secret teaching

"The secret teaching is not secret in the sense that something has been held back from non-initiates. Rather it is secret because it cannot be transmitted by words or letters — it is an inner realization which must be experienced by the disciple."
from the notes on Illuminating the Essential Doctrine by Ch'an master Ho-tse Shen-hui
The Zen Frog



"Trying to speak about the ultimate reality is like sending a kiss through a messenger."
- Rumi



When you write late at night
it's like a small fire
in a clearing, it's what
radiates and what can hurt
if you get too close to it.
- Stephen Dunn
from his poem A Secret Life



So You Say
It is all in the mind, you say, and has
nothing to do with happiness. The coming of cold,
the coming of heat, the mind has all the time in the world.
You take my arm and say something will happen,
something unusual for which we were always prepared,
like the sun arriving after a day in Asia,
like the moon departing after a night with us.
- Mark Strand



"The easy path of aging is to become a thick-skinned, unbudging curmudgeon, a battle-ax. To grow soft and sweet is the harder way."
- James Hillman



"In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves - to that part of us which is conscious of a higher consciousness, by means of which we make the final judgments and put everything together."
- Saul Bellow



"The greatest force in the human body is the natural drive of the body to heal itself - but that force is not independent of the belief system, which can translate expectations into physiological change. Nothing is more wondrous about the fifteen billion neurons in the human brain than their ability to convert thoughts, hopes, ideas, and attitudes into chemical substances. Everything begins, therefore, with belief. What we believe is the most powerful option of all."
- Norman Cousins



Dr. Irving Oyle's Guide to Good Health
1. Eat when you are hungry.
2. Sleep when you are tired.
3. When nature calls, answer.
4. When it's cold, go inside.
5. Don't think of anything else while making love.
- Irving Oyle
The New American Medicine Show



The rest I have told you already
The rest I have told you already.
A few years of fluency, and then
the long silence, like the silence in the valley
before the mountains send back
your own voice changed to the voice of nature.
This silence is my companion now.
I ask: of what did my soul die?
and the silence answers

if your soul died, whose life
are you living and
when did you become that person?
- Louise Glück



Myth
Long afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded, walked the
roads. He smelled a familiar smell. It was
the Sphinx. Oedipus said, "I want to ask one question.
Why didn't I recognize my mother?" "You gave the
wrong answer," said the Sphinx. "But that was what
made everything possible," said Oedipus. "No," she said,
"When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning,
two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered,
Man. You didn't say anything about woman."
"When you say Man," said Oedipus, "you include women
too. Everyone knows that." She said, "That's what
you think."
- Muriel Rukeyser


<°))))><


Well Water
What a girl called 'the dailiness of life'
(Adding an errand to your errand. Saying,
'Since you're up . . .' Making you a means to
A means to a means to) is well water
Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.
The pump you pump the water from is rusty
And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel
A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny
Inexorable hours. And yet sometimes
The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty
Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear
Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands
And gulp from them the dailiness of life.
- Randall Jarrell



"A sage of Chelm went bathing in the lake and almost drowned. When he raised an outcry other swimmers came to his rescue. As he was helped out of the water he took a solemn oath: "I swear never to go into the water again until I learn how to swim!"
A Treasury of Jewish Folklore
edited by Nathan Ausubel



To the Light of September
When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later

you
who fly with them

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew
- W. S. Merwin



"I've often experienced a moment of deep happiness when watching someone sleeping, and wondered why. I think what occasions that joy is an awareness of the truth that the body itself is totally innocent, flesh and bone unquestionably fine, justified and without blame. All aspects - feet and legs, the intricacy of the ears, the grace of the neck and the arms - all are sculptures unsurpassed in beauty of line and function. And the hands, solely in and of themselves, are astonishingly perfect and inviolate.

