Poems: Koans

Showing posts with label Koans. Show all posts

2019-02-06

Verses on Koans XIII

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 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 66
How 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 5
Hanging 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 97
Dear 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 12
Always 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 41
Do 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 59
When there is no escape,
When all is irretrievably lost,
The deep grasses of exile
Are your ancestral home.

2019 Oct

Book of Serenity 81
That 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 52
That 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

KOAN INDEX

2018-09-20

Ten Verses on Koans XII

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 94
"There is no way to escape having ill health." (Upajjhatthana Sutta: Anguttara Nikaya 5.57)

No escape, Papillon.
Not from this Devil's Island.
All your cleverness, resolve, and luck
Only shuffles your grimy skin
A meter or two within your cell.

No escape: the key to freedom.
The fox feeds on rabbit,
Then the rabbit feeds on fox.

2018 Sep

Blue Cliff Record 19, Book of Serenity 84
A great matter weighing on me,
I traveled a thousand kilometers
to see old Jinhua, get his answer.
It took two months.
I lost 10 kilograms.

I arrive in the morning.
A monk meets me at the gate.
I must see Jinhua.
Wait here.
Before he goes he mentions
The master answers every question
By raising one finger.

I sit down on a stone.
The sun passes its zenith.
Just one finger, for all my troubles?
One finger for my life to make sense?
Which finger?

The index finger?
Pointing? Saying one?
The middle finger?
The thumb?
Up? Down? Out like a hitchhiker?
Could old Jinhua want a ride?
What if he raises his pinky?
Or his fourth finger
to show me a ring
of power and commitment?
What if he grabs my hand and holds up one
of my fingers?
Or what if the old man carries a severed finger in a pouch,
taking it out when asked a question,
even as it decayed and stank and was finally
three phalanges rattling in his cupped hand?

In the cool evening I rise,
Walk back down the mountain.
Perhaps I'll make better time on the way home.

2018 Sep

Gateless Gate 3
Teachers do this,
Cut off parts of their students --
A finger, a toe, a nose,
A vanity, a limiting story, a jaded detachment --
Whatever: the cut hurts.
There's screaming and blood.
Some teachers offer bandages and prosthetic
Replacements that meet a purpose.
Others don't, but only watch
With silent eyes the dripping wound
To see what the excised part
Had been inhibiting,
Teacher and student alike
Surprised at what emerges,
In wonder of what it might be for.

2018 Sep

Blue Cliff Record 79
Everything flawless and perfect --
For all that
No less screwed up, broken, wrong.

Everything a mistake, a punishable offense
For all that
No less elegant, beautiful, exactly right.

Does disrespect present the Buddha's voice?
Does it display the highest principle?
Yes.
As does a cudgel to the solar plexus.

"Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly"
the Roshi Micah said. Hotetsu adds:
and observe the grammar of formal and familiar.
Total liberation from all constraint
Comes with some constraints.

2018 Oct

Blue Cliff Record 35
"When numbers get serious, they leave a mark on your door." --Paul Simon

How many friends have you? How many relations?
How many schoolmates, former or current? Colleagues?
With how many people have you sat, in zendo or church or temple?
By how many passers by have you passed?

How many particles of dirt or sand
Have felt the press of your sole?
How many cubic centimeters of air
Have you expelled in laughing?

How many bird species would be
on your life list? How many mammals?
Reptiles, amphibians, fish?
How many on your current week list?
How many trees can you call by name?
How many call yours?
How many leaves have you seen
Bud? Fall?
How many years are yours?
How many yous belong to the years?

You could tally estimates.
That's not necessary.
By numbers uncounted
The dharma fares
North and South,
East and West.

2018 Oct

Blue Cliff Record 5
I love the units, their countability,
Three seconds.
Five centimeters, squared or cubed.
Two decades.
Seven days.
One parsec.
Three millennia.
Five minutes.
Twenty kilometers.
Fourteen billion years.
So reassuring and practical this, the mind's mirror.
Working or testifying,
The measure must be taken.

I remember, too, that
Huineng was right to scold Shenxiu:
"The mind is no mirror."
It is made for unity as well as units:
For uncountable time with its two names,
Now and Eternity --
For vastness and tininess indistinguishable.
Caverns measureless are its home.

I have only this to suggest:
Gather wise friends.

2018 Oct

Blue Cliff Record 22, Book of Serenity 24
I jumped before I knew
Why, or what.
Neurons out of mind
Sent the slender wriggle
Straight to motor,
Leaving the cerebrum
To mosey to a conclusion
Half a second later: "snake."
Recollection would have it that
I jumped first, and then saw it.

