Tara Brach - Writing and Haiku as Spiritual Practice (Tara Brac Interviews Natalie Goldberg)

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

Writing and Haiku as Spiritual Practice (Tara Brach Interviews Natalie Goldberg) -

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Welcome, namaste, greetings friends. Glad you're with us. So this is a special gathering. I'm having a conversation with Natalie Goldberg and just to say that I've only recently, like very recently connected with Natalie personally, but I have loved and admired her from a distance for decades, really. Actually, since the 1990s when I read her book writing down the bones, many of you've heard of it. It impacted me incredibly. So Natalie's written 15 books and has inspired countless people in how they approach writing and really more fully how they live. a spiritual life. So Natalie is also a painter and has practiced Zen for over 40 years and is a wonderful

teacher. She's offered workshops on writing as a practice around the globe. So Natalie, on behalf of our community, a really big heartfelt welcome to you. Thank you. I'm actually thrilled. My little heart is pitter-pattering. Likewise, I've known about Tara forever. And I've heard she's a really good teacher, which is so important to me, and that she's a fine meditation teacher, and she doesn't skirt around psychology,

that she's deeply rooted in it. So the combination is unbeatable. So I'm very excited. Well, it's fun that this is, we finally get to, like intersect and weave these lives. And so I wanted to start by saying that you really have awakened a whole generation of us to the power of writing as a spiritual practice. And speaking personally, you know, it takes me a really, really long time to complete a book. And you really help me

understand that, of course, we have to listen inwardly in order to really be coming from that presence. So I kind of wanted to start here, if that's okay with you, with just writing as a meditation, a spiritual practice, and just to ask you just to share with us what makes it a spiritual practice. Well, you know, we can't all be stuck on the Zafu. Do you call them Zafu's in your, you know. Yeah, Christian, whatever. Yeah, we can't all just be stuck on them all the time. So I used writing as a way to translate the Dharma. But you can use painting or running or grocery shopping. But, okay, I'll come back to writing. Writing is about studying the mind and how the mind works.

What is your writing equipment? Pen, paper, and the human mind. The more you understand the mind, the better you. you can work with it. So it just always seemed obvious to me when I used to sit for years and hours. I'm embarrassed almost now how much I've sat and watched. I mean, you know, we just live in this wild domain and how to lasso it and, you know, and channel it and use it and not use it.

And also, I think writing keeps you kosher because you can stay on that meditation cushion forever and just drag on. But when you've written, you have to show it. You might just show it to yourself, but it really feeds back and closes the gap between who you think you are and who you are. So it reflects it back. Whereas I think that's important. And really, I frankly think every Dharma person, every human being should read and write. It was so powerful that slaves were forbidden to do it. But it's a human right.

My sofa doesn't do it. My table doesn't do it. It's a human right. It's only human beings that write and read. And I was naive. I wanted everyone in the public schools to learn writing practice so that they could be good citizens and know their mind and trust it. So, you know, your teachings continue to be really relevant on this. Like, I run into people all the time and I recommend to people all the time for just what you're

saying, that there are so many ways of waking up and that writing is such a natural. way of kind of getting mirrored, a mirroring of where we are and then to keep refining that mirroring and come more and more intimate with what's right here. And I wonder if you might just share a few of the basic tips. Like you do these workshops, people come away so alive with it. What are some basic tips for people that just want to say, okay, I'm going to see what it means to have writing as a practice? Get a cheap, notebook, nothing fancy, because if you're fancy, you get scared. I just get spiral notebooks in the pharmacy and CVS usually because they stop smoking. At a great expense, they stop selling smoking.

Anything having to do with smoking. So get a cheap spiral notebook and a fast moving pen. But Natalie, what about my computer? Leave it alone. What if you're a. backpacking. You want always to be available. Keep it fundamental. Get a fast writing pen because your mind is always going to be faster than your hand. And then just go. And just like meditation, you sit for 20 minutes or half hour. Well, at the beginning, you might write for 10 minutes. Go. And I really like no topic and just go with your mind. But people get nervous. So I'll give you a topic. I'm thinking of.

