Curtains

Curtains

Catch a glimpse,

Behind the curtain?

Just one peek,

See for certain!

Be it silken sad,

Radiant or rare,

What one finds

Beyond that curtain

May be just

The rustling of 

Another curtain.

The above image is the work of the photographic artist Kayla. More of Kyala's excellent photographs may be viewed at http://kyala.deviantart.com

The Lucky Few

Few are the lucky ones

Who know wisdom

From the start,

For the rest;

         We must burn our hands

         To learn the stove is hot,

         We must wound with words

         To realize the virtue of silence,

         We must suffer our broken hearts

         To know the true value of love.

Lucky are the few

Who know wisdom

From the start. 

The photo of the flowers is a found image.

North American Ghost Flight

Above the dry sticks of a winter without rain

Speed great flocks of chattering crows.

They head east into the fading mist at dusk,

As though searching for the ghosts

Of passenger pigeons,

Now lost in the mists of time.

The fields and trees that surround my home are filled with crows, and I must admit to a real fondness for them, despite their rather dubious reputation in the popular mind. The expression "A smiling man with a bad reputation" comes close to it. 

The above poem was written after a late afternoon walk up a steep hill nearby that gives a commanding view of this whole area. I was amazed at the tremendous number of crows flocking as described, reminding me of the descriptions of the now-extinct passenger pigeons darkening the sky like a cloud over the prairie.

The image is Vincent Van Gogh's last painting, called "Wheat Field with Crows"

What Sea? Samadhi Poem

 What Sea is this,

Rising in the mind of Man?

What gulls are they that cry?

Lord and vassal

Regard each other

From the same chair.

Frozen ice may melt and seas may rise. Some may look away and try to deny, but to deny is to decline. Others regard the change and rise with the tide. Either way, the familiar slips away beneath the waves, revealing anew the shape of things as they are, revealing that this sea is no other than ourself, revealing the shape of things as they have always been. 

Guest and host embrace. Lord and vassal always occupy the same seat.

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” 

- Meister Eckart

Opinions Are Like...

What is the use of having an attitude,

Of honing an edge with pumped-up platitudes,

Or holding your ground with no room for latitude?

No prizes are given out to those

Who die with the most opinions.

You’ll be keeping them all to yourself

In that last silent solitude.

Today's image from: http://adriano10.deviantart.com/art/Silence-Solitude-66087022

These Tears

What is it?

What are these 

Tears really for?

Saying good-bye,

Though no one

Is going away.

Saying thank you,

In deep gratitude,

For the gift 

No eye can

See.

Today's image is from a very thoughtful posting about tears, including a number of great quotes about them, found @ : http://divinevirtuosity.blogspot.com/2012/10/tears-oceans-tides-in-your-eyes.html

The Reason Why

Make sense to you?

Makes sense to me.

How could I tell you

How to be?

See that man banging his head

Against a wall so hard

That it makes him cry?

If you were standing 

In his shoes 

Perhaps you'd know

The reason why.

I composed this poem while driving one afternoon and seeing a crazy-bad bit of driving by a complete stranger. Why the sudden stops, why the multiple lane changes? Why ask why? 

When I got to the meeting I was driving to I wrote this down and read it fresh to a group of friends there. One of them told me about having seen two different people literally banging their heads against walls. Both persons had just witnessed the death of someone they loved, one in combat the other in a freak accident. Their despairing actions do make a terrible sort of sense, once you know the reason.

How about our own actions? What visible or invisible walls are we currently banging our poor heads into? Would any of our painful and persistent collisions make any sort of terrible sense to a disinterested viewer? It's worth asking the question.

Scotland's beloved national poet, Robert Burns famously put it well.

"O would some power the giftie gie us 

to see ourselves as others see us."

- "To a Louse" 

Today's image is from: slwakes.wordpress.com

Mortality

This business of drawing a last breath is no joke,

It’s a serious matter, make no mistake.

There’s so much hot soup still steaming

At the bottom of the bowl,

So many laughs remain at large,

Awaiting apprehension.

An army of metaphors are left unmixed,

And the very next moment is now standing in the wings,

Just dying to burst forward with its’ wild surprise!

So, stick to your diet while you compose,

And revise once more your big exit line,

Stay on your treadmill and ponder

All the kisses you have left to plant.

