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FINDING BUDDHA
Grasp what you love but hold it carefully, for it may slip away into the blackness of night. Grasp what you fear but hold it carefully, for it may slip away on the feet of your lover.
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A FLUTE PLAYED BACKWARD : THREE CASES (100 – 98) FROM TETTEKI TŌSUI
ISAN’S TEN FOOT SQUARE 鐵笛倒吹 百 Ten thousand words what do they mean – with which will you compose a poem for the wall of your room. Leave the room, does the poem remain? Enter the room is this the same poem? Write them on the wind with a pointed leaf, that is a fine…
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SHINJUKU
The sun rises slowly painfully, stiff from the cold night air, creeping upward, barely warming the streets. In Shinjuku Central Park the trees are still despite the cold breeze. The small group gathers for morning stretches and Tai Chi, smiling toward the fountain and the ten foot waterfall they call Niagara. The siren cuts through…
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ON THE ROAD
On the road I found Tao. I held it and gazed at it from every angle, but seeing nothing placed it back on the road. On the road I found a sutra. I held the scroll and gazed at its strange letters, but reading nothing placed it back on the road. On the road I found…
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MORNING HAIKU
In morning’s stillness we all hear the Buddha’s breath the zendo awakens. The mourning dove sings prayers to the departing moon a monk sits zazen Tomorrow is gone, yesterday has disappeared. What moment is this?
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OT
Standing in the garden soaking in the sudden downpour Eve turned to Adam and said, “Did you bring the umbrella?” “What’s an umbrella?” Adam asked. “I’m eating the apple” Eve replied.
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ETERNITY
In a clockless world all life is an approximation and clear boundaries evaporate like the mist off a morning pond. In that world, this moment seeps into the next, night becomes day, only to return again. The Buddha knew this, for in his clockless world all that existed was the moment, an instant that was, as…
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BUDDHA NATURE
The infant girl smiles with infinite knowledge, present wholly in this moment, knowing no other, her eyes speaking with the wisdom of all who have gone before her. In those eyes your heart hears stories of universes waiting to born, collapsing inward, naked singularities, and compassion. She doesn’t offer to teach you, but you cannot…
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MEMORIAL
This woman approaches the stone, carefully places sake and cherry blossoms and leans a sotoba against it, before bowing and walking away. It is what you do for a son, she says, looking at the bibbed Jizo hoping she can protect the child who lies beneath. That woman approaches the headstone, gently places the flowers and leans…
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COYOTE SONG
Down at the butt end of the arroyo is a pond, an aneurysm in the stream that runs down from the mountains for better than a month each spring. The twisted, gnarled mesquite cluster around it, like children gazing at a corpse in utter fascination who dare not approach lest it become real and touch…
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an old writer and his words 