And every time you get stuck, come back to I'm thinking of. And keep your hand going for 10 minutes. It could be just junk. But that junk is your mind. It's all your discursive thinking, yada, yada, yada. Many people don't know they even have that until you start writing. But if you keep writing, the mind,

will settle like shaking up vinegar and oil the vinegar drops and the oil becomes clear but you accept your mind wherever it is and then do another one i'm not thinking of and that gets to the underbelly that's that's very simple but with just that if you keep practicing it'll i'm looking at i'm not looking at. I remember. I forgot. So just a question about writing versus computer, because that really struck me. Yes, if I go backpacking, I'm not going to have a computer, but also is there something just about the movement of the hand and connecting more physically with your pen and your paper that kind of helps you be more embodied in some way? Yes, I think so because writing, if you were lucky in school and they taught you penmanship,

the pen and the hand, it's all connected. And actually, when you were young, learning penmanship, it builds your character. That's why they should not, not do it in the schools. It's very important. But, okay, but some people are just, Natalie, I have to do computer. especially younger people. Okay. Watch.

It's a different physical activity. Not good or bad, but a slightly different bent of mind comes out. That's okay. But especially if you work and have a job that you use a computer, do handwriting for writing practice because it signals your mind

that you're going to a different place. that's so valuable what you're saying because I notice the different mood I'm in. I get a little regressed when I'm handwriting because it comes from an old era of my life. I just don't do it very much. But that's exactly right. I want to disrupt my habitual state. And sitting in front of a computer and moving my fingers on the keyboard puts me into a certain more left brain state. And writing shifts it. But you know, some people, I accept it all. because, you know, I've had to deal with everything. But there's something else.

Fundamental. You think you're going to have electricity forever. The way things are going, we might not. You know, your computer might fall apart. But paper and pen, I hope, will still be around. Maybe so. It's very fundamental. Don't get fancy.

Sitting, you can do no matter what. So the next step. you can write and read. Okay, so you, I'm thinking fundamental and simple. I want to share, and I'm going to bring this to the screen, this beautiful book, and this is, I want to invite everybody to get it as a gift to yourself because it's three simple lines, haiku, and can you just, what drew you to haiku? Like, how did that happen?

Well, you know, it was in 1976. I studied with Allen Ginsberg at Naropa Institute at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. And he in one afternoon, just one afternoon, said, talked about haiku. And maybe I'll just read what he said because I think it's, I never forgot it. And actually the very beginning of this book, Follow Your Inner Moonlight, Don't Hide the Madness, Alan Ginsberg. Some of you, I hope everyone knows Alan Ginsburg, but I don't presume he was a great writer. He wrote Howl, and he was part of the Beat Generation.

But here, here is it. I just want to read it because it makes it, it's terse, so terse of him. find it. Here it is. Alan Ginsberg, the poet, first introduced me to haiku. There were four great Japanese haiku writers, he declared,

holding up a finger for each one, as he named then in front of the class in summer 1976. We were at Noropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Basho, Busan, Issa, and Shiki.

No women, I thought. Okay, I'd take the boys on and learn what I could from them. Sure, there were some women hidden in history. He also told us that the formal five syllables, then seven, then five, often taught in Western schools, does not necessarily work in English. You know, you've all learned haiku in grammar school, maybe, you know, where you count five, seven, five. In Japanese, each syllable counts. They don't have the and that, those articles of speech. So we encouraged us not to worry about the count if we write or translate haiku.

Only make sure the three lines make the mind leap. The only real measure of a haiku, Alan told us that one hot July afternoon, is upon hearing one, your mind experiences a small sensation of space. He paused. I leaned in breathless, which is nothing less than God. And I never forgot it. And it took me, I guess, 40 years later to write this book about haiku. And one of my old-time students said to me,

Why didn't you tell us this earlier? I said, things come at the right time. I went to Japan. I went to the graves, to Basho's grave, to Busan's grave, Shiki's grave, not Issa's yet. And I found women haiku writers. So the book's a combination of memoir, travel, and lots of haiku. and me telling you about the stories of these haiku writers is just so inspiring. Amazing stories. And I want to share with you that I plucked that exact quote from your book

that if you weren't going to say it, I was going to say it, which is basically the only real measure of a haiku is upon hearing one, your mind experiences a small sensation of space. which is nothing less than God. So again, you're studying mind. And at first, sometimes you'll hear a hykoo, it will go like this. Huh? Oh. Huh?