When the human body is sleeping we can see clearly, without interference or confusion, that the body is indeed sacred and honorable, a grand gift we hold in trust. It is sublime and chaste in its loveliness and as unbothered by greed or violence, by deceit or guilt, as a brilliantly yellow cottonwood standing in an autumn field, as the moon filling the boundaries of its white stone place. If there is sin, it resides elsewhere."
- Pattiann Rogers
The Dream of the Marsh Wren



"An irrational, unconscious identity arises from the fact that anything which comes into contact with me is not only itself, but also a symbol. This symbolization comes about firstly because every human being has unconscious contents, and secondly because every object has an unknown side. Your watch, for instance. Unless you are a watchmaker, you would hardly presume to say that you know how it works. Even if you do, you wouldn't know anything about the molecular structure of the steel unless you happened to be a mineralogist or a physicist. And have you ever heard of a scientist who knows how to repair his pocket watch? But where two unknowns come together, it is impossible to distinguish between them. The unknown in man and the unknown in the thing fall together into one. So there arises an unconscious identity, which sometimes borders on the grotesque. So long as they are unconscious our unconscious contents are always projected, and the projection fixes upon everything ours, inanimate objects as well as animals and people."
- C. G. Jung
Abstracts of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung



"We know how complicated and inexplicable we are as individual human beings. We are constantly perceiving, our bodies taking in and processing sensual information and concurrently affecting that information, our minds debating, formulating, contradicting, playing, dismissing, remembering, on many levels simultaneously. The mind works that way - memories, thoughts, images, facts, rising up, many without being consciously recalled or summoned, occasionally coming together in strange juxtapositions, then vanishing quickly. I believe it's important for a writer to latch on to these disappearing words and images, to capture them before they escape. Some may hold the potential for insight or revelation."
- Pattiann Rogers



It Wasn't Death She Saw
But life:
skin dancing with flesh
like silk curtains that swirl in the wind
above her mother's window
up up now puff! and in again
Or breath - is the wind breathing?
She'd been playing in the grass when it happened:
the snake flung
from the mower's blade, rainbows
of ribbons in the air
rainbows rainbows everywhere, catch a ribbon for your hair
She wrapped the pretty pieces in willow leaves and grass.
When she told her mother what she'd seen -
the way life
leapt out of the snake
just like a ballerina -
her mother beat her,
scrubbed her tongue with salt
but Mama, it was beautiful, like fireflies at night
She learned to hold her body
very still.
- Kirstin Hotelling Zona



"Maybe the existence of divinity in the universe depends in part on us. We may be the consciousness of the universe, the way by which it can come to see and love and honor itself. If this is so, then our obligations are mighty and humbling. We are cocreators. We are servants.

I believe we move through the sacred constantly, yet remain oblivious to its presence except during those rare, unexpected moments when we are suddenly shocked and shaken awake, compelled to perceive and acknowledge. During those brief moments we know with bone-centered conviction who it is we are; with breath-and-pulse clarity where it is we have come from; and with earth-solid certainty we know to what it is we owe all our allegiance, all our heart, all our soul, all our love."
- Pattiann Rogers
The Dream of the Marsh Wren



"All you can do is this: Whatever you experience, whether tangible or intangible, look underneath the experience, like a child looking for a lizard under a stone. You're not expecting anything to be there, but you're always wondering if there might be."
- Richard Leviton



This is an exquisite truth:
Saints and ordinary folks are the same from the start.
Inquiring about a difference
is like asking to borrow string when you've got a good strong rope.
Every Dharma is known in the heart.
After a rain, the mountain colors intensify.
Once you become familiar with the design of fate's illusions
Your ink-well will contain all of life and death.
- Hsu Yun


><((((º>


"I've crossed things out with a thin, single stroke so the original could be read, leaving for investigation both correction and the corrected. I've intentionally erased two people from my life, only two, yet can't help following the traces of them. Like pentimento, some old marks, some ruins, ghosting my days and nights. Any fictionist knows that one event, even if poorly executed, can make another happen, the slightest authenticity creating a path to the hidden. One way to revise: erase something, erase something else, see what's left standing, then decide if it deserves companions. Total erasure makes sense too, a grand cleaning up after the misconceived party, a starting over with a better nothing. The eros of beginnings! Yet even then, who doesn't desire to leave a trail, barely followable, or dream of being properly found by someone who might exquisitely look and care?"
- Stephen Dunn



Yes
It could happen any time,
tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It
could happen.
Or sunshine, love,
salvation.

