Contact Us
Table of Contents
Search Site
Google listing of all pages on this website
Site Map
Toby
Johnson's Facebook page
Toby
Johnson's YouTube channel
Toby Johnson on Wikipedia
Toby
Johnson Amazon Author Page
Secure site at
https://tobyjohnson.com
Also on this
website:
As an Amazon Associate
I earn from qualifying purchases.
Toby
Johnson's books:
Toby's books are available as ebooks from
smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc.
FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned
from Joseph Campbell: The
Myth
of the
Great Secret
III
GAY
SPIRITUALITY:
The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
GAY PERSPECTIVE:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the
Universe
SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with
wonderful "aliens" with an
Afterword by Mark Jordan
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:
A
Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods
THE FOURTH QUILL, a
novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil
TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with
the
Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams
CHARMED
LIVES: Spinning Straw into
Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with
Steve Berman and some 30 other writers
THE MYTH OF THE GREAT
SECRET:
An
Appreciation of Joseph Campbell
IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE
SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey
Unpublished manuscripts
About ordering
Books on
Gay Spirituality:
White
Crane Gay Spirituality Series
Articles
and Excerpts:
Review of Samuel
Avery's The
Dimensional Structure of Consciousness
Funny
Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco"
About Liberty Books, the
Lesbian/Gay Bookstore for Austin, 1986-1996
The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate
A
Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality
Why gay people should NOT Marry
The Scriptural Basis for
Same Sex Marriage
Toby and Kip Get Married
Wedding Cake Liberation
Gay Marriage in Texas
What's ironic
Shame on the American People
The "highest form of love"
Gay Consciousness
Why homosexuality is a sin
The cause of homosexuality
The
origins of homophobia
Advice to Future Gay
Historians
Q&A
about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness
What
is homosexuality?
What
is Gay Spirituality?
My three
messages
What
Jesus said about Gay
Rights
Queering
religion
Common
Experiences Unique to Gay
Men
Is there a "uniquely gay
perspective"?
The
purpose of homosexuality
Interview on the Nature of
Homosexuality
What the Bible Says about
Homosexuality
Mesosexual
Ideal for Straight Men
Varieties
of Gay Spirituality
Waves
of Gay Liberation Activity
The Gay Succession
Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian?
The Reincarnation of
Edward Carpenter
Queer
men, myths and Reincarnation
Was I (or you) at
Stonewall?
Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality
as Artistic Medium
Easton Mountain Retreat Center
Andrew Harvey &
Spiritual Activism
The Mysticism of
Andrew Harvey
The
upsidedown book on MSNBC
Enlightenment
"It's
Always About You"
The myth of the Bodhisattva
Avalokitesvara
Joseph
Campbell's description of
Avalokiteshvara
You're
Not A Wave
Joseph Campbell Talks
about Aging
Toby's Experience of
Zen
What is Enlightenment?
What is reincarnation?
What happens at Death?
How many lifetimes in an
ego?
Emptiness & Religious Ideas
Experiencing experiencing experiencing
Going into the Light
Meditations for a Funeral
Meditation Practice
The way to get to heaven
Buddha's father was right
What Anatman means
Advice to Travelers to India
& Nepal
The Danda Nata
& goddess Kalika
A Funny Story:
The Rug Salesmen of Istanbul
Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva
John Boswell was Immanuel Kant
Cutting
edge realization
The Myth of the
Wanderer
Change: Source of
Suffering & of Bliss
World Navel
What the Vows Really
Mean
Manifesting
from the Subtle Realms
The Three-layer
Cake
& the Multiverse
The
est Training and Personal Intention
Effective
Dreaming in Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven
Drawing a Long Straw:
Ketamine at the Mann Ranch
Alan Watts &
Multiple Solipsism
Gay
Spirituality
Curious
Bodies
What
Toby Johnson Believes
The
Joseph Campbell Connection
The
Mann Ranch (& Rich Gabrielson)
Campbell
& The Pre/Trans Fallacy
The
Two Loves
The
Nature of Religion
What's true about
Religion
Being
Gay is a Blessing
Drawing Long Straws
Freedom
of Religion
The
Gay Agenda
Gay
Saintliness
Gay
Spiritual Functions
The subtle workings of the spirit
in gay men's lives.