Oh. Maybe I should read some so they can feel that. Please. I was going to ask you. I'd love you too. Okay. Issa, who you'll die. He's really in Japan, they all love him.

He's the most beloved. But he lost his mother when he was very young, like before he was five. And so he wrote his first haiku when he was six years old. And I'll read it to you. Come play with me. You, little sparrow, motherless sparrow. Can you feel that? I'll read you a few more, Issa, just because, oh.

this one. Now you need to know the names of flowers and plants to be writers and really to wake up and to be meditation people. But listen to this. Sitting on her eggs, the chicken admires the peony. Sitting on her eggs, the chicken admires the peony. So it's not even human-oriented. Yeah. I just want to say you, at some point you say that the spirit of it really is not to be human-centered. And I thought that was so powerful how all of a sudden I went, wow, it doesn't mean it doesn't include this human heart, but it's just not human-centered. Yeah. That's profound.

The relief of letting go of ourselves. Yeah. And often when I'm having a really hard time, I'll read high-code. Even if the haiku is about suffering, it opens the suffering. And I don't feel isolated with it. And maybe I'll read you this one. Issa had a very tough life. I tell the history in here.

I won't go through the whole thing, but he lost all his children. You know, that was a very hard time. We're talking Japan back in the 17th century, 1600s. So he lost all his children and his daughter, particularly. He had three children, three. And his daughter particularly, he loved. And listen to this haiku. In the dream, my daughter lifts a melon to her soft cheek.

I'm going to read it again. In a dream, my daughter lifts a melon to her soft cheek. So in his deep suffering, he was also. able to empty himself in a way and write about a dream and about his daughter. I'll read you another one. Oh, Autumn wins. Tell me where I'm bound, which particular hell. He has a great sense of humor and he really knocks you over the head. I mean, I got to behave myself because I will nonstop read to you. about here's one more by isa okay and then i'll we'll go we could go on who can be a stranger under the cherry blossoms so he had a very tough life and yet he showed up he became a haiku writer

and kept writing and i do want to say that all of these people did spend some time in the monastery, but they don't identify as Zen. Their practice and their path is the way of haiku. You know, one of my understandings of haiku, and I get it that it's not linked to a particular tradition, it's its own, is that it does parallel and include what in Buddhism are the three characteristics of this world, everything's always changing, that there's no central self, no solid self, and the pain or suffering that's inherent when there's any grasping at all. And I love what you said, Natalie, about how even the suffering in a haiku helps us transcend suffering, because in the moments of actually becoming aware of it and naming it and being intimate

with it, there's an opening to a larger presence and a shared presence. But I fascinated by how once I understood that those three elements were in how they were, it's like I could see in every haiku some sense of that freedom of those three elements. Wow, I never thought of it from that angle, but I definitely know the three marks of existence. And yes, for it to really work, it has to have all three or be really aware of it in the deep suffering of our lives. That's terrific. And it comes through in the joy too. The joy is still, it's got a sense of selflessness and the freedom that come from impermanence. And yeah, it's also the interconnectedness. Exactly. Because that opens it. You know, our suffering sometimes is because we're tight,

you know, because we think we're suffering alone and it's the separation. Exactly. And so when you read haiku, it opens it. That's what good literature does. Yeah. That's why I didn't leave it behind when I was a Zen practitioner. No, it feels like another expression of Zen. Yeah.

Of any spiritual awakening. Yeah. This is shiki. Ocean and mountains way beyond. 17 syllables. That's great. And Shiki died in his early 30s. And he coughed up his first blood when he was 13.

He had TB and he always knew he was going to die young. And yet he wrote haiku, not only wrote haiku, he had a whole following. And the last five years he was in such pain that he would have to be in bed. But every morning, he dragged himself to the edge of the tatami and sit at the edge and look at the garden and wait to receive a haiku. I'm telling these stories are in there. So I'm not telling you all the particulars, but it kills you.

And it's so inspiring. The one that I, it kills me that I love so much. You go, I stay to autumn's. You go, I stay to autumn's. Mm-hmm. Hmm. Is it valuable to take a moment and make a comment on something? I mean, I think the first step is just the stillness, like, oh.

