The Space Between Zen teachers Robert Chodo Campbell and Koshin Paley Ellison interview poet Marie Howe

How do we pay attention? How do we attend to what is right in front of us, whether it be a loved one who is dying, a homeless person, the cashier in the local food store, or simply slamming the car door shut? What motivates us to take care of others? How do we separate ourselves from the “other”? These are some of the questions that New York’s poet laureate, Marie Howe, holds in mind as she writes her poetry. , 2005 Robert Chodo Campbell and Koshin Paley Ellison, Zen Buddhist teachers and the founders of New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care (NYZCCC), are friends with Marie Howe and she is a guest teacher in the NYZCCC’s Foundations UNTITLED INTERIOR (BLIZZARD) in Buddhist Contemplative Care Training pro- gram. On a bright winter Sunday in March, Chodo and Koshin spent the morning with Marie Howe and her daughter, Inan, in New York City. Over bagels, cream cheese, and tomatoes, they spoke with Howe about poetry, caregiving, and paying attention. PHOTOGRAPH BY SARAH MALAKOFF, MALAKOFF, SARAH BY PHOTOGRAPH

48 TRICYCLE SUMMER 2013 TRICYCLE SUMMER 2013 49 Magdalene—The Seven Devils

“Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had How had this happened? been cast out” Luke 8:2. How had our lives gotten like this?

The first was that I was very busy. The third was that I couldn’t eat food if I really saw it The second—I was different from you: whatever —distinct, separate happened to you could not happen to me, not like from me in a bowl or on a plate. that. Ok. The first was that I could never get to the end of The third—I worried. the list. The fourth—envy, disguised as compassion. The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of The second was that the laundry was never finally life of the aphid, done. The aphid disgusted me. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The third was that no one knew me, although they The mosquito too—its face. And the ant—its thought they did. bifurcated body. And that if people thought of me as little as I thought Ok the first was that I was so busy. of them then what was love?

The second that I might make the wrong choice, The fourth was I didn’t belong to anyone. I wouldn’t because I had decided to take that plane that day, allow myself to belong that flight, before noon, so as to arrive early to anyone. BY EMILY GRAHAM EMILY BY and, I shouldn’t have wanted that. SINK The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know The third was that if I walked past the certain place on what we didn’t know. the street Robert Chodo Campbell: What was your experience of care- stuff for days. But my sister-in-law—“Toots” we used to call her, the house would blow up. The sixth was that I projected onto others what I giving? we call her “our outlaw”—I went to her house that night, and she myself was feeling. listened to me when I told her the stories, because I just needed to The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with Marie Howe: Oh, it was a joy. The days and weeks with my talk, talk, and talk. And she listened to me. a thin layer The seventh was the way my mother looked when she brother Johnny were some of the happiest times in my life. It was of skin lightly thrown over the whole thing. was dying. one of the few times in my life where I didn’t feel like I wanted to Koshin Paley Ellison: How did Johnny’s dying influence your The sound she made—her mouth wrenched to the be anywhere else. I’m a restless person and I got to be with him poetry and life? Your voice changed after your first book. The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me right and cupped open for hours and hours and hours. Finally, we could just be together. than the living So as to take in as much air—the gurgling sound And I got to read while he slept and look at his face and get him MH: Everything changed when John died. And being with John —so loud we had to speak louder to hear each other ice water and talk and tell stories. And just the way the hours when he was alive in those hours and days in his room with the The sixth—if I touched my right arm I had to touch over it. would pass was so sweet. green, flapping shade. Sitting by Johnny and just talking in those my left arm, and if I touched the left arm a little I took care of him growing up, but then he became my spiri- ways for those hours and all the particulars: the glass, the sand- harder than I’d first touched the right then I had And that I couldn’t stop hearing it—years later— tual advisor when he was in his twenties. And it feels like in any wich, the shade, the bedclothes, the cat, the summer heat outside to retouch the left and then touch the right again so grocery shopping, crossing the street— friendship, there’s that mirroring back and forth of your deepest pressing against the windows, the coolness in the air, the dim it would be even. truths—and our souls were connected from a very early time. He room. The peacefulness. The sounds of kids on bikes outside. For No, not the sound—it was her body’s hunger got very sick. And at one point he was lying there in bed and he once there was nothing else going on but that. That’s the freedom The seventh—I knew I was breathing the expelled finally evident.—what our mother had hidden all her said, “You know, Marie, my worst nightmare was that I would be of it, right? What’s more important? Nothing. So you’re actually breath of everything that life. lying here dying, and you’d be feeding me one of those stupid living in time again. After Johnny died I couldn’t write at all. was alive and I couldn’t stand it, milkshakes. And now it’s happening, and I’m so glad you’re And I was so lucky at that time: I received a fellowship to the For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots, here.” I loved it. Bunting Institute right down the street from me in Cambridge, I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word—cheese the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by at Radcliffe. So I just had to go down the street to an office and I cloth— what grew underneath. RCC: Who took care of you after he died? could write all day. But I couldn’t write, and I just would sit there. to breath through that would trap it—whatever was And I would write, “Still dead.” Then, “Still dead.” But I had a inside everyone else that The underneath—that was the first devil. It was always MH: Almost nobody. Nobody in my family knew how to take reading in the spring and that was enough of a deadline. So in entered me when I breathed in with me. care of themselves after John died. We went insane. The day after early winter I began to write those poems about John. John died, my sister Anne, who was a woman of action, decided No. That was the first one. And that I didn’t think you—if I told you—would we should tear apart my mother’s house and refurbish it so she KPE: It is such a crucial time, and having the time and space to understand any of this— could sell it. And people were pulling up linoleum floors and grieve is such a big deal. The second was that I was so busy. I had no time.

