"The truth will make you free. But first it will piss you off."

- (unknown)

Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum

Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee
They’re throwing knives into the tree
Two big bags of dead man’s bones
Got their noses to the grindstones
Living in the Land of Nod
Trustin’ their fate to the hands of God
They pass by so silently
Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee

Well, they’re going to the country, they’re gonna retire
They’re taking a street car named Desire
Looking in the window at the pecan pie
Lot of things they’d like they would never buy
Neither one gonna turn and run
They’re making a voyage to the sun
“His Master’s voice is calling me,”
Says Tweedle-dee Dum to Tweedle-dee Dee

Tweedle-dee Dee and Tweedle-dee Dum
All that and more and then some
They walk among the stately trees
They know the secrets of the breeze
Tweedle-dee Dum says to Tweedle-dee Dee
“Your presence is obnoxious to me.”
They’re like babies sittin’ on a woman’s knee
Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee

Well, they’re living in a happy harmony
Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee
They’re one day older and a dollar short
They’ve got a parade permit and a police escort
Tweedle-dee Dee—he’s on his hands and his knees
Saying, “Throw me somethin’, Mister, please.”
“What’s good for you is good for me,”
Says Tweedle-dee Dum to Tweedle-dee Dee

Well a childish dream is a deathless need
And a noble truth is a sacred creed
They’re lying low and they’re makin’ hay
They seem determined to go all the way
One is a lowdown, sorry old man
The other will stab you where you stand
“I’ve had too much of your company,”
Says Tweedle-dee Dum to Tweedle-dee Dee

BOB DYLAN

At an ancient temple, I lean on a balcony rail,
And hear the Wondrous Function rise.
In the empty courtyard, the pure color of the moon;
As night advances, chime sounds move.
The water clock turns: cold watches ring faster;
Lamps sputter: cool flames die away.
The Primordial Void and the Ten Thousand Things
Are telling each other the Mysterious Secret.

- Changoa (d. 874)

A Chan hut beneath a pine;
Moss lush, paths indistinct.
Green mountains:
Seen at spring’s end;
Flowing water:
Heard in deep night.
He’s not sitting
On a gaze-at-the-mind-rock;
Perhaps he’s followed
Roused-from-concentration clouds?
Monkeys and apes can’t be asked where he is:
Cliffs and valleys alone in empty twilight.

- Qibai (847-860)

Ultralight

In an emergency, a crayon will light for thirty minutes.
In an emergence, rainbow votives held high
refract prisms on walls and in the sky, flying flares
detract from heat-seeking missiles and take the blame.


Grateful for aim and gasping for breath,
thanks to lighthouses and harbingers
we have escaped death and burn with purpose
like a California wildfire fueled by fierce winds,
choosing our victims with a logic only known
by three-hundred-foot tall flames that take
everything in their wake by storm.


Our prayers reside in droplets of rain
hovering over clouds of smoke that move
from here to New Jersey and wind up
on the news, coating everything in fear
and soot, the tears of mothers dripping down
on things we could no longer protect,
dirty black rivulets making their way south.


Enlightened by loss we remove the handles
from toothbrushes to take every last ounce
of weight off our backs, to ease the days
spent on trails that are thousands of miles long;

Somewhere, someone has recorded all this
for posterity, hoping someone will be alive
to grasp these leftover asphalt thoroughfares,
remnants of dams and plastic hills,
miscellaneous bits of things we left behind
in our attempts to run from ourselves—

Unidentifiable trinkets that melted together
to block the natural paths of rivers
until they forgot how to flow to the ocean.

~DM Freeman

I’m free in this cave on T’ien-t’ai:
No seeker here will ever find me.
Han Shan’s my only friend.
Chewing magic mushrooms,
Underneath tall pines,
We chatter back and forth
Of ancient times, and new,
Sighing to think of all the others,
Each on his own way,
Get your heads out, there’s still time!

- Shih-te

Amid
a thousand clouds and streams

There’s an idle person somewhere

Roaming
the hills during the day

Sleeping
below cliffs at night

Suddenly
passing springs and autumns
At peace
no earthly burdens
Happy
clinging to nothing
Still
like a river in fall

- Han shan

Through a face full of clear frostiness
Raw cold bites through
A head overstuffed
With white hair.
A gale whistles,
And over the world
From flowers of emptiness
Shadows fall;
But from my eyes
The spells of darkness
Have completely melted.

- Han Shan Te-ch’ing (1546–1623)

A person of the Way fundamentally
Does not dwell anywhere.
The white clouds are
Fascinated with the
Green mountain’s foundation.
The bright moon
Cherishes being carried along
With the flowing water.
The clouds part,
And the mountain appears.
The moon sets,
And the water is cool.
Each bit of autumn
Contains vast interpenetration without bounds

- Hongzhi
from Practice Instructions

@hakima said
In an emergency, a crayon will light for thirty minutes.

@rookie54 said
Amid
a thousand clouds and streams

There’s an idle person somewhere

Roaming
the hills during the day

Sleeping
below cliffs at night

Suddenly
passing springs and autumns
At peace
no earthly burdens
Happy
clinging to nothing
Still
like a river in fall

- Han shan

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations -- such is a pleasure beyond compare.

-- Soseki

@rookie54 said
Even profound concepts are ultimately empty: the Ultimate Path is wordless, and if we speak, we go astray from it. Though we may characterize the fundamental basis as “empty by nature,” there is no “fundamental basis” that can be labeled. Emptiness itself is wordless: it is not a mental construct.

- Records of the Lanka

@rookie54 said
No dust speck anywhere.
What's old? new?
At home on my blue mountain,
I want for nothing.

- Shofu

@hakima said

What is the cause of happiness? What is the cause of suffering?

My life is a mess. I believe I must strive for a state called "everything is OK." This is suffering.

My life is a mess, and it's OK, because a mess is all there is. This is the end of suffering.

From a mess I came. To a mess I will return. The world is a mess. The cosmos is a hot mess, c ...[text shortened]... o unconditional vulnerability is love possible.

Now be a mess, and be happy.

~Fred LaMotte