The reptilian god shoots fear right past
the cognizer's models, precious and hapless,
and scrambles time.
Nothing so presents it straight
Like curves.

2018 Oct

Blue Cliff Record 49, Book of Serenity 33
She crawls out of her chrysalis,
Fans her wings, notices
She has wings,
Notices she's hungry and that
Her mandibles are gone.
What do I eat now?
Without knowing she can, or how,
She flies.
Not knowing why,
she alights on a flower,
sticks her tongue into the nectar,
has no more questions.

2018 Nov

Blue Cliff Record 51, Book of Serenity 50
What this is is
I've come to see Xuefeng --
Is he around?
What this is is
What is this?
What this is is
The staff in my hand, the one in yours,
the gate thrust open, our dusty sandals.
What this is is
What is this?
What this is is
Disappointing guests.
What this is is
My hesitancy to ask.
What this is is
My most recent word.
Just this "just this"
Is
What this is.
Which is?
What this is is
What is this?

2018 Dec

Book of Serenity 75
Heraclitus didn't quite say, as we love to quote:
"Change is the only constant" -- which is
Funnier, and truer, than what he did say.

When we've a mind for immutable principle,
Heraclitus must again remind
Everything flows, and nothing stays.

Then, attending to movement,
We miss the constancy to the flow; we don't
See the permanent principle of goneness.

The real, Heraclitus said, is logos -- which is fine
As long as logos isn't reason, seeking assent.
Reality is not an argument. It's a poem.

A poem wants to show itself to you,
Not for you to assent, but to see.
Agreement and disagreement alike misconstrue.

2018 Dec

Ten Verses on Koans XI

Verses on Koans XIII

KOAN INDEX

2018-02-26

Ten Verses on Koans XI

2018 Feb

Blue Cliff Record 74
Every day, the same thing.
Every day, it's a fresh, spontaneous,
Gesture of total freedom.
Like a spouse to spouse saying, "I love you":
Deadly.

2018 Feb

Blue Cliff Record 11, Book of Serenity 53
Evening shadows stretch east and
I have passed Today Today.
I think probably you have too. How could we not?
Still, this feeling of having been somewhere else is a
Morning fog that doesn't lift, a delusion
The very nonsense of which encourages its recurrence.
Perhaps I'll swing by the Zen bar on the corner
To hoist a pint of dregs and be thereby intoxicated until
Tomorrow is Today.

2018 Mar

Blue Cliff Record 24, Book of Serenity 60
The sun, low in the western sky, asks, "Have you come?"
I ask back, "Will you go?"
The sun, low in the eastern sky, asks, "Will you go?"
I ask back, "Have you come?"

What strange beauty there is in this:
That the blunt true answer to all four questions,
Is both "Yes, obviously,"
and "Quite impossible."
I dodge so as not to spoil it.

2018 Mar

Book of Serenity 87
"To say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not." (Aristotle, defining True)

Words of being and non
Need a structure
To wrap themselves around,
To bloom purple, and seed.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, say,
Or, what might not be different,
The tree of the delusion of permanent separate essence,
Hosts the pretty parasite,
Supports and feeds its ontological categories.

And if that tree collapses?
Bwahahaha!

2018 Mar

Gateless Gate 1
Dear God, I pray,
For I am sick as a dog, and have no power to heal myself.
It's a dog's life -- "a bitch and then you die" --
And this sad world has been going to the dogs for some time.
The morning paper's dolorous tidings wound like darts.

Yes, I have known beauty and wonder --
Ecstatic shivers and inundations of grace.
Is there not ugliness, too, and tedium?
And, worse, pain? Is there not cruelty?

Some say that loveliness alone is true --
That suffering is delusion, a perceptual distortion.
This will not do, for hurt and wrong are real.
Others proffer that joy and grief are linked somehow,
Co-dependent enablers of each other.
There is something to this, sometimes, maybe,
Though it is not ultimate.

Dear God, I pray,
Sick as a dog and powerless,
I have asked you if there is some light behind every darkness
And been requited in your thunderous, silent No.
In this negative space, this despair,
Where dark is only dark,
May I learn to love unremitting sorrow.
God, show my heart the way to love it
Doggedly.

2018 Jul

Book of Serenity 18
I smile at your joke, or giggle;
Rebuff your criticism, or make penitent resolutions;
Let sadness in the back door,
or anger out the front;
Brush my teeth, scratch an itch,
Respond curtly, become pensive.
In each of these:
Am I expressing absolute liberation?
Or reactive habit?
If there is no difference,
Practice is a waste of time.
If there is no difference,
Practice has born fruit.