Because it’s a serious business

Drawing your last breath,

Make no mistake,

It’s no joke.

The two old-timers in Francisco Goyas' sardonic but life-affirming painting above have got the right idea, while there's soup in the bowl, keep eating! 

Your Secret Voice

In darkest night your secret voice

Whispers to me, soft and clear.

Your words not words

But knowing,

One truth unshaken.

“You are safe with me, in me.

Safe beyond all changes,

All disasters, all that passes,

All despairing, all departures.

To this alone, nothing need

Nor can be added.

Nothing reduced nor be removed.

No acts, no preparation,

Nothing to be studied, or forgotten,

Nor taken up or be forsaken.

Though any and all pains

May befall you,

Of even death, be not afraid.

You are with me,

And I with you.”

Peak experience, sudden enlightenment, satori, angel's visit, the holy spirit, gestalt or grace, there might be a billion names for that sudden moment when great doubt is altered into great understanding, Fears and anxieties drop away like the illusion they always were and in their place there is peace. 

Today's image of the light of the mysterious Moon is from: http://polarblogger-charsmeanderings.blogspot.com/2011/08/missing-perseids.html

Fair Warning!

Every day we see beloved flowers fall,

With each passing year we watch

While hated weeds grow taller,

Still we continue to cut the cake

On each new birthday that we meet.

Fair warning!

Celebrate enough birthdays without

Learning to let go and you'll end up

Writing somber poems just like this!

Yep, another birthday come and gone and no, I'm not feeling particularly somber. In fact, I had a rather nice birthday this year as it happened to fall on the day before Thanksgiving Day. The two occasions seemed to fuse into one with a small but very pleasant feast with friends.

This poem came up as a reminder to myself about the impermanence of things. This reminder was probably triggered by the loss of a molar tooth, the first tooth loss I've experienced since the last of my milk teeth departed many years ago. I understand that with the passing years our bodies age and losing teeth is part of the deal. Okay. But my mouth suddenly feels different and I'm not all that happy about the difference.

I'm seeing an oral surgeon next week about having a dental implant, so perhaps this time I can get back to pretty much the mouth I'm used to. But a milestone in life like this can be a good teacher if one is willing to be a good student. I always thought of that tooth as being part of me and now it's gone. How many parts of me make up "me"? As parts fall away, as they surely will, am I still me? When every part has fallen away, what remains? Who was this "me" I thought I was and who was it doing this thinking?

That lost tooth has given me quite a bit to chew on.

Today's image of a fire-hazzard cake comes from:

http://cdn.stripersonline.com/f/f2/f23336d8_man-i-feel-old-too-many-candles-in-this-cake.jpeg

Thinking to Take Tiger Mountain

Step by step I went when young, 

Thinking to take Tiger Mountain 

By strategy or storming Heaven

Just for laughs.

Trying hard to push the river,

I carried myself forward,

Quite lost through my own effort.

Just seeing this and 

Doing that,

Now I'm seated in my garden,

Listening to the small birds sing,

Quite content to watch all things 

Come forth, and let the world

Just turn itself.

"To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. 

That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening."

- Dogen Zenji, Genjo-koan

What a relief it is to know that our constant effort is not required to keep this big world turning, the great river flows on quite nicely all on its own. Our effort is best spent in being aware of the turning and the flowing and in listening to the small bird's songs.

Today's image is of the author at 19 years of age, in the mountains of Vietnam.

Filling Seven Senses

There is a cactus by my doorstep,

I call it eloquent.

Blooming only once a year,

Saying all it has to say

In just one day.

While men may speak

In shouts and whispers,

And mountains hold forth

With thunder and falling rain,

This cactus catches the world

With petals of pure white,

And a piercing perfume

That fills seven senses,

All at once.


"All of nature talks to me. If I could just figure out 
what it was trying to tell me." 
- Laurie Anderson

Today's image is an original photograph. 

Lakavatara Sutra - A Poem

At Buddha's Deli Meats

The Tathagata is behind the counter,

The Dharma loaf is in the slicer.

The World-Honored One cuts it Lanka style,

Each slice thinner

Than the one before,

So thin that at last,

You'd swear it was non-existent!

In the end, he'll tell you

Not to eat meat at all.

