the designated light
- R. H. Blyth
Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics
stains that disperse through
time's erosion in a window
a passion for transformation
as the sun goes down a glinting
& that old demon winter's come.
- Robin Ouzman Hislop
Some old papers were
recently excavated
from the ruins of an ancient city
in Eastern Turkestan.
The scholars say that they contain
the thoughts of Bodhidharma,
and they have been busy
turning out commentaries,
both in the horizontal writing
of the West
and the vertical lines of the Orient.
Who knows exactly the thought
of the blue-eyed monk?
Some imitate his zazen
and gaze at the wall
until the sun goes down.
Hey - you are all wrong!
- Nyogen Senzaki
what is it that you cherish
to find the Way to see your nature
your nature is naturally so
what Heaven bestows is perfect
looking for proof leads you astray
leaving the trunk to search among the twigs
all you get is stupid
- Han shan
"If you use your mind to study reality, you won’t understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you’ll understand both."
- Bodhidharma
Ready for Silence
The devotional moon looks into
the heart and is in the heart.
When the heart has a Friend like
you, the universe cannot contain
their pleasure. Anyone warmed
by sun feels courage coming in.
If grief arrives, you enjoy it.
Generosity: that's your hand in
my pocket giving your wealth away.
Yet you run from me like one
raised in the wild. Here comes
this strange creature: me, in a
hands-and-feet shape! The formless
tries to satisfy us with forms!
A transparent nakedness wearing
pure light says, Blessed are those
who put on gold brocade! You may
not see him, but Moses is alive,
in this town, and he still has his
staff! And there's water and thirst,
wherever and however water goes, and
the one who brings water. The morning
wind broke off a few branches in the
garden. No matter. When you feel
love inside you, you hear the
invitation to be cooked by God.
It's that creation the heart loves.
For three winter months the ground
keeps quiet. But each piece of earth
knows what's inside waiting: beans,
sugarcane, cyrpess, wildflowers. Then
the spring sun comes talking plants
into the open. Anyone who feels the
point of prayer bends down like
the first letter of pray. Anyone who
walks with his back to the sun is
following his shadow. Move into your
own quietness. This word-search poem
has found you, ready for silence.
- Jelaluddin Rumi
"Does the self really exist?
There are wide variations of the theory. There are people who believe they make the sun rise or control the weather. Some schizophrenics appropriate a fantastic range of sensory input to the self, believing themselves the focus and the orchestrator of great cosmic events. Other mental patients, and some mystics, completely lose the sense of self, facing a bewildering confusion of sensation with no unifying scheme to make sense of it. Most people's experience, of course, lies between these extremes. But normality does not establish truth. The fact that most people have a normal self, the subject of consistent and limited experience, does not make the self real. From the perspective of every spiritual tradition, entered deeply enough, the existence of ego is considered an illusion, the normal psychosis."
- Dan J. Bruiger
The Ground of Experience
"We each have a self - an image developed over time. It is a mysterious fusion of ego, personality, and memory that everyone amasses between infancy and early childhood. Being completely personal, your 'self' is also completely isolated and separate from every other 'self'. Yet, if you saw yourself truly, you would no longer identify with this haphazard, ramshackle thing, your self. In truth, every person is like a piece of gold. If you were a gold ring, you could say "I am a ring", but this is a temporary shape (your self-image). In truth you are just gold - that is your essence, no matter how the shape changes."
- Deepak Chopra
"You sit here for days saying, 'This is strange business.' You're the strange business. You have the energy of the sun in you, but you keep knotting it up at the base of your spine. You're some weird kind of gold that wants to stay melted in the furnace, so you won't have to become coins."
- Rumi
"We (that indivisible divinity that operates in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it as enduring, mysterious, visible, omnipresent in space and stable in time; but we have consented to tenuous and eternal intervals of illogicalness in its architecture that we might know it is false."
- Jorge Luis Borges
Other Inquisitions
"Love is the connection with spirit, and one way it flows is through form. That's the state of rapture Rumi praises, the joy of being inside an intersection with the divine which is what this world is."
- Coleman Barks
"People who study the path clearly know there is such a thing; why do they fail to get the message, and go on doubting? It is because their faith is not complete enough and their doubt is not deep enough. Only with depth and completeness, be it faith or doubt, is it really Zen; if you are incapable of introspection like this, you will eventually get lost in confusion and lose the thread, wearing out and stumbling halfway along the road. But if you can look into yourself, there is no one else."
