"SHANESPEARE IS HERE..!!" 'The Way of The Poet': ‘the habit and discipline of the notation of consciousness'; 'the practice of creative writing as a parallel process to the practice of meditation...'
How I came to have the nickname 'Shanespeare’, AND a few notes on working as a writer with the great Dzogchen Master Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, PLUS the Third Zen Patriarch’s famous poem…
“Shanespeare is here..!!”
Meeting the Tibetan Dzogchen Master Chogyal Namkhai Norbu in London in 1978
When I first met the late Tibetan Dzogchen Master Chogyal Namkhai Norbu in London in 1978 and he learned that I could write and had taught Creative Writing, he began, laughingly, to call me ‘Shanesepeare’, which at first seemed to me to be a joke aimed at making affectionate fun of my image of myself as a poet and lessening my attachment to my love of language and writing.
Starting to translate for Norbu Rinpoche at his public talks and retreats
The country that Chogyal Namkhai Norbu first came to when he arrived in the West was Italy, rather the US or the UK, the destinations to which most other Tibetan lamas came, so he was used to speaking in Italian rather than in English, and thus the Western language in which he first gave teachings was Italian, and I was already familiar with that language.
So when Norbu Rinpoche needed someone to translate for him from Italian into English at his public talks and retreats in various countries, I often fulfilled that role.
Beginning to help Norbu Rinpoche to produce books about the Dzogchen teachings in English
And, after I had been translating for Rinpoche for a while and had become more familiar with his teachings and the way in which he presented them, he asked me to collaborate with him on producing books in English about Dzogchen.
When we began to work on a first book together, it became clear to me that, even though what the Dzogchen teachings point to is beyond language, and despite the fact that Norbu Rinpoche enjoyed making fun of my attachment to what I like to think of as my skills as a writer, he nevertheless really did value my ability to use the English language with both precision and evocative poetic power, qualities that were abundantly evident, in fact, in his own prolific writings in Tibetan.
At first I was embarrassed when Norbu Rinpoche gave me the humorously called me ‘Shanespeare’, even though he always used the nickname with obvious affection.
But as I became more & more able to laugh whole-heartedly at myself and my own pretensions, I also became able to ‘own’ the nickname despite recognising how ridiculous it is for my work - even jokingly - to be compared to the work of a great poet & dramatist like William Shakespeare…
I have to admit that I was more than a bit embarrassed when Norbu Rinpoche first started calling me ‘Shanespeare’, even in public, sometimes in front of hundreds of people at his public talks or teaching retreats.
But now - several years after Norbu Rinpoche passed away - as I begin to write here on Substack about my life as a writer and about what I am defining here (with tongue firmly in cheek) as ‘The Way of the Poet’, I’m happy - in this new phase of my writing life - to ’own’ the humorous nickname Rinpoche invented for me.
In fact, I’m even happy to publicly celebrate it here, remembering with humility that, despite all my many faults, Rinpoche had enough confidence in me to trust me with the difficult task of helping him to express, in English, the profound teachings of which he was such a great Master.
Playing a small part in helping to prevent the Dzogchen teachings disappearing from the face of the Earth and making them more widely available all over the world
When I began to work with Norbu Rinpoche, the Dzogchen teachings were not at all widely known and were hardly available to anyone at all in the Western world.
But I’m happy to be able to say that the books that I and others helped Norbu Rinpoche produce in English and other languages succeeded in bringing the Dzogchen teachings to the attention of the wider Western reading public for the first time, helping to open the door for many other books, over the years, to be translated and published in many languages by many other Masters and their students.
As a result of all those efforts, the Dzogchen teachings are no longer threatened with disappearing from the face of the Earth, as they once were, but are now, in fact, widely available to interested people of all kinds all over the world, and I’m very happy indeed, as I look back on the course of my life, to have had the great privilege of playing a small part in helping to make that happen.
Helping to found ‘The Mirror’, the newspaper of the International Dzogchen Community
In the days before the internet, as well as helping Norbu Rinpoche produce books, I also made use of my writing skills in my capacity as a Founding Editor of ‘The Mirror’, the newspaper that we created and mailed out to help build the International Dzogchen Community of the students of Chogyal Namkhai Norbu and to keep its growing number of members around the world in touch with one another. (‘The Mirror’ is now, of course, available online.)
Using creative writing to help integrate the teachings into one’s life
At the end of every retreat or seminar, Chogyal Namkhai Norbu would remind those who had followed his teachings that they should integrate the teachings into their life.
And, over the years, writing both poetry and prose has helped me with this process of integrating meditation with the events of my daily life.
- If we regard sessions of meditation themselves as ‘the lab’ in which one investigates one’s mind and its nature in a ‘controlled environment’…
- and if we regard life as ‘the field’ in which one is learning to apply what one has discovered in ‘the lab’ of one’s sessions of meditation…
- then we can perhaps regard ‘the practice of the notation of consciousness’, writing down one’s thoughts, emotions, and ones’s daily-life experience as a kind of ‘log’ of the ‘field work’ of what one lives through as one tries to learn to accept every experience of one’s life - no matter how seemingly sublime or difficult - with equanimity, that is to say, without either grasping or resistance, without either attachment or aversion.
