This image of Kwan Yin is a photograph taken by Robert Moody
of the statue at the
I’ve never been there, but the statue beckons me. See
http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~rvmoody/rvmphoto/index.html
The Grace Carving the Stone: Kwan Yin
Every act of mercy she
Unseeing
Offers each of us
Dissolves the remote perfection of heaven,
The hope wherein she dwelt for so long.
She knows now
That need will outlast her.
There is no humility, only acceptance.
Here on this earth,
This mortality.
Kwan Yin
Understanding
The price of insight
Let go—
That sharp knife
Life’s suffering
Broke her open.
Every atom of her being
Cracking and scattering in the wind of sentience,
Borne over the world at the moment of arising,
The endless atoms of her immortality.
See, open your mouth
That sweetness in the darkness of your being,
That flavor is the invisible shard of
Her dissolving grace
The small seed of heaven,
Taking root in your life.
In every act of separation
In every loss
In all your suffering
In this cleaving,
Life’s conundrum
The grasping fist of emptiness,
Mercy is generated.
Melody Carr
5/20/07
3 comments:
Thanks to Robert Moody for permission to use his photograph of Kwan Yin and his generous comments on my poetry.
Melody
Melody:
Grace Carving the Stone - Kwan Yin
Her cracked serenity does not disrupt
Her being
Her forehead cleaved
Her extremities dismembered
Her form remains in perfect semblance
Her crown intact
Her focus spreads as seed of dandelions
Her smile is in satisfaction
Her disintegration in replicas
Her reflection in the immanence of stone
Her rock cries out
Her stone speaks in crumbling
Her dust dissolves
She disseminates as mercy
She animates the world
Frank D. Ratti, 05/22/07; for Melody
Melody:
I asked you to edit this poem when posting it as a comment on 05/22/07, noticing later that dandelion was misspelled, but also realizing my own confusion over the use of the word immanence, which was also originally misspelled as emmanence ( a made up word). I just came back to it and read what I wrote in response to your poem about Quan Lin, and marveled at the unconscious consciousness of what I meant to say in it.
Looking up these three words, any of them could fit in that slot of this poem:
Immanence -Her being is reflected in qualities inherent in the stone itself.
Imminence -The image although quiescent evokes something ‘ready to take place’.
Eminence – There is an inexorable prominence in her visage that commands one to pay attention.
Immanence
• the quality or state of being immanent; especially : INHERENCE
• being within the limits of possible experience or knowledge
• inherent – involved in the constitution or essential character of something : belonging by nature or habit
Imminence
• 1 : something imminent; especially : impending evil or danger
2 : the quality or state of being imminent
• Imminent - : ready to take place;
Eminence
• 1 : a position of prominence or superiority
2 : one that is eminent , prominent, or lofty: as a : an anatomical protuberance (as on a bone) b : a person of high rank or attainments -- often used as a title for a cardinal c : a natural elevation
Thank-you for this ongoing conversation in poemetry. Frank R. 05/29/07
Dear Melody:
Here from The Spell of the Sensuous, in The Flesh of Language, David Abram quotes Maurice Merleau-Ponty from The Body as Expression and Speech:
“It is the body which points out, and which speaks... This disclosure [of the body’s immanent expressiveness] ... extends, as we shall see, to the whole sensible world, and our gaze, prompted by the experience of our own body, will discover in all other “objects” the miracle of expression.”
“Thus, at the most primordial level of sensuous, bodily experience, we find ourselves in an expressive gesturing landscape in a world that speaks. “ D. Abram.
Ah, thus can the immanence of Quan Yin can be expressive even in repose even as stone.
Thanks. fdr
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