The Sinfulness of
Homosexuality
Proposal
for a study of gay nondualism
Priestly Sexuality
Having a Church to
Leave
Harold Cole on Beauty
Marian Doctrines:
Immaculate Conception & Assumption
Not lashed to the
prayer-post
Monastic or Chaste
Homosexuality
The Monastic Schedule: a whimsy
Is It Time to Grow
Up? Confronting
the Aging Process
Notes on Licking
(July, 1984)
Redeem Orlando
Gay Consciousness changing
the
world by Shokti LoveStar
Alexander Renault
interviews Toby
Johnson
Mystical Vision
"The
Evolution of Gay Identity"
"St. John of the
Cross & the Dark Night of
the Soul."
Avalokiteshvara
at the Baths
Eckhart's Eye
Let Me
Tell You a Secret
Religious
Articulations of the
Secret
The
Collective Unconscious
Driving as
Spiritual Practice
Meditation
Historicity
as Myth
Pilgrimage
No
Stealing
Next
Step in Evolution
The
New Myth
The Moulting of the Holy Ghost
Gaia
is a Bodhisattva
Sex with God
Merging Religion and Sex
Revolution Through
Consciousness Change: GSV 2019
God as Metaphor
More Metaphors for God
A non-personal
metaphor God
The Hero's
Journey
The
Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016
The Gay Hero Journey
(shortened)
You're
On Your Own
Superheroes
Seeing
Differently
Teenage
Prostitution and the Nature of Evil
Allah
Hu: "God is present here"
Adam
and Steve
The Life is
in the Blood
Gay retirement and the "freelance
monastery"
Seeing with
Different Eyes
Facing
the Edge: AIDS as an occasion for spiritual wisdom
What
are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?
A Different Take on Leathersex
Seeing Pornography Differently
The Vision
The
mystical experience at the Servites' Castle in Riverside
A Most Remarkable
Synchronicity in
Riverside
The
Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis
The Techniques Of The
World Saviors
Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the
Tar-Baby
Part 2: The
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
Part 3: Jesus
and the Resurrection
Part 4: A
Course in Miracles
The
Secret of the Clear Light
Understanding
the Clear Light
Mobius
Strip
Finding
Your
Tiger Face
How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated
Joseph
Campbell, the Hero's Journey, and the modern Gay Hero-- a five part
presentation on YouTube
About Alien Abduction
In
honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke
Karellen was a homosexual
The
D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance
Intersections
with the movie When We Rise
More
about Gay Mental Health
Psych
Tech Training
Toby
at the California Institute
The
Rainbow Flag
Ideas for gay
mythic stories
My first Peace March
People
Kip and Toby,
Activists
Toby's
friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.
