Although the Wind

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight
also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.

---by Izumi Shikibu (974-1034)

Translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani

Enter the Door - 17

One day Manjushri stood outside the gate when Buddha called to him: “Manjushri, Manjushri, why do you not enter?”

“I do not see a thing outside the gate. Why should I enter?” Manjushri answered.

--- Zen koan "Manjushri Enters the Gate" from
 "The Iron Flute"

Peonies

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again —
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.

--- by Mary Oliver

Five Gates by Daoxin

Know this: Buddha is this mind. Outside of this mind there is no Buddha. Briefly, I suggest that there are five basic principles.

First: Know the essence of mind. The essential nature is pure. The essence is itself Buddha.

Second: Know the function of mind. Its function gives rise to the jewel of Dharma. It functions without obstruction, but is always still; even the ten thousand delusions are in essence just this.

Third: Constant Awakening is without end. The Awakening mind is always present. The Teaching of this Awakening is without form.

Fourth: Always know the body is empty and tranquil. Inside and outside are transparent to each other. Your body arises in the midst of ultimate reality. There have never been obstacles.

Fifth: Keep unified-mindfulness without deviation. Both movement and stillness go nowhere.

Those who practice this will clearly see their Buddha-nature and enter into the gate of practice without hesitation.

---by the Fourth AncestorZen Patriarch Dayi Daoxin (580-651)

Enter the Door - 15

The Zen storie about a monk who is tired of the rigors of monastic practice and wants out of the monastery. He goes to the teacher and this dialogue ensues:

“I can’t take this anymore. I want out.”

The master said, “Okay, then leave.”

He started for the door, and the master said, “That’s not your door.”

“Oh. Sorry.” The fellow looked around and spotted another door. As he headed for it, the master said, “That’s not your door.”

“Oh!” He looked around for another door, and as he headed for that one, the master said, “That’s not your door!”

Bewildered and exasperated, the poor fellow said, “What do you mean? There’s no other door. You told me I could leave, but there’s no door I can leave by.”

“If there’s no door you can leave by,” said the master, “then sit down.”

The Need to Win

When an archer is shooting for fun

He has all his skill.

If he shoots for a brass buckle

He is already nervous.

If he shoots for a prize of gold

He goes blind

Or sees two targets –

He is out of his mind.

His skill has not changed,

But the prize divides him.

He cares

He thinks more of winning

Than of shooting –

And the need to win

Drains him of power.

---by Chuang Tzu

You Are One with Clouds

Whereever you are,
You are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything.
That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.

---By Shunryu Suzuki (1904-1971)

Fish and Bowl

A king gave a present to a Sufi mystic. It was a golden bowl with a beautiful fish in it. The Sufi looked at the bowl and then at the fish. He felt very sorry for the fish, because the fish was imprisoned in that golden bowl.

So, the Sufi mystic went to the lake and liberated the fish in that lake. He was tremendously happy that at least now the fish can have the whole lake, the great freedom, the space that really belongs to the fish. Although the bowl was made of gold it was a confinement. Then he looked at the bowl and thought, what will he do with that bowl? So he threw the bowl also into the lake.

The next morning the Sufi mystic visited the lake to have a look at the fish and he was surprised, the fish was again in the bowl although the bowl was in the lake. The fish had again chosen the bowl. The bowl was in the lake, but the fish was not in the lake. The fish had entered into the bowl again. The fish had lived in that bowl for so long. The bowl was its home. The mystic thought it was a prison, but not the fish.

Knock on the Sky

Knock on the sky and  listen to the sound!       

--- Zen Proverb

Sunflower Sutra

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.
...Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust—I rushed up enchanted—it was my first sunflower[...]gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye—
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man's grime but death and human locomotives, all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black misery, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt—industrial—modern—all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown—and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos—all these entangled in your mummied roots—and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul too, and anyone who’ll listen,
—We're not our skin of grime, we're not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we're golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.

---By Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997)

Silent Illumination

"Mozhao ming" - Silent Illumination, Serene Reflection or Stillness and Brightness by Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157), a Chinese Chan Buddhist monk.

