Journal articles on the topic 'Tibetan Folk songs'

Baima Tibetan is a branch of Tibetan in Longnan area. Its historical origin, religious beliefs, customs and folk customs are very different from Tibetan. Baima Tibetan folk songs have rich flavor and various forms, including toasting songs, labor songs, dance songs, sacrificial songs and other types. Baima Tibetan folk songs are a vivid display of their national customs and living customs. This paper introduces the types of Baima Tibetan folk songs, and analyzes their music characteristics, hoping that more researchers can go to Baima Tibetan and learn about the charming Baima Tibetan folk songs.

Folk songs and dances originated from people’s sacrificial activities in the struggle against nature in the primitive society. Their origins are related to the ideology and living environment of the people at that period of time. These activities were expressed in the form of primitive songs and dances, and gradually evolved into folk songs and dances. The gar pa song and dance from Diebu, in Gannan region, is a unique song and dance of a Tibetan region on the eastern edge of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Its content and form are unique. It still retains the original trinity feature which includes poem, music, and dance. The production of songs and dances contains rich cultural connotations and unique local characteristics. This article elaborates the characteristics of Diebu’s gar pa song and dance in terms of its music and performance form.

Baima Tibetan folk songs are an integral part of the Baima Tibetan music culture. They are performed in diverse styles, including solo, duet, lead singing, round singing, and chorus. The objective of the study was to explore the significance of Baima Tibetan folk songs as a resource for literacy education in Chinese music history. By engaging with key informants divided into three groups - scholar informants, casual informants, and general informants. The result of this study reveals that ritual music holds deep roots in religious beliefs and is performed during sacrificial ceremonies, marriage ceremonies, and funeral ceremonies. Dance music culture reflects the collective nature and community cohesion of the Baima people, with dances like the fire circle dance serving as prominent expressions. Folk songs encompass a wide range of themes, including labor, wine, wedding, and love, showcasing the diverse musical expressions within Baima Tibetan society. The unique rituals, dances, and songs of the Baima people contribute significantly to the preservation and celebration of their rich cultural heritage. This study highlights the educational potential of Baima Tibetan folk songs as valuable resources for promoting literacy and understanding in the context of Chinese music history.

The article is devoted to the problem of increasing the role of folk songs in the content of general musical education. This problem is relevant not only for China, but also for Russia. It is connected with the tasks of the modern state educational and cultural policy of these countries, aimed at educating the younger generations in the context of their own national and cultural traditions and spiritual and moral values. The purpose of the article is to reveal the role of Chinese folk songs in the content of modern general musical education in China. The article reveals certain aspects of the history and artistic originality of Chinese folk songs, considers the state requirements for their development by schoolchildren, presents the results of the analysis of folk songs included in music textbooks for grades 1–6 of China’s comprehensive schools. It was revealed that they include significantly fewer samples of folk music than Western European and modern Chinese. Among the folk songs, songs of ethnic minorities (Tibetan, Mongolian, etc.) prevail, and not of the Chinese ethnic group. From this, a conclusion was made about the need to develop and theoretically and methodologically substantiate the pedagogical conditions for increasing the role of Chinese folk songs in the content of general musical education in China.

The academic study of Tibetan Buddhism has long emphasized the textual, philological, and monastic, and sometimes tended to ignore, dismiss, or undervalue the everyday practices and beliefs of ordinary people. In this article, I show that traditional folk songs, especially changlü, are windows into the vernacular religion of ethnically Tibetan Himalayans from the Nubri valley of Gorkha District, Nepal. While changlü literally means “beer song”, and they are often sung while celebrating, they usually have deeply religious subject matter, and function to transmit Buddhist values, reinforce social or religious hierarchies, and to emplace the community in relation to the landscape and to greater Tibet and Nepal. They do this mainly through three different tropes: (1) exhortations to practice and to remember such things as impermanence and death; (2) explications of hierarchy; and (3) employment of spatialized language that evokes the maṇḍala. They also sometimes carry opaque references to vernacular rituals, such as “drawing a swastika of grain” after storing the harvest. In the song texts translated here, I will point out elements that reproduce a Buddhist worldview, such as references to deities, sacred landscape, and Buddhist values, and argue that they impart vernacular religious knowledge intergenerationally in an implicit, natural, and sonic way, ensuring that younger generations internalize community values organically.

