Raven Verses VII

Responses to Robert Aitken, Zen Master Raven

Saving the Many Beings
I tell you my failures lie piled at my feet
And thick to the horizon in all directions,
Thinner in spots, or more transparent.
It is a landscape of lapses.
Were you accessory to some of them? I don't know; it's possible I suppose.
I say each one fulfills the vow.
Each one breaks it.
Each one whispers vigilance.

2018 Jul

Emptiness
One day, to explore widely the surrounding districts, Xuansha leaves the mountain. He stubs his toe on a stone. Bleeding and in great pain, Xuansha reflects, “They say this body is not real existence. Where does the pain come from?” --Dogen

A Few Things Real and Unreal

Phlogiston, unicorns, the present king of France;
Huckleberry Finn, Sherlock Holmes, Celie;
Nations, governments, laws,
Punishment, the stock market, hospitals;
Freedom, unselfish actions, God;
Joy, kindness, wisdom.

Planets and atoms;
Death and love;
The neighbor's dog and Attila the Hun;
This body and me;
Denali and Mt. McKinley.

The hemlock tree in the front yard;
The stone on the ground waiting to meet Xuansha's foot, or Samuel Johnson's;
The pain that followed when it did.

All are real, and real the same way;
All unreal, the same way as real.

2018 Jul

The Stick
A stick is not a stick
When it is just a stick.
In the dawning light --
The call to breakfast.

2018 Jul

Can't Have That
Standing, sitting, lying, walking
Amid the colors, shapes, sounds, smells,
The feels of things,
A kind of Heisenberg Principle
Slips between naming and having.
What is named is ungraspable.
What is grasped is unnameable.
God's dice rolling always
Everywhere.

2018 Jul

How Do You Account For This?
Myriad the mystery that supports and guides
That surrounds like peripheral vision
That smiles from the shadows and sometimes laughs
That writes the truths and publishes
Under pen-names.

2018 Aug

Too Clever By Half
"Some teachers say that Zen is hard. I say that Zen is very easy. But we are saying the same thing." -Seung Sahn

Sun and earth make pine and hyacinth, and
The hummingbird outside the window
Beats her wings 80 times a second --
Without trying.
Even my pushing, willful, effort
Arrives and unfolds effortlessly.

I might say,
It is difficult to know the ease of things --
meaning only,
One settles into such knowledge slowly,
And if the thing is kept at.

2018 Aug

Not Playing Favorites
Reliability
Of, say, things planted growing, usually,
When conditions and seed are right for each other,
Which isn't so hard to arrange,
Surprises, edges me into believing
In consistency, and the possibility of justice:
That there are like cases that may be treated alike.

Then: the shift of pattern,
The randomness of events and outcomes,
The course reversals called inexplicable
because we forget the inexplicability of courses stayed,
Come as a wonderment.

Each surprise sets up the other,
like players of a comedy team.

2018 Aug

The Fun Way
Maybe you go where those others go --
Not because you are paid;
You pay to do it.
Weekly or twice weekly or more,
You arrive there at the appointed times,
You
Be with them, doing and saying.

Maybe this is a loveliness
that makes you tender,
and sometimes you cry.
Maybe there you know yourself
and become real.
Or maybe you hide there,
and slowly harden.
Maybe you become thoughtful --
Or quicker to blame.
Maybe this is the locus of your wisdom --
Or your vehicle of dominance.

Maybe you go where those others go
And find in some form all of the above.
Maybe you stay home.

2018 Aug

Zazen Alone
Sit with the sturgeon, with the stars.
Stand with the aspen, with the yak.
Walk with the brook, with the ocean waves.
Lie with the moss, and the setting sun.
Sit with the lakes, fallen logs, and bunnies.
Stand with the mushrooms, mountains, and salamanders.
Walk with the cows, chickens, and the full moon.
Lie with the bedrock, yellow leaves, and rhesus macaques.
Do this because you can't not,
And because the ten thousand things
Are sitting, standing, walking, lying
With you.

2018 Sep

Perspective
A robin, the lifeless form of,
Lies by the path, her talons
Curve around air.
To say what is missing is not hard:
Her motion, her song, her concerns.

To detect the prevailing presence of same,
In the gray and ruddy feathers:
This, too, is not difficult.
Less often said, maybe.

I bend and take the body up,
Carry it to the covering of underbrush,
Stand over the grave
In wonder of the goneness
And equally of the
undepartability.

2018 Sep

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