How Shall We Make a World Worth Saving?
Rajanaka News for June Now Upon Us
Saturday, June 1, 2024
Aho’ Rajanaka,
I hope this finds you well.
What is poetry which does not save nations or people?”
– Czesław Milosz
“You live in the caesura of our times, the sound of nations, persons, breaking around you. If poetry can only save itself, then who will hear it after it has fled from the nations and the people that it could not save even a remnant of for a remembering?”
---From Fault Lines, Kendel Hippolyte.
Poetry may not save the world but it may make for a world worth saving.
This week I’ve been reading the poetic Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines. A seminal work composed in its own strange Sanskrit, the 8,000 Lines set into motion the subtle philosophical vision of Buddhism’s Greater Vehicle. It is quite unlike the devoted logicians who took up its soteriology and whose work I have spent decades unpacking for clarity and precision. Rather, it is the poetry that “saves,” not the arguments. I found myself less exercised by dialectics and more charmed and wheedled by blandishments to stay gentle in this reliably coarse world. While the work suffers from its own analeptic sophistry, its poetry helps us understand how to make life worth the trouble.
Saved you say? Not from rebirth (or redeath) but possibly, plausibly from more exasperation, incredulity, resignation. The news this week would be merely alarming were it not also a harbinger of what is yet to come. Scared yet? If you’re not, you skipped the news. Come back when you can, the future of humankind is actually at stake.
But this poetry---because it is heroic for its insistence and importunity, for its claim that we must become our better angels---does not tell us merely to seek the truth deep inside ourselves but to conjure what is of value from a humane imagination and put it into words and deeds and dreams.
In other words, the 8,000 Lines, preoccupied as they are with our potential immortal awakening (that’s the sophistry part) are as much an admonition to us not give up the call of poetry. What is that call? Why it is to save people from themselves. We can do better than what the world will accept or indifferently ignore or conjure into rage, performative anger, or incited violence. It is up to us to make this a world worth saving. We’re going to need poetic collaboration to stand any chance. And if you don’t think poetry will suffice, you’re likely right. But without it where do we think we’re going?
Today we’ll begin the journey into the Mahayana from this original source. Doncha’ worry, I’ll provide what you need to come along. It’s worth the ride not because you will become enlightened but instead because we don’t have to accept or believe or endorse even a little what is being said. Rather, it is because this poetic genius works its magic without magic, because it is an overture of human accomplishment that gives emboldens us to a more humane aspiration. Join us on Zoom at 5pm Eastern today.
https://rochester.zoom.us/j/95057662268
Sunday Mahabharata tomorrow. 5pm Eastern.
https://rochester.zoom.us/j/314987250
Rajanaka Summer Camp in July. Got plans? It’s always amazing when we learn together.
LOOK HERE for Summer Camp details, we go Thursday to Monday, the weekend after the 4th of July: https://rajanaka.substack.com/p/rajanaka-summer-camp-2024-details
Enough is never really enough if it’s the good stuff. So let’s make some of that.
Saprema, Douglas