How Zen Fuels Creativity
Episode Summary:
Episode 13 of Redesigning The Dharma by Sahaja Soma features a conversation with poet, artist, and Zen meditation teacher, Brooke McNamara. The discussion centers on the intersection between art and Zen Buddhism and explores themes like the embodiment of Eros, the paradox of transcendence and intimacy, and the importance of uncertainty in spiritual practice. Brooke also reads one of her touching poems, 'Change the Lighting,' and discusses her perspective on poetry as a vehicle for transmitting life's vibrancy. The conversation touches on the influences of various Zen and Tantric masters and how their teachings intersect with creative expression and wraps up with a summary of her current work as an artist and with Dragon Lake Zen, a meditation community based in Colorado.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Guest Introduction
02:03 Exploring the Intersection of Zen, Meditation, and Creativity
19:27 Embracing Uncertainty and Aliveness in Zen
25:37 Erotic and Creative Energies in Zen and Poetry
36:35 The Importance of Ethics in Transgressive Practices
39:51 Poetic Reflection and Closing Thoughts
Guest Bio:
Brooke McNamara, MFA, is a poet, dance-theater artist, teacher, and Zen dharma holder. She has published two books of poems: Bury the Seed (2020) and Feed Your Vow (2015). For her poetry, she is the recipient of the Charles B. Palmer prize from the Academy of American Poets.
Brooke has taught at Naropa University in Yoga Studies and at the University of Colorado, Boulder in Dance, and she is co-director with Lauren Beale of Eunice Embodiment, an organization that offers cutting edge performances, embodiment education, and creative practice workshops and retreats.
Brooke is creator and instructor of the online courses Write to the Heart of Motherhood, Summoning the Unseen, Cultivate: Creative Practice (with Lauren Beale), and Women’s Ritual of Renewal (with Lisa Gibson). She is a long time Zen student of Diane Musho Hamilton, Roshi, and empowered as a dharma holder.
Brooke lives with her husband, Rob, and their two wild, adorable sons, Lundin and Orion.
Full Transcript:
Adrian: Welcome to Redesigning the Dharma. I'm your host, Adrian Baker. And today I'm speaking with Brooke McNamara.
I met Brooke through practicing in a Zen community, with the teacher, Diane Musho Hamilton, who's an excellent teacher. And then, I've done coaching with her one on one.
She does coaching for meditation, creativity, poetry. She has a background in the arts and really teaches and works at this intersection of meditation, Zen, creativity, and the arts. I enjoyed working with her over the last six months and that's why I wanted to have her on this podcast.
So, I wanted to have her on this show to basically talk about this intersection of zen, meditation, poetry and the arts and so It's a big set of themes to cover in just an hour, but we touched on it a little bit, gave an overview, and I [00:01:00] hope you'll enjoy this conversation.
So to give some background on Brooke, she's a poet, a dance theater artist, a teacher, and a Zen Dharma holder.
She has published two books of poems, Bury the Seed and Feed Your Vow. For her poetry, she is the recipient of the Charles B. Palmer Prize from the Academy of American Poets.
Brooke has taught at Naropa University in yoga studies and at the University of Colorado Boulder in dance. And she is co director with Lauren Beale of Eunice Embodiment, an organization that offers cutting edge performances, embodiment education, and creative practice workshops and retreats.
Brooke is creator and instructor of the online courses, Right to the Heart of Motherhood, Summoning the Unseen, Cultivate Creative Practice with Lauren Beale, and Women's Ritual of R enewal with Lisa Gibson. She is a longtime Zen student of Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi and empowered as a Dharma holder.
Brooke lives with her husband Rob and her two children in Boulder, Colorado.
And with that said, [00:02:00] please enjoy my conversation with Brooke McNamara.
So I want to discuss in this conversation, as I mentioned to you, just this intersection of Zen meditation and creativity in the arts. And since you our longtime Zen practitioner and now a teacher who's received Dharma transmission as well as a poet, thought you'd be the perfect person to, um, to talk about this with.
And I wanted to start by just asking you, what did you get into first? Were you first into, poetry in the arts or were you first into meditation?
Brooke: It's hard to answer,I mean, it depends on, on how you define, I think, meditation because formally speaking, I got into the arts first.
I was a really shy child and I felt really overwhelmed by this weird world. And, I remember feeling a lot of fear when I was little until I discovered dance [00:03:00] and writing and in particular poetry. It was really specific.
