One of the kongan (Korean; koans in Japanese) that Zen masters frequently assign their students is “What is your original face?” Would it be farfetched to think that poets, too, should question the ground of their poetry? Because the ground will determine the essence of their poetry.
As there are countless ways to enter truth, there are also countless ways or reasons a poet writes poems. I enter the world of poetry as a traveler on the Way, and I have always thought that my poems are signposts on my journey toward the unknown or the absolute, which cannot be named or described but only grasped intuitively. Poems come to me as a gift mostly when I am at work in the garden, taking a walk, or meditating, and I am like a midwife who delivers poems from the quiet heart. So each poem I receive tells me where I am and how far I have to go on my journey. My teachers or guides in this travel are those sentient or insentient beings who quench my thirst or who awaken my longing for the state in which I am free from the world of discrimination.
What would this mysterious ground of poetry be? What makes any creation or creative activity possible? I thought about this for a long time, and one day an answer came to me: The ground of all creation is impermanence. Our life, which is the result of creation, and our creative activity depend on impermanence. Why didn’t I think of such an obvious answer before?
What is the significance of impermanence as the ground of poetry? Impermanence means that nothing is unchanging, including time. It frees us from self, which is the product of time. Without impermanence, no-self is not possible. Impermanence is the world of the Flower Garland Sutra, where, as Blake said, we can perceive the universe in a grain of sand, and each moment becomes eternal because eternity is only possible in the absence of time. Time is the territory of the known, and we are able to see the unknown only when we go beyond time. That is why the poems that come from this unknown territory cannot but be wild, fresh, and alive, like a leaping carp. Perhaps this state is what poet Gary Snyder calls the “practice of the wild.”
In his essay “On the Path, Off the Trail,” Snyder writes that “There are paths that can be followed, and there is a path that cannot—it is not a path, it is wilderness. There is a ‘going’ but no goer, no destination, only the whole field.” Snyder also writes, “’Off the trail’ is another name for the Way, and sauntering off the trail is the practice of the wild. That is also where—paradoxically—we do our best work. But we need paths and trails and will always be maintaining them. You must be on the path before you can turn and walk into the wild.” After reading this essay, I realized that I am a traveler on the pathless path, where, as Dogen said, “practice is the path,” and I have chosen the way of poetry as my practice.
A Hummingbird’s Dance
By Don Juan Matus
Translated by Ok-Koo Kang Grosjean
Whenever I water flowers
somewhere
a hummingbird appears
and dances.
For a long time
I’ve watched that dance
not knowing
what moves me so.
Today
I see.
In a hummingbird’s dance
there is no bird
only movement.
The dance
danced without “I”
is the dance with a heart.
Beauty Only
By Ok-Koo Kang Grosjean
Taking a walk
I saw
a wildflower.
Not knowing its name
I saw
its beauty only.