It could, you know. That's
why we wake
and look out - no
guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like
morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
- William Stafford



"We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us. We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those mental objects for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears. We are endlessly seeking security. Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by untouched and untasted."
- Henepola Gunaratana
Mindfulness In Plain English



"Let your ears hear whatever they want to hear; let your eyes see whatever they want to see; let your mind think whatever it wants to think; let your lungs breathe in their own rhythm. Do not expect any special result, for in this wordless and idea-less state, where can there be past or future, and where any notion of purpose? Stop, look, and listen."
- Alan Watts
Tao: The Watercourse Way



"Zen teaches that our approach to today determines our whole approach to life. The Japanese call this attitude lchi-nichi issho: "Each day is a lifetime."
- Philip Toshio Sudo
Zen 24/7



"Do not quit. You see, the most constant state of an artist is uncertainty. You must face confusion, self-questioning, dilemma. Only amateurs are confident . . . be prepared to live with the fear of failure all your life."
- William Ormond Mitchell



Wife, daughters, friends.
This is for you.
Enlightenment is
Mistake after mistake.
- Ikkyu



"It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.

Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things."
 - Okakura Kakuzō
The Book of Tea



" . . . for those whose favorite season is autumn with its days of cloudless sky, of spacious and clear, far-flung panoramas - those who view nature with detachment, for whom nature's appeal is primarily pictorial, classicists as opposed to romanticists, perhaps. On such a day, one is usually excited, physically exhilarated, mentally stimulated. Only not much is left for the imagination."
- Charlton Ogburn, Jr.



"You have had the audacity to take on human form and you are delighted. But the human form has ten thousand changes that never come to an end. Your joys, then, must be uncountable."
- Chuang Tsu


<°))))><


XIII (Dedications)
I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
..........up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
..........hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
..........between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
..........left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
- Adrienne Rich
An Atlas of the Difficult World



Why we don't die
In late September many voices
Tell you you will die.
That leaf says it. That coolness.
All of them are right.

Our many souls - what
Can they do about it?
Nothing. They're already
Part of the invisible.

Our souls have been
Longing to go home
Anyway. "It's late," they say.
"Lock the door, let's go."

The body doesn't agree. It says,
"We buried a little iron
Ball under that tree.
Let's go get it."
- Robert Bly
Eating The Honey of Words
New and Selected Poems



"If we were not beings who pass quickly away like all other things, none of this would matter."
- Susan Murphy
Upside-Down Zen



"It's not just happenstance that we don't live in some kind of crazy, haphazard universe. There are natural laws, laws of nature such as karma, that deeply affect how we are in this world. It matters what we care about and commit to, and to understand this is very important. The most powerful aspect of ignorance is the feeling that it just doesn't matter what we do, when in fact it matters so very much. We have so much power to create the life we want."
- Sharon Salzberg



"September: it was the most beautiful
of words, he'd always felt, evoking
orange-flowers, swallows, and regret."
- Alexander Theroux


"For summer there, bear in mind,
is a loitering gossip, that only begins
to talk of leaving
when September rises to go."
- George Washington Cable



"People have asked about my practice. How do I prepare my mind for meditation?
There is nothing special. I just keep it where it always is.
They ask, 'Then are you an arahant?'
Do I know?
I am like a tree in a forest, full of leaves, blossoms and fruit.
Birds come to eat and nest, and animals seek rest in its shade.
Yet the tree does not know itself.
It follows its own nature.
It is as it is."
- Ajahn Chah



