment.  The setting sun will always set me to rights -- or if a Sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the Gravel."

John Keats, letter to Benjamin Bailey, November 22, 1817, in Robert Gittings (editor), Letters of John Keats (Oxford University Press 1970), page 38.

At the risk of making a tenuous connection, a statement made by my favorite mystic may be worth considering at this point:  "If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present."  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Proposition 6.4311, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) (translated by C. K. Ogden).  An alternative translation is:  "If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present." (Translated by David Pears and Brian McGuinness.)

What Keats and Wittgenstein have to say about living in the present moment is nothing new:  they are repeating wisdom that has been known in all places and at all times.  But this wisdom has to be learned anew by each soul that arrives here.  "Dwell[ing] in some decent corner of your being,/Where plates are orderly set and talk is quiet" is, I think, an essential element of the learning process:  living in the present moment requires presence of mind.  Easier said than done, of course.

                         Rarities

Beauty, and grace, and wit are rare;
     And even intelligence:
But lovelier than hawthorn seen in May,
Or mistletoe berries on Innocent's Day
The face that, open as heaven, doth wear --
With kindness for its sunshine there --
     Good nature and good sense.

Walter de la Mare, Inward Companion and Other Poems (Faber and Faber 1950).

Charles Holmes, "A Warehouse" (1921)

I fear that I have floated too far off into the ether.  Let's face it: inhabiting the present moment on a consistent basis (even without adding "eternity" or "timelessness" into the mix) is not something that most of us are up to.  I know that I'm not.  But something short of that may be enough to bring us a measure of repose.

In this matter of Soul-making we need to proceed in a measured, attentive, and thoughtful fashion.  There are no short-cuts.  Wrong turns and dead-ends are common.  Thus, coming anywhere close to possessing a modicum of "good nature and good sense" is, as de la Mare observes, a rare accomplishment indeed.  Enough work to keep us busy for a lifetime, with no guarantee of success.  Moreover, none of us will ever be in a position to say of ourself that we possess "good nature and good sense."  How could we?  That is for others to decide.

Yet, if we "dwell in some decent corner of [our] being," and if we "come to the heart of the world and [are] humble," we may be headed in the right direction.  And if -- an enormous if -- we are patient, receptive, and fortunate, we may arrive at a place of serenity.

                 From My Window

An old man leaning on a gate
Over a London mews -- to contemplate --
Is it the sky above -- the stones below?
     Is it remembrance of the years gone by,
     Or thinking forward to futurity
That holds him so?

Day after day he stands,
Quietly folded are the quiet hands,
Rarely he speaks.
     Hath he so near the hour when Time shall end,
     So much to spend?
What is it he seeks?

Whate'er he be,
He is become to me
A form of rest.
     I think his heart is tranquil, from it springs
     A dreamy watchfulness of tranquil things,
And not unblest.

Mary Coleridge, in Theresa Whistler (editor), The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge (Rupert Hart-Davis 1954).  Coleridge wrote the poem in 1907, the year in which she died (at the age of 45).

Charles Holmes, "Scholar Gipsy" (1917)

Beyond Words

As human beings, we are adept (more or less) at putting things into words.  It is what we do.  Hence, for instance, poetry.  It has been argued that this trafficking in words is what sets us apart from the other creatures with whom we share the World.  Sets us apart for both good and ill, I would suggest.  Poetry, yes.  But a great deal of noisome noise as well.  There is no need to go into the particulars. You know them well.

However, there are some things that are simply unsayable, however articulate and clever we fancy ourselves to be.  Thus, as it wondrously happens, an awareness of the inexpressibility of certain fundamental elements of existence and of the World often accounts for the beauty and the truth of the poems that move us.

     'And so they came to live at Daffodil Water'

'And so they came to live at Daffodil Water.'
Such were the words that fell as by dictation
Into the cloud of my preoccupation,
And one by one they fluttered down like leaves,
Touching me with their strange illumination --
Like leaves the girls would catch at Butler's Cross
To bring themselves good luck, each leaf a year.