Yeah. I want to make sure that people feel the leap. You know, it's almost like, raise your hand class. Anyone else? But yeah, you want to comment? Sure. I actually was going to invite yours on how that lives for you, that one.

Because it's really, I almost collapsed because, you know, it's like when you're sick, when he can't go places, you can go climbing in the mountains. You go. I stay to autumn's. That it's autumn now and you can go and I have to stay. It says so much. I'm sick.

I don't go any place. And really friendship. You know, a friend visits you and they get to go home and you're already home. Oh, that's another way of looking at it. Whoa. there's so many levels there's so many levels that often i don't know what i'm writing about i'm really in it when you keep your hand going eventually what you want writing does writing and you get out of the way yeah it doesn't mean i'm channeling i'm just not getting in my way

And so it's that's exactly and what you just said I'm just not getting in my way and sometimes I wonder when we're all busy and stirred up you described how and what was his name again shikki shikki or isa like that yeah how he would drag himself and and sit and look at the garden and wait until a haiku appeared i just wonder whether you also encourage rather than sitting and just starting to write, the quietness or just gazing or unfocused gazing or just taking in until whatever wants to arise arises. Yeah, we do that some.

But sometimes, you know, when you try to gaze instead, your monkey mind is going crazy. It's much better to do some writing practice to vomit it out. And then the sitting is much deeper. And you're not wrestling. with yourself as much. That's why the writing and sitting is, I do whole weeks with more of my long-time students,

silent, like a meditation retreat. But writing is part of it, where the sitting has been the deepest I've ever sat because the writing clears your mind. I think of it a little bit also like walking and sitting, that there's something about, moving that allows everything to move through you and to find its place and then sitting still then there's that deeper settling so in some way you're just allowing things to

move through you yeah yeah yeah I think I'm coming out of kick-ass Japanese direct Zen I studied with Japanese Zen master for 12 years I was six blocks away so it was just sitting with the mind until you went out of your mind. So, you know, I think, you know, the West became creative with it. Which feels important. I mean, I'm just listening to all this research that's been done on the brain that we think of it as this computer, but it's really this, you know, organismic material

that we humans are meant to move and that we sit too much. much and that it's actually when we move that we can then access more creativity and be more available. So yeah, it feels like that's very similar to me to writing, to just engage in the activity to start moving it through. Writing is what I say is an athletic activity. Beautiful. You're really moving. But also sometimes I'm walking when I'm stuck. I do a lot of slow walking. It's powerful. And actually, these haiku writers, every one of them, Basho is the one that's really known for it.

And I hope you've all read Journey to the Deep North. He put a backpack on and sometimes went with a companion and would walk for six months and with a notebook. And he'd write in his journal, journal writing, then haiku, journal writing, haiku. It's called hyphen. but everybody did it you go on these walking journey journeys now was the indication walking journey to the deep north which is the translation of bashoes the deep north indicated the darkness the civilized the undeveloped the wildness yeah your mind

that's beautiful i mean every all it seems that this is universal what we're saying, that all the poets, I mean, when you look at the biography of most poets, it's walking in the countryside. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. This was very formal as the way of haiku.

Yeah. Understood. They didn't think you were weird like they do here in this country. It was integrated into the society and understood. And actually, when you talked about the three marks of existence, that is somehow integrated into Japanese society. And Harada Roshi, who I write about in here, when he read the book, he doesn't speak English, but I sent it to him. He really wanted it. I overnighted it when I got it.

You can imagine to Takayama, Japan, how much it costs. But he wrote my friend who translates for me, he understands. me. He understood the complete book. And I said, you don't speak English. He said, I read what I cannot read. And he told Mitsuway, he said, she got it. She got Japan Zen. And I think what he was meaning is it's in the society. It's not separate. I'm thinking of this. I mean, the book has a way of describing your pilgrimage and as a, it was, you do it as a meditation. I mean, there's so much just present moment awareness. You're a good writer. It's really, you do it beautifully. That's the best thing you could say to me. Yeah, well, I mean, I get moved. So I have a couple of

