Kintsugi, noun, (Kint-soo-gee): “golden repair”
As if it arrived in time to teach me a lesson, I encountered the Japanese word two times in one month last year, once in a magazine on wholeness and again in a book by a young woman who was raped. It refers to the ancient Japanese technique of putting together the broken pieces of a bowl or a cup with gold thread and lacquer or resin. We can infer different meanings or metaphors from it. Life is not entirely perfect or whole; it is composed of broken pieces that we mended together, shards that became a part of ourselves, a part of who we are, or part of our relationships. The restored self is made whole from life’s experiences. We see the blemishes: they are repaired with love and gentleness. When we look at what we have threaded and glued together we see something new; we also remember that it came from a painful past, a time of anger and bitterness that was transformed through love. We have created a stronger bowl or cup and it’s even more beautiful. I have a saucer that I glued together: I am still using it along with my miniature tea set from China. Our body covers the wounds with scars. As we go through life, we suffer tragedies, tribulations, traumas or learn lessons that become a part of our psyche. We speak of a broken heart when we are rejected. Yet we survive and are healed because we bring our will and hopes inside of us to face the trials we fear we cannot endure.
Thanks to the magazine “Magnolia” and the book “Know My Name” by Chanel Miller for featuring this word, the first in its special issue on wholeness and the second in its dust cover.
My attention was called to another Japanese word last year. “Karumi,” related to the poetics of the haiku master Matsuo Basho, means “simple but lovely.” Like kintsugi, it evolved a different concept of aesthetics, the self and health.
There must be an odd pattern, indeed a synchronicity, in the way these Japanese words entered my awareness and vocabulary recently. I bought the book “Basho and his Interpreters” by Ueda for a Filipino friend last November.There was only one copy left at the Barnes and Noble warehouse. Published in the 1990s a copy of the book, now dog-eared, is in my library. I read it when I was exploring the world of Japanese poetry and I was writing haiku myself. I was also doing renga with fellow poets. There were other books that discussed the haiku, among them, Yoel Hofmann’s “Japanese Death Poems” and Roland Barthes’ “The Empire of Signs.”
Another apparent synchronicity: on my last full day in the Philippines Jenny Romero Llaguno took me to the Wednesday group at Café Havana In Greenbelt 3. I understand it was started by Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, the
famous writer. I was introduced to Lirio Calixto (for the second time in a monrh), Gemma Cruz Araneta, Rony Diaz and a couple of other people (for the first time) whose name I cannot remember. Jimmy Yambao and Toti Que, old friends from the university, were there too. Nelson Navarro (my tribute is reprinted in the Writings section of the website) was part of this group, I heard. There was talk going on around the long table and I was just listening to everything. But I did have a little, but wonderful, conversation with Esperanza Ramirez, Japan scholar and author of Heart’s Flower, the biography and poetry of Shenkei, a Buddhist monk. I bought a copy of her book when it first came out in 1994. I told her I had just given a friend (Temy Rivera) a copy of Makoto Ueda’s Basho and His Interpreters
and she said her translations are better. I asked her if she agrees with “Empire of Signs” by Roland Barthes and she said,Totally. She did mention the Japanese appreciation for the concept of “Emptiness” (or mushin in Japanese, wuxin in Chinese) in Zen. I did not know much about her but she was one of the most interesting people I met in the Philippines or anywhere. But we never have enough time for important things. She’s renovating a house in Makati. So perhaps I’ll see her again. I wanted her to see a video of myself doing Tai chi chuan forms like the sword but I was leaving the Philippines the next day.
Dear Karen,
Vic Ramos, a friend in the Philippines, wanted to host a 79th birthday party for me at his condo in Greenbelt, Makati, Philippines. He asked me if I wanted to invite anybody. I said, “I would like to invite Frankie
Llaguno, an old friend from the university, but he is dead. I would like to invite Ed Maranan, another college friend, but he is dead too.”
Everybody I thought of inviting among my contemporaries had passed away. I said, “Let’s invite Jennifer, Frank’s widow, I have not seen her in a long time.” So we ended up inviting the widows and eventually the wives as well. It was the first time we had women in our Conclave that only aging men attend. Eventually, we also got Bessie Aguirre, Bayani Aguirre’s widow, and Nel Ramos and Lolit Navarro to come.
It was actually quite wonderful because for the first time, too, we did not talk about our medications and ailments!
At least not as much.
We have to adapt to change. After my cardiac by-pass in August I realized that I may not be able to do my Tai chi chuan weapons forms for a long time. But after about 5 months I decided it was not so bad after all. There are many things I can do with my time. I can write another essay or another book of poetry. I can study the piano or the flute. I decided to research the astrology of Jose Rizal, national hero of the Philippines. A Taoist friend is helping me. So this is another challenge at my age. I know I’ll never run out of things to do. My mind is big enough to embrace the world. But I have to look for something that I am happy with, something meaningful. As you get older, you may feel a sense of being increasingly irrelevant. At clan gatherings, you sit in one corner or in the middle of conversations swirling around you and listen to the young relatives talking about their own issues and interests. Like you, your lifetime of experience and knowledge also sits idly by feeling totally ignored.