Harry
Hay, Founder of the gay movement
About Hay and The New Myth
About
Karl
Heinrich Ulrichs, the first
man to really "come out"
About Michael Talbot, gay mystic
About Fr. Bernard Lynch
About Richard Baltzell
About Guy Mannheimer
About David Weyrauch
About
Dennis Paddie
About Ask the Fire
About
Arthur Evans
About
Christopher Larkin
About Mark Thompson
About Sterling Houston
About Michael Stevens
The Alamo Business
Council
Our friend Tom Nash
Second March on
Washington
The
Gay
Spirituality Summit in May 2004 and the "Statement
of Spirituality"
Book
Reviews
Be Done on Earth by Howard
E. Cook
Pay Me What I'm Worth by
Souldancer
The Way Out by Christopher
L Nutter
The Gay Disciple by John Henson
Art That Dares by Kittredge Cherry
Coming Out, Coming Home by Kennth
A. Burr
Extinguishing
the Light by B. Alan Bourgeois
Over Coffee: A conversation
For Gay
Partnership & Conservative Faith by D.a. Thompson
Dark Knowledge
by
Kenneth Low
Janet Planet by
Eleanor
Lerman
The
Kairos by Paul E. Hartman
Wrestling
with Jesus by D.K.Maylor
Kali Rising by Rudolph
Ballentine
The
Missing Myth by Gilles Herrada
The
Secret of the Second Coming by Howard E. Cook
The Scar Letters: A
Novel
by Richard Alther
The
Future is Queer by Labonte & Schimel
Missing Mary
by Charlene Spretnak
Gay
Spirituality 101 by Joe Perez
Cut Hand: A
Nineteeth Century Love Story on the American Frontier by Mark Wildyr
Radiomen
by Eleanor Lerman
Nights
at
Rizzoli by Felice Picano
The Key
to Unlocking the Closet Door by Chelsea Griffo
The Door
of the Heart by Diana Finfrock Farrar
Occam’s
Razor by David Duncan
Grace
and
Demion by Mel White
Gay Men and The New Way Forward by Raymond L.
Rigoglioso
The
Dimensional Stucture of Consciousness by Samuel Avery
The
Manly Pursuit of Desire and Love by Perry Brass
Love
Together: Longtime Male Couples on Healthy Intimacy and Communication
by Tim Clausen
War
Between Materialism and Spiritual by Jean-Michel Bitar
The
Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion by
Jeffrey J. Kripal
Esalen:
America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal
The
Invitation to Love by
Darren Pierre
Brain,
Consciousness, and God: A Lonerganian Integration by Daniel A
Helminiak
A
Walk with Four Spiritual Guides by Andrew Harvey
Can Christians Be Saved? by Stephenson & Rhodes
The
Lost Secrets of the Ancient Mystery Schools by Stephenson &
Rhodes
Keys to
Spiritual
Being: Energy Meditation and Synchronization Exercises by Adrian
Ravarour
In
Walt We
Trust by John Marsh
Solomon's
Tantric Song by Rollan McCleary
A Special Illumination by Rollan McCleary
Aelred's
Sin
by Lawrence Scott
Fruit
Basket
by Payam Ghassemlou
Internal
Landscapes by John Ollom
Princes
& Pumpkins by David Hatfield Sparks
Yes by Brad
Boney
Blood of the Goddess by William Schindler
Roads of Excess,
Palaces of
Wisdom by Jeffrey Kripal
Evolving
Dharma by Jay Michaelson
Jesus
in Salome's Lot by Brett W. Gillette
The Man Who Loved Birds by Fenton Johnson
The
Vatican Murders by Lucien Gregoire
"Sex Camp"
by
Brian McNaught
Out
& About with Brewer & Berg
Episode One: Searching for a New Mythology
The
Soul Beneath the Skin by David Nimmons
Out
on
Holy Ground by Donald Boisvert
The
Revotutionary Psychology of Gay-Centeredness by Mitch Walker
Out There
by Perry Brass
The Crucifixion of Hyacinth by Geoff Puterbaugh
The
Silence of Sodom by Mark D Jordan
It's
Never About What It's About by Krandall Kraus and Paul Borja
ReCreations,
edited by Catherine Lake
Gospel: A
Novel
by WIlton Barnhard
Keeping
Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey by Fenton Johnson
Dating the Greek Gods by Brad Gooch
Telling
Truths in Church by Mark D. Jordan
The
Substance of God by Perry Brass
The
Tomcat Chronicles by Jack Nichols
10
Smart
Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives by Joe Kort
Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same Sex Love
by Will Roscoe
The
Third Appearance by Walter Starcke
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann
Surviving
and Thriving After a Life-Threatening Diagnosis by Bev Hall
Men,
Homosexuality, and the Gods by Ronald Long
An Interview
with Ron Long
Queering Creole Spiritual Traditons by Randy
Conner & David Sparks
An Interview with
Randy Conner
Pain,
Sex
and Time by Gerald Heard
Sex
and the Sacred by Daniel Helminiak
Blessing Same-Sex Unions by Mark Jordan
Rising Up
by
Joe Perez
Soulfully
Gay
by Joe Perez
That
Undeniable Longing by Mark Tedesco
Vintage: A
Ghost
Story by
Steve Berman
Wisdom
for the Soul by Larry Chang
MM4M a DVD
by Bruce Grether
Double
Cross
by David Ranan
The
Transcended Christian by Daniel Helminiak
Jesus
in Love by Kittredge Cherry
In
the Eye of the Storm by Gene Robinson
The
Starry Dynamo by Sven Davisson
Life
in
Paradox by Fr Paul Murray
Spirituality for Our Global Community by Daniel
Helminiak
Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society by Robert A.