"We all know that the Buddha sat down under a tree, devoted himself wholeheartedly to sitting meditation and experienced a great enlightenment, but keep in mind that he didn't do that right away. First he practiced intensively with every meditation and yoga teacher around. He was a student of practice before he was a teacher. And he didn't just dabble. He mastered many meditation techniques, became adept at many yogic practices. He kept at it, working hard, learning, but still his question burned in his heart. Still he didn't understand how we can live with any real peace. And as often happens during intensive practice finally he hit bottom. Do you know what I mean? It was when he was doing a severe ascetic practice where he and five other students were only eating one jujube fruit, one sesame seed and one grain of rice a day, not bathing, not sleeping particularly and working very intensely on their practice. He must have been in a wild kind of starved, spiritual daze. Really out of his mind, and yet deeply present. They say he had really awe inspiring spiritual and psychic energy. There's a famous Ghandaran statue of what he looked like then and it's really creepy looking. Ribs showing, wild hair, sunken, intense eyes. Anyway finally something snapped and he realized "this just isn't it." He stumbled across a girl from the nearby village, the story goes, and accepted an offering of rice and milk from her and then finally he began what was to become known as Buddhist practice. The middle way."
- Nomon Tim Burnett



You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story -
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.
- Mary Oliver
from her poem Dogfish


><((((º>


"Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there."
- Eric Hoffer



"We suffer not from our vices and our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality."
- Daniel Boorstin



"Out of damp and gloomy days, out of solitude, out of loveless words directed at us, conclusions grow up in us like fungus: one morning they are there, we know not how, and they gaze upon us, morose and gray. Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him!"
- Friedrich Nietzsche



"Now, though I do no wrong, I'm punished by my past. Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit. The sutras say "when you meet with adversity don't be upset because it makes sense."
- Bodhidharma
translated by Red Pine



"Despite the fact that you arrived in this world with nothing but an unborn Buddha-mind, your partiality for yourselves now makes you want to have things move in your own way. You lose your temper, become contentious, and then you think, "I haven't lost my temper. That fellow won't listen to me. By being so unreasonable he has made me lose it." And so you fix belligerently on his words and end up transforming the valuable Buddha-mind into a fighting spirit. By stewing over this unimportant matter, making the thoughts churn over and over in your mind, you may finally get your way, but then you fail in your ignorance to realize that it was meaningless for you to concern yourself over such a matter. As ignorance causes you to become an animal, what you've done is to leave the vitally important Buddha-mind and make yourself inwardly a first-class animal.

You're all intelligent people here. It's only your ignorance of the Buddha-mind that makes you go on transforming it into a hungry ghost, fighting spirit, or animal. You turn it into this and into that, into all manner of things, and then you become those things. Once you have, once you've become an animal, for example, then even when the truth is spoken to you, it doesn't get through to you. Or, supposing it does; since you didn't retain it even when you were a human being, you certainly won't have the intelligence as an animal to keep it in your mind. So you go from one hell or animal existence to the next or spend countless lifetimes as a hungry ghost. You pass through lives and existences one after another in this way in constant darkness, transmigrating endlessly and suffering untold torment, for thousands of lives and through endless kalpas of time, and during it all, you have no opportunity whatever to rid yourself of the burden of your evil karma. This happens to everyone when, through a single thought, they let the Buddha-mind slip away from them. So you can see that it's a very serious matter indeed.

So whatever anyone else may do or say, whatever happens, leave things as they are. Don't worry yourself over them and don’t side with yourself. Just stay as you are, right in the Buddha-mind, and don't change it into anything else. If you do that, illusions don't occur and you live constantly in the unborn mind. You're a living, breathing, firmly established Buddha. Don't you see? You have an incalculable treasure right at hand."
- Bankei
The Ryumon-ji Sermons
The Unborn
Norman Waddell