- Foyan
"The trouble with Westerners is that they want to witness their own enlightenment."
- Chogyam Trungpa
"Stop doing stuff all the time,
and watch what happens."
- Ron Hogan
The Tao Te Ching
a modern interpretation of Lao Tzu
"We are hidden in ourselves, like a truth hidden in isolated facts. When we know that this One in us is One in all, then our truth is revealed."
- Sir Rabindranath Tagore
Personality
Among other creatures this is what I was.
Abilities depend on the realm; realm also depends on abilities.
At birth I forgot completely by which path I came.
I don't know, these years, which school of monk I am.
- Ikkyu
Someone once asked Issan,
"Tenzo! We are vegetarians, so we don't kill animals. But we eat carrots and potatoes. What do you think about killing vegetables?"
Issan replied, "Well, I definitely think we should kill them before we eat them."
At dusk
I often climb
To the peak of Kugami.
Deer bellow,
Their voices
Soaked up by
Piles of maple leaves
Lying undisturbed at
The foot of the mountain.
- Ryokan
Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen Poems of Ryokan
translated by John Stevens
- Tung-shan
The Song of the Jeweled Mirror Samadhi
"The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned this knows what it means to live. He has penetrated the whole mystery of life: giving thanks for everything."
- Albert Schweitzer
"Only the idea of self remains
Floating on a sea of cells;
Only heartbeats short of eternity
In breath after breath we dwell."
- Mike Garofalo
"There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that Thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought."
- Mark Twain
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."
- Descartes
Let me ask you something, sir.
Sir?
What's it like? After?
After . . . ?
This misery ends.
Hell or Heaven?
Like San Francisco.
A city. Good. I was worried . . . it'd be a garden. I hate that shit.
Big city, overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty-corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, fierce gusts of gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.
Isaiah.
Prophet birds, Roy.
Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths.
And a dragon atop a golden horde.
And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion.
And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers.
Race, taste and history finally overcome.
And you ain't there.
And Heaven?
That was Heaven, Roy.
- Tony Kushner
Angels in America
Part Two: Perestroika
"Because the soul is progressive,
it never quite repeats itself,
but in every act attempts the production
of a new and fairer whole."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
On Art
but less interesting than looking."
- Goethe
Essential Zen
1. Don't wish for perfect health. In perfect health there is greed and wanting. So an ancient said, "Make good medicine from the suffering of sickness."
2. Don't hope for life without problems. An easy life results in a judgmental and lazy mind. So an ancient once said, "Accept the anxieties and difficulties of this life."
3. Don't expect your practice to be always clear of obstacles. Without hindrances the mind that seeks enlightenment may be burnt out. So an ancient once said, "Attain deliverance in disturbances."
4. Don't expect to practice hard and not experience the weird. Hard practice that evades the unknown makes for a weak commitment. So an ancient once said, "Help hard practice by befriending every demon."
5. Don't expect to finish doing something easily. If you happen to acquire something easily the will is made weaker. So an ancient once said, "Try again and again to complete what you are doing."
6. Make friends but don't expect any benefit for yourself. Friendship only for oneself harms trust. So an ancient once said, "Have an enduring friendship with purity in heart."
7. Don't expect others to follow your direction. When it happens that others go along with you, it results in pride. So an ancient once said, "Use your will to bring peace between people."
8. Expect no reward for an act of charity. Expecting something in return leads to a scheming mind. So an ancient once said, "Throw false spirituality away like a pair of old shoes."
9. Don't seek profit over and above what your work is worth. Acquiring false profit makes a fool (of oneself). So an ancient once said, "Be rich in honesty."
10. Don't try to make clarity of mind with severe practice. Every mind comes to hate severity, and where is clarity in mortification? So an ancient once said, "Clear a passage way through severe practice."
11. Be equal to every hindrance. Buddha attained supreme enlightenment without hindrance. Seekers after truth are schooled in adversity. When they are confronted by a hindrance, they can't be overcome. Then, cutting free, their treasure is great.
- Kasuaki Tanahashi and Tensho David Schneider
The early sun dissolves the mist
that has covered the mountain.