Like when I was eight, I wrote my first poem to my pet bird whose name was Bart. And he was a cockatiel with like a yellow, tall feather on his head. And so he looked like Bart Simpson and I loved him.
And I wrote this poem to him about whether he felt trapped by his cage or safe because of his cage. And it was just this endearing moment where I felt like I was able to, express something and then feel really relaxed and at home in this human body mind.
Um, and I also started dancing really early and those were the two places where I felt like, I think what was happening is I was, I was forgetting self consciousness and finding flow.
And that has carried me all the way through my teens, college, um, careers in the [00:04:00] arts, and still to this day, I feel at home in those ways ways of expressing. And I didn't start meditating formally until my twenties.
But my mom says that when I was really little she'd sit me in the garden while she was gardening, and that my brother was running around and really active and really wild and loud and physical.
And she said I would just sit cross legged in the garden completely still, for like when I was two or three, for weirdly long periods of time. So from that perspective, I think something innately sought stillness. And so from that perspective, I think meditation came first before the arts.
So,
Adrian: Thank you for that. And I love that
story. It made me think immediately of, Padma Sambhava, Guru Rinpoche's
famous saying that it's easier for a woman to get enlightened than a man.
Brooke: I
Adrian: That's exactly why you were
a girl was meditating at two and the boys running around tearing things apart.[00:05:00]
Brooke: I've never heard that, that saying. That's interesting.
Adrian: Yeah.
Yeah.
So you mentioned something important, I think, which is it depends how you define meditation. So let's take a moment to do that because sometimes people will say something like this. They could say it for dance. I've heard people say, well, running is my meditation.
Brooke: Mm hmm.
Adrian: what do you mean when you talk about meditation and how is that the same as, or different from let's say a flow state that someone engages in with dance or running.
Brooke: Mm hmm. Yeah. The way that I talk about it now, I really respect that, different people have different ways to access, um, a sense of identifying as something beyond the personality self or the ego self or the habitual conditioned self.
And so I think most broadly, that's how I define meditation is either by engaging will or by allowing and softening. [00:06:00]
I think of meditation as accessing an experience, a direct experience of who we are as either deeply interconnected with all things or one with all things. And in which that interconnection or oneness gives rise to multiplicity and difference and diversity.
But it's basically the difference between the flavor of like me walking around brushing my teeth, thinking about my day, you know, and everything else is out there, versus, um, I am this moment as it's arising. In it's emptiness, fullness, oneness. zero-ness and many-ness. I am the whole thing. We are the whole thing.
So the way that I talk about Zen practice, because that's the tradition I've trained in and teach in, is that we're formally practicing. We're formally practicing Zazen. Specifically. It's a specific method [00:07:00] method that can be called a method of no method. Or Shikantaza, just sitting.
But it's a formal training ground to experience intimacy with all things, as Dogen Zenji said, the 13th century Zen master. A training ground so that we're more ripe to fall into or access that state in any given moment off the cushion. Does that answer your question?
Adrian: I think it does really well. And it's, it's actually, I'd like to draw a parallel to it since we talk a lot on this podcast about psychedelics
Brooke: mhm,
Adrian: and their connection,
you know, with the spiritual practice, but I think it can be similar to psychedelics in a sense, if someone doesn't have that spiritual practice or isn't at a certain point in their spiritual practice, which is just, you know, after you have that experience of not self, thinking that, but once that medicine wears off or once you stop running or once you stop dancing, you know, basically, you're completely [00:08:00] identified with consciousness is identified with its contents.
There's not the recognition that, that sense of self is that sense of being a subject is an appearance in the mirror just as those objects out there an appearance in the mirror.
And yeah, I mean, there are different forms of meditation and
and there's not one right thing, but from a non dual kind of perspective, I think that is sort of a key difference.
There's a liberating life changing insight that can come through meditation practice that, really doesn't happen automatically with those other things because we get a glimpse of it and then we think we have to be doing that.
Brooke: Yeah.
Adrian: In order to glimpse that right?
Brooke: Exactly. I was having this exact conversation with a one on one, uh, student meeting yesterday and then also in a class this morning that, um, like you said, everyone has these moments of grace where we just forget ourself and open, basically.
And then this particular student [00:09:00] was associating that state of openness with the context and the contents of that moment and we were talking about the difference between a state where, by its very definition, it will come and it will go.
Whereas, meditation is, is, cultivating or inviting a recognition of what is ever present. Always here. And, and so, in class this morning we were talking about the, this story, an old koan from Korea back in the day where the student asks the teacher, how do I cultivate the way of the Buddha? And the teacher says, no cultivation.