Minor
Coming Out: Irish Gay Experiences by Glen O'Brien
Queering
Christ
by Robert Goss
Skipping
Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage
The
Flesh of the Word by Richard A Rosato
Catland by
David Garrett Izzo
Tantra
for Gay Men by Bruce Anderson
Yoga
&
the Path of the Urban Mystic by Darren Main
Simple
Grace
by Malcolm Boyd
Seventy
Times Seven by Salvatore Sapienza
What
Does "Queer" Mean Anyway? by Chris Bartlett
Critique of Patriarchal Reasoning by Arthur Evans
Gift
of
the Soul by Dale Colclasure & David Jensen
Legend of the Raibow Warriors by Steven McFadden
The
Liar's
Prayer by Gregory Flood
Lovely
are the Messengers by Daniel Plasman
The Human Core of Spirituality by Daniel Helminiak
3001:
The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
Religion and the Human Sciences by Daniel Helminiak
Only
the
Good Parts by Daniel Curzon
Four
Short
Reviews of Books with a Message
Life
Interrupted by Michael Parise
Confessions of a Murdered Pope by Lucien Gregoire
The
Stargazer's Embassy by Eleanor Lerman
Conscious
Living, Conscious Aging by Ron Pevny
Footprints Through the Desert by Joshua Kauffman
True
Religion by J.L. Weinberg
The Mediterranean Universe by John Newmeyer
Everything
is God by Jay Michaelson
Reflection
by Dennis Merritt
Everywhere
Home by Fenton Johnson
Hard Lesson by James
Gaston
God
vs Gay?
by Jay Michaelson
The
Gate
of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path by Jay Michaelson
Roxie
&
Fred by Richard Alther
Not
the Son He Expected by Tim Clausen
The
9 Realities of Stardust by Bruce P. Grether
The
Afterlife Revolution by Anne & Whitley Strieber
AIDS
Shaman:
Queer Spirit Awakening by Shokti Lovestar
Facing the Truth of Your Life by Merle Yost
The
Super Natural by Whitley Strieber & Jeffrey J Kripal
Secret
Body by
Jeffrey J Kripal
In
Hitler's
House by Jonathan Lane
Walking on Glory by Edward Swift
The
Paradox
of Porn by Don Shewey
Is Heaven for Real? by Lucien Gregoire
In Search of Lost Lives by Michael Goddart
Queer
Magic by Tomas Prower
God
in Your Body by Jay Michaelson
Science Whispering Spirit by Gary Preuss
Friends
of Dorothy by Dee Michel
New by
Whitley Strieber
Developing Supersensible Perception by Shelli
Renee Joye
Sage
Sapien by Johnson Chong
Tarot
of the Future by Arthur Rosengarten
Brothers
Across Time by Brad Boney
Impresario of Castro Street by Marc Huestis
Deathless
by Andrew Ramer
The Pagan Heart of the West, Vol 1 by
Randy P. Conner
Practical
Tantra by William Schindler
The Flip
by Jeffrey J. Kripal
A New World
by Whitley Strieber
Bernhard
& LightWing by Damien Rowse
The
Mountains of Paris by David Oates
Trust
Truth by Trudie Barreras
How to be an Excellent Human Being by Bill Meacham
The
Deviant's War by Eric Cervini
What Is the Grass by Mark Doty
Scissors,
Paper, Rock by Fenton Johnson
Toby
Johnson's
Books on Gay Men's Spiritualities:
Gay Perspective
Things Our [Homo]sexuality
Tells Us
about the
Nature of God and
the Universe
Gay
Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated
by Matthew Whitfield. Click
here
Gay Spirituality
Gay Identity and
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness
Gay
Spirituality is now
available as an audiobook, beautifully narrated by John Sipple. Click here
Charmed
Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling
edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman
Secret
Matter
Lammy Award Winner for Gay
Science Fiction
updated
Getting Life in
Perspective
A Fantastical Romance
Getting
Life in Perspective is available as an
audiobook narrated by Alex Beckham. Click
here