questions. And one is, did you plan the book before you did this recent journey, like, plan, did you plan to do the journey and turn it into a book or did the book come out of the journey? The book came out of, I wrote, I started to write after the first one that I went on the trip with Joan Halifax and Kaz Toshashi. When I came back, I wrote about 20 pages and then I got cancer. And so I put it aside. And while I had cancer, I wrote the Great Spring. because I practice. You don't, when you have cancer, you brush your teeth because you do that as, you know, you do it as a habit. Well, I write. So I wrote a book while I had cancer. When I knew I was going to survive, I wrote another book about cancer. And then when I was done, I went back to what I

began before I had cancer. So I could almost say, see, I got to write it. But it was very hard. I I don't know that I'm writing a book. And so I hope that the writing was shitty, so I wouldn't have to write the book. But I read that page and I thought, oh, it's really good. I got to do it. And I read, I did a lot of research.

I read about 50 books. I went to Japan a few times. I had to find their graves because I visit graves of writers and painters that I love, sort of an homage to them. and I didn't know what I was doing until about a month before the book was done. I had all this writing and I didn't know where it was going.

And then I wove it together like a braid. I have to hang out and don't know mine for a long time when I write a book and it's painful. It's hard. It's the hardest. And it shows because it has so much life to it. I mean, it feels so alive and uncontrived. This is my other question because I was following you in the book, going to these different grave sites,

and it was such a rich part of your communing with the great masters, you know. And so here's the thing. I was really struck by a piece you put in there. It was you had just visited the grave of Busan, and you were back and you were just reading some of what he had done back in the hotel. And the message that came through that you shared with us was that the gateway to haiku is what we have inside us and we need to commune with the haiku masters that it's a lineage. And that, you know, I just hadn't registered that. I'd always been an okay, you just listen

deeply inward. But that was really powerful. So I want to hope you would share with us what that is for you, going to these sites and your haiku poet friends Long Dead and do you have a haiku master, if you could just share a little bit about that. Yeah, lineage is very important to me, that it doesn't just come from any place. And actually, I'm really pushing it more and more when I teach writing practice too, that it comes from 2,000 years of watching the mind. It's not some little creative thing. And I think our country particularly is rootless. And we need to go back to our roots.

Even if they're painful, we need to know the truth of how this country was created. So I have that in writing. And also with the masters, why I went back. I wanted to begin, who were these people? And I think I wanted to find a lineage of writing that was way back, you know, really old. And so I went, Basho was the first one. It was used mostly those haiku was used at parties as very funny things and to flirt. And he's the first one who made it a serious practice.

I wanted to understand that. And then sure enough, when he died, it went right back to being fun. Then Busan came in. It was handed to us out of much determination and, you know, holding on, not in a bad way, but saying this comes, this is a practice and a lineage. So we're not alone. And all we have to do to be part of that lineage is elbow our. weigh in by practice and we carry it forward. Good or bad, you don't have to be a great haiku writer. They've written thousands of haikus. They're not all good. It's practice.

But there's something also about immersing yourself and kind of becoming receptive to the power and beauty of the haikus that have come through the ages, the ones from masters, that that helps in some way link us to that that ancient and eternal wisdom and beauty. And so I'm wondering for you, do you have one person you consider? I mean, I know in the past they considered, you know, this is my haiku master and they pick one. Do you have one or do you have for a long four? And then one day, I write about it in here. I was in a hot springs, my hair dripping and up in northern New Mexico. I read this haiku and I'll say it ah grief and sadness the fishing line trembles in the autumn breeze I'll say it again ah grief and sadness the fishing line trembles in the autumn

breeze and I of course I was blown out by it it went all the way down and I thought but, oh, Basho, it was Busan at that moment. I promised myself, I would go, when I went to Japan, I would find his grave and thank him. And it took 19 years, but I got there. And I found his grave and felt very foolish. You know, here he was, he didn't even speak my language. And he was right above Basho's hut.

Basha was his great teacher. So Busan I took on for a long time. You don't have to stay with the same one, but study each one and go deeply. Read them, just read them and take them in. Read them and do them. I mean, after reading your book, I just started in. It's been a true haiku party, you know, in the best of sense.