And so we were talking about the differences between, it's important to have practices that we do in ways that we cultivate wakefulness and compassion, in the relative sense, like having companions in practice and having things we do that that allow us to recognize and taste directly our Buddha nature, our awake self. And at the same time, in any given moment, all [00:10:00] we're doing is recognizing what's always already here. So there's the, the inbuilt paradox that, um, you know, psychedelics can help with that with a vivid glimpse and then meditation can support grounding that in ever present recognition.
Adrian: Yeah.
Yeah.
I think they can be very wonderfully synergistic practices the interesting thing is it's sort of the advantage of psychedelics in a way is it can make things very, obvious so that we can't miss it,
but then realizing on the meditation cushion, what to recognize, because even on a meditation cushion, you could be there for weeks.
You could have been going through intense boredom, you know,
for a week straight, but there are these moments of it's its own peak experience,
right? That you can have on a meditation retreat.
And I think, especially when you're first having that recognition, of nature of mind that that it's often associated with a certain clarity, certain qualities of mind.
Like the mind might be [00:11:00] sharp
when you have that recognition. So then we think, oh, vividness is what I'm trying to recognize, right? Or
calm, but actually calm, agitation, vividness, dullness,
that itself is a meditative experience.
That's not the nature of the mind. That's not. What we're talking about, and that can be really, really subtle.
And I think that's why it's an important to have. a really qualified teacher to walk you through that because there are all those kind of pitfalls along the way where you think, oh, this is it. or this is it talking about non dual awareness, or I'm nothing but awareness and then identifying with it. So
Brooke: Yeah.
Adrian: It's very helpful to have that teacher to, to walk you through that.
Brooke: Totally, because as soon as this is it, then that is not. And that then we could just start dividing up reality. And I think that is one of the most subtle and interesting, but sometimes challenging thing.
I was literally saying to our class this morning, I said that this is Buddha. This is Buddha. [00:12:00] Tired Buddha, Buddha with insomnia, you know, like whatever is happening is not separate from the absolutely unconditioned, liberated, awake nature that we are.
Um, and, the sixth Chinese patriarch said the great way is not difficult for those not attached to their preferences. And I find it's just a lifelong humbling practice to notice my own preferences like more and more subtly.
I prefer to feel this, you know, relaxed overstressed. So then I associate relaxation with buddha nature, but that's not true. It's... stress is just as much a part of this reality. So I think what you're saying is really, really, really important for the integrative part of practice that um, nothing is excluded.
Adrian: Yeah. And I also, I want to explore that quote with you for a minute because that's a very famous quote and it's one that's often cited and I think it speaks to something beautiful and also maybe a [00:13:00] pitfall of the path for modern practitioners or just, it's not wrong or right.
It's just as a modern Dharma practitioner, it's, hmm, what do I think of this? Do I actually believe this? Do I want to make sense of it? And there's something about it where Buddhism is a perfection model. You know, this idea that the great way is not difficult for those who don't have preferences. It's like transcendence. I'm going to get to this perfect state of equanimity where I don't have preferences, or to be more precise, okay, I don't have attachment to preferences.
Brooke: hmm. Mm hmm.
Adrian: But, you know, and this really jumped out at me, actually, there's a number of ways it jumps out.
So, for example, when I first read Dogen, you
know, um, there's actually, there's this section where he talks about, these are the ideal conditions for meditating. And he talks about having the room at a certain temperature.
Brooke: mm hm. Mm hmm.
Adrian: And that
immediately struck me because you would not write that if you're a Theravada Buddhist, that right there would be a reflection of your attachment to preferences [00:14:00] and the fact that you weren't truly liberated because you should be able to meditate in a hot monastery in Burma with mosquitoes
and it's all fine whether
it's hot, whether it's cold.
And so, uh, I think there's something... like what's the goal
of Dharma practice? And that's what I'd love to ask you. Is it total liberation or
is it, um, yeah, the goal is liberation, but it's actually what we're developing is expansion to
hold the paradox of our desires to be not
so reactive, but actually, you
know what, I'm human. I have a nervous system and it's okay to have preferences.
Brooke: Yeah.
Yeah.