2018 Jul

Gateless Gate 7, Book of Serenity 39
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” ― Norman Maclean

Somewhere in that breakfast eating and washing
The extra stopped adding itself.
"Rice" and "bowl"
And "me" and "thee"
And "that" and "this"
Disappeared behind
Quotation marks, which, embarrassed,
Departed after.
Norman said it would eventually happen.
The river wasn't long, though,
Running through, floating me back,
In time for lunch.

2018 Aug

Gateless Gate 31, Book of Serenity 10
There is the going straight on that one may fail to do --
the possibility of erroneous wandering.
There is the going straight on that one can't not do --
the impossibility of deviation from exact straightness,
howsoever winding the path.
Hotetsu advises clarity on the latter
Antecedent to regrets and resolutions
Regarding the former.
How to arrive at this clarity?
(Or is it clarity that you have already arrived at this clarity?
Or clarity that you have already arrived at clarity that you have already...)
A little intention doesn't seem to hurt.
Not too much.

Mount Wutai holds up its finger;
Nothing is concealed.
Straight on through sees Zhaozhou;
Nothing is revealed.

2018 Aug

Book of Serenity 98
What is "intimate with it"?
What is intimate with it?
What is it?
What is intimate?
Always, ubiquitous perfection encounters ceaseless mistake,
Continuously, the call to know it encounters the impossibility of not.
Therefore:
Q: What is intimate with it?
A: What is intimate with it?
When it comes to intention, to prayer,
here's mine:
Let this always and never suffice.

2018 Aug

Ten Verses on Koans X

Ten Verses on Koans XII

KOAN INDEX

Ten Verses on Koans X

2017 Nov

Book of Serenity 56
Dashing 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 89
There 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 67
Gotama, 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 6
I 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 53
Beloved 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 8
A fox:
Just what it must be,
And a constant surprise.
Every moment a fox --
Every action a turning word.

2018 Jan

Gateless Gate 2
The 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 37
The 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

Ten Verses on Koans XI

KOAN INDEX

Ten Verses on Koans IX

2017 Sep

Gateless Gate 25, Book of Serenity 90
There I was in Professor Maitreya's class,
Was it the second or the third seat?
Someone in a monk's cowl called on me
Did he bang the gavel first, or not?
Anyway, I took that gavel and banged it.
I had some point to make that seemed important.
Or I'd already made it.
I wanted the class to get it.
Something about propositions and negations and beyond.
Then I woke up and the dream
Began.

2017 Sep

Blue Cliff Record 34
There are peaks and there are valleys
But it is all the peak.
Even so, it is, at the same time,
A big mistake.

2017 Sep

Blue Cliff Record 68
I am the pine trees
For all that
If I bump into one
I say excuse me.

2017 Sep

Book of Serenity 26
The white, whole and beautiful, pure and radiant.
It goes beyond
the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
What goes beyond the white?
The red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
What's all this beyonding?

2017 Oct

Book of Serenity 32
One side of the mystery.
How many sides are there? (None. One. Two. More than the square of the number of all the grains of sand in the world.)
From the mountain peak of faith to the village street of person,
Wherever you are, you're needed at the other.

2017 Oct

Book of Serenity 62
"Second class enlightenment"?
It is the way of my house to speak thus,
Goosing one another to notice conceptualizing
And serve the greens fresh
As befits a house of the homeless.

2017 Oct

Book of Serenity 77
First, the myriad things. Then, the practice.
Third, the empty oneness. Then, guarding the dharma.
Yangshan and company put on a flashy show,
But there's really nothing to it.

2017 Nov

Blue Cliff Record 43
Asking how, answering why.
Asking where, answering when.
No what, no who: suffering cannot arise.
From the beginning, we are dead ones walking.

2017 Nov

Book of Serenity 45
The way the sun's warmth is pleasant before I think "pleasant" --
The way it's just there, abiding.
The way the thought "pleasant" arises before I notice it has --
The way it too is just there.
I can't not dwell in the luminous.

2017 Nov

Ten Verses on Koans VIII

Ten Verses on Koans X

KOAN INDEX

Ten Verses on Koans VIII

2017 May

Blue Cliff Record 32
So the essence of Buddhism is: you get slapped and shoved.
Also: Bowing in gratitude.
In this gentle roughness
Gnawing hunger is itself the food.

2017 Jun

Book of Serenity 13
I think of praying: "dear God, when my time is nigh, let me enter
that good night as Linji did:
teaching with my last breath,
learning with my last awareness."
But never mind.
Linji's dying words granted that prayer long ago
And laid bare our imperishable treasury of the true dharma eye.

