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Gratefulness
Enjoy this practice as a stand-alone experience or as the fourth of an eight-day series inspired by Br. David's appreciation of and experience with haiku.
Not to feel that you feel, not to know that you know, but just to feel, just to know– how liberating! ~ Br. David Steindl-Rast
Welcome.
In his book A Listening Heart: The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness, Br. David guides readers in an exploration of some aspects of a peak experience. He proposes an experiment in which we close our eyes and recall a major or minor peak of our past experience. Maybe it was “a moment on a mountain top…Or sitting on a fence-rail dangling your legs, not in boredom, not at all, but in utter absorption. Absorption into what? Into nothing; for nothing happened.” He goes on to reflect upon the fact that our peak experience is “an altogether unreflective moment,” writing “Only afterwards can I reflect on it and so talk about it. And what I am then inclined to say is something like ‘I was simply swept off my feet,’ or…’I had lost myself,’ This was all. But not quite all. For looking back I will also admit that at that moment of my Peak Experience I was more truly and more fully myself than at any other time.”
Haiku and calligraphy by Br. David Steindl-Rast
Through this exercise, Br. David suggests that “we have gained access to Haiku from within.” He writes, “If you have become aware that you are most truly yourself when you forget yourself; that in truly being alone you are one with all…you have discovered in your own experience the paradox in which Haiku has its roots.”
Today, we invite you to close your eyes and bring to mind a major or minor peak experience, referencing Br. David’s guidance above. Let it be a moment of utter absorption in which you “forgot yourself.”
Once you have relived this moment, notice what words begin to arise in your recall of this peak experience. With this experience fresh in your heart and mind, experiment with writing a haiku.
We invite you to reflect on your experience in a notebook or in the reflection area below. If you’d like, you may also share your haiku.
You may have noticed that Br. David signs his haiku as “Anon.” You might explore doing this for your own haiku. Notice how it impacts the poem. Notice how it feels for you. Imagine how it might land with others.
Enjoy the full eight-day Exploring Haiku practice.
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Still summer morning Lone loon paddles silently Barely a ripple
Kayaking near shore Hear water gurgle behind See pines bend in wind
Snow on the mountain Reflected in the water Praise for Creation
Snow on Palm Sunday Driving, I brake for small birds bewildered with Spring
Bewildered with spring, what a lovely phrasing!
Light spring rain dapples my glasses Clouds part Rainbows fill my eyes.
“Anon” is interesting…. The paradox of sight/insight and “my” sight/insight. Of a peak experience being an experience of presence and the retelling with haiku a sharing of that present in which it become’s the reader’s…thus “anon”… Very cool.
Heavy snow Silence Hot tub steam rises… I KNOW! I laugh. … then I cry
From two very different events:
Robust in rhythm Elemental force Natural, uncontrived
Emergence, expansion Perfection, in the moment Complete, abundant
hollow empty vessel tears tumble forgiveness is my own
No space between us Last breath upon us There is only love
I feel the tears roll The sun shines on my face Water dries on the skin
Dying dad greets wife owner of cruel pointed barbs eyes flash tenderness
Roaring whitewater Raft swept into the current Then, a wild ride!
Going with the flow Totally in the moment One with the water
grassy green glade solitary child entranced with overflowing fulness
Thoughts not me Mind not me Body not me Who is me?
Fir trees reach for sky Stream meanders to river Sun-warmed rock grounds me
Free falling rollercoaster Terrified screams Self forgetting catharsis
The enduring vastness of the landscape. I feel so small and impermanent.
April snow . . . SURPRISE! Elkhorn Mountains wearing ermine capes Classy
The specific event isn’t important except to say it was out in nature and has happened more than once. Relecting on it this is all there is:
nothingness is oneing
—unknown
palm sunday birdsong floats through a morning fog
water meets water the creek becomes a river rushing to the sea
Write an entry in your private gratefulness journal
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