Way-Finding: Thoughts + Poems

On "The Sting of Existence" and Some Poems From Autumn

Frank Inzan Owen

Jan 27

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Poem: “Kannon’s Offering” / Poet: Frank Inzan Owen

Greetings Good Travelers and Wayfarers,

I hope this brief note finds you and yours doing well in these hardscrabble times.

I don’t know about you, but the wider world registers in my own poet’s dreamingbody as being so strained and LOUD right now.

“The Sting of Existence” is a turn of phrase taken from a few of my poems over the years including the one above (which connects the imagery of soothing rain to the energy of Kannon — the bodhisattva of compassion). I use it as a poetic expression for the ancient Sanskrit term dukkha, which is associated with the First Noble Truth of the Buddhadharma (the Buddhist teachings).

Often translated by Western scholars as “suffering”, I feel more of an affinity with the idea that dukkha is like a low-level “sting” or burn that stands alongside all of life’s many other joys and wonderments. On a “normal” day, this “sting” isn’t necessarily overwhelming (though it can be, sometimes, depending upon what’s going on). In general, though, it’s not a catastrophic sense of suffering. It’s usually this underlying sense of irritation, unsatisfactoriness, or pain that’s always there, whether front-and-center, or “stinging” in the background.

That’s the basic idea of dukkha in the Buddhist view. It isn’t that all of life is suffering with no redeeming qualities, but rather that at least a portion of existence contains this “sting” and no one gets out of here without experiencing it — either in birth, sickness, old age, or death, and the many off-shoot emotions that may occur such as grief.

Our situation is this: We are here, in the here-and-now, and the world is the way the world is, and the reality of that registers in both our bodies and the heart-mind of our consciousness,…whether or not we talk about it. I just happen to be one that doesn’t like to avoid the obvious.

So, the “Sting of Existence” is real and yet the “sting” has its antidotes as well. This is why Shakyamuni Buddha followed up the First Noble Truth with the other Three. If he had stopped with the First Noble Truth, it would neither be noble nor the truth. In the end, as a good psychologist, Shakya Buddha essentially applied the Scientific Method of empirical observation to the human condition.

The sting exists. If the sting exists, it must have a cause. The sting is caused from craving and clinging (to ideas of how we want things to be). The sting hurts much less if we address the cause. The way to address and work with the sting is through practice, what would come to be referred to as the Eightfold Path.

Another traditional image that explains dukkha is that of a poorly-fitted axle in the hole of a lopsided chariot wheel (denoting a bumpy ride). Whether a sting, a burn, or a bumpy ride, dukkha is; it just is. It is the nature of reality and the traditional teaching is that what I call the “sting” is only ever soothed through spiritual practice. Nothing from the outside, and certainly nothing from the world of addictions and distractions, proves helpful for very long. As my late teacher used to say, “Practice is the medicine. Practice is the antidote to all poisons.”

In this cycle of time, I have found myself feeling especially mindful and grateful for the antidote that is the natural energy and rhythm of the Winter Season, which invites us to slow down, be still, be silent, hibernate, gestate, simmer.

Part of my own simmering process (at any time of the year) is the practice of poetry. I don’t always know where the poems come from when I put pen to paper; or, indeed, whose eyes they are meant for in the end. But, I faithfully avail myself to the flow of it, for better or worse.

Below are a few poems penned this past Autumn. Perhaps one or two may speak to you on your own hardscrabble road of these times.

Wishing each of you well.

Frank Inzan Owen

near the River of Painted Rocks

Year of the Black Water Rabbit

“When practice becomes

practice without goal,

then you have found

the trailhead of the Way.”

— Darion Kuma Gracen (1949-2007), Dust in the Wind School

“Breathing and Aspiration”
My late teacher almost never used the word: enlightenment.
She called it a “blinder to practice.”
Instead, she talked of “lessening the load”,
“lightening up”, “off-gassing the shadow”,
“becoming a Lantern-Lit Heart-Mind”.
Of this, she said: “One breath at a time.”
Only now, after all these years,
am I finally learning the proper way to breathe.

“Emblematic”
A student asked: “What is Samsara?”
The Teacher replied:
“Taking for Paradise what is a Hell Realm.
Taking for a Hell Realm what is a Paradise.”

“Fudō: One”
These times are burning through us.
I sit here with a sword and a rope;
one for cutting-through delusion,
one for binding “demons”
to convert them into allies.
I drink in the venom of the world with my eyes.
I take in the hateful words.
I take the poison down to the anvil of the heart.
I hammer it and shape it
temper it and sculpt it
until the poison is neutralized
and becomes a basket of flowers.

“Expedient Means”
Some people need a Dharma gate that dazzles their senses.
Others need a Dharma gate that soothes old wounds.
Others need reminders of their connection to life.
And, there are 83,997 more.

“Cocoon”
Our liberation
has to become more compelling
than our distractions.

“Professional Wayfarer Hillwalking Guide”
Even the detours
and switchbacks
bring you to where you need to be.

“Fudō: Two”
They always focus on my sword
and fail to see my halo of flowers.

“Before Ikkyū (but after Jim Harrison)”
There once was a division.
The division was between
the body and the holy.
Then along came Ikkyū, who said:
The body is holy.
All buddhas and bodhisattvas
are born of woman.

“The Neuroscience of Liberation”
We have to make a deep study of what hooks us.
Why does anything hook us?
For what is the hook a poor replacement?
What is the unmet need?

“High-Elevation Hillwalking”
The more weight we put down
the better the view.

“Heart-Mind-River”
Mindfulness…is what you say ‘no’ to.
Heartfulness…is what you say ‘yes’ to.

“Cohabitation”
– for Chris La Tray, in celebration of The Little Shell
If we have a relationship to land,
we have a relationship to the spirit of land.
If we have a relationship to the spirit of land,
we have a relationship with whatever happened in the land.
It doesn’t matter how many walls
and guard rails and Walmarts are erected,
how many acres upon acres of trees are slashed to the ground,
what was here before is here always.
What was here before
is here
always.

mappō
— for Sister Andō
one day,
silence will be seen
as medicine.

“Inner Ecology”
Don’t rush.
Don’t burn through too quickly.
The Way is a slow-simmering tea-fire
not a bonfire for a funeral.
Though there may be aspects within you
that are dying, or even rotting and fermenting
as old un-met griefs are apt to do
the great breathing wind
of staying with the flow
“off-gasses” what needs to go
and brings in fresh seeds
for tomorrow’s planting.

“Crazy Cloud whispered…”
When we stay fully present in this life,
we create a Pure Land.
When we fall into painful trances,
we create a Hell Realm.

“Willow Kannon’s Antidote to The Sting of Existence”
You’ll never know unless you go;
unless you enter the realm of wood and green
like a child again.
The place where hill and plum tree kami
whisper secrets on the wind.
Stroll
as if your body is that
of a yet-to-be-discovered
Mountain Buddha.
Drink deep draughts of Tao from an earthen cup.
Dangle your road-weary feet in the cool, trickling stream.
Though the sting never goes away,
this deep-listening to the teachings in the water
soothes heart-mind for the next leg of the journey.