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Book Review
Omnipresent Gold
Assorted Poems by Lee Evans, 2012
Omnipresent Gold consists of the author's poetic gleanings
that did not appear in his previous works, and which he believes
still have value to readers. Indeed, they do. About the first
two-thirds of the short book is composed of shorter poems, and
the last one-third contains longer poems. I think the best way
to appreciate and understand the poems is to view them in a philosophical
framework, i.e. briefly describe the framework, and then examine
some individual poems in more detail. The same philosophical framework
could be discerned in other works by the author, two of which
have been reviewed by this writer on The Golden Lantern.com .
The main issue is what is traditionally called the problem
of evil. It is a theological and metaphysical issue that arises
from when tries to reconcile suffering in the world, with the
existence of an omniscient, omnipotent and loving God.
Evans approaches the problem of evil and suffering from the perspective
of Non-Dualism, an attitude in which the everyday physical
world is seen as indistinct from the All, God or the totality
of existence, however this is conceived metaphysically or theologically.
Non-dualism could be approached from two opposite directions,
what we could call the path of affirmation, and the
path of negation. While the poet treads the former path, his
fondness for the latter path is clearly revealed, in his poems
in Omnipresent Gold.
Walking along the Path of Affirmation one feels absorbed into
the All of the universe, or described in personal terms, as a
Beneficent God. The individual is not distinct from the All. In
Advaita Vedanta, this is Atman that is at one with Brahman. In
Christianity it is expressed in feelings of God's overwhelming
presence and love, so that the self feels not separated from God.
In Christianity, suffering becomes transfigured in divine light,
as the individual expands into the All, through feelings of overwhelming
love.
While the path of affirmation is the expansion of the ego into
All, the path of negation is the contraction of the self and its
obliteration; the self, becoming nothing, is not separated from
everything else by a "skin." So, this is a form of Non-dualism.
The problem of suffering is not solved, but dissolved,
for how could there be suffering if there are no abiding self,
or existing beings to experience suffering? This last theme is
expressed in the famous Three Marks of Buddhism, Impermanence,
Suffering and Non-self, which characterize the world. Impermanence
is also expressed in the famous mantra of the Buddhist Heart Sutra,
from the Mahayana tradition, Form is emptiness, and emptiness
is form (which also cited here in the poem, "Fire In
The Mountain"). It's also expressed in the Buddhist concept,
from the beginning, nothing is. Likewise modern quantum physics
declares that there is no abiding substance that exists apart
from acts of perception by sentient beings (described here, in
the poem "Einstein's Space").
Poems in this collection illustrate these differing approaches
to metaphysics and the problem of evil, and form a kind of point-counterpoint.
But point-counterpoint is really too polite to describe level
of engagement and personal involvement of the poet-narrator in
the poems. Dharma combat is a better term. Evans is relentless
in pursuing truth and exposing injustice, deception and self-deception
(nor sparing himself in this). He is zealous in exposing religious
hypocrisy. Among his object of ire here are the Christian Coalition
and the Promise Keepers (p. 26), TV religious ministries (p. 43).
The hypocrisy of bosses in the workplace is also a favored object
of scorn for him, also the subject of several poems in in his
bookMaryland Weather, reviewed earlier on TGL.
Let's consider the path of affirmation, which describes all-encompassing
divine love. A fine example of this, also a fine poem, is his
"Whispers from Heaven" (p. 22) The poem is short, and
I'll reproduce the whole poem here.
Whispers From Heaven
Amor Vincit Omnia (itals by poet)
Though jaded cynics sneer,
The Good reforms the True
And resurrects the Real.
Love conquers all:
Make perfect thy will--
Which freed from itself,
Recovers from ill.
No anger is righteous,
No vengeance is just;
No demon of hatred
Should mar thy trust.
Love without clinging,
Love without bias;
Passionless love
Redeems and refines us.
