Dharma Roar
The Dharma Seed KM group met last night and listened to Jack Kornfield’s awesome “Poetry & Beauty” talk, which can be streamed or downloaded here.
Jack’s talks are always great, but he really out-did himself this time. He reads poetry and weaves stories and….well, there’s no way to sum up what he says, but I’ll give you a sample. It’s from the part where he talks about Dharma as the Lion’s Roar–female version. To illustrate, he reads this poem by Nikki Giovanni:
I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad.
I sat on the throne drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains created the nile
I am a beautiful woman
I gazed on the forest and burned out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat’s meat and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can’t catch me
For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother’s day
My strength flows ever on
My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save
I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filing from my fingernails are semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid across three continents
I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission
I mean…I…can fly
….like a bird in the sky…..
(image from “I Told You So,” by Daisy de Villeneuve)