Adrian: make sense of those teachings as a, that statement as a Dharma teacher
Brooke: Yeah,
this is really, it's really rich territory. I'm glad you're, you're bringing us right into this because it's, it's, again, it feels really alive and really important. And this is usually where the conversation leads eventually is, um,
And the reason, sometimes [00:15:00] it's translated, the great way is not difficult for those without preferences, and I always use the translation when I quote that the great way is not difficult for those not attached to their preferences. Because we all have preferences and like I said, it's a lifelong, humbling practice to notice them. Especially the preference to not have preferences.
So this is what, this is where it gets into that funny paradoxical land because that's a preference too. Like to prefer to be slightly lightly removed from the human experience and not have preferences...
Oh, the great way is easy for me because I don't have that human thing going on, or I've relinquished all my preferences. But I think that the real heart of that quote is to notice and include and possibly, include the opposite of not having preferences and fully, you [00:16:00] know, also fully embrace limitations, preferences, desires, delusions.
And And so, the moment in the history of Buddhism where Nirvana and samsara started to be embraced as one thing. That's a, that's a really important flavor of Zen. And the goal is not transcendence. The goal is not transcendence.
The goal is realizing ever present transcendence already here in order to more freely, so there's, there is freedom from that we can realize, And simultaneously that, in my experience, enables more wholehearted freedom to be the messy parts of myself and have compassion and humor for them.
And that is more the goal of the Zen path is the bodhisattva that we chant to is Kanzeon, who is the [00:17:00] bodhisattva of compassion.
So, This practice is for having more skillful, compassionate, liberated, natural, spontaneous response to this moment. And that might be to do something... like if you were hurting, I might give you a hug or listen to you or, you know, my son is upstairs, he just needed some food. So between teaching and this, I ran up and, um, Just made him some food.
And it can also look like not, not doing something. So part of the training is to, to feel the discernment and the stability to not react, not respond, and just be with, and just witness.
So the liberation and the transcendence is part of the realization, but it's not the whole thing. It's part of the, the, um, open heart that moves toward relieving suffering or witnessing it. Just being with it if it can't be relieved.
And also a huge [00:18:00] part of the practice, a huge part of the goal is play. It's like recognizing fundamentally, this doesn't make sense and we don't have to figure it out. And it's really funny and weird and sexy. And there's a lot to enjoy and laugh about and play inside of.
And there's a lot of pain, and there's a lot of ache, and so just being available, I mean it's as simple as that, it's like being available to respond in a way that meets the moment. that.
was kind of a mouthful, so,
Adrian: No, I like that a lot. You know, one thing that I heard in it was it reminded me. that transcendence isn't the whole picture. It reminded me of the way my teacher Douglas Brooks would frame what we've learned from a lot of these traditions, and he'd call it the archetypally masculine and the archetypally feminine, you know, and it's a paradox.
It's not one or the other. It's, we have this desire for freedom or transcendence, and then we also have this desire for intimacy or connection. [00:19:00] And there's no perfect spot at which we can land a lot of times their intention,
you know
Brooke: Yeah.
Adrian: We want to be close in relationship, but then we also want autonomy in our personal space, a lot of these desires are in conflict and I think a lot of what we're opening to is paradox and being intimate with, this is another thing, Zen thing, we're being intimate with uncertainty.
Brooke: mm hmm,
Adrian: And if we think about
religion or spirituality through like psychological development, it seems like that's a big next step because what you have at kind of like an adolescent stage, we could think of cycle of religion is basically certainty. It's dogma.
It's, this is my truth, this is my way.
And,
just as adolescents become more comfortable when they become adults holding, you know, complexity and shades of
gray. I
think we become a lot more intimate with uncertainty and that paradox of [00:20:00] desire. And I'm hearing that and what you're saying. If you think that's fair, I'm curious, you
know, is that a proper framing do you think, and what has Zen taught you about holding sort of the paradox of your desires within your
own life, including your creative desires.
Brooke: Mhmm, yeah, you're definitely right in hearing that, um Like the way of uncertainty and the, and the tension or the creative tension between this polarity that isn't meant to be resolved. It's, and it's not meant to be chosen between like you said, the liberation and intimacy or masculine and feminine or active and receptive. Um, one way that just showed up in teaching was, like I said, actively including the will to cultivate awakening versus releasing any effort and allowing.
So activating and allowing, there's just all these different ways of pointing to a similar set of [00:21:00] energetics that, when they both exist, they create, uh, an aliveness when they're allowed to exist. That's that tension is actually aliveness or Eros or... it also includes impermanence and uncertainty.
And what a rich territory. And also I'm noticing that interestingly, as you're bringing it up, I feel this tenderness, like for some reason I feel like I might cry and, that's part of it. And I don't, I don't understand that.
