Poetry Friday

Po Chu I was many things: a successful government official, a well known and tremendously popular poet, and an exemplar of Confucian duty. He is considered one of the four great Tang dynasty poets, along with the Buddhist Wang Wei, the Taoist estatic Li Bai, and the greatest of the them all, the perfect Du Fu.
Po Chu I was considered the "people's poet". His success in government gave him a wide perspective on the suffering all around him, and yet he didn't become complacent or withdrawn. This earned him devotion over the next thousand or so years.
If you want to see more go here. If you want to peruse a great book on the poet, here's an e-text.

The Grain Tribute (transl. Arthur Waley)

There came an officer knocking by night at my door

In a loud voice demanding grain-tribute.

My house-servants dared not wait till the morning,

But brought candles and set them on the barn-floor.

Passed through the sieve, clean-washed as pearls,

A whole cart-load, thirty bushels of grain.

But still they cry that it is not paid in full:

With whips and curses they goad my servants and boys.

Once, in error, I entered public life;

I am inwardly ashamed that my talents were not sufficient.

In succession I occupied four official posts;

For doing nothing—ten years’ salary!

Often have I heard that saying of ancient men

That “good and ill follow in an endless chain.”

And to-day it ought to set my heart at rest

To return to others the corn in my great barn.

A Disgrace Repealed

Yesterday one of the students and I mailed off 10 packages of books to prisoners in Texas, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. The program is called Books through Bars and does only one thing: it tries to fill requests for reading materials. We are also looking for donations, especially self help, dictionaries, thrillers, and westerns.
The prison population of the U.S. exploded for a number of reasons. One was a Reagan era pushback against the justice reforms of the 60's and 70's. Another was the boom in private prisons and the investment of numerous entities in keeping them in business. Yet another was the failing school systems and de-industrialization of urban areas. The evaporation of the job base slowly devastated many cities. The most significant reasons were the so-called Rockefeller drug laws, which criminalized minor drug activity and the three strikes laws, which essentially sent thousands to prison for decade for minor offenses. On top of all this, prison seems to cripple many people, and beside stigmatizing them, forcing them out of the job market and into the underground economy.

To a degree I do not understand, the relatively low levels of crime that we have right now (on average) seem to related to our huge prison population. A lot of bad actors get swept up. But the price is gigantic, both fiscally and psychologically. There are too many children who do not have contact with parents because of prison sentences. There are too many men and women who are repeatedly traumatized in prison. And there are far too many young people in the prison system being hardened up and then turned out into the street with no other skills but raw survival.

Finally, change. Thirty years or so later, New York State is repealing the Rockefeller laws:

Under the plan, judges would have the authority to send first-time nonviolent offenders in all but the most serious drug offenses — known as A-level drug felonies — to treatment. As a condition of being sent to treatment, offenders would have to plead guilty. If they did not successfully complete treatment, their case would go back before a judge, who would again have the option of imposing a prison sentence.

Currently, judges are bound by a sentencing structure that requires minimum sentences of one year for possessing small amounts of cocaine or heroin, for example. Under the agreement reached by the governor and lawmakers, a judge could order treatment for those offenders.

More significantly, the former marine and all-round tough guy Senator Jim Webb has introduced prison reform as a key part of the legislative push for the next year:

Senator Webb's interest in reforming the U.S. criminal justice system stems from his days as a Marine Corps officer, sitting on courts-martial, and "thinking about the interrelationship between discipline and fairness." Later, as an attorney, he spent six years in pro bono representation of a young African American Marine accused of war crimes in Vietnam, eventually clearing the man's name three years after he took his own life.

Twenty-five years ago, while working on special assignment for Parade Magazine, Webb was the first American journalist allowed inside the Japanese prison system, where he "became aware of the systemic dysfunctions of the U.S. system." Japan, with half of the United States' population at that time, had only 40,000 sentenced prisoners in jail compared to the U.S.'s 580,000; today, the U.S. has 2.38 million prisoners and another five million involved in the process, either due to probation or parole situations.

"We are not protecting our citizens from the increasing danger of criminals who perpetrate violence and intimidation as a way of life, and we are locking up too many people who do not belong in jail," concluded Webb. "I believe that American ingenuity can discover better ways to deal with the problems of drugs and nonviolent criminal behavior while still minimizing violent crime and large-scale gang activity.

"We all deserve to live in a country made better by such changes," said Webb.

Spiritual Development

Few people question the pressing need for each of us to have some kind of trans-personal orientation to our lives. Generally speaking, this is the realm of ethics and religion, especially the former. Ethics for me implies a much deeper engagement with the ambiguity of daily life than does religion, which so often shields a person from it. Life is challenging and does not have easy answers.
But spiritual development requires exposure to many different approaches and traditions, as well as an exploration of self. Both of these routes tend to turn back on themselves. Looking at different ways of being "spiritual" can seem like shopping, but why not? Why shouldn't we approach important things like we approach everything else?
Self-exploration is often incoherent. Age nineteen was a disaster for me. I was depressed and overwhelmed and far away from my best self. That was the year I lost three jobs and spent far too much time alone. It was also the year I met or became close to people who would stay in my orbit from then on. I discovered the I Ching, Gurdjieff, P.G. Wodehouse, the Athenaeum, and Harvard's Widener Library, and dove into the underground music scene (it was 1984, a great year for music in Boston). I was all over the place and not much was working for me, but I was stumbling across alot of what would later become crucial to me.
I keep that year in mind when I worry about my older students.

Humanism often gets missed when discussing this subject. Slowly, TAS is going to be introducing a special track for students interested in their own spritiual development. It won't be simply Zen oriented, but it will be fairly disciplined and require a commitment. Will the school districts that pay us get queasy? If they do, then what? Ironically, most schools in our area don't even teach secular-humanist philosphy (which is what they are supposedly doing anyway); they don't teach much of anything in the way of consistant personal development and integration.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting some of the aspects of the proposed TAS program. Let us know what you think. Meanwhile, drift over to this site, the web HQ of secular-humanism.

Art. or art.

I have stumbled upon two creatures, one an artist, Andy Goldworthy, whose recent book was loaned to me by a fellow student, and one more of a showman and engineer, Bill Dan who I found via some surfing.
Goldsworthy is deeply engaged in environmental art. His work really clicked with me- I was skeptical, a lot of such stuff doesn't move me at all. Some of it is a kind of sand mandala, some of it simply beautiful. It made me want to do it too, which I consider a strong indication of effective art.

Andy Goldsworthy at the Met, 2004

Bill Dan is a bit of a savant. He "rock balances". Enough said.