'And so they came to live at Daffodil Water.'
A grey-green light of depths that do not stir
Beneath the unfledged ash-bough's contemplation
Touches me now as I transcribe the words.
Such were the depths perhaps where Hylas drowned,
Such were the wreaths his temptresses would wear.
But who are they who came to shelter there
And live obscurely by that leaf-light crowned,
Patiently mending their storm-shattered minds?

Who came to live in grace at Daffodil Water,
And why they sheltered there and from what storm,
Neither the voice that speaks through my abstraction
Nor my own fantasy serves to inform.

James Reeves, The Talking Skull (Heinemann 1958).

Hylas (line 12) was a young man who was a companion to Heracles, and one of the Argonauts who accompanied Heracles and Jason in search of the Golden Fleece.  However, while on the journey, he was seduced by the temptations of the nymphs who haunted a spring and vanished beneath the water of a pond, never to be seen again.

Stanley Roy Badmin (1906-1989), "Stormy Evening, Glencoe"

The phrase "words fail me" usually carries with it a connotation of inadequacy or of frustration.  However, it may in fact represent a sign of progress.  To wit:

"There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words.  They make themselves manifest.  They are what is mystical."

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Proposition 6.522, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) (translated by David Pears and Brian McGuinness) (italics in the original).  An alternative translation is: "There is indeed the inexpressible.  This shows itself; it is the mystical."  (Translated by C. K. Ogden.)

The word "mystical" (whether used by Wittgenstein or by anyone else) causes some people (ironic moderns, for example) to raise their eyebrows.  The same is true of the word "Immanence."  I don't know why this should be the case.  Perhaps the modern temper is not as "open-minded" as it believes itself to be.  In truth, it is quite doctrinaire and intolerant.  But we are each free to follow our own path.

                              Abersoch

There was that headland, asleep on the sea,
The air full of thunder and the far air
Brittle with lightning; there was that girl
Riding her cycle, hair at half-mast,
And the men smoking, the dinghies at rest
On the calm tide.  There were people going
About their business, while the storm grew
Louder and nearer and did not break.

Why do I remember these few things,
That were rumours of life, not life itself
That was being lived fiercely, where the storm raged?
Was it just that the girl smiled,
Though not at me, and the men smoking
Had the look of those who have come safely home?

R. S. Thomas, Tares (Rupert Hart-Davis 1961).

Wittgenstein was fond of William James, and of The Varieties of Religious Experience in particular.  He is said to have read it in 1912 in Cambridge, nine years before Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was published.  It was one of the books he often recommended (or gave) to friends (another such book, interestingly, was Samuel Johnson's Prayers and Meditations).  James identifies "ineffability" as one of the four defining features of mysticism, and states:

"The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative.  The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.  It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others.  In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect."

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (Longmans, Green 1902), page 380.

I am not attempting to pigeonhole 'And so they came to live at Daffodil Water' or "Abersoch" as "mystical" poems, or as poems about "Immanence":  they are, after all, composed of words and they do "say" something concrete.  But I think they also point to something ineffable and unsayable beyond themselves.  I am reminded of R. H. Blyth's comment (using a Buddhist saying) about how a haiku works:  "It is a single finger pointing to the moon."  R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn (Hokuseido Press 1952), page i.  The Buddhist lesson is that we must ultimately look beyond the pointing finger.

Robert Coventry (1855-1914), "The Haven" (1908)

In the end, there are certain things -- likely the most important things -- that are beyond the reach of words.  To think otherwise is to give ourselves too much credit and too much power.  We are forever overestimating our ability to formulate dispositive explanations of existence and of the World that rely upon words.  There are certain things that are beyond words.  Wittgenstein's well-known proposition (which I have quoted here on numerous occasions) is true:  "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Proposition 7, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (translated by David Pears and Brian McGuinness).

And where does this leave us?  Bereft of words, we may feel hopelessly lost.  Ah, but that's the beauty of letting words go, and of accepting silence:  we are exactly where we ought to be.

                 The Forest of Dean

'Now here you could not lose your way,
Although you lost it,' seemed to say
Each path that ran to left or right
Through narrowing distance out of sight.

'Not here, not here,' whistled a thrush
And 'Never, never,' sighed a thorn-bush;
Primroses looked me in the face
With, 'O too lovely is this place.'