In stillness and serenity words are forgotten,
What is before me appears in bright clarity.
Looking closely things become spacious,
Feeling deeply life becomes vibrant.

Life's vibrancy is bright of itself,
This brightness reveals the wonder:
Moonlight in the dew, stars in a river,
Snow on the pines, clouds on a peak.

Through darkness things are bright and
Through concealment they are ever more manifest -
A crane dreaming in the winter mist,
Autumnal waters, sounding from afar.

Endless kalpas are utterly empty
And all is totally the same.
When wonder dwells within the stillness,
Striving is forgotten within the brightness.

What is this wonder?
Seeing through confusion, awake and with clarity.
The practice of stillness and bright awareness
Is the foundation for setting the subtlest appearance free.

Truly seeing the subtlest thing, it is set free.
Like a golden shuttle through a loom of dark jade
The true and the partial yield to one another,
Light and darkness bring each other forth.

When neither subject nor object is relied upon,
At such basic time, they merge and
We drink the medicine of right views,
And beat the poison-clearing drum.

That time when subject and object are merged,
Activity and passivity are present in me.
Going through the gate, the true body emerges
And there is fruit at the end of the branch.

Stillness alone is the supreme word,
Brightness alone, the universal response.
Responding without meritorious purpose,
Speaking whether heard or not.

All things throughout the universe
Shine with majesty and speak the Dharma.
Every one of them is proving the true,
Each of them asks and answers.

Proving the true in communication
They respond to each other just right.
When the insight lacks in stillness,
Harshness appears.

In communication, proving the true,
The response is just right, accordingly.
When the stillness lacks in brightness,
Dullness results in a waste of Dharma.

When you have perfected stillness and brightness,
The lotus blossoms and the dreamer wakes up;
All the streams flow into the ocean
Every mountain faces the highest peak.

You're like the goose that goes straight for the milk, not for water,
And like the bee that picks out the choicest flowers for nectar.
When you have perfected stillness and brightness,
I offer the seal of our lineage.

This practice of bright stillness
Pervades from the top of our heads to the soles of our feet:
The body expresses emptiness,
The arms and hands form mudras.

From beginning to end there is one task,
Though it is expressed in a myriad forms:
One man offers a treasure to someone
Who does not recognize it,
Another tricks the treasure back from a beneficiary who does.

Within life's motion there is a regulating principle,
This great function involves no effort:
While the emperor stays within his realm,
The generals go beyond the borders.

The basic matter of our school
Is to be straight and true.
Pass this on in all directions
Without a wish for gain.

Translated by Hakuun Barnhard

Monk and Skull

A Korean monk named Won Hyo was on his way with a companion to T'ang China to study Zen there. He spent one night in a cave, where he woke up in the dark suffering from intense thirst. He scrabbled around and soon located what seemed to be a bowl of water. He drank deeply from it -- it was cold and sweet -- and went back to sleep refreshed. When he opened his eyes in the dawn light, he saw that what he had drunk the water from was a human skull. He was seized by the most intense terror and revulsion, to the extent he started to tremble all over and broke out into a cold sweat. Then, all of the sudden, he woke up and knew fully that not a single thing in this world exists by itself, therefore nothing in our experiences is inherently pure or impure, clean or defiled. He sang the following enlightenment song to his companion:

The Triple World arises from Mind.

All so-called things are mere perceptions.

Thus, since everything is basically Mind perceiving Mind,

What is there left to seek?

I will not go to T'ang.

This body is not me

 This body is not me.

I am not limited by this body.

I am life without boundaries.

I have never been born,

and I have never died.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars, manifestations from my wondrous true mind.

Since before time, I have been free.

Birth and death are only doors through which we pass, sacred thresholds on our journey.

Birth and death are a game of hide- and seek.

So laugh with me,

hold my hand,

let us say good-bye,

say good-bye, to meet again soon.

We meet today.

We will meet again tomorrow.

We will meet at the source every moment.

We meet each other in all forms of life.

---By Thich Nhat Hanh,
a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk

Fish Enjoying Itself

One day Chuang Tzu and a friend were walking by a river. "Look at the fish swimming about," said Chuang Tzu, "They are really enjoying themselves."

