Blue Cliff Record -- a.k.a. Biyan Lu (Chinese), Hekiganroku (Japanese), and
Book of Serenity -- a.k.a. Congrong Lu (Chinese), Shoyoroku (Japanese).
Book of Serenity 49
Silent, I unconscionably allow the lies to stand.
Speaking, I only introduce new lies.
Sit, stand, walk, eat, wash, sleep.
Speaking or silent,
Dustless truth presents continuously.
Sit, stand, walk, eat, wash, sleep.
2017 Nov
Book of Serenity 56Dashing rabbit zips past. So swift!
Rabbit-watching uncle stands motionless. So swift!
"Wherever you go, there you are" --
And somewhere else, too. So swift!
2017 Nov
Book of Serenity 89There is a plot I plant and weed assiduously.
Other areas grow mostly wild:
I support an occasional sapling, cull a little.
Then there are forests I traverse without tending.
I have seen the earth all bare, and see it bare now,
All its growth transparent.
2017 Dec
Book of Serenity 67Gotama, privilege-born, home-leaver, family-abandoner
Perceived a line, and himself on the bad side:
Not enlightened nor awake, knowing neither truth nor peace,
Possessing neither wisdom nor virtue.
When the morning star saw Gotama,
The illusion of that line lifted.
Each being "possesses the wisdom and virtue of Tathagata,"
He said, "All achieve the way together."
Then Gotama perceived another line,
And himself on the good side.
On the other side:
Beings, because of delusions and attachments,
Not realizing, knowing, seeing their own wisdom, virtue, enlightenment.
"I should teach them," he said.
Suppose next the evening star had seen Gotama,
Had lifted the illusion of his new line.
Doesn't every lifting of an illusory line
Draw another illusory line:
Between the illusion and its lifting?
The path leads nowhere.
I walk it.
Gotama has nothing to teach.
I study.
There is no practice, and I practice.
The lines come and go and come again
And go again.
2017 Dec
Blue Cliff Record 73, Book of Serenity 6I love this beautiful monk,
Adjudged clueless by a millennium of Zen teachers,
and his beautiful question:
What is this Zen,
when all of us are enlightened from the beginning?
What happens when we sit in that posture we sit in?
How can it be anything? How can it seem to be something?
I love his imperviousness to Nagarjuna's pliers:
Bodhidharma came from the west, didn't come from the west,
Both did and didn't, neither did nor didn't --
and 100 negations of these.
I love that he is undaunted,
The question still carries him,
And he it.
Mazu and and two senior disciples
Have their nice answers:
I can't explain it.
I can't explain it.
I understand nothing about that.
Those are fine pine-tree answers.
And what else could they say? The pine tree
Answers everything.
Yet still my man keeps asking.
I love that about him.
Five patient explanations he receives of the meaning for which he asks:
I'm tired.
Why don't you ask our master?
I have a headache.
I don't understand.
This is white and that is black.
Each is as true as the day is long.
But I love this monk because he doesn't let me forget
That the meaning is
Please tell me directly, Master, the meaning --
Nor that this query is not put to rest
By philosophy or pine trees.
The master and his top students must apprehend
that this beloved novice's persistence
Outshines their shining answers.
2018 Jan
Blue Cliff Record 53Beloved progenitors, deceased.
Friends, grown estranged.
The hour before that awful mistake.
Youth.
Last summer.
The spring before.
How did it ever fly away?
It was always gone, and is always here.
This cold comfort burns
And burns.
2018 Jan
Book of Serenity 8A fox:
Just what it must be,
And a constant surprise.
Every moment a fox --
Every action a turning word.
2018 Jan
Gateless Gate 2The orange five-ball rolling across the green felt
Its vector determined by the angle and magnitude of the force that acted upon it,
So utterly free! So totally liberated!
That monk holding the cue stick, on the other hand:
Another matter.
2018 Feb
Blue Cliff Record 72"Can you, Master, do such a thing?"
Beloveds, did anyone notice that
Yunyan said this with
His lips and throat closed?
2018 Feb
Blue Cliff Record 37The mind, being nothing apart from things,
Is found in all the things.
And things?
Wake up and roll out of bed.
Before long, one steps into a desire:
wanting something or wanting it gone.
Pop, pop, pop, desires appear all through the day.
Sometimes, though, a grace:
Attachment/aversion peels away
leaving the bare form of the thing.
If that, too, departs: only an idea or memory of the thing.
Where, then, is there a thing?
Not in the residual no-form imagined thing.
In the form?
It is without essence, without a part distinct or enduring.
Desire, then, which imputes such a thingy feel?
No: the substance of "I want"
makes a delusion, not a thing.
At every level and angle,
All things are nothing things.
The mind, being a nothing mind,
Is found in all the nothing things.
2018 Feb
Ten Verses on Koans IX
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