Amor Vincit Omnit:
Such is the case,
Who this realizes
The All does embrace. (p.22)
In another illustration of the path of affirmation, Evans retells
a story from Garma C.C. Chang's A Treasury of Mahayana Sutras
and writes in the final stanza:
After all, you cannot be what you are without sharing your
being with others,
And you cannot share your being with others without becoming
what they understand:
And so does the Buddha teach that all sentient beings are no
other than one sentient being, and that one sentient being is
not other than all... (p. 55)
In contrast to these poems, the poet treads the path of negation
very clearly in two back-to-back poems, "The Aggregates"
(p. 15) and "In Forests of the Night." The latter is
a wonderful poem, two pages long, and with dramatic unity. I can
only briefly allude to the Tiger here, in one stanza, as the sense
of self as separate ego:
You are the Tiger's shuddering meal,
Eaten alive
As long as you steal
Perceptions of an outer world
By means of the six sense fields. (p. 16)
The aggregates in Buddhism, are sense data supplied to the person
by their senses. I will quote in full, the short poem "The
Aggregates":
The Body
Is tainted with desire;
The feelings
Are torture to you, dear;
Perceptions
Are but hallucinations;
The Will
Decays with hope and fear.
The Consciousness
Depends on these conditions,
Albeit
"Tis you are their technician:
A sleight-of-hand
The self-deceived magician
(Composed
Of aggregates five)
To pull himself
From his own hat contrives!
One after the other, each sense is negated. When there's no thoughts,
there's empty mind. The poet's love of dharma combat shows up
in "Fire On the Mountain," which follows right after
the two preceding poems. Moses' affirmation of God as fullness,
is counterposed to the Buddhist conception of reality as empty.
I can't resist quoting the first three stanzas of "Fire On
the Mountain" here.
When Moses hearkened to his burning God
Whose word was I AM THAT I AM: BELIEVE,
He failed to see within that camouflage
The consummation of the world's conceit.
When Sariputra faced that fiery storm,
The voice that answered from within was still;
And Form is Emptiness, Emptiness Form
Arose instead, and perfect made his will.
For just as from the burning bush one flame
Arises and unto the next does cease,
Just so in this samsaric winding maze
Is threaded through the subtle path of peace.
… (p. 18)
The path of negation also includes non-resistance. In his poem
on Rasputin, the poet describes the negation of the (Nietzschian)
will to power: once the poet-narrator stops opposes Rasputin,
and identifies with him, Rasputin's power over him vanishes (p.
46):
...We gazed into his eyes and saw ourselves as Rasputin: realized
identity with him from the root of existence!
There was no duality in that insight, neither self nor other:
And he faded away like a will o'the wisp, or a waking dream....
Similarly, in "Schopenhauerian Romance," the poet-narrator
writes about his attachment to his lover:
If he had realized
That her will had been his own
From before the world's foundation,
He could have escaped the fatality
of their mutual fascination.
He could have denied himself,
And attained the guiltless freedom
That was his birthright
Before the apparition of her soul
Evolved from his deathlike sleep" (p. 33)
To summarize the book's theme, nondualist consciousness could
be approached via these two paths of affirmation or negation,
ultimately confirmed on the level of the individual higher consciounsess.
What guides us on both paths, and also afterwards, if we look
at teachers of the past, the Buddha, the Christ, and the world's
great teachers, is compassion toward our fellow beings. With this
in mind, we'll end with the final stanza from the very first poem
in the book, "The Bodhisattva Makes His Vows":
From this moment on, I promise you
I will not yield to the wellsprings
Of violence and cruelty within me:
I will make them dry and barren,
And no more a threat to you.
I will protect you by radiating
Lovingkindness, Compassion,
Sympathetic Joy, Equanimity,
Throughout the universe -
Until the truth that makes us free
Transmutes our suffering into Nirvana. (p. 2)
Lee Evan's latest book of poetry, Omnipresent Gold is another
fine and very readable collection of his poems. It is available
on Amazon.com.
Omnipresent Gold
Assorted Poems by Lee Evans, 2012
Reviewed by Paul Dolinsky
Editor, The Golden Lantern
editor@thegoldenlantern.com
http://thegoldenlantern-blog.tumblr.com
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