Like why just talking about this paradox between liberation and intimacy or autonomy and connection. And why does that make me feel like crying. I don't know why it's moving to include, it's moving to include opposites. And I think it is so much that's beginner's mind is like not knowing and being willing to be in that free fall.
Like Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said, the bad news is we're falling. We're in free fall. And, we don't know what's [00:22:00] going to happen next. And the good news is there is no bottom.
And that feeling of like, I don't know where this conversation is going, where where reality is going, how much longer I have with any of my loved ones or in this form, takes my breath away.
And it's why we, my particular Zen organization and my teacher so often point to awakening as an experience of aliveness, not, not enthusiasm or hyperness, but just that basic hum of beingness and "being" under concept. Not that concepts are, are bad, but the quality of animation or presence/absence, that's underneath and more fundamental than our thinking, thinking mind and that includes our thinking mind.
But I can feel when you bring up uncertainty, I can feel that like, whoo, here we are. This is, you know, it's that quality of a [00:23:00] precipice. And, that is what we're cultivating because it feels to me, just true. It feels like that's just, that's more true than beliefs.
And again, not the beliefs are bad or preferences are bad or anything, but it feels like the basic experience of aliveness here and now is, um, more true and has a, an inbuilt in my experience again, and this is something that I wouldn't want someone to believe, but that can be experienced directly through practice, that that basic aliveness has an inbuilt recognition of kinship with other beings, even those that are very different than ourselves and has an inbuilt movement toward, um, at the very least tolerance of difference and more so compassion.
I really experienced that when I'm in touch with this fundamental uncertainty [00:24:00] and vibrating aliveness, love flows naturally. So there's something about all that, that is just so incredibly profound to me.
And so real to me, that that's why I've devoted my life to practicing this, realizing this, sharing Dharma because there's nothing more meaningful, even though I don't understand it. Yeah. Wow.
Adrian: And it can feel good to rest in
that there, you can relate to it two different ways. You know, I can, I don't understand it. I'm frustrated. I'm trying to understand it. Or it's like, I don't understand it. Wow. Relax into that.
Brooke: Yeah.
Adrian: Yeah. So, talking
about play and eros and this vibrating
sense of aliveness, I love that you said vibrating sense of aliveness. It actually reminded me a lot of Kashmir Shaiva's
Shaivishakta Tantra, where there's a lot of emphasis on that.
[00:25:00] That power, that Shakti, that vibrating nature of consciousness, which is sort of pulsating in love.
And um, these are qualities that aren't so much associated with Buddhism a lot of times. I mean, they show up later, you know, I think you start to see it with, uh, early Buddhism's very ascetic. Then Mahayana, there's talk about compassion and then it shows up perhaps even more in arguably in Vajrayana, you know.
But there's really not this sense of eros in the same way that it shows up in other traditions like Sufism, you know, for example, or in Hinduism even.
And I'm curious as a poet and an artist, this feels especially important to you. And how do you bring that in to Dharma practice? So what has Dharma practice showed you or helped you to cultivate about that sense of aliveness, but then perhaps what, if anything, was missing in the tradition?
And did you have [00:26:00] to bring to it from elements of your own experience or other traditions or the arts?
Brooke: Yeah, I was thinking a moment ago that might have been more the poet and me speaking, but maybe they're also not divisible, the Zen teacher and the poet.
Because, truthfully, my experience of Zen practice, you know, it's about 15 years formally now and then a few years before that with a non dual teacher named Dorothy S. Hunt.
Um, but my experience is that there's a very vivid quality of, of course, letting go and deep relaxation on, ever deeper layers of mind and body. And, and a recognition of impermanence and that everything I track in form or subtle form goes into the void or disappears.
And tracking that can create an experience of cessation that can't even be recognized in the moment because it's...everything's [00:27:00] gone.
But in reflecting back on it, it's like, oh wow, everything disappeared. And that taste is really important of gone ness and emptiness and nothingness.
And also that is in my experience, not separate, separate from what often seems to be the opposite, which is an experience of uprising or, um, aspirational or, um, evolutionary or however we want to call it, like an uprising, erotic, um, alive feeling.
It's like emergence or a word that one of my professors in grad school used a lot was incipients, like things coming into being. This quality of something from nothing, all the time, in every given moment, everything we're experiencing coming out of nothing and then simultaneously, impermanence and dissolution. [00:28:00]
And so, tracking both and experiencing both has been extremely tenderizing and, enlightening for lack of a better word, to, to really experience nothingness, but then also the fullness and how, how, you know, that's not, that's also not the goal. And if I try to hang on to this pleasurable, full feeling, that's going to be its own trap.
