Raven Verses II

Responses to Robert Aitken, Zen Master Raven.

Thoroughgoing
Retreat. Preparation? For advancing? Maybe.
Or perhaps advancing was preparation for this retreat,
Accouterments reduced to carryable.
This temporary eternal world-self never stops shining.

2017 Jul

Early Students
Wander. Find something abandoned and tall.
Fix up. Sit with what gathers.
Take a perch. Rinse. Repeat.
How could anything be grander than life?

2017 Jul

The Dream
Of whose dream are you the child?
You may choose, or, rather, it is for you to discern
Whose dream -- what teacher and tradition
Gives birth to you, becomes present
Everywhere.

2017 Jul

The Pivot
Everywhere: things in their place.
Everywhere: things turning --
themselves, each other,
thee and me.
Nowhere: a place that isn't a turning point.

2017 Jul

Ego
"As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there! He wasn't there again today. Oh how I wish he'd go away!" (W.H. Mearns)
Every day, climbing that stair,
Meeting the self-centered one:
The companion who acts in your name.
Not there! Won't go away!
Like an unforgettable fictional character.

2017 Aug

The Spirit of Practice
The better question isn't Why? It's What?
What is this? What is now and here?
This sensation, this emotion, this world presenting before me, This!
What is it? Curiosity is the path;
It leads not to knowledge, but to intimacy.

2017 Aug

A Key Issue
Are we not here to be eaten, the substance of our life consumed by more life?
To die and turn our bodies over to the nourishment of a grander thing?
To flee in terror only to get caught?
To see amid safety and friends that this is so?

2017 Aug

Timid and Truthful
Declarative sentences come in true and false.
Sycamore trees, not so much.
A river, even as it winds back on itself, flows nothing but truth.
The moon, even as it blocks the sun, shines nothing but truth.

2017 Aug

Essential Nature
Kidneys and intestines and lungs and heart,
Liver secreting bile and brain secreting thoughts:
This is called "inside."
Trees and chipmunks, rooms in buildings, people,
The kitchen sink and the Hudson River:
This is called "outside."
Inside and outside, essential nature everywhere,
Nowhere to be found.

2017 Aug

Bedrock Buddha
Signifier and signified
All over the place, standing alone.
My finger points to the moon, yes,
Also, the moon points to my finger.

2017 Sep

Previous: Raven Verses I   ☙   Next: Raven Verses III   ☙   RAVEN INDEX

Ten Verses on Koans IV

Responses to koans in Gateless Gate -- a.k.a. Wumenguan (Chinese), Mumonkan (Japanese),
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 72
"Inside there is a monkey."
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
"If someone calls, 'monkey,' it responds."
Right, right, right, right.

2016 Jun

Blue Cliff Record 75
Sticky sticks are scripts:
The bit is in your mouth, directing your course.
Sticks washed of stickiness are playthings:
Total freedom is enacted before our eyes.

2016 Jun

Blue Cliff Record 63
What cruel murders do you commit
With your concept-clinging arguments?
Cut it in two. Cut it in one.
Present your delusions. Present essential nature.

2016 Jun

Blue Cliff Record 64
Those monks swimming in mud,
Zhaozhou swimming in a clear brook, with the current --
How dear to me are they all!
Not by our efforts does the mud clear to pure water,
Nor without effort.

2016 Jun

Gateless Gate 19
To a mind simultaneously ordinary and boggled
The world's very banality is its profound, wondrous mystery.
Only let the unnecessary fall away --
By attending to its necessity.

2016 Jul

Gateless Gate 27
Preaching comes down the chimney with presents wrapped in quote marks.
For you, "mind," "Buddha," and "beings." How to unwrap them?
Explanations cover the package with more shiny paper and sticky tape.
Wanting to live disquotationally puts your life into a gift-wrapped "disquotationally" box.
Merry Christmas.