50 TRICYCLE SUMMER 2013 TRICYCLE SUMMER 2013 51 MH: That was really a big deal. I was given this place to be RCC: Being a part of the world is so essential, and it is the heart without any expectations really. And everything changed so that of spiritual practice. The stories from the Bible are so alive in all the particulars of life—this white dish, the shadow of the bottle your work. Can you speak about that a bit? on it—everything mattered so much more to me. And I saw Government what happened in these spaces. You can never even say what MH: Growing up, they were deep stories to me. They are the happened, because what happened is rarely said, but it occurs archetypical stories that help me live. Everybody’s there. Because Standing next to my old friend I sense among the glasses with water and lemon in them. And so you Easter’s coming, Inan and I were just talking about when Jesus that his soldiers have retreated. can’t say what happened but you can talk about the glasses or went to the garden the night before he was arrested and asked And mine? They’re resting their guns the lemon. And that something is in between all that. his friends to stay awake with him. And they all fall asleep. on their shoulders That’s me: I fall asleep. Just stay awake. talking quietly. I’m hungry, one says. KPE: It’s like the Japanese esthetic word of ma. It’s so wonder- Cheeseburger, says another, ful. The space between you, Chodo, and me. KPE: Where would you say your contemplative practice lives in and they all decide to go and find some your life? dinner. MH: This is the space I love more than anything. And this became very important, but there’s no way to describe that, MH: I’ve been meditating 20 minutes in the mornings. But But the next day, negotiating the too except to describe “you and me.” And there’s the space. I make otherwise, it’s poetry. My life is very external. I teach. I’m a narrow aisles of my students write 10 observations a week—really simple. Like, mother. So my life is about service to others. But to be at my The Health and Harmony Food Store this morning I saw. . . , this morning I saw. . . , this morning I desk in my studio on the third floor is to be in interiority, which —when I say, Excuse me, saw. . . —and they hate it. They always say, “This morning I saw is, I think, a place that’s almost becoming obsolete in our cul- to the woman and her cart of organic ten lucky people.” And I say, “No. You didn’t see ten lucky ture—the interior world, and to be in reverie. And it’s difficult chicken and green grapes people. What did you see?” And then they try to find something to maintain that discipline, because like anything if you don’t do she pulls the cart not quite far back spectacular to see. And I say, “No.” It’s just, “What did you see?” it, the threshold becomes painful to reenter. enough for me to pass, “I saw the white towel crumpled on the blue tiles of the bath- and a small mob in me begins picking room.” That’s all. No big deal. And then, finally, they begin to RCC: How old were you when you became a mother? up the fruit to throw. do it. It takes weeks. And then the white towels pour in and the blue tiles on the bathroom, and it’s so thrilling. It’s like, “Ding- MH: A hundred. Like those ladies in the Bible. I was a hundred So many kingdoms, BY EMILY GRAHAM EMILY BY a-ling, da-ding!” And some people never really take to it. But I years old. I was Sarah. I was Abraham’s Sarah. I was just telling and in each kingdom, so many people: EGG insist on it. What you saw. What you heard. Just the facts, my students this story, because there’s this gorgeous poem by the disinherited son, the corrupt ma’am. The world begins to clank in the room, drop and fall, D. H. Lawrence, “Song of a Man Who Has Come Through.” counselor, and clutter it up, and it’s so thrilling. He says, essentially: Not me, not me, but the wind that blows the courtesan, the fool. through me. Bring it on. Bring it on. I will be a good well-head. And so many gods—arguing among KPE: Because it clanks and falls? I will blur no whisper, spoil no expression. I will be firm like a themselves, What the Living Do chisel. I’ll do it, I’ll do it. over toast, through the lunch salad MH: Yes! It does. It’s like, “Did you see it? Did you see it?” And then all of a sudden, “What is the knocking?” he writes. and on into the long hours of the Everybody goes “Whoa!” “What is the knocking at the door in the night? It is somebody mild spring afternoon—I’m the god. Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. wants to do us harm.” In other words, the things you ask for be- No, I’m the god. No, I’m the god. And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up KPE: And is that part of the poem “The Gate”—how you gin to happen in the poem. They are the same angels that come walked into a new world? to Abraham and Sarah, and say, “The unthinkable’s gonna hap- I can hardly hear myself over their waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of. pen. The impossible’s gonna happen.” And Sarah laughs. The muttering. It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through MH: Yes. I finally entered this world. The coming into the angel just says, “You laughed.” I love that moment. Sarah says, How can I discipline my army? They’re world of time, life, death, and the flapping green shade against “No, I didn’t.” And he goes, “Yes, you did.” And Sarah’s laugh is exhausted and want more the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off. the window. My heart broke. The great thing, as everybody one of the great laughs in all of history. It’s the laugh that really money. For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking, knows who lives through what you think you can’t live through, thinks she knows better. How can I disarm when my enemy is you turn around and there are millions and millions of other seems so intent? I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those people there—the billions of people who have lived through KPE: And your care and attention must have taken a huge shift wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve, unendurable loss. And you look around and you go, “Hi, every- when you became a mother—what you paid attention to and body!” and there they are. And you join the world. And I was how you took care of another. How did that affect your writing? I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. glad to join that world. Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning. If someone had said, “What’s the worst thing that can hap- MH: Oh, yeah, writing was gone for a long time. I wrote a little pen?” I would say, “It would be if John died.” And John died. He poem at the end of The Kingdom of Ordinary Time called “Mary What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want was the person I felt linked me to the world and loved me as I (Reprise),” where she has a finger in a book, and she looks up and whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss--we want more and more and then more of it. am. And I loved him unconditionally. And then he was gone. she thinks she’s gonna be the same person. And she goes back to more at TRICYCLE.COM And everybody knows this sooner or later. Sometimes you lose a her place, but she’s not. And no more reverie. So in a long time, But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, To participate in Robert Chodo child or your mother. The thing you think you can’t live through there wasn’t a rich interiority in my life, and I think that’s the say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep Campbell and Koshin Paley Ellison’s happens. Then there are those billions of people—and I was just thing that is very challenging about being a mother of a small Tricycle Online Retreat on Zen and for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless: so glad to belong to their group. “Oh, I didn’t know this. All child. I love Inan like I love no one else in the whole world, but caregiving, visit tricycle.com. these people have known this.” And now I know what they have that was hard, to not have interiority. I was just completely in the I am living, I remember you. known, and I now know that I didn’t know. service of someone else. (continued on page 102)