The article is devoted to the opera The Song of Majnun by Bright Sheng, the modern American composer of Chinese origin. This one-act opera was composed in 1992 and premiered in Chicago. In Russian musicology, this work is being studied for the first time. The authors analyze the history of the creation of the opera, the plot, composition, dramaturgy, and the specifics of the musical style. They pay special attention to the search for cross-cultural connections - the interaction of elements of Eastern (Persian, Chinese, Tibetan) and Western European cultures. The libretto of the opera is based on the plot of an ancient Persian legend. The composition of the opera was influenced by the art of the Persian book miniature of the 13th century. For the musical themes of the main characters Majnun and Laila, folk songs of ethnic Tibetans from the Chinese province of Qinghai were used. Many opera melodies are composed with the use of pentatonic scale. The orchestration uses techniques typical for Beijing Opera Orchestra. Conclusions are drawn about the peculiarities of combining elements of Chinese folklore and European composing technique of the 20th century. The importance of the opera The Song of Majnun for the further work of Bright Sheng is noted.

North-East is a hub of many ethnic languages. This region constitutes with eight major districts; like-Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya and Sikkim. Tutsa is a minor tribe of Arunachal Pradesh. The Tutsa was migrated from the place ‘RangkhanSanchik’ of the South-East Asia through ‘Hakmen-Haksan’ way to Arunachal Pradesh. The Tutsa community is mainly inhabited in Tirap district and southern part of Changlang district and a few people are co-exists in Tinsukia district of Assam. The Tutsa language belongs to the Naga group of Sino-Tibetan language family. According to the Report of UNESCO, the Tutsa language is in endangered level and it included in the EGIDS Level 6B. The language has no written literature; songs, folk tales, stories are found in a colloquial form. They use Roman Script. Due to the influence of other languages it causes lack of sincerity for the use of their languages in a united form. Now-a-days the new generation is attracted for using English, Hindi and Assamese language. No study is found till now in a scientific way about the language. So, in this prospect the topic Nominal Inflection of the Tutsa Language has been selected for study. It will help to preserve the language and also help in making of dictionary, Grammar and language guide book.

В статье представлены результаты анализа алтайских фольклорных текстов с участием героя Ойрот-Каана. Установлено, что исторические предания алтайцев описывают историю III Ойратской конфедерации и содержат мессианские мотивы, связанные с ожиданием возвращения Ойрот-Каана и последующим возрождением государства. Определены тексты, описывающие политическое устройство Джунгарии. Выявлены линии передачи преданий, восходящие к политическим противникам (партии Дабачы и Амыр-Саны). Отмечено присутствие мотивов, отражающих Тибетские походы джунгаров. Зафиксировано включение архаичных онтологических мотивов в сюжеты исторических преданий с целью внесения оценочных суждений. Сделан вывод, что образ Ойрот-Каана является сложносоставным, сюжеты с его участием сочетают достоверные исторические реалии и традиционные литературные клише, а также обобщенные представления алтайцев о Джунгарском государстве, в том числе модель идеального будущего. The article presents the result of the historical analysis of Altai historical and ontological legends, historical songs and Burkhanist hymns. The main sources used are the bilingual edition of the “Altai folk legends”, carried out by the Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the collection of Altaic folklore texts by B.Yu. Bedyurov. The author remodels the formation of the folklore image of Oirot-Kaan, reflecting the ideas of the Altaians about the Zhungar state (III Oirat Confederation), which it symbolizes. The Altaian historical tradition describes the history of the III Oirat Confederation from its creation in 1635 to its collapse in 1658, and contains messianic motifs related to the expected return of Oirot-Kaan and the subsequent rebirth of the Oirot Khanate. All the names and epithets of Oirot-Kaan, such as Kairakhan, Galdan, Kon-Taidi, Konodoi, have been collected and translated from Altai language. The texts describing the political structure of Zhungar state are defined in the article. The lines of transmission of legends belonging to political opponents (Dabachi and Amyr-Sanaa parties) have been revealed. The presence of motifs reflecting the Tibetan campaign of 1717, as well as the earlier ones, is noted. The overlap of folklore images of Tibet and Qing China has been found in the Altai tradition. The inclusion of archaic ontological motifs in the plots of historical legends is recorded in order to make valuable judgments in the narrative. It is concluded that the image of Oirot-Kaan is complexly composite, the plots which include him combine reliable historical realities and traditional literary clichés, as well as generalized ideas of the Altaians about the Oirot Khanate in the past, and a model of an ideal future.

The Buzha drama of the Garzê Tibetan people is a unique “ritual dance” performed periodically in various religious settings. This form of performance, which falls between theater and dance, reflects the diverse cultural and belief systems of the local people and has been listed as an intangible cultural heritage for protection in recent years. Tribal organizations integrate various religious and cultural forms, including folk beliefs, Bon, Tibetan Buddhism, local customs, and regional knowledge into folk song and dance, transforming them into psychological customs and ethnic emotions, penetrating cultural elements. This article takes an anthropological perspective and examines the relationship between the artistic representation of the Buzha drama and the region's life, spiritual beliefs, and ethnic identity through prop making, ritual procedures, and dance content. The article also explores the characteristics and values of the diverse religious culture of the Garzê Tibetan people.