It is really easy now, in these senior years, to let things go. For me anyway. Eventually, my collection of books, swords, artifacts, status, reliquaries and paintings will go somewhere. I’ve already donated 2000 hardcover books to the Carlos P. Romulo Memorial Library and Museum in Tarlac, my hometown in the Philippines. That was very easy for me to do because I know my townspeople need the books more than I do. I used to go to the town library when I was in, high school but there were very few books in the shelves, At the library book sale here in Easton, PA last December I bought books for Young Adults and Children. They will go to the CPR library too. As for my swords there are the people I know who do martial arts. I have given away a few swords to my students in Manila.
When I went to Boston to study acupuncture and Tai chi chuan in 1989 I left my weapons – swords, staffs, chain whips, spears, halberds, a Philippine kris — with one of my students. He mounted them on one wall of his dojo. They are still hanging there. I gave away my Rolex Oyster Datajust, my car, a Greek gold ring of Athena, a replica of the sword in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and several swords and 2 phurbas. I never did notice a void in their absence.
So there is always something that happens for the best. We may not realize it soon enough but as we get older, it is easier to let go and adapt. There is also another lesson we have to learn: ultimately our life is our legacy; and our legacy is what we give away.
Much love,
Rene
I met with the staff and director of INAM Philippines, the organizer of my seminars in the Philippine for the last 20
years. I do not know if it is really going to happen but they are planning to include Universal Healing Tao teachings
like Chi Nei Tsang internal organs manipulation and Microcosmic Orbit and Tai chi Chuan DaoRen and DragonWell
Qigong in their curriculum and clinic. It was the best thing that happened during my last visit.
List of reading materials:
The Paris Review (Winter 2019 issue)
Salamander (Fall-Winter 2019-2020)
The Bitter Oleander (Vol 5, #2)
Pigu Chi Kung: Inner Alchemy Fasting by Mantak Chia and Christine Harkness-Giles
Greatest Kan and Li: Gathering the Cosmic Light by Mantak Chia and Andrew Jan
Lapham’s Quarterly (on Memory)
Buddhadharma Journal (Fall 2019)
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (with audio)
Paula Arai, Painting Enlightenment: Visions of the Heart Sutra
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche
I never expected to be at St Luke’s Hospital Meals for Older Adults. But there I was in the queue for the salad and soup and a Mexican entrée, along with other seniors. $3.99 for the meal plus a small glass of soda and a slice of pie for dessert.
Flash back to 1971: I was running a 2-hour, twice a week, church project, a “recreation” class for children. But my first job in the US was as a nurse’s aide at a Nursing Home across from where I lived in Neptune, NJ. It was standing on a hill, a 2-story building in an empty lot a walking distance from Shop Rite.
I worked 2-3 days a week, or more depending on when I was needed. I started on the morning shift to train for the job. A man gave me a list of things I had to do. He showed me how to give the residents a shower and dress them, how to use the wipes and the towels, drain the urinals, and how to fix the beds in the morning. I was later assigned to the graveyard shift, 11 PM to 7 AM. It wasn’t as busy as the morning shift but one had to stay up almost all night because there were elderly residents who needed help. A couple would have digested problems, many would have urinary incontinence; so I had to clean them and change the bedsheets.
I remember a Jewish couple who were residents. I used to sit with the wife at the TV room after dinner. She sat on a wheel chair. She loved poetry and occasionally we would read together. A stroke resulted in a speech impediment but it did not prevent her from reading. The husband, also the survivor of a stroke, loved to talk. He would tell me that when he got out of the nursing home he will go back to his work selling real estate. It was the same thing he told me all the time.
Hi!
We’ve had a mild weather the last few days. While working on the website posts, I was thinking of the Tao Garden in Chiangmai and the village of Doi Saket. Every day at dawn during the millennium, I would practice the Classical Yang family system at dawn: Solo 108 slow fist form, Tai chi chuan Chang Chuan (the old form) and the weapons — Broadsword, Straight Sword and spear/staff. Master Lao Cang Wen would be passing by, dressed in his white silk wu-shu uniform, singing. He would go to the other side and do his own forms. One time, Lao shifu took me outside the Tao Garden, bought some candles, and brought me to a small Buddhist temple that had the statue of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy. He and I lighted some candles and incense. He led me through a ritual of worship, the sequence of which I cannot describe. Until now, I do not know why he did it. He spoke no English, I spoke no Chinese, but we managed somehow to communicate. On the way back to the Tao Garden, we passed two giant tamarind trees wrapped at the trunk with a cloth. We sat at one of the stores where he bought two bottles of beer and had a toast! He invited me to his place later and taught me a form of Qigong. It is a mystery to me, but I appreciate the experience and his generosity.
Here is a posture from the Shaolin form “The Fairy Child Praying to the Goddess of Mercy Guanyin” that I learned from two Chinese masters – Johnny Chiuten and Lao Kim — in the Philippines back in the 1960s. I have not seen a form like it anywhere anytime. I suspect it is a temple, not a family, form because my teacher Lao Kim studied in a Buddhist temple in Fukien Province.
I have included a short essay about GM Mantak Chia of the Universal Healing Tao and a poltical opinion “Prometheus – Bound” in the Writings section.