2016 Jul

Blue Cliff Record 28
You can't step in the same river twice, can't preach a dharma the same as what's been heard before.
Comprendes?
Also, there's nothing you can preach that can't be preached (so, as Roshi John Lennon said, all you need is love.)
Capisce?
And here is Nanquan saying (preaching?) "it's not mind, it's not buddha, it's not things."
If he's preaching it, then it's preachable, so he must be not-preaching it.
Ah.
I stepped into the Chattahoochee River once. Then stepped into it again.
I do that kind of thing all day every day -- entering what is the same, yet different,
Preaching what is unpreachable.
84,000 not-preachings per second.
I am like this. How about you?

2016 Jul

Gateless Gate 34
Buddha, Dao, knowing, mind.
Not a one of them is another.
Mind is only mind. Buddha is only Buddha. This is only this.
So how could you be somewhere else?

2016 Aug

Blue Cliff Record 31, Book of Serenity 16
Sometimes you're affirmed, sometimes scolded.
You get judged. It happens. The teachers recommend equanimity.
Beyond that, though.
Judging aside. Equanimity, or lack of, aside.
There is just the fact
That what you just did,
And the time before that, and the time before that,
And now, and next time,
Was, is, and will be
Entirely right and completely wrong.

2016 Aug

Blue Cliff Record 40, Book of Serenity 91
You can't pretend there is no flower there.
There clearly is!
You can't pretend there is a flower there.
There clearly isn't!

2016 Aug

Ten Verses on Koans III

Ten Verses on Koans V

KOAN INDEX

Raven Verses I

Responses to Robert Aitken, Zen Master Raven.

Mutually Dependent Arising
Jackrabbit knows about the chase,
And cuts right to it.
But that wasn't Raven's way in.
Everything is because everything else is, and vice-versa.
So what else could Raven do?

2017 May

Metaphysics: Oneness
What really happens
When you see a star?
Easy to say oneness --
It's not a star.

2017 May

Delicious
The difference between mutually dependent arising and delicious waterweed?
Or between oneness and waterweed?
Standing on the doorstep
There is no difference to be found.

2017 May

Something Still Missing
A tiny portion of the rain fills up a few water barrels.
A larger portion carves out the deep canyons.
The teacher does not fill your lack
But arrives to be with you in absence.

2017 May

Metaphor
She has lived a thousand moons
by the mouth of the river.
Say it's a metaphor, and
she does not understand.

2017 Jun

Faith
Faith: No having or lacking.
Only doing or failing to
commit to the fullness of (your) being, with
heart and mind open to
the unknown, to
hints of new meaning.

2017 Jun

The Unborn
You and your questions
Your self and its jones on for meaning
From where does all that come?
From the unborn? The void?
Awesome.

2017 Jun

Turning Points
Cancer, maybe. Or heart disease, or a traffic accident, or "natural causes."
Something is coming for you, loaded for bear.
Bang! As old as it is new.
Bang! The turning point.

2017 Jun

Character
"There is a Universal Love that has never broken faith with us and never will." (Walther Herz)
Winter winds, shivering chill
Summer mug, sticky sweat
Blue jay at noon, clear stars at night --
They are always keeping their promise.

2017 Jun

Birth and Death
We croak.
Startled croaking, calculated croaking --
Is this birth or death?
What else is freedom?

2017 Jul

Next: Raven Verses II   ☙   RAVEN INDEX

Ten Verses on Koans III

Responses to koans in Gateless Gate -- a.k.a. Wumenguan (Chinese), Mumonkan (Japanese),
Blue Cliff Record -- a.k.a. Biyan Lu (Chinese), Hekiganroku (Japanese), and
Book of Serenity -- a.k.a. Congrong Lu (Chinese), Shoyoroku (Japanese).

Blue Cliff Record 18, Book of Serenity 85
A seamless monument, he requests -- to a seamless life,
Lived like a fabric smooth and unbroken from river to lake.
Are you so keen to unemploy the tailor?
Or has your eye perceived the seamlessness of every seam?

2016 Jan

Gateless Gate 30
Endless play everywhere. No inside, no outside.
The ten thousand things cross the ten thousand synapses,
Merge into a single axon, which passes itself into
The dendrites of ten thousand other cells.
This is not just a nervous system.
It is mountains, rivers, the great wide earth.
No outside, no inside. Endless play everywhere.

