writ in water

<°))))><


"I am only a ferryman, and it is my task to take people across this river. I have taken thousands of people across and to all of them my river has been nothing but a hindrance on their journey. They have travelled for money and business, to weddings and on pilgrimages; but the river has been in their way and the ferryman was there to take them quickly across the obstacle. However, amongst the thousands there have been a few, four or five, to whom the river was not an obstacle. They have heard its voice and listened to it, and the river has become holy to them, as it has to me . . .

Have you learned the secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? . . . That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future."
- Herman Hesse
Siddhartha



A little too abstract, a little too wise,
It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
Let the rich life run to the roots again.
- Robinson Jeffers



"I think it is time to face yourself again.
Then again, it is always time."
- Stonepeace



"This is it. This is my personality, this is my body, this is my life. Just this life is it. It's hard to describe the feeling of accepting this a little more deeply. It's a feeling of settling in a little more, or settling down, or opening up, of ceasing to fight against what is. This is not to say that I don't keep working on my conduct, that I don't intend to keep studying and practicing, but somehow my attitude shifted a little lately. A little away from trying to be someone else, a little more squarely on just being this person. "Just be yourself" our teachers tell us.

Letting go of trying to be someone else is liberation. You don't need to apologize anymore. If you really accept that this is it you don't need to strive anymore, you don't need to fight what is. You make effort out of joy, out of curiosity, out of compassion for beings, out of the sheer pleasure of engagement with the world. And when things don't work out you aren't thrown, you understand that as part of what this is. You don't think, "oh there is trouble so I'm going about things the wrong way" rather you understand trouble as part of what this is. You adjust and react to the feedback of the universe but just as adjusting, just as reacting not as someone who has failed."
- Nomon Tim Burnett
Just Being Yourself dharma talk



"You yourself
should reprove yourself,
should examine yourself.

Your own self is
your own mainstay.
Your own self is
your own guide.
Therefore you should
watch over yourself -
as a trader, a fine steed."
- Buddha
Dhammapada



"Following the master, following the sutras - all this means to follow oneself. The sutras are an expression of yourself. The master is your master. When you travel far and wide to meet with masters, that means that you travel far and wide to meet with yourself. When you pick a hundred weeds, you are picking yourself a hundred times. And when you climb ten thousand trees, you are climbing yourself ten thousand times. Understand that when you practice in this way, you are practicing yourself. Practicing and understanding this, you will let go of yourself and get a real taste of yourself for the first time."
- Jisho-zanmai



"Being your true self, being your true nature, is different than experiencing it with thought. Realize that you are the mystery, and that you can't really look at the mystery because you are only capable of looking from the mystery. There is a very awake, alive, and loving mystery, and that's what is seeing through your eyes at this moment. That's what is hearing through your ears at this moment. Instead of trying to figure it all out, which is impossible, I suggest you ask, "What's ultimately behind this set of eyes?" Turn around to see what is looking. Encounter pure mystery, which is pure spirit, and wake up to what you are.

The mystery always takes care of itself - as long as we are not addicted to following concepts. This addiction cuts off your access to the mystery. It's like having a jewel in your pocket but you can't get your hand into the pocket to pull it out. When you deeply know that you are the mystery experiencing itself, you realize that's all that is ever happening. Whether you call an experience a me or a you, a good day or a rotten day, beauty or ugliness, compassion or cruelty - it's all still the mystery experiencing itself, extending itself into time and form. That's all that is happening.

If this understanding is held only in your head, you can know it but you are not being it. The head is saying, "Oh, I know, I'm the mystery," and yet your body is acting like it didn't get the message. It's saying, "I'm still somebody, and I've got all these anxious thoughts and wants and desires." When we are being it knowingly, the whole being receives the message. And when the whole body receives the message, it's like air going out of a balloon. When all the contradiction, turmoil, and searching for this and that deflates, there is the experience that the body is an extension of the mystery. Then the body can easily be moved by the mystery, by pure spirit."
- Adyashanti
Emptiness Dancing



"'Our existences precede our essences,' as Sartre put it. I don't know what I'm here for until I've lived my life. My life, who I am, is not determined by God, by the laws of Nature, by my genetics, by my society, not even by my family. They each may provide the raw material for who I am, but it is how I choose to live that makes me what I am. I create myself."
- Ludwig Binswanger



"When Zen Master Seung Sahn had been in this country for six or eight months, everybody was always asking him questions about Korea, Buddhism, and enlightenment. Somebody asked him if there were any women Zen Masters in Korea. He said, "No, women can't get enlightenment."

"What do you mean women can't get enlightenment?"

He looked at me and said, "So you're a woman!"

"I am a woman."

