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 43
Between urb and sub-
An hour before dawn
A grey monk walks
the empty sidewalk
From her rented room
To the chapel zendo.
She sets out six mats in two rows
Centers a round cushion on each,
And a sutra book.
As the sky begins to lighten, I
On my way to a bagel and coffee,
Look in through a narrow window
See the small grey peak
At the end of a row, alone.
She has always been there
and always will be,
Just as I have stood and will stand
through all past and future
Looking in
One hand on the doorknob.
2019 Jan
Blue Cliff Record 66How is it when the student wants to take the Master's head with a sharp sword?
Your teacher was asked this question a generation ago;
You were there, or heard about it.
Your teacher answered by stretching out his neck.
The Master's head has fallen, said the student.
Now you are visited by a young man who has traveled
From a city where a warlord with a fabled sword
was lately defeated and killed.
Did you get the sword? you ask.
It's banter, metaphor, and test.
Yes, he says.
You stretch out your neck
Like your teacher did.
Your visitor responds with the
Same words
Your teacher's student spoke.
Ah. So he's heard the story.
You laugh, remembering
Your old dear teacher,
The way he carried his bowls and
retreated to his room.
You laugh, remembering the monks of the hall
all those years ago -- and this fellow here
repeating the earlier one.
You laugh as your head rolls across the floor.
2019 Jan
Gateless Gate 5Hanging by Your Teeth from a Tree When the Question Comes
It's a question about meaning,
It's a request for direction,
It's a classmate copying your answers.
It's swords or pistols?
It's the plea deal offered,
It's your false teeth slipping,
It's the taste of bark,
It's grieving what's lost,
It's the victory party,
It's how time and being are each other.
It's the absent friend,
It's the hungry carnivore,
It's the telephone.
It's a generous pauper,
It's the weight you don't want,
It's the craving of craving.
It's making a fashion statement,
Or using language,
It's not knowing what you said
Or knowing.
It's a question about meaning.
It's your false teeth slipping,
It's the taste of bark.
2019 Feb
Book of Serenity 97Dear god of triumph and of wasted days,
Of résumés and of addictions,
I wonder at the worth of me and us,
What price would be our measure?
In such a market, as folktales tell,
The devil is the only buyer.
What we fashion from the years --
Fronts of patina, and backs rough-hewn --
Is only for giving away,
To what takers we find -- not
For the market. Besides, as folktales tell,
The devil is the only buyer.
Dear god of triumph and of dissipation,
Let me leave the market for market things;
Craft by dint of grace and years blindly
The gifts I cannot see yet must bequeath;
And wash off the sticky folktale conceits,
Of worth, and price, and buyer.
2019 Mar
Gateless Gate 12Always the Master calls --
The voice of the green turtle,
Silence.
Always affirmation answers, yes
In every soundwave, every photon, every particle's
Stillness, the origin of every vibration.
Silence calls. Heed.
Stillness answers. Heed.
2019 Apr
Book of Serenity 41Do not tell one dying
That mountains never stop walking.
Tending to what can be tended to
Neither affirms nor denies.
When the deathly ill are before you,
There are no dharmas,
Only a puke bucket or bedpan to empty,
A cup to hold up to the lips,
A facial tissue, or a prayer,
To offer.
2019 Oct
Book of Serenity 59When there is no escape,
When all is irretrievably lost,
The deep grasses of exile
Are your ancestral home.
2019 Oct
Book of Serenity 81That thing about everything
Depending on everything else?
The thing is, it makes each thing
whole and complete, dependent on nothing.
This is not a point about shunyata.
It's stranger than that.
2019 Oct
Book of Serenity 52That Nietzsche's abyss would gaze back,
And plumb the measure of me,
Is most of why I looked.
What I see as we peer into each other
Depends on what the abyss sees.
Friend,
The party is not to be peeked at from concealment.
The festivities can only be viewed from amid --
Seeing by being seen; being seen by seeing.
2019 Oct
Ten Verses on Koans XII
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