The Fourth Quill
originally published
as
PLAGUE
The Fourth Quill is
available
as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie
Moreland. Click here
Two Spirits: A Story of
Life
with the Navajo
with Walter L. Williams
 Two
Spirits is available as an
audiobook narrated by Arthur Raymond. Click
here
Finding
Your Own True Myth: What I Learned from Joseph
Campbell
The
Myth
of the
Great Secret III
In Search of God in the Sexual Underworld
The Myth of the Great
Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell.
This
was the second edition of this book.
Toby Johnson's
titles are
available in other ebook formats from Smashwords.
|
Who is I? and Who is You?
What Is the Grass
Walt Whitman in My Life
by Mark Doty
W. W. Norton & Company (April 6, 2021)
288 pages, paperback, $15.95
ISBN: 978-0393541410
Available from Amazon in other formats
What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life
Description:
Effortlessly blending biography, criticism,
and memoir, National Book Award–winning poet and best-selling memoirist
Mark Doty explores his personal quest for Walt Whitman.
Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman’s perennially new
American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul.
In What Is the Grass, Doty effortlessly blends biography, criticism,
and memoir to keep company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass,
tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary
poet’s life and work. 3 illustrations
Review:
What is the Grass by
poet, art and literary commentator, college professor, and surprisingly
self-disclosing memoirist, Mark Doty, is a literary analysis of Walt
Whitman's poetry, into which is beautifully blended a series of
meditations and musings on the nature of language, sex, love, and especially the
Self, with a capital S.
Whitman's Leaves of Grass was a transformation of poetic form.
Never before had a poet taken such liberties with the traditional rules
of rhyme and meter. The 19th century poet (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892)
effectively created what we know today as "free verse." An important
aspect of Whitman's poetical identity was that he had been assistant to a printer
and so was able to use the presses to "self-publish" his book(s) —mostly, all the
same book revised, expanded and published over and over again. Doty
discusses how the typesetting was used to create spaces between stanzas
and to break up lines of thought, and sometimes were used to mask or
obfuscate homoerotic references: if the lines about men's bodies were
broken by a double space, the next lines could be taken for new
meanings, perhaps women's bodies. Thus the typesetting itself was part of Walt's meanings.
 Throughout the book Doty —and I, as reader and as
reader of Whitman—
expresses amazement that the poet could get away with so much
homosexuality. Doty suggests that homosexuality, though known about, of
course, seemed simply so beyond the pale and so foreign and unspeakable
in the 1800s that readers just read right through it without realizing
what was
being said.
As Doty's title suggests, one of the themes of his book is what "grass"
means. And the meanings are multiple. I was surprised and pleased to learn that among printers at the
time, scratch/ dummy copies run through the press to test spacing, registration, and
print quality were referred to as "grass." And, of course, the pages of
a book are called "leaves," so leaves of grass would have been
pages of experimental tests in typesetting—a whole new meaning for
Whitman's title.
