The other day, Anne, my yoga teacher began class by saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears. So says Lao Tzu.” I couldn’t stop myself from correcting her, “Nope, he never said that.” “Who said it then?” she asked. “No one knows. I am guessing fake Lao Tzu? In other words, someone who wanted to attribute the saying to a great thinker instead of himself or herself, and so he or she did?”
I should have kept my mouth shut. Anne wanted to attach the saying to a name of a great teacher, a name we all know and respect. But I like the idea of fake Lao Tzu. For the purposes of poetry or yoga, I think, Why not invent a guru who tells you what to do, think, write. It was the idea of fake Lao Tzu that inspired me to invent Our Lady of the Orgasm.
Inventing famous writers or poets is the kind of game the fabulous LA poet, Rick Bursky, often plays. David Lehman is also an admirer of poetic mischief.
But I do not want to suggest that one should not honor one’s true teachers.
One of my favorite teachers, Dr. Jay Williams, a professor of Religious Studies at Hamilton College, died last summer, and I have been thinking of him a lot lately–of all that he taught me. I could say I majored in Dr. Williams—I took every class he taught and spent countless hours in his office, debating passages from Hegel or Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, Martin Buber . . .
A poet himself Dr. Williams told me once that he had frequent dreams in which a woman read him her poetry out loud. Sometimes she handed him poems to transcribe. When he woke in the morning, the poems were still in his mind, and he wrote them down. “But how do you remember your dreams in such detail?” I asked. “Oh, you can do that. All you have to do is keep a pen by the bed. Before you close your eyes, remind yourself the pen is there, waiting.”
It’s true. Keep a pen by your bed. Consider it your magic pen.
One of my favorite memories of Dr. Williams: one spring break when I took the plane trip home, I was carrying the book, God, the Problem by the Harvard theologian, Gordon Kaufman, a book I was reading for Dr. William’s class. That book turned out to be a problem. Anyone who saw it felt licensed to tell me about their personal relationship with Jesus. “Are you saved?” my seat-mate asked. So, before my return trip, I covered the word, God, taping over it the word, Poetry. Poetry, the Problem. No one bothered me after that.
Seeing the book, Dr. Williams was delighted by its new title. “They are very much the same,” he said. “Poetry, like God, is a mystery. Both demand discipline or disciple-ship. Focus. Time, space, quiet. Elevated language. Then he added: “You are lucky to be studying poetry. Luckier if you can devote your life to it.” He told me that in Buddhism, it is believed that those who have time to study and practice the dharma are considered the luckiest and wealthiest of all.
I do feel so very lucky.
Go to Source
Author: Nin Andrews
