I went through a breakup last month, and it’s been the source of seemingly endless emotions. This week, I’ve been getting familiar with embarrassment. There’s the embarrassment over the details: “why did I react this way to that situation”, or “Gah! I wish I never said that.” But there’s also a pervasive, more subtle embarrassment in the situation. It’s embarrassing to have had such grand plans and to have cared so much, and have it all fall away into nothing – it makes me feel like a fool, and a major chump! It’s not a nice feeling, and I often find myself shutting down or running away from it. It’s invited some curiosity about embarrassment this week, in all parts of my life. What’s up with embarrassment? What does it feel like, and when does it arise? Strangely enough, I noticed the same feeling embarassment come up while reading parts of The Complete Cold Mountain: Poems of the Legendary Hermit Hanshan.
The process went like this: reading the collection of poems, I found myself attracted to those that are tender and sweet. I felt deeply touched by those poems when Hanshan reflects on the simple pleasures of a recluse life:
I covet the joy of my secluded dwelling,
where I can always be a person beyond form.
or those bittersweet poems reflecting on impermanence:
Gradually, their lives burned out like candles,
they drifted off like water in a stream.
This morning I faced my solitary shadow–
before I knew it, two threads of tears came streaming down.
Looking over my notes on the book, almost all of my favorites fell into these genres. Those poems really are great, but what’s going on there? It doesn’t take long to notice Hanshan is not always so nice. Reading between the lines, I had almost entirely avoided his poems that are scathing judgments. Judgments for eating meat, having sex, or for getting caught up in money, ambition and self-centeredness. I do all of those things, and I felt called out by Hanshan! There he is, an old man standing on a mountain and laughing at me. Confronting these poems felt uncomfortable, and I wasn’t sure what to do. To get away from that judgment, would I have to follow his instructions to the letter, cutting out meat, sex, and money? Or would I get away through constructing some opinion that Hanshan’s ideas are outdated, and finding a way to disregard them? That’s Jack Kerouac’s way out. He says in response to Hanshan’s judgment “in this modern world to be a vegetarian is to split hairs a little since all sentient beings eat what they can.” Both options don’t seem quite right.
The moment that cut through these worrisome questions came when re-reading poem 97.
Wise people aren’t greedy,
but the ignorant are keen to stoke the furnace.
They take over someone’s barley field,
then try to get his entire bamboo grove.
Those of you who shoulder in, seeking riches,
gnashing your teeth, driving your servants and mares,
take a look outside your gate–
tombstones scatter beneath the oaks and pines.
I read my note on the first few lines which went simply “I see this in myself.” It’s not his most cutting poem, but he got me right in one of my neuroses! However much I want to get away from the competitive world of school and jobs, I can still find myself angling to get ahead, or being proud of my achievements and looking down on others. (In fact, the condescension I feel to my peers who are really in the rat race is no doubt my own self-judgment turned outward. Hm!) Long story short, he had pinned me down, and I was caught in a cycle of discursive though and embarrassment.
But then, the last two lines. “take a look outside your gate– // tombstones scatter beneath the oaks and pines.” A moment of quiet, of zooming out. There is this cartoon ball of dust from a fight, but wait, quiet for a moment! Just outside your gate, there is a view of the river of time. He doesn’t say to run away from our predicament or shut it out; we are just to take a look outside ourselves and see what’s there. Can we be big enough to hold those conflicting feelings, the judgment and embarrassment, without holding hard to one side?
From there, I could begin to hold the ancient words of this cackling old man as a powerful teaching, something that cuts through my usual cycle of worries and self-judgment. It also leads to a sweeter appreciation of his poetry as a whole, both tender and harsh. I feel like I can be in this human life that “disappears by itself in the shining sun” with Hanshan, not scared of his judgment but happily laughing alongside him.
P.S. The more I sit with it, the funnier the whole situation is. The judgments are so harsh, but he isn’t even particularly consistent! Advising monetary wisdom here, and shunning the use of money there. I take it as a sign to fully be with the teachings without disregarding them, but to hold them all lightly. The guy isn’t even real!
Buddhism