2017 Jun

Book of Serenity 38
Right where you are is everywhere-nowhere.
Without rank, position, business, affairs,
The no-rowing rowing of your no-boat boat:
Gentle, merry, carried by the stream.

2017 Jul

Book of Serenity 95
Sell your shout for a whack, or your bow for the same,
Sell all that you've grown, lose your load, lose your name.
Still that trace of the staff is beyond an exchange
'Cause what's given for free is in no one's price range.

2017 Jul

Blue Cliff Record 10
Where did you come from, after all?
Conceived in a shout and birthed from silence,
As was the Universe, Dao, God --
As is each eternal moment coming forth.

2017 Jul

Book of Serenity 22
Common or holy?
No, not in the least.
That's why Yantou
and I bow.

2017 Jul

Gateless Gate 13, Book of Serenity 55
Deshan, deep student of the Diamond (his beginning, his first word)
Burner of all his notes (no further words on that!)
At last becomes himself the Diamond.
In this fleeting world he comes --
an ancient man
bowls in hand
no bell rung
no drum struck
In this phantom dreamland he goes --
an ancient man
bowls in hand
bereft of clue
bereft of luck.

2017 Jul

Book of Serenity 14
"Where have all the past saints gone?"
A finch song, a broken cup
A harsh word, the pang of being judged
The vast sky and the unanswerable green of the fern,
Brooks, roads, subway cars, scents of flowers, of garbage,
All of it, each of it, complete,
Quietly displays all that ever was or will be
Brings our noble ancestors so fully and plainly before my face --
So present --
That for a moment I wonder at their absence.

2017 Aug

Book of Serenity 35
"It's no use walking anywhere unless our walking is our preaching." (St. Francis)
St. Francis never said,
"Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary use words."
At least, he never said it using words.
Perhaps he walked it, tongueless.
Perhaps, when he spoke, he spoke the same way.

2017 Aug

Ten Verses on Koans VII

Ten Verses on Koans IX

KOAN INDEX

Ten Verses on Koans VII

2017 Mar

Blue Cliff Record 58
The old man was 80 before he consented to teach.
By then, decrepit, and so unattached to whether or not he was attached,
He had nothing to left to teach -- nothing more than
a stone, a brook, or a breeze teaches.

2017 Mar

Blue Cliff Record 59
Take it to the end: Give every bit of yourself!
"I only meant this much." He's made his choice and chosen small.
The Great Way, helping people:
Only take it all the way to the end.

2017 Apr

Blue Cliff Record 80
There's a babe inside the adult,
Overlaid with learning, skills, delusions.
There's no going back, and what is going forward?
This, then this, then this . . . Watch and see!
"Not by your will is the house carried through the night."

2017 Apr

Blue Cliff Record 96
Mud clay, gold metal, wood
Every strength depends upon weakness
Your destruction is incorporated into your being, as usual.
"The true Buddha is sitting in the recesses of the house."

2017 Apr

Book of Serenity 57
The nothing returns again to something.
If the nothing returns as something to obtain, have, grasp,
Scrape off that sticky something nothing.
Wash it away.
Otherwise, the nothing returns to mere being, the self-world river.
Float downstream;
Smile softly over the fall.

2017 Apr

Blue Cliff Record 55
Alive or dead? Form or emptiness?
Meaning or no meaning? The body,
beautiful and poignant, presents all that has passed.
For a while it moved; then it stopped.

2017 May

Blue Cliff Record 89, Book of Serenity 54
Compassion, in the darkness, seeing nothing,
acts with unthinking naturalness.
Being awakened is like being asleep --
Nondiscriminating, responding spontaneously.
A patch of violets beside the path --
What could be more awake?
What more could Compassion do?

2017 May

Book of Serenity 21
Working hard is taking it easy.
Taking it easy is working hard.
The moon, for instance: nothing works harder --
Nothing's more at ease.
The river, for instance.
The flower beside the path.

2017 May

Book of Serenity 83
The stars at night: sick or healthy?
The room where Daowu tends a patient: a sick or healthy room?
Perceiving the sickness of health, the health of sickness,
Is a single step down an infinite road --
A sick or healthy step?

2017 May

Ten Verses on Koans VI

Ten Verses on Koans VIII

KOAN INDEX

Ten Verses on Koans VI

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 36
"Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it." (Norman Maclean)
By the river, eternal, flowing,
A gate.
At the gate, the conversation, the meeting:
Master and administrator.
oneness and multiplicity,
going and returning,
rising scents and falling flowers,
spring and autumn.

