Whoever is master of his own nature, Bright, clear and true, He may indeed wear the yellow robe.<\/p>Translated by Thomas Bryom<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This time the quote is a poetic rendering of the Dhammapada from Thomas Bryom. Sangharakshita<\/a>, the founder of the Sangha I practice with<\/a>, was very keen on poetry. To paraphrase him, he stated that poetry was the pinnacle of all the arts. It towers above all the others in its majesty and can communicate the spiritual life like no other art form. I love the sentiment but I struggle to connect with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My own poetic education was a bit more troubled. My father loved nothing better than to bring down a gigantic (to my eyes) book of classic verse<\/a> from the shelf and read passages of it to his unimpressed 12 year old son. I can still feel the oppressively claustrophobia of those Sunday afternoons. No doubt my father was doing a “good thing” but invariably his pearls of Victorian verse fell on rocky unwelcoming ground. Even now, there is part of me that can feel aggravated when someone opens a poetry book, particularly if it’s a big one. And if it’s got a brown cover, like my fathers book had, then I’ll likely have to leave the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But times change and 12 year old boys grow up and change too. I read Thomas Bryom now and I feel that it captures the spirit of the verse and is no less meaningful than an exact and qualified translation. I perhaps fell a little bit moved by it. Years of hanging around Buddhist centres, talking to Buddhists and practicing the Dharma has gradually infused me with an nascent appreciation of poetry. I warm to the playful Zen haikus of Ryokan<\/a> and I’m inspired by the mysticism of Rumi<\/a>. If you look at my bookshelf these days you’ll find a few books of poetry peeking out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess poetry is an art form to be read aloud, perhaps like music lyrics. Perhaps, it’s to be memorised and reflected on at your leisure like a religious text. Maybe, it’s best appreciated in those 5 minutes between doing one thing and doing another – 5 minutes when you don’t quite know what to do with yourself. It could even be that poetry is best written yourself, to try to capture something that can’t be expressed adequately in any other way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whoever is master of his own nature, Bright, clear and true, He may indeed wear the yellow robe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-01-twin-verses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dhammapada.baysidebuddhist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dhammapada.baysidebuddhist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dhammapada.baysidebuddhist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dhammapada.baysidebuddhist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dhammapada.baysidebuddhist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dhammapada.baysidebuddhist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259,"href":"https:\/\/dhammapada.baysidebuddhist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions\/259"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dhammapada.baysidebuddhist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dhammapada.baysidebuddhist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dhammapada.baysidebuddhist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dhammapada.baysidebuddhist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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