But noticing that fullness arises and then empties out into nothing. And there's some kind of, you know, Shunyata is a, is a Sanskrit word that often gets translated to emptiness with a lot of Western Dharma teachers. But these days I hear it also, Joan Halifax, Roshi Joan Halifax from Upaya Zen Center often uses the word boundlessness instead.
And, and the root of Shunyata has this meaning of swollenness. It's like the etymological root, it has something to do with [00:29:00] swollenness almost like a pregnant quality.
Almost like a pregnant womb and so I think emptiness can not tell the whole story sometimes to Western Dharma students. Cause feels like, oh, my practice should be quiet. I had a student yesterday just like, oh, it's not quiet. It's like, that's okay. that's okay.
It's okay. It's fine. Quiet, quiet is always here. As whatever noise, whatever forms come. And quiet, , and as much as we just read Rebecca Lee's book, Illumination, she's a Chan teacher, teaches silent illumination. Chan led to Zen, uh, was, originated in China and then became Zen in Japan.
in silent illumination, silence is ever present and silence is simply not adding reaction to whatever forms are here. So it's just being with, being intimately with, [00:30:00] the inherent illumination of everything and the ever present silence.
So, to answer your question, I think Eros has been a huge part of my creative life always, and something that I've noticed is it seems to be a fundamental feature of reality that arises and generates life and forms and recombines existing forms into new forms.
And can be achy and tense and can also be really blissful and just like everything, it comes and goes. And so if it's held in that spirit, it can be a beautiful energy to participate with and can give a lot of luminosity and radiance to what can otherwise feel a bit cold or inert. You know, sometimes when people are practicing, they're like, it feels stale, feels dry.
And if we can include [00:31:00] the natural waves of erotic energy, creative energy, creative tension, those will come and we can allow them to come and go. And then they, they keep our practice feeling, juicy and radiant, like I said.
in terms of the Zen tradition, there is erotic, there are erotic threads.
Um, "Crow With No Mouth," do you know that poetry book?
Adrian: No,
Brooke: is it's it's written by a Zen master named Ikkyu, who was quite a rebel. I think he was in the 17th, 1700s in Japan, I might be wrong about timing.
But he was a very rebellious-- he was a very wakeful Zen master, an abbot of a temple. He was in charge. He was recognized to be so realized that he was put in charge. And then he would go through phases where he would just leave the temple and go drink. And he had many lovers who were prostitutes that he would write these love poems [00:32:00] for.
He was really in the, the grit and the kind of, um, shadows of Zen culture then, but he wrote all this poetry about it. About being so in love with the prostitute and drinking and how, like, that's not, that's not, not Buddha.
And so, his poems are quite erotic and there's a, a Zen master named Hangzhi from China.
Adrian: How do you spell the last guy's name? Just before we move on.
Brooke: Ikkyu, I K K Y U,
Adrian: I K
K
Brooke: K
Adrian: Y
U.
Okay. Thank you.
Brooke: Um, Dogen was really inspired, Dogen was 1200s, and he was really inspired by a Chan master from China named Hangzhi, who came, I think, about a hundred years before him, and he doesn't, his writing isn't, like, typically erotic, but it's very full of light and radiance and illumination in a way that you don't hear a lot of Zen masters talk about.
I mean, the [00:33:00] word love isn't often used, and, and, you know, light is often used in conjunction with darkness, but Hangzhi talks a lot about light and illumination in a way that's kind of unique and, feels, um, you know, a bit more like Vajrayana than Zen and, and is very poetic and very inspiring.
So, you can find it if you dig into the Zen tradition, you can find light and radiance in Eros, more than is typically portrayed.
Adrian: Interesting. And how do you spell his name, by the way, in English?
Brooke: Hongzhi. H O N G Z H I
He wrote a book called Cultivating the Empty Field. That's the one that I recommend. Yeah.
Yeah.
Adrian: Yeah. It's, it's interesting as you were describing both of those guys, I thought immediately of Vajrayana and it's a similar dynamic too, [00:34:00] which is, you know, Vajrayana has the monastic, more conservative element to it, but then it's got the more rebellious on the outside, of edges, tantric figures.
And I mean, tantra was always, it was originally meant to be transgressive.
Brooke: hmm.