‘The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences’, as the first line of Zen teachings of the Hsin Hsin Ming, a poem written by Seng T’san, the Third patriarch Ch’an (the Chinese word for Zen), says. (The full text of the poem follows below.)
Having the courage and humility to write down whatever one is experiencing in the moment ‘without fear or favour’, no matter what one is experiencing, can be of value in helping one perceive more clearly what is happening and in enabling one to see through the hypnotic power of discursive thought and disturbing emotions so that one can let go of one’s compulsive psychological fixations and free one’s mind from them.
‘Growing up’ & ‘Waking up’
If we want to talk in terms of seeing through our habitual patterns, then ‘growing up’ (one’s psychological development) is as important as ‘waking up’ (one’s spiritual development), if by ‘growing up’ we mean ‘becoming truly the master of oneself’, and by ‘waking up’ we mean ‘going beyond all dogmas and ideologies, of whatever kind, and looking directly at reality itself in every moment’.
Combining the practice of writing and meditation in your life
I hope that whatever will be published here will be of value as a witness to the history of my travels on the ‘pathless path’ and I hope that it may offer a window into the possibilities of combining the practice of writing and meditation in your life.
In this Substack publication I will be publishing more general poetry and prose pieces and other visual and audio material linked to what I have called here ‘The Way of the Poet’ and have described above as - ‘the habit and discipline of the notation of consciousness’ - the practice of creative writing as a parallel process to the process of the practice of meditation.
I also hope, in due course, to begin to publish poetry, stories, and other visual and audio material that more specifically record what I saw, heard, and experienced on my travels around the world with my teacher, the late Dzogchen Master Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, but perhaps I will give that part of my publication another name and make it only available to those who subscribe here on Substack...
Sages of all the spiritual and religious traditions of the world have, of course, universally made use of poetry to express their vision and realisation.
Below is the full text of the Third Zen Patriarch, Song T’San’s famous poem in Richard B. Clarke's translation from the Chinese.
The poem’s name, Hsin Hsin Ming, is sometimes is translated as ‘Faith In Mind’, or variants of those words, but I prefer the translation ‘The Mind of Absolute Trust’.
(There are many other translations of this poem and one can easily find them, and many commentaries on the poem, on the internet.)
The Hsin Hsin Ming
The Mind of Absolute Trust
by SONG T’SAN
the 3rd Ch’an patriarch
The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood, the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.
The Way is perfect, like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.
Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things.
Live neither in the entanglements of outer things nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.
When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity, your very effort fills you with activity.
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other you will never know Oneness.
Those who do not live in the single Way fail in both activity and passivity, assertion and denial.
To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality.
The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
To return to the root is to find meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.
At the moment of inner enlightenment, there is going beyond appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear to occur in the empty world, we call real only because of our ignorance.
Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.
Do not remain in the dualistic state; avoid such pursuits carefully.
If there is even a trace of this and that, of right and wrong, the mind-essence will be lost in confusion.
Although all dualities come from the One, do not be attached even to this One.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way.
When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist.
When thought-objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes; as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.
Things are objects because of the subject (mind): the mind (subject) is such because of things (objects).
Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.
In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world.
If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.
To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult, but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: the faster they hurry, the slower they go.
And clinging (attachment) cannot be limited: even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray.
Just let things be in their own way and there will be neither coming nor going.
Obey the nature of things (your own nature) and you will walk freely and undisturbed.
When thought is in bondage, the truth is hidden, for everything is murky and unclear; the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness.
What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separation?
If you wish to move in the one Way, do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.
Indeed, to accept them fully is identical with true enlightenment.
The wise man strives to no goals, but the foolish man fetters himself.
There is one Dharma, not many.
Distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant.
To seek Mind with the (discriminating) mind is the greatest of all mistakes.
Rest and unrest derive from illusion; with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking.
All dualities come from ignorant inference.
They are like dreams or flowers in air: foolish to try to grasp them.
Gain and loss, right and wrong; such thoughts must finally be abolished at once.
If the eye never sleeps, all dreams will naturally cease.
If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence.
To understand the mystery of this One-essence is to be released from all entanglements.
When all things are seen equally, the timeless Self-essence is reached.
No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state.
Consider movement stationary and the stationary in motion; both movement and rest disappear.
When such dualities cease to exist, Oneness itself cannot exist.
To this ultimate finality no law or description applies.
For the unified mind in accord with the Way, all self-centered striving ceases.
Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible.
With a single stroke we are freed from bondage: nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing.
All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power.
Here thought, feeling, knowledge and imagination are of no value.
In this world of Suchness there is neither self nor other-than-self.
To come directly into harmony with this reality, just say when doubts arise, ‘not two’.
In this ‘not two’, nothing is separate, nothing is excluded.
No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth.
And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time and space: in it a single thought is ten thousand years.
Emptiness here, emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes.
Infinitely large and infinitely small; no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen.
So too with being and non-being.
Don’t waste time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this.
One thing, all things, move among and intermingle without distinction.
To live in this realisation is to be without anxiety about non-perfection.
To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.
Words!
The Way is beyond language, for in it there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.