2016 Feb

Gateless Gate 33
Snowflakes are beautiful because they are gone.
Flowers come after, also gone, gone before they arrive.
Rocks, lakes, stars -- all that is mind --
All long departed: beauties of absence.

2016 Feb

Blue Cliff Record 3, Book of Serenity 36
Listen, I will tell you the good news: you're going to die.
You don't have to get everything fixed, figured out.
It's not up to you. You're off the hook, Dead One Walking.
You only have to be present to the sky's shining faces.
If you say, "no time soon, I hope," you might as well be dead already.
1800 years is just the same as one day.
Right now, the only eternity there is, they're just the same.

2016 Feb

Blue Cliff Record 26
Behold the special! So ordinary.
Behold the ordinary! Sublimely special.
Sitting alone leads to bowing.
Bowing leads to receiving blows.
This ordinary is extraordinary precisely because there is no extra.

2016 Mar

Gateless Gate 40
Every true assertion is also false.
Every false one also true.
Speech, calling a thing this or that, is a hawk's cry in a canyon.
It says neither something nor nothing, and it echoes.

2016 Mar

Blue Cliff Record 70
An action (speaking, say)
Doesn't come from a decision (to open the lips, say)
It doesn't come from anywhere, it's just suddenly (there, say)
One ex nihilo universe after another, all day long. Say!

2016 Apr

Blue Cliff Record 71
The monkey leaped far from branch to branch, and
Now would instruct the eagle and turtle alike how to soar.
Shoulding the teacher is a gutsy display,
But what do you do for an encore?

2016 Apr

Blue Cliff Record 91, Book of Serenity 25
Rhinoceros broken to make a fan, also broken. One brokenness or two?
Bring forth your brokenness and, what is the same, the rhino's.
Then you may draw a perfect circle
And behold what is right under your nose.

2016 Apr

Blue Cliff Record 42
Beauty of flake, sting of slap,
No place but here, no place but here.
Beauty of flake, sting of slap,
Long since gone, long since gone.

2016 Apr

Ten Verses on Koans II

Ten Verses on Koans IV

KOAN INDEX

Meditation 17,514

"If a clod be washed from the shore, Europe is the less....Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." -John Donne, Meditation 17

Though I am, and perhaps you, too, are, weird,
though I am, and perhaps you, too, are a bundle of idiosyncratic brain chemicals and neural circuitry that render incompetent and useless,
though my thoughts which seem to be insights and important are neither, are trivial or trite or false,
though I cannot grasp an original truth of interest,
though I am a clod washed from the shore, as, perhaps, are you, too,
still I am strangely necessary. You, too. This weirdness
is not ours, but the universe's, or God's.
Can this be said?
I think: not like this.
I am (and perhaps you, too, are) here to love, and that can be said.
The bell that tolls for thee, for all of us,
tolls for me, too --
for my grief and loss,
and for my death and passing, though my every pass
is incomplete.
I can still sometimes catch yours --
just get it somewhere in my vicinity, OK?

White Plains, 2017 May

Ten Verses on Koans II

Responses to koans in Gateless Gate -- a.k.a. Wumenguan (Chinese), Mumonkan (Japanese),
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 3
Every dharma is dharma.
Realizing realizes.
He can recite the suchness-sutra
But can he shut up?

2015 Oct

Blue Cliff Record 1, Book of Serenity 2
The deep meaning of the holy truth is that there is no holy truth.
Therefore, not knowing pervades everywhere
Like a mountain mist, like a speck of mud on a trouser leg --
Like a sincere and pious prayer.

2015 Nov

Gateless Gate 41
No one's arm was lost,
No weapons, no defenses, cut through;
Thus peace and disarming mutually entail --
And both are always already established.

2015 Nov

Blue Cliff Record 67
Other masters of the time opened their mouths, spoke at length,
Polished and clarified the Diamond, edified audiences.
Today we speak of Fu, who spoke not,
And speak not of the masters who spoke.
Were not Baozhi's ghost whispering the poisonous question, "Have you understood?"
We would not distinguish chatter from silence.

2015 Nov

Gateless Gate 23
Ming's primal face, without thinking good or evil, was thinking good and evil.
Maybe he knew. If so, what then? Softening? Hardening?
Freedom.
To become dry, dive into the lake.
Steadfast attention to the grip
Is the only release.