I mean, I find that it doesn't matter how bad they are, It's like if I was in a busy metropolis, just caught up and people scurring around so on, and it's like all of a sudden looking up at the sky and remembering it's a bigger world, you know, even when they don't work. Oh, yeah. And I curated about 100 in here so that you have a really good foundation. And you can read them and even take off from them. Cheat and take off from them.

You know, when you write it. a bike they usually those training wheels and then you keep pedaling and then the wheels lift off and suddenly you're riding. I love the way you're saying that because that was a bit of the flavor I got from Busan talking about how you know, immerse yourself and commune with the masters and then they'll disappear. Yeah. Oh, you really got it. Yeah. Oh, I love that one. That really was very beautiful. And I I do want to say, again, to those of you who, you know, for this book, the choices that you made, Natalie, I mean, there are so many, it was like I just kept having to stop. I mean, it took me a long time because I just stopped and go, oh, that one, that one, you know. So I wanted to ask you to share with us a little about your own unfolding in writing, I mean, you described this like, oh, so, you. human process you went through in Santa Fe with your haiku group there. And, you know, the challenges,

the triumphs. And I just wanted to share a little bit about kind of what you've been through. Yeah. It's interesting. People love that chapter, I guess, because I'm such a clutz. I didn't know where the book was going. So I thought, well, maybe I should write haiku. I was really interested in studying the masters. But I thought, maybe the book's about me writing haiku. Okay. So I started to try to write them and my brain immediately like monkey mind went, this is the stupidest haiku I have ever. I hate you, Natalie. But I knew to keep going.

And then I looked up. It turns out people all over the country and the world are writing haiku. So I found amazingly in Santa Fe a group that met once a month. So I contacted them and they said I could come and you sit there and you read a haiku, you go around with no comment. Then you bring another haiku and they comment on it. So I could feel when we went around, I could feel that it was like a dead fish. It was awful my haiku, but it was okay.

And then they commented on the next one. I said, it's okay. You can rip it apart. You could do whatever you want. they cut my throat. I loved it because I wasn't good at it. And it was so much fun to not know something. I loved it.

I really fell in love with that group. And time after time, they cut my throat. And I'd think, this one's pretty good. This one will do it. Then I'd bring it in. And they didn't even have to comment. I could hear by reading it that it was like, And then finally, one word.

I was ready to just, I acted very trey casual. Inside I wanted to do leaps around the world. I was so excited. I was so excited and I became very fond of everyone. And I write about them and then some of them would bring haiku that you would die from. They were so good. like wow and i realized they didn't know how good they were you know because there's always a gap and i'd say pull them beside later and say that was fantastic and i'd say really

and these were like very practice haiku writers we all have gaps yeah and it just you're reminding me of the power of practicing together yes and this and i mean in a on all levels. I mean, whether it's haiku writing or sharing our joys or sorrows, it's like we enter a bigger world, a more intelligent and true world when we are sharing with others. We're in a kind of cocoon otherwise, you know? Yes. And even though you're alone writing to be connected to realizing it's in a lineage and you're really writing with many people. Or you're sitting. I sit alone a lot now because of COVID. I usually sit outside because then I'm all with the trees and the ground. I'm just there. Even in the cold, I sit outside. I just wrap up and

sit outside. But yeah, otherwise it's too lonely and isolating and funk. You don't get anything. And it's not the truth of what we are. We do belong to the trees and the earth. earth and each other. Yeah. So when we're in our true belonging, there's going to be a flow. I mean, it's like the intelligence of the universe can flow through us. And also, haiku writing is a communal act. You know, the Basho Hut that I told you about where Busan was buried above it,

his disciples, it was a dirt, it was just a dirt pile. They came and rebuilt it, Basho's Hut. and they bowed once a year on a weekend to come and drink sake and write haiku all weekend. So people write haiku. It's a very communal act. I love that. I love that. So something you said earlier, I just wanted to loop back to, which was about the syllable.