"I am a man. Already enlightenment has passed through your fingers. It's not a thing. You can't get it. Nobody can get it. Buddha didn't get it either. So we don't have to worry. We're all in the same family and that's wonderful."
- Soeng Hyang
Believing in Yourself



As for the skin,
What a difference
Between a man and a woman!
But as for the bones,
Both are simply human beings.
- Ikkyu



a woman is enlightenment when you're with her and the red thread
of both your passions flare inside you and you see
- Ikkyu



From the world of passions returning to the world of passions:
There is a moments pause.
If it rains, let it rain; if the wind blows, let it blow.
- Ikkyu

><((((º>

"The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is sure to be noticed."
- Soren Kierkegaard



"You know, you could not see me unless you could also see my background, what stands behind me. If I, myself, the boundaries of my skin, were coterminous with your whole field of vision you would not see me at all. You would not see me because, in order to see me, not only would you have to see what is inside the boundary of my skin, but also what is outside it. This is terribly important. Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery, the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets is this:

That for every outside there is an inside,
and for every inside there is an outside,
and though they are different, they go together.

There is, in other words, a secret conspiracy between all insides and all outsides, and the conspiracy is this: To look as different as possible and yet underneath to be identical, because you do not find one without the other."
- Alan Watts



"In your lump of red flesh is a true person without rank who is always going in and out of your senses. Those who have not yet realized this should look! Look!"
- Linji



"Our continual mistake is that we do not concentrate upon the present day, the actual hour, of our life; we live in the past or in the future; we are continually expecting the coming of some special hour when our life shall unfold itself in its full significance. And we do not observe that life is flowing like water through our fingers, sifting like precious grain from a loosely fastened bag."
- Alexander Yelchaninov



"Life is enough unto itself; to 'be' is, in its absolute essence, an ineffable, inexpressible, inexhaustible event of beauty and strangeness; the staggering aspect of 'being' is that it is, and that it is thoroughly incomprehensible."
- Jack Haas
The Way of Wonder



"Always surpass the one you were yesterday."
- Yagyu Sekishusai



"I am not dreaming
This is a real day, a beautiful one.
Do we want to return to the past
and play hide-and-seek?"
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Call Me By My True Names



"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked."
- Viktor E. Frankl



"You are called and you answer automatically. Something in you responds, but at the same time you hate it. You refuse your orders. You say, "no, I can't do it. I'm not worthy. I'm too busy. I don't have the capacity. I'm too old, too lazy, too fat, too thin, too timid, and, besides, I think you have the wrong person." But there's no choice and no excuse. So, you go forth with great reluctance, and things turn out badly. Yes, there are moments of great insight, and narrow escapes, and heroic turns, but, basically, you wander around in circles back in the desert for forty years, fighting with your family and friends, until you finally come close to the goal, but you die before you get there. This sounds like my life. Maybe yours too. Maybe this is everyone's life.

Buddha spoke of suffering; his whole teaching comes down to suffering, the end of suffering, and the path to the end of suffering. But, if you think about Buddha's teaching very carefully, you can understand that Buddha was not saying that suffering is to be eliminated, removed like you would remove a growth by surgery. He was saying that suffering, when it is appreciated and really understood, and fully, radically, accepted as it really is - as empty of any real nature of suffering - as the shape of life itself, then suffering is transformed. There is freedom, not from suffering, but within it."
- Norman Fischer



How dear you will be to me then, you nights
of anguish. Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you,
inconsolable sisters, and, surrendering, lose myself
in your loosened hair. How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they really are
seasons of us, our winter -
enduring foliage, ponds, meadows, our inborn landscape,
where birds and reed-dwelling creatures are at home.
- Rilke

<°))))><

"Seeking happiness outside ourselves is like waiting for sunshine in a cave facing north."
- Tibetan saying



To this place of retreat
the world does not follow;
but many old ailments
heal here.

I polish words
of old poems;
view mountains,
and sleep outside my hut.

Colored clouds
cross the setting sun;
cicadas ring
in the leaves of trees.

With this
my heart again knows happiness;
and who would have thought it,
without wine or money.
- Yao Ho



A Leap of Faith
"Actually, Zen does require a leap of faith. To be mindful, you have to believe that life is worth paying attention to. To meditate, you have to believe you are worth getting to know. To reach a state of inner peace, you have to believe that you have peace within you and that your true nature is already complete. You have to believe inner peace is possible, that you are already perfect, that you don't need to add anything to yourself. If, at this moment, you don't believe some of these things, that's okay. If you can take them on faith, at least for awhile - then you can decide for yourself."
- Gary R. McClain and Eve Adamson
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Zen Living


"Absolute faith is placed in a man's own inner being. For whatever authority there is in Zen, all comes from within."
- D.T. Suzuki
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism


"If you are wandering about in your head, you may miss the vital path of letting your body leap."
- Dogen Zenji
Fukanzazengi