Mark Doty's literary discussions are interwoven with bits of
autobiography and personal experience —some of these are spiritual,
almost mystical, some sexual, some romantic, some nostalgic: a scene in a men's changing room at the beach, a few hours at a gay bathhouse, a tryst with a longtime fuck buddy turned romantic then magical when the Beloved's face transforms
into that of Walt Whitman (specifically, the face in the photo to the
right), a struggle with sex addiction, accounts of boyfriends and husbands, of AIDS
and grief, and, importantly, the recognition of the Buddhist character
Avalokitesvara hiding just behind Whitman's words.
(Permit
me a moment to interweave a bit of my own bio
in this review to mention that I first studied Whitman —for his
mystical/archetypal meanings— in a class on Jungian interpretation of
literature at Saint Louis University in 1966. That was just at the time
poster art was becoming a craze among the Youth Generation. The fad at
S.L.U. was poster-size scratch paper from a nearby map-printing company
that had been run through the presses multiple times to clean the
ink off the rollers, so they were all one-of-a-kind fantastic blurs of
color and shape. I had one
of these on my dormroom wall that year. I now discover from Mark Doty
that that poster was a "leaf of grass," wasn't it? And just to share a
curiously ribald association, let me add that the dormitory
was named after a great benefactor from the brewing industry of St.
Louis. So the men's dorm at that Jesuit college was named Griesedieck Hall.)
But grass is also the stuff of life, the ever-present fecundity of
planet Earth that sprouts life abundantly everywhere. Grass is also the
stuff we cut down and throw away. Grass is a symbol for human mortality
and the evanescence of ego and personal selfhood.
Doty focuses on two important poems: "Song of Myself"
and "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," effectively the first and last extended
poems of Leaves of Grass.
"Song of Myself" begins:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" ends:
We use you, and do not cast you aside —we plant you
permanently within us,
We fathom you not —we love you— there is perfection in
you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.
Who is the I who celebrates self? And who the you that furnishes parts for the soul?
The nature of self —and maybe Self to use the Jungian, new-age
convention of the capital-S for distinguishing between personal ego and
cosmic consciousness— is an ongoing theme in Doty's book. It begins
with Walt loafing at his ease, inviting his soul into consciousness,
observing a spear of grass. Throughout Whitman's extended meditation on
human life, Doty observes, the antecedents of personal pronouns shift
around. Sometimes the you is the reader, sometimes the generic human
being, sometimes the speaker referencing himself as part of humanity,
sometimes the greater consciousness that creates all things and that
the poet "celebrates."
Doty makes an interesting point that in Whitman's day, "celebrate"
would have meant less holding a party and more officiating at a
sacrament: the priest celebrates the Mass. Celebrate is an act of creating.
Doty elucidates at great length the meanings in:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Science with its atomic theory tells us that every
atom of every one of us was born in a stellar collapse and supernova;
that every atom is shared among all people; we breathe in and excrete
out a myriad of atoms. Every atom in me has been in some other being, a
you. So every atom of mine also has been or will be an atom of you —and
if not you (specifically), then some other you (generically) who is you
to both of us.
Another sense is that the atoms I think of as mine belong as good to
you because you are me. "I" am both the subject and the object. The
"you" I speak to is the "me" that is being spoken to. To celebrate Self
is to become one with all. And all of us are like leaves of grass.
In discussing Whitman's use of literary language, Doty cites the King James Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 6:
28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
To go on one more verse:
30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass
of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall
he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
There's the grass, isn't it? We are all One.
Individual blades of us are mowed down and cast into the oven of time, and yet
the field—and the fecundity of the earth—lives on and flourishes.