Adrian: And this is, I mean, this is as some people, you know, even within Vajrayana, people like Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche have talked about, there's a fundamental contradiction
in Monastic monks being tantric, right? It was actually meant to be transgressive, like Guru Rinpoche, like that, that makes sense. Like the non monastic
wild yogi figure.
But I also think there's a lot of healthy things that come from that tradition, from that conversation, right, between the more traditional and the institutional, and the more rebellious and
potentially innovative and the artists, and
so it was really interesting to hear about that within the Zen tradition.
well. So
Brooke: Mm hmm. Mm
hmm.
Adrian: there's something archetypal about that, I think, [00:35:00]
Brooke: Absolutely. Yeah,
Absolutely. And I, I, um, The way I've received the training is that there's a little bit of a developmental thing, like it helps to have, uh, a bit of a period of practice where we are saying no to certain things. And in that way, we're a bit more monastic
Adrian: definitely.
Brooke: or renunciate so that we can really stabilize and recognize what Buddha nature feels like and then what we might just be convincing ourselves buddha nature feels like. Just to really stable and deepen into the truth of this.
And then at a certain point, start to transgress and break rules and, and, and really see that that division that we set up for ourselves was like a training wheel. And we can let it go and see that what we're recognizing within these training wheels or riverbanks is true everywhere, [00:36:00] including in the skullcap that the tantric master might be drinking out of, or including in sex, including in all the things we might think of as dirty or taboo. Awakeness is also right there.
So, my teacher has a beautiful mix of training from, her Her Tibetan teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and her Zen teacher, Genpo Roshi, and so she often is sharing a really profound mix of those two paths that I've really benefited from.
Adrian: Nice. I like that. Yeah. And one thing that comes up for me as you're describing it, I'm thinking like how to, to reconcile that. What's the sort of, especially Buddhist Tantra, or, or Zen way to make sense of that, which is you can play with the boundaries and the transgressive, but there, there also needs to be an emphasis on ethics and non harming and compassion.
And it is possible to be transgressive. and non harming and
I think there's a distinction there, [00:37:00] certain things, it can be taboo and harming other people, but it can also be taboo, but not harming other people. And there's a distinction there.
And it seems if you're transgressive, but not harming and, and staying in line with those ethics, that that's a particularly perhaps okay, and even rich place to, to play with
Brooke: Yeah, yeah, thank you. It's like the more transgression, almost the more heightened intention and vows and ethical conversations need to be. Cause I think ethics function, the way I experienced ethics functioning well is in feedback loops with trusted others.
Adrian: Hmm
Brooke: Um, and so, yes, to, you know, how can we discover truth and aliveness in every context, including the transgressive and hold an intention and a, and an experiment around what is compassion... How does compassion behave right now? How does compassion move now? [00:38:00] How can I hold the wellbeing of all beings in my deepest heart right now?
Um. And, um, ironically, one other way that I, and I know you and I are both interested in this one other way that I experience, um, a certain kind of tantra is just that I'm not a monastic.
I'm a monk and a Zen teacher, but that's it's an interior thing. And we do go on retreat and everything, but we hold our, it's like we hold the monastery within ourselves, because we're, I have a career, I'm married, my kids are here, and so Tantra for me is just as much helping my kids through a fight as it might be something more about Eros or sex.
It's also just like ordinary lay life, householder way. Where it's
Adrian: Yeah.
Brooke: just like cleaning cat shit from the litter box and watching my own irritation when my kids [00:39:00] are fighting and just all this gritty, very human stuff. And how does, how does the path meet each of those moments? How do I meet those moments wholeheartedly and with compassion for myself and my kids and all of it?
Adrian: Nice.
Back to what we were saying at the beginning in terms of spirituality or meditation, it's not just about the transcendent. It's not just sacred when it's like this really high moment or not only I, but I'm in this beautiful setting on retreat
and now I'm really practicing
as opposed to when you're cleaning up after your kids.
That's
Brooke: hmm.
Adrian: as if that's a distraction from practice, you
know, most of that is practice,
Brooke: Yeah.
That is practice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. It really is.
It really is.
Adrian: Total respect for you.
Um, Yeah, in our closing minutes, you know, I'm, I'm wondering if there's anything, just to bring it back to the relationship to creativity [00:40:00] that
you want to share, whether it's how it's playing with
those boundaries and it could be boundaries of
form or things like that within your more traditional artistic background.
But yeah, how's this sense of tracking aliveness within your Dharma practice within meditation practice, Like, where's that brought you to now in your life as an artist?