It's three simple lines. It doesn't necessarily have to be the 575. Can you just say a little more about how. the structure can serve, but also can get in the way. Because you had one line, which is something about, you know, if I only cared about the syllables, I'd have a block of words with no soul. And I love that. And there's also some value to, I mean, I find it useful to have some container too. So just to speak to that a little. Yeah. Well, in Japan, they do do 575. But each syllable has tremendous weight. We have a,

that doesn't have a lot of weight. So you could practice 575, which is very good, but you could also know that more than that is three short lines. But then you think, well, what's three short lines? What makes it a haiku? It's that it has that leap, that leap when the mind hears it. And sometimes when you do it, you don't know there's a leap. later on. So sometimes I'll write 10. I'll say, okay, Nat, go, 10 haiku. And maybe three months later, I'll look at them after the blood has dried. I can see that one works. So I'm telling you that because don't get tied around it. And you can float between the two syllables, because I'll

write and not count syllables, but I'll make sure that it's in a range. I don't write. I don't 15 were syllables in one line. You know, it might be 7, 8, 7. You know, I'm flexible, but not, it does have a certain form. And the form is, even if you're off by syllable or two, is it still that there's 575 or 686 or 565, is it still got that shape to it where the middle line is longer? Yeah. I'd say yes. Yeah. Why don't you try for that? Yeah, try for that. But I could, you know, it's funny because the translations don't have five-seven-five in order to really communicate it. The translator couldn't cling to that any. Yeah. That's important. That's really important, because we tend to be kind of rigid and I kind of wanted to get a feeling from you of where the fluidity is

and also what a wise container is. So that's a softness. Just a softness. Yeah. Not flabby, soft. Well, maybe just say a little bit about what you've noticed, just the way practice always keeps evolving. What's a kind of cutting edge or place of evolving for you in current days?

Well, that is quite a question. I've been burning for 35 years. Bomes came out 35 years ago and I've gone nonstop. I've written 15 books. When I wasn't teaching, I was writing a book. I was continue under all circumstances. Don't be tossed away. Make positive effort for the good.

COVID came and it all collapsed. And I sat in my backyard. who am I? And for the first time, I had nothing more to write. And I used to complain, why do I have to write another book? But when I didn't have a book to write, that's my real practice. That really makes me face myself. And I didn't have anything.

I sat. You know, I was dutiful. I sat, but things really collapsed. The country collapsed for me. I was guided. I didn't realize my grandfather was a Jew who ran from pogroms in the early 1900s. So he always would say we lived with him. Natalie, you don't know how wonderful this country is.

And for him, it was. And so underneath, that's why I'm out in the West. I wanted to be in the gorgeous country. And, you know, I've always known about slavery. and I've had a, you know, a scholarship program for people of color for 35 years. We always read people of color. I knew all this, but like everything was stripped. I felt betrayed.

I felt like we were living in a house that was about to collapse. Everything. And how could I write? What did I have to write about? So it was very painful time. And I'm facing that now. And I'm a little embarrassed, but I'll tell you, I drove up to the place I thought I would never go, Ketcham, Idaho.

Do you know what's in Ketcham, Idaho, Tor? There's something familiar about it. So tell me. Hemingway's grave, Ernest Hemingway. I wouldn't have known that. He was an early teacher of mine, mentor. I didn't know him. but movable feast for instance death in the afternoon and he had an awful life really and

killed himself in Ketcham, Idaho and is buried there. And I found his grave and I sat by it and I talked to him and talked and talked. And I realized that this is your path, you're a writer. And I know you want to quit now. You want to find something else. But it's the only thing you made a vow somehow, someplace. You will continue.

So I'm facing into that, but not with the mojo I had for 35 years. And friends say to me, well, welcome Natalie. Now you know how other writers feel. But I always have this third foot. you know, the Dharma. So it helps. But everything's been torn from me, it feels like, everything.

My great love of New Mexico, it's a good place. You know, just everything has been born from me. So I'm in there. I want to thank you. There's always something really precious when there's a sharing that's not that, That was last year but here's what I've figured out, even though there's something that's evolved, there's some place in you that knows your path is to keep writing, that you're

still in the rawness of the uncertainty, of the ripped-awayness. And so I'm pausing here for a moment, friends, just to let you know that I lost my internet connection right at this moment of responding to Natalie's powerful person. personal sharing, which is really interesting because everything got cut off and just living with that energy. But I'm continuing now. And yeah, so Natalie, as I listened, I felt like you were reporting something that's actually happening to so many of us, which sometimes maybe is the job of a writer to report

out. And I think it's something that maybe we haven't recognized. recognized so clearly, which is that on some level we've all been stopped in our tracks. We're going along, you know, of course, to some degree on autopilot, and then the magnitude of what's happening to our larger body, the earth, has really pierced through our consciousness, the suffering of the pandemic, just completely cracked things open, the ongoing and violating an oppression of black people. You know, it's piercing through.

