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FROM THE SPEAKER: "May all I make, compound or assemble together be medicine."
The daily vows, prostrations, visualizations and recitations for practicing Sowa Rigpa include the Aspiration Prayer from which the above quote is drawn. Does this entreaty apply to the composition of poetry as well? To every sentence we form? Every thought that arises?
I'm a poet whose primary research is in the field of Prosody. Prosody is the interplay between speech and song. It's the intonational, rhythmic, musical, interactive aspects of language. It is also definable as poetry's basic elements of composition (stress, intensity, pause, pitch, timbre, mood, etc.). Initially, I sought out Tibetan Medicine only in order to practice mantra (which is integral to Tibetan Medicine) as the most potent form of phonic sound.
As a student of mantra ('mind protection') I had no intention of practicing Tibetan Medicine which is tantric (tantra, 'body protection'). During the pandemic, my Tibetan teacher made the decision to go online and teach Sowa Rigpa (Traditional Tibetan Medicine), and I accepted an invitation to be interviewed. My resistance to this medical practice was elemental: 5 element theory, the 3 humors, the 3 poisons, and the one primary cause of disease (ignorance, ma rigpa, or avidyā) were foreign to me. In the interview it was pointed out to me that the mandala from which Sowa Rigpa emanates (a garden called Tanaduk) is the abode of the poets (the rishis, the same sage/poets who received the Vedic hymns). Right away, I asked my teacher: what are the rishis doing in there? His answer basically reconstituted my life.
I'd like to show the interrelationship between Sowa Rigpa and prosody, the composition of health, with prosody understood in this context as bearing properties such as vibration, vibrancy, timing, attuning, intoning, intent, interacting, proportioning, and equipoise.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Robert Kocik is a poet, prosodist, trans-disciplinary essayist, teacher, artist and designer/builder. In 2006, working collaboratively with choreographer Daria Faïn, Kocik initiated a field of research called the Prosodic Body, an experiential artscience that explores prosody (the tone, tempo, intention, intensity and total body language of speech) in relation to movement, bioprocesses and health.

On the Entanglement Project at Duke-FHI: Climate catastrophe cannot be thought outside of the context of empire and the forms of racialization central to global capitalism, including the degradation of peoples, ecosystems and lands facilitated by states in the global North. Threats to the very existence of the planet and all its inhabitants result from this genocidal global development project, yet the effects are being borne more grotesquely by those who live in the global South. Environmental justice efforts that overlook the longue durée trajectory of the historical operations of capitalism, and the raciality that affixes a disproportionate burden onto ex-colonized areas of the planet and its inhabitants, fall short of pointing us in a direction of systemic and just change.

STRANGE LIFE is part of The Entanglement Project, a multi-stranded initiative at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute focused on race, health, and climate. @dukeuniversity @FranklinHumanities

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