Why do you so earnestly seek the truth in distant places?
Look for delusion and truth in the bottom of your own hearts.
- Ryokan



"Zen is empty, there is nothing in it.
There is no room for any -ism, not Buddhism, not Taoism.
Who you are is all it is."
- Sam Cheng



"There is no path to truth. Truth must be discovered, but there is no formula for its discovery. What is formulated is not true. You must set out on the uncharted sea, and the uncharted sea is yourself. You must set out to discover yourself, but not according to any plan or pattern, for then there is no discovery."
- J. Krishnamurti



No sky
no earth - but still
snowflakes fall
- Hashin

><((((º>

Was it really you
I saw
Or is this joy
I still feel
only a dream?
- Teishin


In this dream world
We doze
And talk of dreams -
Dream, dream on,
As much as you wish
- Ryokan


The moon, I'm sure
Is shining brightly
High above the mountains
But gloomy clouds
Shroud the peak in darkness
- Teishin


You must rise above
The gloomy clouds
Covering the mountaintop
Otherwise, how will you
Ever see the brightness?
- Ryokan
love poems between Ryokan and Teishin



"Your wits can't thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You've no such colours in the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. Oh the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!"
- George Bernard Shaw



"To reach the fundamental ground is not something like going from the country to the city or from one land to another. In reality it is like waking up from a dream. All the questions about where the fundamental ground is and how to get there are part of the dream, arising from the thoughts of a dream about a dream."
- Muso Kokushi



"When you live your life at peace with every circumstance of your life, favorable or terrible, you situate yourself at the still point of the turning universe. Then you are the world of cause and effect itself, you become this. You become, with nothing between you and it, this precarious world. You are precariousness itself and so you are no longer subject to precariousness. When you live like this you are the master of precariousness, the master of cause and effect, and then everything is blessed, just as it is.
Interestingly, the root of the word precarious is "prayer," or "imprecation." When you fully enter precariousness, our ordinary human world of one mistake after another, you are "full of prayer," open to connectedness. Then you can see how a life of human limitation is also a life of grace."
- Susan Murphy
Upside-Down Zen: Finding the Marvelous in the Ordinary



"When you encounter those who are wicked, unrighteous, foolish, dim-witted, deformed, vicious, chronically ill, lonely, unfortunate, or disabled, you should think: "How can I save them?" And even if there is nothing you can do, at least you must not indulge in feelings of arrogance, superiority, derision, scorn, or abhorrence, but should immediately manifest sympathy and compassion. If you fail to do so, you should feel ashamed and deeply reproach yourself: "How far I have strayed from the Way! How can I betray the old sages?" I take these words as an admonition to myself."
- Ryokan



"Pedestals were invented by a very wise man who perceived the need in human consciousness to cast people down. This wise man realized that it would be impossible to cast people down unless you had put them up on something first. So he invented the pedestal, which is now employed on a regular basis. You put people on it so you can cast them down later. Indeed, he was a wise man."
- Frederick Lenz
Meditation: The Bridge Is Flowing But The River Is Not



"Day by day we all meet events that seem to be most unfair, and we feel that the only way to handle an attack is to fight back; and the way we fight is with our minds. We arm ourselves with our anger and our opinions, our self-righteousness . . . And we think this is the way to live our life. All that we accomplish is to increase the separation, to escalate the anger, and to make ourselves and everyone else miserable."
- Charlotte Joko Beck
Everyday Zen



"The universe takes on a whole new meaning when you know that your place in it was not foreordained, that it was not designed for us, indeed, that it was not designed at all. If we are nothing more than star stuff, how special life becomes. How inspiring it is to share in the sublimity of knowledge generated by other human minds, and perhaps to even make a tiny contribution toward that body of knowledge that will be passed down through the ages, part of the cumulative wisdom of a single species on a tiny planet orbiting an ordinary star on the remote edge of a not-so-unusual galaxy, itself a member of a cluster of galaxies millions of light years from nowhere."
- Michael Shermer



"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color and bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked - as I am surprisingly often - why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?"
- Richard Dawkins



"We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts."
- Ray Bradbury



"The bigger and more impersonal the universe is, the more meaningful you are, because this vast, impersonal place needs something significant to fill it up."
- Alan Dressler

<°))))><

Gaelic blessing
Deep peace of the running river to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.



"It's not outer circumstances or conditions that entangle us, Naropa, it's internal clinging and fixations that entangle us.

It is not what happens to us that determines our karma, our destiny, our character and the kind of experience we have in life; it is how we relate to what happens that makes all the difference."
- Tilopa
Song of Mahamudra



lines for winter
tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself —
inside the dome of dark
or under the crackling white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. and you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
and if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.
- Mark Strand
The Late Hour