В статье анализируются калмыцкие народные песни о паломничестве в Тибет на примере текстов «Зу гидг һазр» ‘Страна, называемая Тибет’, «Алта гидг һазрас» ‘Из местности, называемой Алтай’. На основе сравнительного исследования разновременных записей песни «Зу гидг һазр» (1897 г., 1903 г., а также записи конца XX в.) и сопоставления с историческими данными о посольствах и паломничествах в Тибет и вариантами преданий о Джиджетен-ламе сделан вывод о том, что религиозная песня посвящена паломническому посольству хана Дондук-Даши (1755‒1757 гг.) и в ней отражены сведения о пути в Тибет через Монголию и Кукунор. Анализ песни «Алта гидг һазрас» и данных наиболее полного текста песни «Зу гидг һазр» в записи Г. Й. Рамстедта позволил сделать вывод о том, что в них отражены сведения о двух основных путях в Тибет. Архивные и литературные материалы о паломничествах в Тибет свидетельствуют, что в XVII в., когда территория формирующегося Калмыцкого ханства была подвижной, к святыням Лхасы, называвшейся калмыками «Зу», отправлялись по традиционному пути через территории расселения ойратов — «из местности, называемой Алтай». С начала XVIII в. по ряду причин путь в Тибет пролегал через Монголию и Кукунор. И лишь в начале XX в. вновь был освоен путь в Тибет, бывший традиционным для их предков, который теперь назывался «новым». The article analyzes the Kalmyk folk songs about the pilgrimage to Tibet through the example of the texts titled “Zu gidg gazr” (“The Country Called Tibet”), “Alta gidg gazras” (“From the Land Called Altai”). The comparative study of records of the song “Zu gidg gazr” of different times (1897, 1903, late 20th century) and insights into historical data and versions of legends about Jijeten Lama conclude that the religious song is dedicated to the pilgrimage embassy of Khan Donduk-Dashi (1755‒1757) and contains information about the way to Tibet through Mongolia and Kokonor. The analysis of the song “Alta gidg gazras” and the data of the most complete text of the song “Zu gidg gazr” recorded by G. J. Ramstedt makes it possible to conclude that those reflect information about two main routes to Tibet. Archival and literary materials about pilgrimages to Tibet indicate that in the 17th century when boundaries of the emerging Kalmyk Khanate were still mobile, routes to the shrines of Lhasa (Zu) went through the traditional territories of Oirat settlement ― “from the area called Altai”. From the beginning of the 18th century, for a number of reasons, the way to Tibet lay through Mongolia and Kokonor. Only at the beginning of the 20th century the path to Tibet which had been traditional for ancestors (now called the “new one”) was mastered again.

The story of a husband who returns home in disguise after a long absence, strings his distinctive bow, punishes his wife’s suitors, and reunites with his family is best known through its earliest recorded version, the Odyssey, and is widely represented in folk traditions throughout the world. A thorough comparative analysis of these tales and research on their historical and cultural background suggests that the original tale could have been transmitted from a place of origin to other parts of the world, giving birth to regional versions, such as Central Asian Alpomish, Japanese Yuriwaka Daijin, and other tales. My research led me to conclude that certain religious practices and population movements were drivers for the dissemination, development, and performance format transformations of this tale-type across the length and breadth of Eurasia. This paper is part of a broader research on the tale-type The Homecoming Husband. It focuses on four stories representing the tale-type in Asia: Alpomish (Central Asia), The Epic of King Gesar (Tibet, Mongolia, etc.), The Song of Chunhyang (Korea), and Yuriwaka Daijin (Japan). In this paper, firstly, I identify major structural elements in each story and analyze how the stories based on the same pattern were narrated across sociocultural and historical contexts. Namely, what social customs, rituals, and beliefs are reflected in each tale, and how these affect the narrative development. Secondly, I discuss the possibility of a historical connection between the Asian Versions of The Homecoming Husband.

Abstract Folk culture represents the social, ethnic, and traditional livelihood of people belonging to a certain tribe or community and is important in keeping their culture and tradition alive. The Mizo people are a Tibeto-Burmese ethnic group, native to the Indian state of Mizoram and neighboring regions of Northeast India. Mizo folk culture is an amalgamation of festivity, celebration, liveliness, kinship, brotherhood, and merriment, and above all, preserves the ethnicity of this tribal community that is fundamentally entrenched. Unfortunately, the Mizos are fast giving up their old customs and adopting the new mode of life that is greatly influenced by the western culture. This makes it all the more crucial to preserve the intangible cultural heritage of this ethnic tribe whose folk cultures are vanishing day by day. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first attempt at preservation and classification of Mizo folk songs. The first part of this paper presents a literature survey on preservation, analysis, and classification of folk songs. The second part presents the methodology for preliminary classification of Mizo folk songs. Three categories of Mizo folk songs—Hunting chants (Hlado), Children’s songs (Pawnto hla), and Elderly songs (Pi pu zai)—are used in this study. A total of 29 acoustic features are used. A long short-term memory network using custom attention layer has been proposed for classification, whose results are compared with four supervised models (Support Vector Machines, K-Nearest Neighbor, Naive Baye’s, and Ensemble). Experimental results from the proposed model are promising, with an implication of scope for future research in acoustic analysis and classification of Mizo folk songs using recent unsupervised methods.

Songs (mgur) were one of the most iconic and popular forms of literature in Tibet, continuing to the present day. Lying somewhere between simple folk songs (glu) and highly formulaic poetics (snyan ngag), these songs allow for a freedom in composition and limitless range of subject matter. Songs of experience (nyams mgur) reflect the author’s subjective experiences in an accessible style with many applications, whether in the field of religion or daily life. In the case of the former, they allow not only for celebration of spiritual accomplishment, but often reveal feelings of struggle and even failures on the spiritual path. In all cases, they are edifying for both the reader and the author. They also tell a story. In Jamgön Kongtrul’s more-or-less chronological collection of the songs of the Shangpa Kagyü masters and their ancestors, a thousand years of its history can be discerned, in both its continuity and all its diversity. The following songs selected from his collection, when taken in context, offer a particularly delightful way to learn the history of a lineage. བོད་སྐད་ཀྱི་མགུར་དུ་གྲགས་པའི་རྩོམ་པའི་རྣམ་པ་ལ་ཚིགས་བཅད་རྩོམ་སྟངས་སྣ་ཚོགས་རྒྱ་ཆེན་ཡོད་རེད། དེ་ནི་གཞི་རྒྱ་ཆེན་པོའི་སྡེ་ཚན་ཞིག་ཡིན་ལ་ཁོངས་སུ་བྱེ་བྲག་གི་སྡེ་ཚན་ནམ་དབྱེ་བ་མང་པོ་གཏོགས་པ་སྤྱིར་བཏང་གི་གླུ་གཞས་ནས་རྩོམ་རྩལ་འབུར་དུ་བཏོན་པའི་སྙན་གཞུང་ལྟ་བུ་རེད། བརྗོད་དོན་གྱི་ཆ་ནས་ཀྱང་དེ་མཚུངས་ཏེ་ཆོས་གླུ་ནས་སྐྱོ་སྣང་དང་རང་དབང་ལ་དུང་བའི་སྨྲ་བརྗོད་སོགས་ཐམས་ཅད་འདུས་ཡོད། དེང་རབས་གླུ་གཞས་སུ་ནམ་རྒྱུན་འདིའི་རིགས་སྦས་བའི་ཚུལ་གྱིས་བརྗོད་ཡོད། དམིགས་ཡུལ་ཡང་འདྲ་མིན་སྣ་ཚོགས་ཏེ་ལུས་ཀྱི་ངལ་རྩོལ་དང་ལྷན་དུ་སྡེབ་པའི་འགྲོས་ཀྱི་འགྱུར་ཁུགས་གཡོ་བའི་གླུ་ནས་སངས་རྒྱས་བསྟན་པའི་སྐྱེས་ཆེན་རྣམས་ཀྱི་ཉམས་རྟོགས་ཀྱི་ཐོལ་གླུ། ད་དུང་རང་དཔེ་གཞན་སྟོན་གྱིས་དད་པ་དང་ཀུན་སློང་ལ་ཡར་སྐུལ་བྱེད་པ་སོགས་ལྟ་བུ་འདུག དཔྱད་རྩོམ་འདིར་དེ་ལྟ་བུའི་ཤངས་པ་བཀའ་བརྒྱུད་གྱི་རྟོགས་མགུར་བསྡུ་བསྒྲིགས་བྱས་པ་ཞིག་ལ་ཞིབ་འཇུག་བྱེད་རྩིས་ཡིན། མགུར་དེ་དག་འཇམ་མགོན་ཀོང་སྤྲུལ་བློ་གྲོས་མཐའ་ཡས་ཀྱིས་དུས་རབས་བཅུ་དགུ་བར་༼ཤངས་པ་མགུར་མཚོ་༽ཞེས་ཀུན་ལ་གྲགས་པའི་དཔེ་ཆར་བསྡུས་ཡོད་འདུག དང་པོར་དུས་ངེས་མེད་པར་སངས་རྒྱས་རྡོ་རྗེ་འཆང་གིས་བརྩམས་པར་གྲགས་པའི་ཚིགས་བཅད་ཀྱིས་མགོ་བརྩམས་ནས་རིམ་པར་དུས་རབས་བཅུ་དགུ་བར་གྱི་ཆོས་བརྒྱུད་འཛིན་པ་རྣམས་སྟེ་སྐྱེས་ཆེན་ཉི་ཤུ་ཙམ་གྱི་མགུར་གླུ་བཀོལ་འདུག དེ་ལྟར་མཛད་ཡོད་པས། མགུར་ཚོམས་འདིས་མགུར་གླུ་རེ་རེའི་སྐོར་གྱི་འབྲེལ་ཡོད་ཀྱི་བྱུང་བ་བརྗོད་པ་ལ་བརྟེན་ནས་ཤངས་པ་བཀའ་བརྒྱུད་ཀྱི་ལོ་རྒྱུས་དང་ཆོས་གཞུང་མངོན་པར་བྱེད། ང་ཚོས་མགུར་གླུ་ཉུང་ཤས་ཤིག་དཔེར་བརྗོད་ལ་བདམས་ཏེ་དཔྱད་ཞིབ་དང་རྒྱས་བཤད་བྱས་ཡོད། སྔོན་མར་རྒྱུས་མངའ་མེད་པའི་བོད་ཀྱི་ནང་བསྟན་གྲུབ་མཐའ་འདི་དེང་རབས་འཇིག་རྟེན་ལ་སྤེལ་མཁན་སྒོམ་ཆེན་སྐྱབས་རྗེ་ཀ་ལུ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་ཡི་སྨོན་ལམ་གསུང་མགུར་ཞིག་བརྒྱུད་ང་ཚོས་མགུར་ཚོམས་འདི་འདི་ཉེ་རབས་བར་སྦྲེལ་ཡོད།

[Editors’ note: this lyric essay was presented as the keynote address at Edith Cowan University’s CREATEC symposium on the theme Catastrophe and Creativity in November 2012, and represents excerpts from the author’s publication Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry. Regina, SK: Hagios Press, 2011. Reproduced with the author’s permission].Essay and verse and anecdote are the ways I have chosen to apprentice myself to loss, grief, faith, memory, and the stories we use to tie and untie them. Cat’s cradle, Celtic lines, bends and hitches are familiar: however, when I write about loss, I find there are knots I cannot tie or release, challenging both my imagination and my craft. Over the last decade, I have been learning that writing poetry is also the art of tying together light and dark, grief and joy, of grasping and releasing. Language is a hinge that connects us with the flesh of our experience; it is also residue, the ash of memory and imagination. (Threading Light 7) ———Greek katastrophé overturning, sudden turn, from kata down + strophe ‘turning” from strephein to turn.Loss and catastrophe catapult us into the liminal, into a threshold space. We walk between land we have known and the open sea. ———Mnemosyne, the mother of the nine Muses, the personification of memory, makes anthropologists of us all. When Hermes picked up the lyre, it was to her—to Remembrance —that he sang the first song. Without remembrance, oral or written, we have no place to begin. Stone, amulet, photograph, charm bracelet, cufflink, fish story, house, facial expression, tape recorder, verse, or the same old traveling salesman joke—we have places and means to try to store memories. Memories ground us, even as we know they are fleeting and flawed constructions that slip through our consciousness; ghosts of ghosts. One cold winter, I stayed in a guest room in my mother’s apartment complex for three days. Because she had lost her sight, I sat at the table in her overheated and stuffy kitchen with the frozen slider window and tried to describe photographs as she tried to recall names and events. I emptied out the dusty