Our nearly two-year-old granddaughter is learning the wonder of words. Her phrase conveying her request to any loved one (from parents to grandparents) to get up from the couch and play with her is:
"Up-pah, Mama! Up-pah, Mama!"
Her words have substance. You can see her take command of them in her mouth, and then observe her satisfaction in their magic.
Do you remember sensing words as something physical that could be stored in your toy box? You could feel the word 'corduroy' brush against your cheek, and 'rickrack' would make you grin just for the fun of croaking it from the back of your throat.
Abbess Zenkei Blanche Harman says that Beginner's Mind (1) is Zen practice in action. It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions, expectations, judgments and prejudices. Beginner's mind is just present, exploring and observing and seeing.
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Today I ask you to have Beginner’s Mind as you write poetry, perceiving words as you did when you were a toddler. Toss them in the air and see how they arrange themselves. Here is your assignment:
Start with one word that calls your attention. Write it in the top left corner of your paper. Beneath it, write a second word, which you freely associate from the first. Continue until you've filled three columns, in which the words line up both vertically and horizontally.
For example:
Fall intuitively stars
down oneness shadowy
up many awake
bounce multiples daydreams
softener twins etc.......
fluffy sharing
clouds secrets
Spirit whispers
knowing dark
Get it? The associations go down vertically, continuing to the top of the next column each time you get to the bottom of the page.
Now you have a word list from which you will harvest your poem. The catch is that you must use the first six across, followed by the next group of six, and so on. Feel free to change forms of a word, or sometimes you might slide one down to the next group.
You may also add other words that may pull things together. But the fun thing is seeing the unlikely juxtapositions that spark your imagination!
For instance, if I were doing the above list of words, I might start:
Shadowy stars,
how do I intuit your fall-down
oneness?
Up you bounce
and in your multiplication I awake
to dreaming…
I love this exercise. It goes beyond inspiration to teaching me to look at all my experiences with Beginner’s Mind. What I view as 'real' is as malleable and 'sillilly' profound as calling all my loved ones 'Mama'.
I invite you to get up off the couch and play. Find the magic in your words.
Please send me your creations at SpiritWorksArt@mac.com, and let me know if it is OK to include them in this column!
—Donna
EXPLANATORY NOTES
(1) "Shoshin is a concept in Zen Buddhism meaning 'Beginner's Mind'. It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would. The phrase was also used as the title of Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki's book: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, which reflects a saying of his regarding the way to approach Zen practice: 'In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.' " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin
