A lovely transcendental Dream Song
about the experience of being a teacher. I’m not quite sure what the
abbreviation “p.a.” stands for, but from the way it’s used I can only surmise
the “a” is assistant, and most people who have been through college at a big
university have experience with Indian teaching assistants, or from Japan,
China, Africa, etc. That they’re a kind of weapon against the birds—you go in
to teach every day, like going into battle again and again, against the vast,
implacable birdshit tide of innocent ignorance your students drag into the room
with them. But the burden of battle changes to something different and better
when a classroom starts clicking.
A “ghat” is a series of steps
that leads down to water, like the holy Ganges. A “saddhu” is a holy person,
and an online source tells us that, “The term ‘Mahamudra’ is Sanskrit. ‘Maha’
means ‘great’ and refers to great bliss, and ‘mudra’ means ‘non-deceptive’ and
refers to emptiness.” The invocation of maha mudra is meant to do more than
invoke images of India, through the person of the p.a. The holiness of the reference
keeps ringing in the poem and it sets up the last two lines, “smiles & a
passion of their & his eyes flew / in feelings not ever accorded solely to
oneself.” That’s the point of it: When teaching is going well, when all your
training and passion are brought to bear and the students are responding, your
ego steps out of the way. You are “beside yourself.” You’ve tapped into the
flow and joy of learning that stretches back for thousands and thousands of
unbroken years. That is the ideal. It doesn’t always happen. On those rare days
when it does, you do indeed (ideally) become empty of ego and all that mean desire
for attention. You’re an instrument. Teaching is an art, and artists know that
the best moments are when you become a conduit for something bigger that has
arrived—the Muses pay a visit, you hear voices in your head and let them speak,
your fingers play the music by themselves, you become the character, the brush moves of its own accord. This is
what it means to become a transparent eyeball. And when you come to a resting place
you look up at the canvas in wonder and ask where in the world did that come from? How did that happen? Did I do that? And the
answer to that question is, no, but you still get credit for it! Because your
discipline and passion have facilitated that passage, and isn’t it wonderful?
You and your students have together been offered a gift: community with the spirit
of the ages.
(My gratitude to Mr. Emerson this
morning.)
[Addendum, next day: I'll do this just once. Reading B.'s biography this morning, I suddenly find that he taught in India, and DS 24 chronicles his experiences there. Oh... Teaching over the calls of raucous crows, visiting a leper colony, the "p.a."s a "public address" aid to overcome the crows' noise, his being "summed up" and dismissed by his Indian professor colleagues, who could not entertain the notion that America had a literature worth considering. It's all very specific. There is much of autobiography in the Dream Songs. If I miss something, from now on, I'll let it slide. I still like my exuberant response, flailing as it does through a fog of innocent ignorance. There is always so much to learn!]
[Addendum, next day: I'll do this just once. Reading B.'s biography this morning, I suddenly find that he taught in India, and DS 24 chronicles his experiences there. Oh... Teaching over the calls of raucous crows, visiting a leper colony, the "p.a."s a "public address" aid to overcome the crows' noise, his being "summed up" and dismissed by his Indian professor colleagues, who could not entertain the notion that America had a literature worth considering. It's all very specific. There is much of autobiography in the Dream Songs. If I miss something, from now on, I'll let it slide. I still like my exuberant response, flailing as it does through a fog of innocent ignorance. There is always so much to learn!]
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