This hut is small,
But contains the world;
The old man in the tiny room
Has come to understand.
Great bodhisattvas believe without a doubt,
But when lesser beings hear it,
They think it strange.
From master to master, a single thought:
The long warm days of spring.
Sedge grass green under clearing frost;
Herbs fragrant in a gentle wind.
The moon full: the purity of thusness;
Flowers bloom: perfume of the Bodhi tree.
In the courtyard, where orioles call,
I hear, at times, perfect words.
No one tends the sidewalk here
There's broken glass and graffiti
The traffic passes along the road
It's hotter than hell, and humid
That thing that someone said to me
And my own ancient embarrassments
The moon is fine and I love the stars
But this is my practice ground
Thunder and lightning don’t dare topple you;
Scales and wrinkles—power over ten thousand things.
Wood grubs die in your wasted joints;
Snakes coil in your rotten roots.
A shadow is cast, soaking a monk’s meditation;
A sound carries, chilling a dream of cranes.
On any night of wind and rain,
Ghosts and spirits must be watching.
Love has taken away my practices
and filled me with poetry.
I tried to keep quietly repeating
No strength but yours, but I couldn’t.
I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable, chaste and stable,
but who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?
A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
That is how I hold your voice.
I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
quickly reduced to smoke and ash.
I saw you and became that empty.
This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence.
The sky is blue.
The world is a blind man sitting beside the road.
But whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond the blue and the blind man.
A great soul hides like Muhammad or Jesus
moving through a crowd in a city where no one knows him.
To praise is to praise
how one surrenders to the emptiness.
To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.
So the journey goes on,
and no one knows where.
Just to be held by the ocean
is the best luck we could have.
It is a total waking up.
Why should we grieve that we have been sleeping?
It does not matter how long we have been unconscious.
We are groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness around you.
the buoyancy.
The Way is vast and without favor,
And the all-empty Tao is profound.
With an empty heart, its nature is easily learned,
though its power encompasses the cosmos.
With its wisdom one may discern life’s great mysteries,
so that the heart may become pure as the throne of the immortals.
Today the red peonies in front of my steps,
Some are beginning to fade,
Some are beginning to bloom.
When they bloom, I do not understand
Why they are so beautiful,
For when they fade,
We realize that they are like phantom bodies.
How far is it from here to the
Gateway of the Void?
With these faded flowers,
Let me come and ask you.
Living secluded
Above the cloud
At the top of Mount Su
Abiding in your origin
You demonstrate the
Truth of Zen
You have moved far from town
From now on you renew
The Way of Bodhidharma.
The human body is a little universe
Its chill tears, so much wind-blown sleet
Beneath our skins, mountains bulge, brooks flow
Within our chests lurk lost cities, hidden tribes
Wisdom quarters itself in our tiny hearts
Liver and gall peer out, scrutinize a thousand miles
Follow a path back to its source, else be
A house vacant save for swallows in the eaves
Few people believe their
Inherent mind is Buddha.
Most will not take this seriously,
And therefore are cramped.
They are wrapped up in
Illusions, cravings,
Resentments,
And other afflictions,
All because they love
The cave of ignorance.
...
15 Jul '21 13:29
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