nembutsu.info Journal of Shin Buddhism

Poets Corner

Gregg Heathcote

Memoirs of Vacation at Wit's End

Na man da bu
This entering inn of pure hospitality's calling
This vacancy in one's very own clearing
When hopeless is my cause so lost
My foundering yet effects such fearless resignation
That with rough indifference to accomodating outcomes
Out comes Na man da bu

Signatory smoothness starred in such becoming blackness
Portering thus the empty luggage I cannot carry
And unlocking my room within shadow's clearing
Of that which I vacantly call myself
Na man da bu
Now a heart-broken-open holiday flat

You might say what an awful place to stay
But in samsara's swathe where better?
Wit's End lies at the end of all life's roads
And sooner or later all we tourists go there
Perchance to let good old hard times roll
In our own way a levelling spirit in play
With this recreative Na man da bu

Surely it's sick to freely suffer suffering
To visit our patient selves enjoying Hell's hospitality
Most prefer river resorts along the Lethe
Drunkenly drowning themselves in its vain tonic
Overlooking the toxicity of tears called for but begrudged
Truly forgetting what means Na man da bu

But to Wit's End I let myself go
On this infernal riviera called to mind
Beached on the edge of ocean and of night
In overreaching darkness touching the face of the deep
My overshadowed being skimming its eventide
Borne upon plain mystery in Name one and only
Na man da bu

A thing of beauty is the end of my world
See-level meaning that it all comes round to this
A sunken life's treasure herein all washed up
Upon surfacing tension like that of Sona's lute
Liberty's strain to loveliness attuned when my tether's end snaps
Na man da bu!

What is my calling where Life works to unemploy me?
Vocation here on holiday totally taken at ease
Taken with salt's grain into sea water's bittersweetness
Vacation at Wit's End tasting of nothing else
Crushing exaltation breathing this ocean of clarity
Passion within Compassion inspired as light's darkling point
Piercing space sounding my Na man da bu

Thanks to tariki's nowhere-going here my play is fast
But am I really grateful for timelessness off work?
Beauty reconciling all, alone cries yes - but no
This resonant reflection finally takes no listing sides
Yet still I list and in faith free-fall flat
My evening grounded by Na man da bu

Na man da bu
A rosy thorn in mind embedded
Astringent remembrance well-opened thus
Entrusted to the End its strange recreation
Nadir met with Nature's quiet confidence
No destination intimate but arrival so well-met
Just this alone - Na man da bu

[NB The Lethe was, in ancient Greek mythology, the river of oblivion in Hades from which the dead drank, thereby forgetting their lives. Sona was an accomplished musician who became an over-zealous and dangerously ascetic student of Shakyamuni Buddha. In response to the counter-productive extremism of Sona's practice, the Buddha instructed him that he should instead tune his practice in the same way that he tuned the strings on his lute, finding just the right tension for the music to play. Sona understood this, and went on to become an arhat.]

(© Copyright Gregg Heathcote, 22 November 1997)

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