shenyen

radioshenyen feb 2007 south korea

(leaving the western island and heading down to the south coast.)

----- "scrambled telegram" -----

( ... its the middle of the twenty-first century and he's three and a half years old. he's a good kid - the kind parents pray for: quiet, self-contained, undemanding, always able to entertain himself... sometimes his seriousness has a dopey edge to it that makes you want to reach out and touch him. that kind of kid.

but at night lately he's been talking in his sleep, asking for someone - 'nigga junior' and 'mad mike' it sounds like... she thinks its maybe someone he's been listening to on the world receiver that's always plugged into the ear of his dragon hat, some rap artist or dj program, though when she searches on the net she cant find anything. he's so undemanding and she would love to find something by these two guys and give them to him, some mp3 file or something, as a little surprise. but when she tries - softly, indirectly - to get a little more information from him over breakfast he just looks at her like she's talking about something that doesnt exist.

and then a few weeks later it stops. his life continues and so does hers. of the gift that never was there will be endless traces but no trace. there will just be no nigga junior or mad mike accompanying him through this life... )

incheon bus station. a six hour bus journey down to yeosu, my first trip alone in korea.

i buy a ticket using sign language and something written on a scrap of paper by the abbot as he said goodbye, then wait at the bus-stand with a cup of coffee in my hand, visible-invisible like everyone else. and i say to myself: i dont need a history. its beautiful, just the way it is. i want to talk on the phone with my wife and kids, walk into a bookshop and find a book containing maps of the ocean floor and essays by derrida, eno, cage, hillman, cixous. impossible things like that.

in yeosu my friend has everything organised. she's gathered together a group of westerners who are interested in studying buddhism with me twice a week, found a place to teach them in, and a temple for me to stay in for the duration. she even offers to fly me down from seoul but i decline, explaining that the six hour bus journey is a treat not a hassle: i love the feeling of sitting comfortable and quiet (we are not talking india), gazing out of the window while feeling the dynamism of the body moving through beautiful straight lines. sunlight reflecting off buildings and the warmth inside the bus making it feel like spring at the end of winter. stretching one's legs occasionally like an astronaut on the lunar surface of motorway rest-stop car parks. headphones on for the first time in six weeks. i want to have the kind of wild intelligence that is deeply satisfied with little things like this (the same two cds in my machine for months on end - but what titles! - "heidegger's children" and "structures from silence"), while being deeply dissatisfied with all forms of limited perception.

at the motorway rest stop a dvd stall plays music. its wonderful the way some sweet, unrepeatable, nameless song can come from nowhere and make you realise something incredible, like 'your relationship's over' or 'your whole life has been one long act of cowardice'... the way it tells you this in some gentle non-judgmental way, in a three minute shower of beauty that leaves you smiling, repentant and ready to start again. and of course you never do, which is why new songs always appear ...

for ten days i'm alone on jiri-san, korea's holiest mountain, meditating and walking in the silent spaciousness of traditional architecture and pristine forest. but at night its party time: chocolate biscuits, coffee, and geshe michael teaching the diamond cutter sutra, how everything is impermanent and how even the buddhist teachings will one day disappear. and i realise that the only way to not lose touch with them is to disappear with them, the way buddhas do: disappearing into reality. but i'm not there yet, so naturally i worry about that little kid in the middle of the twenty-first century reciting his scrambled telegram from a past life, and my own wife and kids, cooking and skateboarding in the realms of pure possibility, waiting for someone to invent something called the telephone. i am full of love and i have no time.

in a couple of weeks my korea visit comes to an end and i catch the overnight ferry to japan to do the shikoku pilgrimage: a 1200 km journey around the island visiting 88 temples. for practically all modern japanese its a six day bus tour, but on foot, old style, it'll take about 60 days. and i'll be doing it very old style: not knowing where i'll be sleeping each night or even where my next meal is coming from. and if you ask me why i'll just say 'i dont know'. but all my life, whenever i close my eyes, there's been a buddhist monk walking through just such a landscape - walking endlessly, alone, in silence, a silence that i call faith. ever since i first saw him i've wanted to walk like that. and so for the first time in my life my imaginary world and my real world will coincide. a gap in the universe.

in a dream recently the mulamadhyamikakarika (a text by the second century visionary monk nagarjuna) wins a prestigious contemporary art award. i'm reading about it in an art magazine - a long article, with 'photographs', that i gaze at with such joy. the photographs are amazing - you know, dream photographs of something 'impossible' and therefore impossibly beautiful. and i realise that i want nagarjuna to appear in all my future lives. i realise that i will have to do something karmically potent to make this happen. i dont know what it is but i will work on it in shikoku, rap it out beneath the sky and the stars night after night, with a vending machine coffee in my hand. one of the nice things about japan is that you can come across a vending machine even in the middle of nowhere. nobody vandalises them. in japan everyone has this minimum level of knowledge which understands that being able to imagine some stranger having a can of coffee in the middle of nowhere is worth more than a pocket bulging with 500 yen coins and 1000 yen bills. this is the kind of knowledge that can save the world. its the kind of knowledge poetry was meant for. its what i'm looking for and what i'll find. and when i do i'm going to walk right through its invisible boundaries and come out the other side.

till next time,

shenyen