closet she’d ignored since my father left, and we talked about knitting patterns, the cost of her mother’s milk glass bowl, the old clothes she could only know by rubbing the fabric through her fingers. I climbed on a chair to reach a serving dish she wanted me to have, and we laughed hysterically when I read aloud the handwritten note inside: save for Annette, in a script not hers. It’s okay, she said; I want all this gone. To all you kids. Take everything you can. When I pop off, I don’t want any belongings. Our family had moved frequently, and my belongings always fit in a single box; as a student, in the back of a car or inside a backpack. Now, in her ninth decade, my mother wanted to return to the simplicity she, too, recalled from her days on a small farm outside a small town. On her deathbed, she insisted on having her head shaved, and frequently the nursing staff came into the room to find she had stripped off her johnny shirt and her covers. The philosopher Simone Weil said that all we possess in the world is the power to say “I” (Gravity 119).Memory is a cracked bowl, and it fills endlessly as it empties. Memory is what we create out of what we have at hand—other people’s accounts, objects, flawed stories of our own creation, second-hand tales handed down like an old watch. Annie Dillard says as a life’s work, she’d remember everything–everything against loss, and go through life like a plankton net. I prefer the image of the bowl—its capacity to feed us, the humility it suggests, its enduring shape, its rich symbolism. Its hope. To write is to fashion a bowl, perhaps, but we know, finally, the bowl cannot hold everything. (Threading Light 78–80) ———Man is the sire of sorrow, sang Joni Mitchell. Like joy, sorrow begins at birth: we are born into both. The desert fathers believed—in fact, many of certain faiths continue to believe—that penthos is mourning for lost salvation. Penthus was the last god to be given his assignment from Zeus: he was to be responsible for grieving and loss. Eros, the son of Aphrodite, was the god of love and desire. The two can be seen in concert with one another, each mirroring the other’s extreme, each demanding of us the farthest reach of our being. Nietzsche, through Zarathustra, phrased it another way: “Did you ever say Yes to one joy? O my friends, then you have also said Yes to all Woe as well. All things are chained, entwined together, all things are in love.” (Threading Light 92) ———We are that brief crack of light, that cradle rocking. We can aspire to a heaven, or a state of forgiveness; we can ask for redemption and hope for freedom from suffering for ourselves and our loved ones; we may create children or works of art in the vague hope that we will leave something behind when we go. But regardless, we know that there is a wall or a dark curtain or a void against which we direct or redirect our lives. We hide from it, we embrace it; we taunt it; we flout it. We write macabre jokes, we play hide and seek, we walk with bated breath, scream in movies, or howl in the wilderness. We despair when we learn of premature or sudden death; we are reminded daily—an avalanche, an aneurysm, a shocking diagnosis, a child’s bicycle in the intersection—that our illusions of control, that youthful sense of invincibility we have clung to, our last-ditch religious conversions, our versions of Pascal’s bargain, nothing stops the carriage from stopping for us.We are fortunate if our awareness calls forth our humanity. We learn, as Aristotle reminded us, about our capacity for fear and pity. Seeing others as vulnerable in their pain or weakness, we see our own frailties. As I read the poetry of Donne or Rumi, or verse created by the translator of Holocaust stories, Lois Olena, or the work of poet Sharon Olds as she recounts the daily horror of her youth, I can become open to pity, or—to use the more contemporary word—compassion. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that works of art are not only a primary means for an individual to express her humanity through catharsis, as Aristotle claimed, but, because of the attunement to others and to the world that creation invites, the process can sow the seeds of social justice. Art grounds our grief in form; it connects us to one another and to the world. And the more we acquaint ourselves with works of art—in music, painting, theatre, literature—the more we open ourselves to complex and nuanced understandings of our human capacities for grief. Why else do we turn to a stirring poem when we are mourning? Why else do we sing? When my parents died, I came home from the library with stacks of poetry and memoirs about loss. How does your story dovetail with mine? I wanted to know. How large is this room—this country—of grief and how