"You are not a fish," replied the friend, "So you can't truly know that they are enjoying themselves."

"You are not me," said Chuang Tzu. "So how do you know that I do not know that the fish are enjoying themselves?"

Experience Chan

By Master Xu Yun (1840 -1959), a Chinese-born Chan (zen) Buddhist master.

1.Experience Chan! It's not mysterious.
As I see it, it boils down to cause and effect.
Outside the mind there is no Dharma
So how can anybody speak of a heaven beyond?

2. Experience Chan! It's not a field of learning.
Learning adds things that can be researched and discussed.
The feel of impressions can't be communicated.
Enlightenment is the only medium of transmission.

3. Experience Chan! It's not a lot of questions.
Too many questions is the Chan disease.
The best way is just to observe the noise of the world.
The answer to your questions?
Ask your own heart.

4. Experience Chan! It's not the teachings of disciples.
Such speakers are guests from outside the gate.
The Chan which you are hankering to speak about
Only talks about turtles turning into fish.

5. Experience Chan! It can't be described.
When you describe it you miss the point.
When you discover that your proofs are without substance
You'll realize that words are nothing but dust.

6. Experience Chan! It's experiencing your own nature!
Going with the flow everywhere and always.
When you don't fake it and waste time trying
to rub and polish it,
Your Original Self will always shine through brighter than bright.

7. Experience Chan! It's like harvesting treasures.
But donate them to others.
You won't need them.
Suddenly everything will appear before you,
Altogether complete and altogether done.

8. Experience Chan! Become a follower who when accepted
Learns how to give up his life and his death.
Grasping this carefully he comes to see clearly.
And then he laughs till he topples the Cold Mountain ascetics.

9. Experience Chan! It'll require great skepticism;
But great skepticism blocks those detours on the road.
Jump off the lofty peaks of mystery.
Turn your heaven and earth inside out.

10. Experience Chan! Ignore that superstitious nonsense
That makes some claim that they've attained Chan.
Foolish beliefs are those of the not-yet-awakened.
And they're the ones who most need the experience of Chan!

11. Experience Chan! There's neither distance nor intimacy.
Observation is like a family treasure.
Whether with eyes, ears, body, nose, or tongue -
It's hard to say which is the most amazing to use.

12. Experience Chan! There's no class distinction.
The one who bows and the one who is bowed
to are a Buddha unit.
The yoke and its lash are tied to each other.
Isn't this our first principle... the one we should most observe?

Enter the Door - 10

The most famous koan written by Zen master Wumen Huikai (1183 - 1260).

The Great Way has no gate,

A thousand roads enter it.

When one passes through

this gateless gate,

He freely walks between

heaven and earth.

The Migrating Bird

The migrating bird

leaves no trace behind

and does not need a guide.

By Dogen

Person Who is Beyond All Things

From the "Nine Mountains" written by Korean Zen Master Ku San Sunim (1909-1983).

The eyes of the enlightened man who has awakened to the true-nature which is absolutely unchanging, have direct insight into the great truth of the universe.

He has transcended the three time periods of past, present and future; and by transcending both time and space he is not obstructed by being and non-being; this is called liberation.

He sees all phenomena in the universe through the Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom, in the same manner as a mirror reflects everything in creation.

He is without contamination or attachments; he is like white clouds over green mountains or falling rain on the blue sea.

By staying within the mind of non-action (wu-wei), he has followed the stream and reached the marvel; he is vast and boundless.

This is the man who is without any obstruction.

All relativity is ended here; birth does not matter and death does not matter.

Everyone is Vairocana Buddha and all is a store of flowers. There is nothing which is not sacred.

One name for such a man is "a person who is beyond all things."

One Instant is Eternity

One instant is eternity;

eternity is the now.

When you see through this one instant,

you see through the one who sees.

---by Wumen Huikai

Breathing In Breathing Out

Breathing in, I know that anger is here.

Breathing out, I know that the anger is in me.

Breathing in, I know that anger is unpleasant.

Breathing out, I know this feeling will pass.

Breathing in, I am calm. Breathing out.

I am strong enough to take care of this anger.

 By Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Buddhist monk