dear Lori

If it were true you had stopped hearing, your wen xing 聞性 would have ceased to exist. Cup at edge of this wooden bookshelf, unfalling. In this library last Friday night the collective sounds of poets: New York, Cairo, and Seattle. Not just sweet but the capacity for love in conversation of poetry. To hear that. To be shown. Past the artifice of pre- and post-readings Bernadette hated and refused to be there for. But this morning: “Example of a Bell’s Sound.” In the sutra, Buddha asks Ananda if he hears the bell rung. Ananda and others in attendance respond, yes. Some seconds after, Buddha asks–do you hear the bell? No, they answer, they no longer hear the bell. Buddha asks a monk to ring a bell again. Once rung, he asks Ananda and the other monks—is there a sound? Yes, they answer. There is a sound. Some seconds after, Buddha asks, now is there a sound? No, the monks respond, the sound is no longer present. Buddha gently chides them for muddled answers. Why, they ask, are our answers muddled? Buddha responds: if it were true that you had stopped hearing, your enlightened nature of hearing would have ceased to exist. 

One of the teachers of the class on the Surangama Sutra keeps saying what the Sutra is not. It’s not poetry. It’s not sexy. It’s not rich with images. It’s not like the others. I feel an expansive love for this sutra of oneness. In the catch-all closet there are old printers, rock tumblers, mailing boxes, large envelopes, tissue paper, seasonal clothes. Koda Cat likes to climb around in the closet behind me. He paws an opening through sliding closet drawers, slips between, roots around, half nests. This is the sound I’m hearing now. 

Objects of perception. Our attachment to them that pull us away from wen xing–a listening clear and bright. I went to a brilliant performance lecture the other night—Adelaide Blair’s Subversive Mathematics: The Outlawing of Venn Diagrams in 1970s Argentina. Yes, during the Dirty Wars. She first establishes basic understanding of set theory and logic, using Barack Obama’s presidency as an example of the fallacious argument some on the right have made that he is not a legitimate president. 

She proceeds with an excellent summary of Argentina’s traumatic decade and then shares types of state-run activities: the 10s of thousands of disappeared, books banned, control over school curriculum, breeding of suspicion and hatred of difference (divergence from the party line). She simultaneously projects a slide show—text and images from between 2016 and present day: parents in PTA meetings with masks below the nose, Nazi flags flown high on American streets, a President’s incendiary calls to violence, the inconceivable January 6th mob in the Capitol’s halls, Proud Boys’ tattooed arms raised in the streets. 

Objects of perception. Juxtapositions–or contrapuntal moves–places where like sets join–those connections we spend our writing life encouraging. Stretches past sound to hearing. An inward reach away from cognition toward heart. Some evolution of spirit. Not a conclusion but a what is. Rope-held bucket floating in the echoing well. Ringing of a bell—聞性—aspirations of hearing.

Notes

This morning meditation was written May 10—fueled by Lori’s Fathom and her upcoming birthday, May 17. 

…if it were true that you had stopped hearing, your enlightened nature of hearing would have ceased to exist…comes from The Śūraṅgama Sūtra. with Excerpts from the Commentary by the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. Buddhist Text Translation Society (BTTS); First Edition (August 15, 2009). 

With thanks to Heidi, Adelaide Blair, for her talk on May 8 at Fogue Gallery—Subversive Mathematics: The Outlawing of Venn Diagrams in 1970s Argentina. 

Cover marbled paper from Edition Studios via Seattle Art Book Fair, May 12, 2024. 

2024 by Deborah Poe. Edition 1 of 1.

dear Lori