The reason Buddhism (whether you take yours as religion or as philosophy) is so Protean in nature is simple. At least to me (a simple man).
There’s no need to do any math, either. No Four Noble Truths. No Eightfold Path. I just repeat the mantra “change” and watch for the internal battle of two-against-one.
In that corner, the crowd favorites, the past and the future. And in this corner, the seriously undervalued known as the present.
When you look through the lens of that unholy trinity (past, present, future), you’ll see the futility of the favorites and the persistence of the underdog in many pieces of literature. The smiling referee? Change.
A lot of poems work with this model because it’s so broad, but for my purposes this morning I’ll take two by Joseph Mills, a writer who spins family conversation into poetic gold. First, a look at a poem titled in a most deja vu kind of way.
“We’ve Had This Conversation Before”
Joseph Mills
We’ve had this conversation before,
my daughter and I, many times,
about what she might buy
with her allowance, about candy,
about how her brother annoys her,
about where her birth mother might be,
and we’ve had this conversation before,
my son and I, many times,
about how fast he is, how fast horses are,
about candy, about how his sister bosses him,
about how much a horse costs,
and we’ve had this conversation before,
my wife and I, many times,
about how tired we are,
about what we might buy them
and how much it all costs,
about how they annoy us, how fast
they’re growing, how scared we are
about what might happen, about this life,
this life, so tiring and wonderful,
and how, if we could, we’d repeat it,
this life, many times,
many times.
By nature, many poets mine their pasts for material. Experience is the muse of memoir, after all, and memories move poets to write. Here we note the son and daughter both struggling with their desires and their wishes. And here we note the parents worried, too, especially about change and what the future will bring for their kids.
These worries prevent them from enjoying the present, yes, but the final lines imply that they’d gladly do it all over again.
This is a very western take on samsara or reincarnation. Second chances? Tenth? Hundredth? Yes, please!. But to the Buddhist and Hindu scholars of old, these cycles of birth, life, and death were unpleasant, indeed. Pain. Sickness. Old Age. Death. All the things westerners hide from and do their best to thwart, over and over again.
If you think the unspoken worry of Mills’ first poem is a death that takes all this joy away in the blink of a lifetime’s eye, you’ll be interested in a second poem that cuts to the quick (as only children can blithely do).
“Questions”
Joseph Mills
On the Interstate, my daughter tells me
she only has two questions. I’m relieved
because she usually has two hundred.
I say, Okay, let’s have them, and she asks,
What was there before there was anything?
Stupidly, I think I can answer this:
There was grass, forests, fields, meadows, rivers.
She stops me. No, Daddy. I mean before
there was anything at all, what was there?
I say that I don’t know, so then she asks,
Where do we go when we die? I tell her
I don’t know the answer to this either.
She looks out the side, and I look forward,
then she asks if we can have some music.
Maybe you can read something into the final lines where the daughter looks “out the side” (present) and the father looks “forward” (future) and maybe not, but it seems clear that the daughter’s quick shift to the oh-so-ordinary (“she asks if we can have some music”) is an enlightened response to her father’s non-response.
Oh. No answers (or possibly unpleasant ones) about the future? Let’s enjoy the present, then, shall we? Music, maestro!
Thus, in the most prosaic of ways, does Joseph Mills make a larger point. One the Buddha would have applauded. With one hand.