2015 Nov

Gateless Gate 29
So wind, flag, and mind all move.
So neither wind, nor flag, nor mind move.
Both are true.
Indeed, they are the same truth.

2015 Dec

Book of Serenity 5
I went down to Luling to buy a bag of rice.
I paid something for it: the essence of Buddhism, I guess.
Even though the bag proved to be empty
I have been living on that rice ever since.

2015 Dec

Gateless Gate 17
Calling calls and stands alone, complete.
Answering answers and stands alone, complete.
Thus do you and I, each other's attendant, each other's master,
Disappear into solitary completeness.

2015 Dec

Blue Cliff Record 99
"Jesus died to save you," say the Christians.
Buddha, also, dies to save you.
The twist, though, is you must kill him yourself --
And know you haven't been saved from anything.

2016 Jan

Book of Serenity 42
Just take a deep breath. The essential body of Vairocana Buddha.
Turn left at the second light. The essential body of Vairocana Buddha.
It's always right where you put it, until you try to nail it there,
Then it's gone.

2016 Jan

Ten Verses on Koans I

Ten Verses on Koans III

KOAN INDEX

Ten Verses on Koans I

Responses to koans in Gateless Gate -- a.k.a. Wumenguan (Chinese), Mumonkan (Japanese),
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 4
Mountains, rivers, God’s green earth
Spring sanguinaria, autumn moonlight,
Lightning flashes light up the pines.
Indra would have more quickly built the temple
Had he left the grass stalk where it was.

2015 Jun

Gateless Gate 32, Blue Cliff Record 65
Such earnestness and no asking.
Miles and miles beneath the sun and under the moon
Climbing mountains, crossing rivers, getting lost in the woods:
A long journey for nothing.

2015 Jun

Blue Cliff Record 92, Book of Serenity 1
Each moment, a gavel bang.
Each moment as sharp as that whack.
This is the Dharma of the Dharma-King.
Birthless, deathless, thunderingly silent.

2015 Aug

Gateless Gate 42
Buddhas gather so they can return to their original dwelling.
They return so they can gather again at the next Buddha party.
She, unnamed and untitled,
Her light and its snares one,
Surpasses their backing and forthing.

2015 Aug

Blue Cliff Record 94, Book of Serenity 88
When the beloved's smile lights up your world, you don't see it.
Isn't it just you, through and through: smile, light, beloved?
Later, groping for the memory, you believe you saw it,
And the world dims. Also you.

2015 Aug

Blue Cliff Record 97, Book of Serenity 58
The people hate you, of course.
They know you for the liar, the thief, the murderer that you are.
Can you be saved? Redeemed?
Maybe. Just tell me this:
How deeply grateful are you for their hatred?

2015 Sep

Gateless Gate 6
If you are genuine,
like a running brook, like a crow,
Or like that weed in Buddha's hand,
Then the treasury is transmitted to you
Every time you smile, and
Every time you don't.
If you ask, "how can I become genuine?" then you are lost.
Sit down, shut up, and see
That you have never not been.

2015 Oct

Gateless Gate 22
Breathing in, Ananda. Breathing out, yes, Master.
Breathing in, yes, Master. Breathing out, Ananda.
Breathing in, flagpole knocked down. Breathing out, flagpole raised.
Breathing in, flagpole raised. Breathing out, flagpole knocked down.

2015 Oct

Blue Cliff Record 84, Book of Serenity 48
Watch them play, Manjusri and Vimalakirti.
See the one's chatter enact the other's silence.
The one's silence enact the other's chatter.
Watch them play, Xuedou and Hongzhi,
Recapitulating the ancients.
All the words there ever were are contained in your silence.
The vast and void silence is contained in your every word.
How then will you speak? How remain silent?
How enter the gate of Not-Two?

2015 Oct

Blue Cliff Record 78
Just find fifteen intimate friends,
And follow the rule.
The water takes care of everything.
Nothing to pierce. Nothing to break through.

2015 Oct

Ten Verses on Koans II

KOAN INDEX