All night I have listened to the wise,
yet failed to learn.
Dimly, darkly, the eternal pines
rise without effort from the vanishing fog.
- Xue Tao
"We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit."
- e.e. cummings
Learn to see backward, inside out and upside down."
- Lao Tzu
Tao Te Ching
"In May I gave a day-long benefit writing workshop for the Zen Center in Santa Fe. I asked Robert, a Zen priest there, to teach the meditation part and also to give a Zen lecture.
In his lecture, he said that Zen poems are marked by a feeling of space and also a tinge of sadness.
I agreed. Sadness comes from the knowledge of impermanence. Everything will eventually pass away. Why be sad? Because we love and no matter how dispassionate we become, we are not ice bricks. We are human beings with feelings.
Robert said that after he read his first Zen book many years ago - he was young, maybe seventeen; the book was The Zen Teaching of Huang Po by John Blofeld - he wanted to become intimate with everything. He bowed to trees and books and rows of lettuce in grocery stores. He said his friends thought he was crazy.
I thought he was wonderful. That is what Zen is about. To have an intimate connection with the world and on top of it to know about its passing. Of course there is sadness. But how sweet. And at the heart of it, what bravery. We know about impermanence, but it does not drive us into a hole. We dare in the face of it to stand up and become intimate and not just with human beings, which is hard enough, but also with the sky, water, chairs, cows and sidewalks.
Is this not the way of the writer?
The sad thing is that the knowledge of impermanence is often not enough for human beings.
We have to hit ourselves over the head."
- Natalie Goldberg
Wild Mind
Don't think
Don't think
.......I don't know
everyone who reads this poem
.......is helping
.......to write it
- Steve Toth
A fading
Mountain echo
Void and
Unreal
Within
A light snow
Three Thousand Realms
Within those realms
Light snow falls
As the snow
Engulfs my hut
At dusk
My heart, too
Is completely consumed
- Ryokan
"From a cultures point of view, it is far better if your everyday mind, the habitual, automatized way you think and feel, is shaped to reflect the cultures consensus beliefs and values. Then you will automatically experience the right perceptions and interpretations, and so it will be 'natural' to act in the culturally appropriate way, even when there are no agents of social coercion around."
- Charles T. Tart
"A physicist visits a colleague and notices a horseshoe hanging on the wall above the entrance.
"Do you really believe that a horseshoe brings luck?" he asks.
"No", replies the colleague, "but I've been told that it works even if you don't believe in it."
- Niels Bohr
"The Buddha described what we call self as a collection of aggregates - elements of mind and body - that function interdependently, creating the appearance of a woman or a man. We then identify with that image or appearance, taking it to be I or mine, imagining it to have some inherent self-existence. For example we get up in the morning, look in the mirror, recognize the reflection, and think, "Yes, that's me again." We then add all kinds of concepts to this sense of self: I'm a woman or a man, I'm a certain age, I'm a happy or unhappy person - the list goes on and on.
When we examine our experience, though, we see that there is not some core being to whom experience refers; rather it is simply empty phenomena rolling on. It is empty in the sense that there is no one behind the arising and changing phenomena to whom they happen. A rainbow is a good example of this. We go out after a rainstorm and feel that moment of delight if a rainbow appears in the sky. Mostly, we simply enjoy the sight without investigating the real nature of what is happening. But when we look more deeply, it becomes clear that there is no thing called rainbow apart from the particular conditions of air and moisture and light. Each one of us is like that rainbow - an appearance, a magical display, arising out of our various elements of mind and body."
- Joseph Goldstein
"The essence of meditation is training in mindfulness. This is done by resting the attention on an external meditation support, and returning to it every time it drifts away into thought. This action is possible because one part of the mind observes and identifies with thoughts and feelings as they arise. If we did not have this capacity for self-reflective awareness we would not know or realize we were thinking when thinking happens."
- Rob Nairn
"If you have been born a man
Thinking is necessary.
But it will be most exalted in your life to think about your thoughts and correct them."
- M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.
- Wu Men
"What is the mirror of being?
Non-being. Always bring a mirror of non-existence as a gift.
Any other gift is foolish."
- Rumi
wheatbean
snow-viewing
till we're buried.
- Basho
"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
- Mark Twain
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