The story goes that when a thief broke into a little hut at the foot of a mountain, the wise Zen master Ryokan, very much undisturbed by the intruder, welcomed him with open arms and said, “You have come a long way to visit me and you should not return empty-handed.” And then, in a compassionate and non-judgmental way, he added, “Please take my clothes as a gift.” And so he gave up the only thing he ever possessed in his life.
Two thousand and five hundred years ago, the Buddha defined the desire to possess or craving (tanha in Pali) as the Second Noble Truth of his all-embracing teaching and the source of all human folly.
Whatever relationships we may have with our personal possessions, the awareness that they are so essential to our modern way of life, so much the bone and marrow of our self, makes Ryokan’s gesture touchingly relatable; that he chose to give up the last thing he owned in so generous a way is a testament to his enlightened state of being. What is most thought-provoking about this Zen story, however, is not the gesture itself but the last thing Ryokan said after the thief had left his little hut. As he sat naked watching out the window at the night sky, he mused, “Poor fellow, I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.”
Given how famous this Zen koan is among spiritual seekers, it is rather odd that we rarely consider it from the viewpoint of the ordinary, unenlightened, and desire-bound mind of the thief. There, a narrative-driven glimpse into what might have happened — the untold story of a minor character who heard Ryokan’s last words — can teach us the most profound lesson about blind pursuit of something that each of us already has in the core of being.
Such an uncommon poem-turned-Zen-story-sequel is what Fannie Stearns Davis envisions in her marvelous “Moon Folly” included in the collection Myself and I. The role of the “Moon thief” is played by a young boy by the name Samuel Chelpka who recites the poem in the TEDx video below. The video is almost ten years old and the young boy is not so young anymore, but it doesn’t take away one bit from the adorable performance we witness before our eyes. Please enjoy!
MOON FOLLY FROM THE SONGS OF CONN THE FOOL
by Fannie Stearns DavisI will go up the mountain after the Moon:
She is caught in a dead fir-tree.
Like a great pale apple of silver and pearl,
Like a great pale apple is she.I will leap and will catch her with quick cold hands
And carry her home in my sack.
I will set her down safe on the oaken bench
That stands at the chimney-back.And then I will sit by the fire all night,
And sit by the fire all day.
I will gnaw at the Moon to my heart’s delight
Till I gnaw her slowly away.And while I grow mad with the Moon’s cold taste
The World will beat at my door,
Crying “Come out!” and crying “Make haste,
And give us the Moon once more!”But I shall not answer them ever at all.
I shall laugh, as I count and hide
The great black beautiful Seeds of the Moon
In a flower-pot deep and wide.Then I shall lie down and go fast asleep,
Drunken with flame and aswoon.
But the seeds will sprout and the seeds will leap,
The subtle swift seeds of the Moon.And some day, all of the World that cries
And beats at my door shall see
A thousand moon-leaves spring from thatch
On a wonderful white Moon-tree!Then each shall have Moons to his heart’s desire:
Apples of silver and pearl;
Apples of orange and copper fire
Setting his five wits aswirl!And then they will thank me, who mock me now,
“Wanting the Moon is he,” —
Oh, I’m off to the mountain after the Moon,
Ere she falls from the dead fir-tree!
Can you do better than this little fella? Before you undertake this Herculean task and go up on stage to recite “Moon Folly” from Myself and I, practice by beating the adult recitations of these poems: Mary Oliver’s “Percy,” Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard” and “Dharma,” Emily Dickinson’s “I Dwell in Possibility,” Pablo Neruda’s “I Like for You to Be Still,” Gregory Orr’s “This is What Was Bequeathed Us,” and Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man.”
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