might I see it, feel the texture on its walls, the ice of its waters? I was in a foreign land, knew so little of its language, and wanted to be present and raw and vulnerable in its climate and geography. Writing and reading were my way not to squander my hours of pain. While it was difficult to live inside that country, it was more difficult not to. In learning to know graveyards as places of comfort and perspective, Mnemosyne’s territory with her markers of memory guarded by crow, leaf, and human footfall, with storehouses of vast and deep tapestries of stories whispered, sung, or silent, I am cultivating the practice of walking on common ground. Our losses are really our winter-enduring foliage, Rilke writes. They are place and settlement, foundation and soil, and home. (Threading Light 86–88) ———The loseability of our small and larger worlds allows us to see their gifts, their preciousness.Loseability allows us to pay attention. ———“A faith-based life, a Trappistine nun said to me, aims for transformation of the soul through compunction—not only a state of regret and remorse for our inadequacies before God, but also living inside a deeper sorrow, a yearning for a union with the divine. Compunction, according to a Christian encyclopaedia, is constructive only if it leads to repentance, reconciliation, and sanctification. Would you consider this work you are doing, the Trappistine wrote, to be a spiritual journey?Initially, I ducked her question; it was a good one. Like Neruda, I don’t know where the poetry comes from, a winter or a river. But like many poets, I feel the inadequacy of language to translate pain and beauty, the yearning for an embodied understanding of phenomena that is assensitive and soul-jolting as the contacts of eye-to-eye and skin-to-skin. While I do not worship a god, I do long for an impossible union with the world—a way to acknowledge the gift that is my life. Resonance: a search for the divine in the everyday. And more so. Writing is a full-bodied, sensory, immersive activity that asks me to give myself over to phenomena, that calls forth deep joy and deep sorrow sometimes so profound that I am gutted by my inadequacy. I am pierced, dumbstruck. Lyric language is the crayon I use, and poetry is my secular compunction...Poets—indeed, all writers—are often humbled by what we cannot do, pierced as we are by—what? I suggest mystery, impossibility, wonder, reverence, grief, desire, joy, our simple gratitude and despair. I speak of the soul and seven people rise from their chairs and leave the room, writes Mary Oliver (4). Eros and penthos working in concert. We have to sign on for the whole package, and that’s what both empties us out, and fills us up. The practice of poetry is our inadequate means of seeking the gift of tears. We cultivate awe, wonder, the exquisite pain of seeing and knowing deeply the abundant and the fleeting in our lives. Yes, it is a spiritual path. It has to do with the soul, and the sacred—our venerating the world given to us. Whether we are inside a belief system that has or does not have a god makes no difference. Seven others lean forward to listen. (Threading Light 98–100)———The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a rare thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. – Simone Weil (169)I can look at the lines and shades on the page clipped to the easel, deer tracks in the snow, or flecks of light on a summer sidewalk. Or at the moon as it moves from new to full. Or I can read the poetry of Paul Celan.Celan’s poem “Tenebrae” takes its title from high Christian services in which lighting, usually from candles, is gradually extinguished so that by the end of the service, the church is in total darkness. Considering Celan’s—Antschel’s—history as a Romanian Jew whose parents were killed in the Nazi death camps, and his subsequent years tortured by the agony of his grief, we are not surprised to learn he chose German, his mother’s language, to create his poetry: it might have been his act of defiance, his way of using shadow and light against the other. The poet’s deep grief, his profound awareness of loss, looks unflinchingly at the past, at the piles of bodies. The language has become a prism, reflecting penetrating shafts of shadow: in the shine of blood, the darkest of the dark. Enlinked, enlaced, and enamoured. We don’t always have names for the shades of sorrows and joys we live inside, but we know that each defines and depends upon the other. Inside the core shadow of grief we recognise our shared mortality, and only in that recognition—we are not alone—can hope be engendered. In the exquisite pure spot of light we associate with love and joy, we may be temporarily blinded, but if we look beyond, and we draw on what we know, we feel