On To The Fields Of Praise

The Lover Of God

In the wake of learning about the binding problem, what has come to mind are some of my favorite poems, and in particular great turns of line, whose power has much to do with a sudden shift in how our mind is constructing meaning: a slide from one narrative construction to another, which renders the whole construction process transparent, allowing the freedom of the unconstructed “dimension” to more fully permeate our experience.

Consider, for instance, these lines from Rabindranath Tagore’s The Lover of God (trans. Stewart & Twichell):

Spring at last! The amuyas flare,
half-opened, trembling with bees.
A river of shadow flows through the grove.
I’m thrilled, dear trusted friend,
shocked by this pleasure-flame –
am I not a flame in his eyes?
His absence tears at me –
love blooms, and then spring
blows the petals from the world.

In this stanza, Tagore is offering a picture of springtime, as an opening to a story of the love between Krishna and Radha. First, the amuyas [a kind of flower, one presumes] “flare, / half-opened” – i.e. begin to bloom. Then in the phrase – “trembling with bees” – the quality of trembling is attributed simultaneously to the bees and the flowers among which they are circulating. This creates also a “trembling” in the mind of the reader, as a pair of meanings – viz. trembling bees and trembling flowers – is constructed simultaneously, or in rapid oscillating sequence.

Next we’re introduced to the “river of shadow” that “flows through the grove.” Now of course, shadows themselves are not typically thought of or perceived (i.e. mentally constructed) as flowing or being river-like. So in meeting such a phrase, the mind itself is invited to “flow” from its conventional construction into something else. These final three lines —

His absence tears at me –
love blooms, and then spring
blows the petals from the world.

— describe the experience of yearning for one’s beloved. What I find most remarkable is the turn of line from “love blooms, and then spring” to “blows the petals from the world.” In the first line, spring – like the love in Radha’s heart — is blooming. But then in the second line the activity of spring is completely reframed: from the expansive hopefulness of “blooming” to the inevitably destructive “blow[ing] of petals from the world.” Echoing the dynamic (in Hindu mythology) between Brahma the creator and Shiva the destroyer, spring offers flowers, only to (in the very next line!) blow their petals from the world. As quickly as the turn of seasons, giddy anticipation transforms into wistful melancholy.

But what a gift it is that remains, hidden in that momentary freedom from our previous construction: In the loss of the petals is the “blooming” of non-phenomenal freedom. From the loss of the object to which our love had been directed, comes the understanding of the true (non-phenomenal) Source of Love.

On To The Fields Of Praise

For an equally delicious instance of overlapping and joyfully dancing narrative constructions, consider these lines from Dylan Thomas’s poem Fern Hill:

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

In these lines, the mind is invited to un-bind its habitual construction of “warm-bodied horses” or “horses walking through warm air” and replace it with “walking warm” – i.e. the notion that the activity of walking could somehow be “warm.”

Similarly, the mind is invited to un-bind its habitual constructions of “whinnying horses” and “green fields” – replacing these instead with “whinnying green stable.”

And then with the horses and the poem to expand “on to the fields of praise” – which by this time the mind has been primed to accept as entirely natural.

In terms of painting styles, we might describe the overall effect of reading Fern Hill as being a transformation from realism to Impressionism. All the elements of the picture are offered – but in ways which encourage and celebrate conceptual fluidity and playfulness.

Now of course no narrative description of the poem can ever do justice to or replace the power of encountering it exactly as it was written.

It just seemed that it might be interesting to explore these lines, in this way, in light of our recent discussion of the binding problem: of how the phenomena of self and world manage to appear as consciously unified. And to suggest that while the specific contours of phenomena are a function of various levels of conditioning, the quality of unification is an echo of the “one taste” of Awareness. And to the extent that a poem makes us more poignantly aware of mind’s construction of meaning, it also has the power to return us to this Source of all phenomena.

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