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RCC: It’s actually like meditation practice—so many people The great thing about meditation—and writing poetry, awake to the real truth of being alive. So to me, that’s what art MH: That’s how devils had their hands in there. I’m so busy; I’m wish for it to be easy and wonderful. too—is that something can rise and it can be interesting but you and poetry are: trying to be awake and to be with a room of so busy; it’s crazy. I’m so busy; aren’t you busy? How’d it get like this? don’t have to identify with it. Keats said, Shakespeare’s the great- awake people who are committed to being awake, and who are This is the way we all talk to each other, isn’t it? And when did MH: And it never is. est poet because he could be everybody. He was a king, he was a being attentive without necessarily acting. I remember when you this happen? And who forced us into this? It’s the same thing clown, he was a thief, he was a murderer, he was a woman, he was were first talking about this, and I would ask, “What do people with all of our machines. Well, they’ve taken over; it’s over. It KPE: One of the ways that we try to encourage our Zen students a fool, he was a drunk, he was a this. He was everybody. He could do?” and you said, “Well, we just sit in a room and we’re there. never happens the way you think. You think they’re going to is always to experience ourselves as fresh—like what you’re say- be so somebody, he didn’t have to be anybody anymore. He Someone wants to talk, they can talk, and if someone wants to come by big robots! That’s not what happens. They’re like, ing about the dish or being with this piece of paper with that could just imagine everybody, and that seems to me the most be silent we do that.” Now I realize it’s the most important thing “Look into my face,” and we’re just okay. That’s what we do all shadow on it, like in this moment. blissful state, where there’s no judgment. You can be anything we can give to each other ever: quiet attention. And so to be still, day. The machines run our lives, and we are too busy. That was and you can see into everything; you can see it, and you can feel it’s like being in prayer. It’s a radical act to meditate. supposed to not happen like that; we’re supposed to have more MH: Much of my life, until I was about 45, I wanted to keep for Macbeth. You can feel his agony. That could be me, and I time because of the machines. everything the same. I was trying to control things. I grew up could go there. I could go there, absolutely. There’s never going KPE: Tell us about your poem “Magdalene—The Seven Devils” with violence and alcoholism in my house, as well as everything to be something I can’t understand in myself that someone else and what it has to do with attention. KPE: Any last words you’d like to share? else that was there that was wonderful, so there was a lot of could do, without having to do anything about it. trauma. It was just a human thing, too, to want to kind of keep MH: I love her. I’ve been trying to write a poem in the voice MH: I suffer like the rest of you! It’s very difficult to pay atten- everything the same, and nothing stays. So this notion of living KPE: You’ve been a guest teacher in our Foundations Training of Mary Magdalene for 35 years. She strikes me as the femi- tion in this world. We’re trying to have low technology Sundays. in that kind of radical acceptance that nothing stays and you [New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care’s 9-month nine, which is suffering so for being so abased. I read to a We’re trying to reestablish the Sabbath. That’s what we’re trying can’t achieve something. There’s no there. There’s no place program that trains caregivers to integrate contemplative prac- group of people, and I asked, “Has anyone here ever been pos- to do; we’re trying to cook instead and do crafts. We are estab- except the next moment, and that’s going to be different from tices into caregiving] for the last several years, and we were sessed by a devil?” and nobody raised their hands. I said, lishing one day that goes back to being sacred, and it’s slow, but this one, and it’s constantly different, and there’s such a differ- wondering what your thoughts are about what poetry offers “Really? Are you sure?” These demons she’s possessed by are we’re trying to become aware. Just awareness. Accept how dif- ence. This is the single most important change in my life, from those who are serving others. What has poetry done for you in what so many of us are possessed by. Mary Magdalene was a ficult life is, and then slowly take the action.  wanting to keep everything the same and wanting to keep difficult times? subject of her own life; she was a woman who was unidentified myself the same for so many years to not knowing what I’m with a husband, she was a woman who was an autonomous going to hear next or say next or what’s going to happen next and MH: Poetry’s saved my life, period. Poetry can hold the unsay- human who was friends with Jesus, but she was first just her- being more and more comfortable with that. What teaches us able. Poetry holds all the complexity of human life. I love being self. That’s how we meet her. Robert Chodo Campbell and Koshin Paley Ellison are cofounders and co- this? In meditation, of course, one sees that; one watches all that with people in contemplative care training. These people are so executive directors of New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, the first Buddhist organization in America to offer fully accredited chaplaincy training. stuff, and then one goes and comes back and one goes and comes awake to life and death; my God, those rooms are holy to me; RCC: I love that part in your poem. Isn’t the first of the devils The organization offers contemplative approaches to care through education, back and goes, comes back, goes, and you see that’s the traffic. holy to me. What a remarkable group of people who are so I was very busy. direct service, and meditation practice.

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