the presence of the shadows that have intensified what appears to us as light. Light and dark—even in what we may think are their purest state—are transitory pauses in the shape of being. Decades ago my well-meaning mother, a nurse, gave me pills to dull the pain of losing my fiancé who had shot himself; now, years later, knowing so many deaths, and more imminent, I would choose the bittersweet tenderness of being fully inside grief—awake, raw, open—feeling its walls, its every rough surface, its every degree of light and dark. It is love/loss, light/dark, a fusion that brings me home to the world. (Threading Light 100–101) ———Loss can trigger and inspire creativity, not only at the individual level but at the public level, whether we are marching in Idle No More demonstrations, re-building a shelter, or re-building a life. We use art to weep, to howl, to reach for something that matters, something that means. And sometimes it may mean that all we learn from it is that nothing lasts. And then, what? What do we do then? ———The wisdom of Epictetus, the Stoic, can offer solace, but I know it will take time to catch up with him. Nothing can be taken from us, he claims, because there is nothing to lose: what we lose—lover, friend, hope, father, dream, keys, faith, mother—has merely been returned to where it (or they) came from. We live in samsara, Zen masters remind us, inside a cycle of suffering that results from a belief in the permanence of self and of others. Our perception of reality is narrow; we must broaden it to include all phenomena, to recognise the interdependence of lives, the planet, and beyond, into galaxies. A lot for a mortal to get her head around. And yet, as so many poets have wondered, is that not where imagination is born—in the struggle and practice of listening, attending, and putting ourselves inside the now that all phenomena share? Can I imagine the rush of air under the loon that passes over my house toward the ocean every morning at dawn? The hot dust under the cracked feet of that child on the outskirts of Darwin? The gut-hauling terror of an Afghan woman whose family’s blood is being spilled? Thich Nhat Hanh says that we are only alive when we live the sufferings and the joys of others. He writes: Having seen the reality of interdependence and entered deeply into its reality, nothing can oppress you any longer. You are liberated. Sit in the lotus position, observe your breath, and ask one who has died for others. (66)Our breath is a delicate thread, and it contains multitudes. I hear an echo, yes. The practice of poetry—my own spiritual and philosophical practice, my own sackcloth and candle—has allowed me a glimpse not only into the lives of others, sentient or not, here, afar, or long dead, but it has deepened and broadened my capacity for breath. Attention to breath grounds me and forces me to attend, pulls me into my body as flesh. When I see my flesh as part of the earth, as part of all flesh, as Morris Berman claims, I come to see myself as part of something larger. (Threading Light 134–135) ———We think of loss as a dark time, and yet it opens us, deepens us.Close attention to loss—our own and others’—cultivates compassion.As artists we’re already predisposed to look and listen closely. We taste things, we touch things, we smell them. We lie on the ground like Mary Oliver looking at that grasshopper. We fill our ears with music that not everyone slows down to hear. We fall in love with ideas, with people, with places, with beauty, with tragedy, and I think we desire some kind of fusion, a deeper connection than everyday allows us. We want to BE that grasshopper, enter that devastation, to honour it. We long, I think, to be present.When we are present, even in catastrophe, we are fully alive. It seems counter-intuitive, but the more fully we engage with our losses—the harder we look, the more we soften into compassion—the more we cultivate resilience. ———Resilience consists of three features—persistence, adaptability transformability—each interacting from local to global scales. – Carl FolkeResilent people and resilient systems find meaning and purpose in loss. We set aside our own egos and we try to learn to listen and to see, to open up. Resilience is fundamentally an act of optimism. This is not the same, however, as being naïve. Optimism is the difference between “why me?” and “why not me?” Optimism is present when we are learning to think larger than ourselves. Resilience asks us to keep moving. Sometimes with loss there is a moment or two—or a month, a year, who knows?