And as you said, it tears apart the foundations of how we've held the world. And it's painful. And it just seems that each in our own way, we all need to be stopped in our tracks, to listen and reconsider in a way, how do I want to live my life? You know, what really matters? How else can we respond to this precious, struggling world that we don't stop and listen? And I think that includes what you would describe, just living in that rawness and uncertainty. Yeah, so in the spirit of the pausing and the stopping, I'd love to have you share whatever final message you have for us and also some haiku to kind of end on that note.

Well, yeah, I think in my, you know, searching, you know, trying to grab something, I think when I went to Hemingway's grave, what I realized was I'm a writer and that, yeah, Nat, get out of the way, you're white, what do you have to say, all of that. But Matt, continue practicing. Don't stop practicing. Keep doing it. And actually, Hemingway wrote memorable, movable feast right before he committed suicide. So he was in tremendous agony. You know, he's not really a model for us, but he continued. And that is important to me. But yes, I think that we're blown out. We're blown out our foundation, everything. And to admit that. that is helpful because you don't feel so crazy that, oh, you too, you too, that it's really happening. And we're not alone in it. Yes, yeah. And what's dawning on me, that right about COVID, right about what's happening. You know, I thought I had a skirt it or something. But that's all that's happening now,

not just in the US, all over the world. It's suffering. It's suffering. It's It's unbearable to hear the news. Just the news is, I don't know if I've been ripped open or it's worse than I've ever heard it. So why don't we with that, I'll do a few more haiku. Which like I said before, I go to to bring me to another world or to this world, you know, in a deeper way. So I realize I have to read you this one, which Katigiri Roshi used to recite. And it's by Basha. Remember, I told you that he'd go on these long journeys walking.

And he went to Matsushima. And when he got there, he never wrote this down. It's oral. And it's passed on generation to generation. Matsushima, ah, Matsushima. Matsushima. Ah, ah, Matsushima, ah, Matsushima. I mean, there was nothing to say. It was so beautiful. In my mind, it was always a huge, beautiful mountain. I went there. I went on a Basho walking tour. It's an archipelago. It's not a mountain. All these years. I said, this is Matsushima, and it was beautiful. But it took me a minute to turn from what I thought it was.

So I thought I would end, I would read if I can find them, which you think I would have right here, some Chinoni, which is a woman haiku writer that I found. And this one, I'm going to read you this one or recite it, if I can remember it. This was an expression of a moment that she had an awakening. And so she wrote a haiku. Now, I love this one. I'm going to say it twice because I want you to take it in. Clear water. No front, no back.

Clear water. No front, no back. So here's one when she aged. my energy can only defeat a butterfly this spring morning. And just a few little sexy ones that she, so to tell you, we'll leave with a few sexy things. It's not sex life. And that you can tell it's different than the men's writing,

the four men that I read. Not good, not better or worse, just slightly different. Till his hat fades into a butterfly, I yearned for him. Till his hat fades into a butterfly,

I yearned for him. Here's another. Woman's desire deeply rooted a wild violence. And here, mourning glory, the truth. is the flower hates people.

Morning glory. The truth is flower hates people. Maybe I shouldn't leave with that, but, oh, this was her one, you know, haiku writers on their deathbed. They write a haiku. Here was one of hers. She wrote several.

So maybe we'll end with this. I also saw the moon. as for this world ah goodbye I read it again I also saw the moon as for this world ah goodbye whole world's in three lines yeah I'm listening and feeling like how these move us in ways that at least for me my mind can't get it It's almost this energetic. It was space. Yeah.

Yeah, there's not like a cognitive grasping, you know. Yeah, you can't. Yeah, it's just a mood that takes over with each one. Thank you, dear Nat. What a pleasure. Oh, my gosh, for all you've shared with us. And I want to thank all of you who are watching, listening, part of this, wish each and every one of you deepest, namaste and blessings.

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