Wedding Anniversary Poem by gershon hepner

Revered as books some have collected, our
relationship is one through which we browse
each day; it is a cut but unpressed flower
we treasure like the love that we espouse.
Revere and worship and adore with flowers,
banners, incense, parasols, and bells,
not books, but anniversaries like ours.
Pour forth libations, spirit from the wells
where they mature like wine;
saluting bonds between us bonds that endure
within our hearts, and twine within that shrine,
an amatory musculature.


Inspired by our wedding anniversary, the 38th, but who is counting? Some of the language was borrowed from Holland Cotter’s review of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of books written on palm-leafs in honor of Prajnaparamita, the Buddha’s mother (“From Ancient India, Rare Palm-Leaf Books, ” NYT, August 29,2008) :
All the palm-leaf manuscripts we know of are religious books, transcriptions of Buddhist scriptures, or sutras. A few sutras were favorites, and by far the most frequently copied one was “Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita, ” or “Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Verses.” Said to have been written — or spoken — by the Buddha himself, it was more likely compiled over centuries. Like many texts generated by an ardently proselytizing faith, it simultaneously had its head in the clouds and was down to earth. On the one hand, the sutra defines wisdom as a transcendent consciousness, a state of ego-erasure so profound that the reality of emptiness as the ultimate fact of life becomes clear. To reach this understanding was the goal of monastic practice. It was to gain Buddha-level knowledge, which was the knowledge you needed to gain before you could do the one thing worth doing, which was to help others in need. Balanced against this high-minded goal was another. “Perfection of Wisdom” also implied that a smart devotee might use the sutra as a kind of existential survival kit, a magical talisman. With its help you could ward off illness, accidents and other material harm. And you could acquire things: money, a spouse, an extra cow, healthy children, and lots of them. So palm-leaf manuscripts, like most art, had multiple uses. They circulated spiritual information. They functioned as protective charms. They served as religious offerings, gifts from which karmic returns were expected. And they became objects of worship. Prajnaparamita was not only a form of wisdom, but also a female deity who had roots in ancient goddess worship and was identified with the Buddha’s mother. The sutra itself explains that if the Buddha is kind enough to give you a book like this, you should “revere, adore and worship it with flowers, incense, unguents, parasols, banners, bells, flags and rows of lamps all around.” Such exalted copies of “Perfection of Wisdom” were doubtless lovingly preserved and pampered in temple treasuries or monastic libraries, though this did not guarantee their safety. When Muslim and Hindu raiders swept into northeastern India in the 12th century, they destroyed countless Buddhist foundations and burned their contents. Fleeing monks carried at least some palm-leaf books — portability was a decisive factor here — to monasteries in Tibet and Nepal, where they remained until recent times. Few if any of the Buddhist palm-leaf manuscripts now in museums were actually found in India. And a book could have a final use. It could be a personal possession; something to keep at home, carry around, examine up close whenever you pleased. That’s basically the experience offered by the scattering of palm-leaf pages at the Met, with their elegantly written texts and magnetic little pictures.

8/29/08