—where we, as humans, believe that we are standing still, we’re stuck, we’re in stasis. But we aren’t. Everything is always moving and everything is always in relation. What we mistake for stasis in a system is the system taking stock, transforming, doing things underneath the surface, preparing to rebuild, create, recreate. Leonard Cohen reminded us there’s a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in. But what we often don’t realize is that it’s we—the human race, our own possibilities, our own creativity—who are that light. We are resilient when we have agency, support, community we can draw on. When we have hope. ———FortuneFeet to carry you past acres of grapevines, awnings that opento a hall of paperbarks. A dog to circle you, look behind, point ahead. A hip that bends, allows you to slidebetween wire and wooden bars of the fence. A twinge rides with that hip, and sometimes the remnant of a fall bloomsin your right foot. Hands to grip a stick for climbing, to rest your weight when you turn to look below. On your left hand,a story: others see it as a scar. On the other, a newer tale; a bone-white lump. Below, mist disappears; a nichein the world opens to its long green history. Hills furrow into their dark harbours. Horses, snatches of inhale and whiffle.Mutterings of men, a cow’s long bellow, soft thud of feet along the hill. You turn at the sound.The dog swallows a cry. Stays; shakes until the noise recedes. After a time, she walks on three legs,tests the paw of the fourth in the dust. You may never know how she was wounded. She remembers your bodyby scent, voice, perhaps the taste of contraband food at the door of the house. Story of human and dog, you begin—but the wordyour fingers make is god. What last year was her silken newborn fur is now sunbleached, basket dry. Feet, hips, hands, paws, lapwings,mockingbirds, quickening, longing: how eucalypts reach to give shade, and tiny tight grapes cling to vines that align on a slope as smoothlyas the moon follows you, as intention always leans toward good. To know bones of the earth are as true as a point of light: tendernesswhere you bend and press can whisper grace, sorrow’s last line, into all that might have been,so much that is. (Threading Light 115–116) Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Dr. Lekkie Hopkins and Dr. John Ryan for the opportunity to speak (via video) to the 2012 CREATEC Symposium Catastrophe and Creativity, to Dr. Hopkins for her eloquent and memorable paper in response to my work on creativity and research, and to Dr. Ryan for his support. The presentation was recorded and edited by Paul Poirier at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My thanks go to Edith Cowan and Mount Saint Vincent Universities. ReferencesBerman, Morris. Coming to Our Senses. New York: Bantam, 1990.Dillard, Annie. For the Time Being. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.Felstiner, John. Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.Folke, Carl. "On Resilience." Seed Magazine. 13 Dec. 2010. 22 Mar. 2013 ‹http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_resilience›.Franck, Frederick. Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.Hanh, Thich Nhat. The Miracle of Mindfulness. Boston: Beacon Press, 1976.Hausherr, Irenee. Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1982.Neilsen Glenn, Lorri. Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry. Regina, SK: Hagios Press, 2011. Nietzsche, Frederick. Thus Spake Zarathustra. New York: Penguin, 1978. Nussbaum, Martha. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Oliver, Mary. “The Word.” What Do We Know. Boston: DaCapo Press, 2002.Rilke, Rainer Maria. Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus. (Tenth Elegy). Ed. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Random House/Vintage Editions, 2009.Weil, Simone. The Need for Roots. London: Taylor & Francis, 2005 (1952).Weil, Simone. Gravity and Grace. London: Routledge, 2004.Further ReadingChodron, Pema. Practicing Peace in Times of War. Boston: Shambhala, 2006.Cleary, Thomas (trans.) The Essential Tao: An Initiation into the Heart of Taoism through Tao de Ching and the Teachings of Chuang Tzu. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1993.Dalai Lama (H H the 14th) and Venerable Chan Master Sheng-yen. Meeting of Minds: A Dialogue on Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism. New York: Dharma Drum Publications, 1999. Hirshfield, Jane. "Language Wakes Up in the Morning: A Meander toward Writing." Alaska Quarterly Review. 21.1 (2003).Hirshfield, Jane. Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Trans. Arthur Waley. Chatham: Wordsworth Editions, 1997. Neilsen, Lorri. "Lyric Inquiry." Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research. Eds. J. Gary Knowles and Ardra Cole. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2008. 88–98. Ross, Maggie. The Fire and the Furnace: The Way of Tears and Fire. York: Paulist Press, 1987.