Best Of...(imho)

The Tao is the One,
From the One come yin and yang;
From these two, creative energy;
From energy, the ten thousand things;
The forms of all creation.

All life embodies the yin
And embraces yang,
Through their union
Achieving harmony.

--Tao Te Ching

Yes, readers, it's come to this. I am re-running a favorite old post from last year.

I guess it's really true that what goes around comes around.

Ooohhhhhmmmmmmm....

From August 2005:

The image accompanying this post is one of many ink drawings by Sengai Gibon (1750-1838), a Zen priest known for his witty renderings of Buddhist principles. This figure of three shapes represents Lao Tze's configuration of all reality as ten thousand things derived from and returning to an original unity.

The circle represents the origin and unity of all things, the triangle represents the creation of material reality from that oneness, and the square represents the endless replication of triangles into all that we know. I suppose you could say this is an ancient and enduring notation of the unified field theory our scientists still seek.

Ever since I began working on a book whose long title includes the words One Thousand, I have been drawn to all things thousand. Last year when I was teaching high school I stumbled across Sengai's work and found the image deeply moving. Its simplicity helped me unlock the delicate, interlocking processes of writing and revision for my students, whose natural abilities had been all but extinguished by years of conventional "writing" training.

As often happens, when I was careening around the Internet universe looking for good links to this topic today, I came across a link at the New York Review of Books on a little-known 1955 novel, The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermout. In its time it won kudos from, among others, Eudora Welty.

What got my attention is that Robert Creeley, among my favorite poets, made a compelling comparison of Dermout's writing to that of Michael Ondaatje:"you get the tone that makes you recognize that [Ondaatje is] part of a culture, not simply a singular writer; he's part of a whole way of seeing reality."

Another way of seeing reality? That's all I needed to hear. Immediately Dermout went on my to-read list, which is already too long, longer than my eyes' life might be. Oh, well.

And while I'm throwing a whole lot of the world's glorious things at you, I will tell you that one of my favorite websites to stroll through is Michael Garofalo's Spirit of Gardening, which has a lot to say about complexity and simplicity. And I also have discovered another excellent miscellany, Balke Leyh's The Ten Thousand Things, a music site with MP3 offerings from artists like (at the moment) Alpha Blondy, David Byrne, Steve Reich, Hitchcock-film composer Bernard Herrmann, and assorted Nepali hip-hop artists.

Did I forget anything?

oohhmmmmm.

categories:garden home life miscellany religion thought