Poetry from A Thousand Days of Tantra by Keith Emmons

I was introduced to Keith Emmons’ poetry last year when I met him through a mutual acquaintance. He shared a few poems with me and I instantly resonated with the way Keith captures the present moment with discernment. The initial poems I read reminded me a little of Jane Hirshfield’s poetry. When I learned that the poems came from poems written during a three year tantric retreat, I was instantly curious. Late last year, Emmons self-published these poems in his collection titled A Thousand Days of Tantra: Inside Three-Year Retreat. As he says, “The beauty of three-year retreat is expressed here in poetry” (p. 9).

The collection is made up of two books: Deer Park Poems and The Lady Sangmo Trilogy. Both collections present the first-hand experience of a three year, three month, and three day silent retreat conducted by Emmons and his tantric partner, herein named Lady Sangmo. The ‘thousand day” retreat is a central practice in Vajrayana Buddhism that involves intensive daily practice of Vajrayana methods like deity yoga, mantra recitation, and Mahamudra/Dzogchen, including focused study of Prajñāpāramitā or Perfection of Wisdom Sutras. Emmons and his committed partner added tantric practices to their retreat. As Emmons describes it, “A Thousand Days of Tantra is a unique presentation of an authentic long term retreat experience, conducted according to scripture, that is accessible and, hopefully, enticing to all” (p. 9).

Unique presentation indeed. Emmons writes in both free and rhyming verse, which is refreshing given the amount of free verse that seems to be preferred by contemporary poets. The images he creates are at once wistful and grounded in a reality reflective of a Buddhist worldview. And sometimes the poems are so intimate that they seem hardly appropriate of Buddhist poetry, until the reader remembers the tantric context, as if the only way to free oneself of desire is to relish in it.

What I appreciate most about Emmons’ poems is the way he transports the reader, bringing them along with him on retreat. Take for example this poem:

Day after day lifting the pink Post-it 
and placing it at the next chapter - 
as if going anywhere in a text 
is going anywhere. Do the hills 
go anywhere, verdant with giant redwoods 
as mist advances up the valley 
from the sea, cascades over the ridge 
then silently recedes? Yellow beams 
soften the haze, then diamonds sparkle 
from moist bay leaves suspended in air. 
I know each day something stays still; 
each day something goes away (p. 34).

In the page before this poem the reader learns that Emmons is reading the Diamond Cutter Sutra (Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra) which is part of the Prajñāpāramitā. In the poem presented here, Emmons grapples with the notion of spiritual progress. Emmons creates friction by contrasting his experience of reading a Buddhist sacred text in a progressive linear fashion with terrain imagery that does not really “go anywhere”. The reader is brought up short on the path of the poem with the last two lines that resolve the tension between the text-based spiritual practice and the cyclical, fluid natural world by echoing a key teaching in the Diamond Cutter Sutra: ultimate reality is empty of inherent existence, and all phenomena are in constant flux (interdependent).

The seeming simplicity of the images and phases in this poem reflect all of Emmons’ collection. Perhaps a review that graces the back of the book and summarizes the collection will work best to entice readers to lose themselves in Emmons’ imagery: “I love especially the weaving of light and bird song, love making and wisdom texts, with turns of phrase and rhythm that startle and give strength over and over to your lines. You truly have made a pure land and sharing these echoes of it in this work is a great gift you are offering.” — written by Francesca Hampton, author of Buddha on a Midnight Sea and Leo Learns to Meditate.

Reading Buddhism in English Literature

Usually I write about fiction that is clearly Buddhist because of intertextuality between Buddhist sacred texts and stories and works of fiction in the West. But there is growing research and writing about reading Western literature, both poetry and fiction, through a Buddhist lense. I first noticed this lense used in John Wolff’s book The Driftwood Shrine:

Sensai John Gendo Wolff. The Driftwood Shrine: Discovering Zen in American Poetry by John Gendo Wolff, Sensei. Foreword by Gerry Shishin Wick, Roshi. Ottawa, Canada: Sumeru Press, Inc. June, 2016.

Representing the West’s evolving understanding of Buddhism, Wolff discovers Zen in works by such poets as Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, and H.D., Richard Wright.

Then, as is Wolff’s book was foreshadowing a burst of interest in this area, there were four different works published in 2022 about reading Western literature through a Buddhist lense. They are listed alphabetically below.

Lauren Shufran, Ph.D. The Buddha and the Bard: Where Shakespeare’s Stage Meets Buddhist Scriptures. San Rafael, CA: Mandala Publishing, 2022.

Part of the book blurb reads: "Lauren Shufran explores the fascinating interplay of Western drama and Eastern philosophy by pairing quotes from Shakespeare with the tenets of an Eastern spiritual practice, sparking a compelling dialogue between the two."

Dean Sluyter. The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics. San Francisco: New World Publishing, 2022.

Here is the marketing hook from the Amazon blurb: "Suppose we could read Hemingway as haiku . . . learn mindfulness from Virginia Woolf and liberation from Frederick Douglass . . . see Dickinson and Whitman as buddhas of poetry, and Huck Finn and Gatsby as seekers of the infinite . . . discover enlightenment teachings in Macbeth, The Catcher in the Rye, Moby-Dick, and The Bluest Eye."

Pamela Winfield. “To Tame an Ox or to Catch a Fish: A Zen Reading of the Old Man and the Sea” in The Theory and Practice of Zen Buddhism, Eds. Charles Prebish and On-Cho Ng Springer, 2022 pp. 275-298.

Winfield uses the famous ten ox-herding pictures by the twelfth century Chan master Guoan Shiyuan as an analytical frame for understanding Ernest Hemingway’s modern literary classic, The Old Man and the Sea.

Sang-Keun Yoo. PhD Dissertation, Graduate Program in English – University of California-Riverside, 2022. Dissertation title: “Speculative Orientalism: Zen and Tao in American New Wave Science Fiction.”

Yoo's dissertation traces the genealogy of a type of Orientalism found in American New Wave science fiction published between the 1950s and the 1970s, including works by authors such as William S. Burroughs, Samuel R. Delany, and Philip K. Dick.

I will keep my eyes wide open for any further research and writing in this area, as I think it is an interesting indicator of how Buddhism is influencing the Western social imaginary.