2016 Dec

Book of Serenity 79
Down from the pole of emptiness.
Then down from the pole of ordinariness.
Stepping to one's death over and over,
Ah, that's the life.

2016 Dec

Gateless Gate 11
Two hermits -- what is the difference?
Their sameness is their difference.
Dissolving the illusion of "sameness" and "difference"
Into just this! just fist! just thist.

2017 Jan

Gateless Gate 37, Book of Serenity 47
Down, down go the roots; out, out go the branches --
In the winter, standing bare; in the spring, clad in fresh leaves:
The reason and meaning of all that you ask.

2017 Feb

Blue Cliff Record 2
Snow in the branches, on the roofs. Geese
In the sky. A gibbous moon.
Choosing is not to be found.
Disliking choosing is not to be found.

2017 Feb

Blue Cliff Record 9
Coming in, or going out, or coming out, or going in,
Sunlit, moonlit, or unlit,
Thou and I are always stepping over the threshold of four gates,
As if our names were "The World."

2017 Feb

Blue Cliff Record 30
Soil and tending and the grace of waters
Make a radish.
Conditions and conditions and the whole universe pouring through them --
Make one large radish.

2017 Feb

Blue Cliff Record 41, Book of Serenity 63
After the ecstasy, the laundry.
What is on the other side of death
Was always here on this side
Waiting, like the daylight and the laundry.

2017 Mar

Blue Cliff Record 45
The touch my lover brings, breeze in the pines,
That email to answer, moon rising over a winter lake,
A bowl of oatmeal, the prick of a pin,
The fluttering fall of a red maple leaf,
My friend's sweater, a moment's fear,
The raising and lowering of the teacher's eyebrows,
Flowers among the grass, playground sounds,
And the riverbank talks of the waters of March --
Everywhere, oneness never stops reducing.

2017 Mar

Blue Cliff Record 52
Clop, clop, clop, crossing the bridge,
All us beasts of burden treading on
Always crossing, never crossed,
Or always already crossed, and still crossing
From things to no-things, no-things to things
One step, one stone, one step, one stone.

2017 Mar

Ten Verses on Koans V

Ten Verses on Koans VII

KOAN INDEX

Ten Verses on Koans V

2016 Aug

Book of Serenity 69
The three phases:
There is a mountain; there is not a mountain; there is a mountain.
Or:
There is knowing;
there is the further knowing that knocks out the former knowing;
there is the sublime not-knowing of the Buddhas of the three worlds.

2016 Sep

Book of Serenity 93
The treasury is your heart wondering what the treasury is.
The treasury is your heart moving on from wondering what the treasury is.
Summer breezes turn to autumn gusts
The budding peach blossom is already the fallen fruit.

2016 Sep

Book of Serenity 23
Face the wall of years, centuries, kalpas.
Face the wall of time and eternity.
When these illusions lift, the wall you face is always right now --
Also without substance.
Facing facing facing.

2016 Sep

Blue Cliff Record 81
Die when it is time to die.
Come alive when it is time to come alive.
Coming alive and not running away,
The great deer is of no concern.

2016 Sep

Book of Serenity 7
Yaoshan gives a dharma talk like the pines do --
And those who are hungry consume it.
With eyes to hear and ears to see --
Nothing is left unsaid.

2016 Sep

Blue Cliff Record 4
The bundle carried, the haughty dismissal, the second try --
The formal clothes, the shout, the departure --
The lonely mountain hermitage, the frost on the snow --
Such profligate generosity! So superfluous, so unnecessary --
And so absolutely essential.

2016 Oct

Book of Serenity 86
What is the great meaning of the Buddha-dharma?
Whack!
Where else did you think the answer lay?
In the moonlight on the birch tree?
Whack!

2016 Oct

Book of Serenity 15
Those old questions:
Where have I come from? What am I? What should I do?
A field, a hoe, and a moving toward those who labor.
What else is needed? What else is possible?

2016 Nov

Book of Serenity 37
Fully manifesting the entire universe of karma right where you are.
Fully manifesting the entire universe of karma right where everything is.
Tossed in interdependent co-origination, caught in webs of causality:
There is no escape. The daffodil blossom does not escape
its stem, nor the stem the earth:
Fully manifesting the entire universe of karma right where it is.

2016 Nov

Ten Verses on Koans IV

Ten Verses on Koans VI

KOAN INDEX

2017-11-23

Ten Verses on Koans IV

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

2017-09-23

Ten Verses on Koans III

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

2017-09-07

Ten Verses on Koans II

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

2017-08-29

Ten Verses on Koans I

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