I loved that Mark Doty introduced the myth of Avalokiteshvara —it is a story
dear to me, a story by which I explain my life to myself. The
myth (which is discussed elsewhere on my website at great length) tells
that this young monk renounced his own nirvana to remain in the round
of rebirth to save others. In the version I learned from Joseph
Campbell, the way Avalokiteshvara "saved" all other sentient beings is
by becoming them, by assuming all their future incarnations. He is the
one soul reincarnating in everyone. As Whitman says:
And what I assume you shall assume
Campbell called this
spirituality: The Way of Joyful Participation in the Sorrows of the
World. What the I assumed —meaning to believe in, but also to be
incarnated in— you are also assuming. We are all participating.
Doty writes:
Imagine a Buddha who turns to us and says, Shoulder your duds!
Walt Whitman in "Song of Myself" is a homespun American Avalokitesvara;
he finds with immeasurable joy his own realization of unity, and that
vision leads to a tenderness toward all things: And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own… And that a kelson of the creation is love.
Surely Avalokitesvara is the “elderhand” of Walt Whitman; this passage
overflows with a universal, swelling tenderness. [A kelson is a beam
running the length of a ship connecting the floor to the keel, the
"backbone" of the ship.]
…
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars…
Doty, Mark. What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life (p. 50-51). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
Doty concludes: "Radiant and endless: I am all and all never ceases…"
There is a lovely, sexually-charged story in the
book that I referenced briefly above in which Mark tells how he has
spent a wonderful time of lovemaking with an old boyfriend, now older
and grayhaired. And as they are loafing afterwards, he looks at his
friend and unexpectedly, inexplicably he sees the face of Whitman.
It's like the One Being — Avalokiteshvara, the Lord Who Looks Down on
the World and Hears the Cries of All Beings and whose name also means
The Lord Who is Seen Within, and also Walt Whitman, the homespun
American poet who celebrates himself as the I and the you — cannot help
but reveal Itself throughout creation. For it is the "You [that] furnish your parts toward eternity, Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul."
In a way very much like Doty and his grayheaded friend, I once, in a
sexually-charged moment in a gay bathhouse, saw the face of
Avalokiteshvara. In the darkness of the orgy room, he held me tight and
we connected chakra to chakra. His parting words to me: Have faith.
We are all sharing our parts in creation of the soul.
Walt Whitman, the poet of proud and mystical homosexual vision, gave
birth not just to new poetic forms and rhythms, but to a new religion
of cosmic consciousness and Nature divine — one that is still being
born. And Mark Doty is surely one of its prophets.
What Is the Grass is a lovely book, so full of
interesting points and observations about mystical reality as well as
about what it means to be a gay man today. I recommend the book for the
inspiration it will afford.
Reviewed
by Toby
Johnson, author
of Finding Your Own True
Myth: What I Learned from Joseph
Campbell, Gay Spirituality,
and other books and novels.
About Walt Whitman
from goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1438.Walt_Whitman
Walter Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and
humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and
realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the
most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father
of free verse.
Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a
government clerk, and a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War
in addition to publishing his poetry. Early in his career, he also
produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842).
After working as clerk, teacher, journalist and laborer, Whitman wrote
his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, pioneering free verse poetry in a
humanistic celebration of humanity, in 1855. Emerson, whom Whitman
revered, said of Leaves of Grass that it held "inco mparable things
incomparably said." During the Civil War, Whitman worked as an army
nurse, later writing Drum Taps (1865) and Memoranda During the War
(1867). His health compromised by the experience, he was given work at
the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. After a stroke in 1873,
which left him partially paralyzed, Whitman lived his next 20 years
with his brother, writing mainly prose, such as Democratic Vistas
(1870). Leaves of Grass was published in nine editions, with Whitman
elaborating on it in each successive edition. In 1881, the book had the
compliment of being banned by the commonwealth of Massachusetts on
charges of immorality. A good friend of Robert Ingersoll, Whitman was
at most a Deist who scorned religion. D. 1892.
|