Brooke: Mhmm. Well, my attention goes to sharing a poem because that feels like
Adrian: Please do that.
Brooke: an immediate way of, and of course like, one of the questions I get most often is like, what is a poem?
You know, like, I wrote this thing. Is it a poem? And so there's so many ways, like we started with meditation. There's so many ways to define what a poem is, and there's traditional ways that have to do with form.
Well, does it, is it iambic pentameter and 14 lines and rhyming ABAB? And that, that is a definition. It's not my definition at this point. My definition is that poetry is language that carries content [00:41:00] and perhaps some story, but that has a felt sense that's recognizable. That it's language carrying life force itself or carrying awake mind like that it's language that transmits or points to something beyond its content or its conceptual meaning.
So it has content and conceptual meaning, but it also is like, you know, the cliche of Zen, like it's the finger that points to the moon where you read the poem and then you end up with a sense of, wow, open awe. Um, and so I always am looking for that when I'm writing.
Am I feeling, am I feeling the mind of meditation or am I feeling a vivid, true emotion while I'm writing these words?
So, um, I had picked out a really simple poem and it's kind of old, but I think [00:42:00] it, yeah, it's kind of simple, it's not transgressive, but, um,
Adrian: Okay.
Brooke: I think it does, I think it does relate to our conversation and it's, it's also short, which I think is nice for this moment to end on.
Adrian: Nice.
Brooke: And I'll just read it once for timing, and
Adrian: Great.
Brooke: I'll just read it slowly. I actually wrote this when my first son was, I think he was one or two, and he woke up at like five in the morning from his bedroom, and he was crying, and so I had wanted to get up early to write, but I went in and nursed him and put him back to bed, and then I was sitting there feeling like, oh, my writing morning just got interrupted.
And then I looked out his window, and the moon had, the full moon had moved into the window and was like shining into the room.
Adrian: Hmm. I
Brooke: And this poem just started writing itself in my head. It was one of those that just kind of arrived. And so I, I just kept saying some of the lines over and over in my head until he was fully asleep and I could go write [00:43:00] it down.
So this is called Change, Change the Lighting.
If you can't change yourself after all the efforts, change the light by which you read your story. Exchange overhead for something softer, a lamp, a candle, a vine of shining holiday lights, and feel yourself become hugged by the fabric of shadows.
You see the darkness here has wisdom too. You see these objects around become related by the pregnant emptiness that holds them, and you. Let this light reveal the rapture of being just this. [00:44:00] Then, further still, try moonlight or no light until at last, this open, sourceless, incandescence, which you are, No matter who you think you are, will follow you from the inside, wherever you may go, however you may change, or not.
Adrian: Absolutely love that.
Brooke: Thank you.
Thank you,
Adrian: Yeah.
Brooke: thank you. It's
kind of gen. Gentle
Adrian: It is.
it's it's reminded me just really of nature of mind, to
which, you know, these basics and teachings are pointing us in. And it's, it's interesting being into ayahuasca and plant medicine,
Brooke: hmm.
Adrian: It was, of course, I'm relating to it through a nature of [00:45:00] my Buddhist perspective so they're one in the same, but
there's much about that
that you talked about the vine of lights and things. So it was,
Brooke: Hmm.
Adrian: know, that was just my meaning making of it, but I really enjoyed it.
Brooke: Awesome. Oh, good,
good.
Adrian: It was cool. Well, I'm conscious of time. Do you, um, just want to let people know where they can find you or any of your upcoming offerings.
Brooke: Sure. Yeah. Um, my personal website with poetry and meditation teaching is BrookeMcNamara.com and I always, I have some free stuff on there and I have upcoming classes and then my Zen organization that I run with my husband, Robert Daishin McNamara Sensei and my colleague, Brian Butsudo Turner Sensei is called Dragon Lake Zen and it's DragonLakeZen.Org.
Adrian: Nice.
Great name.
Brooke: Thanks.
Adrian: I like that Dragon Lake
Zen
Brooke: Thank you. Thank you. We, and we have a sister org in Vancouver called Dragon Moon Zen with Lisa Genki Gibson Sensei, and we do a lot of stuff together.[00:46:00]
Adrian: Oh, very cool.
Good to know.
Brooke: Yeah.
Adrian: Yeah. Well thanks so much Brooke, really appreciate your time.
Brooke: You're so welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. This was really fun.
Adrian: It was a pleasure. Okay. Take
Brooke: Okay. Thanks.