A larch-bough waved a loose green beard
And 'Never, never,' still I heard;
'Wayfarer, seek no more your track,
It lies each side and front and back.'

Andrew Young, Winter Harvest (Nonesuch Press 1933).

"The Forest of Dean" is prefigured in an earlier poem by Young:

                  In the New Forest

With branch on sighing branch reclined
     And wild rose beckoning wild rose,
I lose my way, only to find
     That no-one here his way can lose.

Andrew Young, in Edward Lowbury and Alison Young (editors), The Poetical Works of Andrew Young (Secker & Warburg 1985).  The poem appears in a letter that Young wrote to John Freeman in August of 1927.  Ibid, page 329.  He did not publish it during his lifetime.  Freeman was an acquaintance of both Edward Thomas and Walter de la Mare.  A few of his poems have appeared here in the past.

Daffodil Water, Abersoch, the Forest of Dean, the New Forest.  Here. With nothing more to be said, are we in precisely the right place?

Dane Maw (1906-1989), "Woolverton and Peart Woods" (1970)

Anew

As I have noted here in the past, I am not one to make New Year's resolutions.  Still, the turning of the year is an appropriate time to remind ourselves of what is important in life, and to consider how we ought to place ourselves in the World.

The reminders (aspirations of a sort) that I offer below are not intended to be all-inclusive.  And please bear in mind that I do not in any way, shape, or form claim to exemplify these qualities.  Far, far from it:  on a daily basis, I fail miserably to live in accordance with these common sense habits of being.  But our lot on earth is to fail, yet to persist.  We are, after all, in Keats's "vale of Soul-making":  an ongoing journey, with an end beyond our ken.

These aspirations are echoed in three haiku that I try to revisit at this time each year.  Here is the first:

     I intended
Never to grow old, --
     But the temple bell sounds!

Jokun (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 202.

Naturally, the turning of the year brings an awareness of time and its passing.  In Japan, there is an added dimension to this tolling of time:  as the old year ends and the new year begins, the bells in Buddhist temples are rung 108 times in order to remind we mortals of each of the 108 desires that beset us.

Our time here is short, and is shortening as we breathe.  This fact should be sufficient to provide us with perspective as to how best to spend our remaining moments.  To wit:  "Manage all your actions and thoughts in such a manner as if you were just going to step into the grave."  Marcus Aurelius (translated by Jeremy Collier), Meditations, Book II, Section 11, in Jeremy Collier, The Emperor Marcus Antoninus: His Conversation with Himself (1701).

Samuel Birch (1869-1955), "A Cornish Stream"

Given that we may "step into the grave" at any moment (a sobering thought, but not cause for despair), we had best attend to the fellow souls with whom we abide in the vale of Soul-making.  It is all quite simple, really (but, like many simple things, difficult in the observance):

                  . . . we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Philip Larkin, "The Mower," in Philip Larkin, Collected Poems (Faber and Faber 1988).

Kindness.  The polar opposite of the irony and the politicization that infect the world in which we now live.  Political beliefs (of any stripe) have nothing whatsoever to do with the ability of a person to behave in a decent manner toward one's fellow souls.  As for irony, I find the contemporary version to be self-regarding, self-satisfied, self-congratulatory, and irremediably misanthropic.

Alas, failure in the practice of kindness occurs on a daily basis (speaking for myself).  But it is a new year.  The second haiku provides not a resolution, but a reminder:

     The autumn wind is blowing;
We are alive and can see each other,
     You and I.

Shiki (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn (Hokuseido Press  1952), page 413.

Albert Woods (1871-1944), "A Peaceful Valley, Whitewell"

And, finally, my third turning-of-the-year haiku:

     To wake, alive, in this world,
What happiness!
     Winter rain.

Shōha (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter, page 217.

The Old Year should end and the New Year should begin with an expression of that from which all else flows:  gratitude.  Gratitude for the World and its beautiful particulars.  Gratitude for being alive.  Gratitude for, yes, winter rain.

Best wishes for the New Year, dear readers.

Fred Stead (1863-1940), "River at Bingley, Yorkshire"