Earlier this year, tipped off by Wild Fox Zen's Dosho Port, I was pleased to get a release day copy of Red Pine's new translation of The Lankavatra Sutra. This Buddhist text played an important role in the foundation and development of the Ch'an/Zen tradition in China, having been taught by the First Patriarch Bodhidharma and passed on by him to his first successor, Hui-k'o.

Previously available in English only in a dense and immensely difficult translation by Japanese scholar D.T. Suzuki, Red Pine (Bill Porter) has done the Western Zen world an immense service by providing a clearly written text with generous and illuminating facing-page notes on many terms and ideas that might otherwise be difficult for all but a scholar.

I see that a number of on-line Buddhist bloggers and reviewers have covered the book's publication, discussing its' history and significance and what each writer felt were its' merits and shortcomings. Not being a scholar, but instead a lazy poet and given only to short outbursts, I have confined my commentary to the poem above, a poem which it is largely necessary for one to have already read the book to understand. How useful is that?

I found the Lankavatra to be a total gem! It is filled with pithy explications of the mind-only view and the fundamental underpinnings of Zen thought, like the following;

"Assertions and denials

don't exist where there is only mind

as for the body, the world and possessions

unable to see these are mind

and bereft of any wisdom

fools assert and deny."

~ Mahamati's Questions, XXV

"4. In truth nothing arises from causes

nor does anything cease

regard conditioned things

like flowers in the sky

let go deluded views

the grasping and the grasped

5. Nothing has arisen or ever will

nor do causes or conditions exist

nothing exists at all

and these are nothing but words."

~ Mahamati's Questions, XXXI

************************************

The above poem and text was written several months ago, but not posted at the time and left unfinished due to illness. I'm undergoing a treatment that has a number of debilitating side-effects which have largely caused me to lose the energy for blogging. Rather than further developing these thoughts, I'm posting what I have written here now. I'm doing so mostly because I want to recommend this exciting text and translation to anyone who is interested in Zen and its' intellectual, scriptural roots.

For more information or to order a copy of the Lankavatara Sutra, go to  http://www.counterpointpress.com/

A Fool Again

Writing poems again?

Old fool!

Catching thoughts in words

Is like collecting butterflies

Made of smoke.

When I'm in the act of writing, it seems like the work at hand is the greatest thing ever written. When I'm done, the act of of reading what I've written can be terribly humbling! Those flighty thoughts just don't let themselves be pinned down on the paper. Before the ink is dry (actually, I write first-draft with a mechanical pencil) the sense of the thing has flown, leaving only dry husks fixed on the page.

Ah well, we do what we can...

I've been going through a rather demanding medical therapy these last couple of months and it has been a bit of a struggle. I'm way behind posting to this blog, among other things. I have not been idle, however, and I have quite a few new or recent poems to share. I hope to get some up here over the next couple of weeks, but I have learned through experience not to make promises when medical issues are involved.

Smoke butterfly image from:

http://slickzine.com/art/25-pictures-of-awe-inspiring-smoke-art/

Don't Be Deceived!

Don't be deceived by the world around you,

Don't be deceived by yourself.

When you look out the window just now,

Don't confuse the curtains for a landscape.

Don't mistake a pane of glass for

Blue sky and white clouds.

Todays image is a key scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail.

The Broken Bowl

His hands still marked

By scar and callus,

His kingdom now

A shattered palace,

We drink his cup,

No fear, no malice,

This broken bowl,

His sacred chalice.

Just whose hands are scared and callused? What kingdom is it that now is shattered? Whose cup is it at our lips? Why must we drink? Why no fear or malice? What is broken about the bowl? What makes this chalice sacred? Where does "sacred" live?

I wrote this poem yesterday, at noon, at work, in the middle of a very busy holiday retail workday. I'm not sure why the words came to me, but the poem formed itself pretty completely in just a few minutes and I had to stop and write it down on the back of some scratch paper. Several hours later I read it to a friend who dropped by the shop. After I did, her eyes widened and she told me she had just come from witnessing the death of a close friend of her husband.

He had died just a couple of hours earlier, in fact at noon. He died bitter with regrets over his perceived failure to express his love to friends, his failure to get together with friends from the past, the failure to appreciate the good times he had had with others and most of all his failure to help others whom he knew were in need when he could have.

I had been thinking of my poem in terms of this world that we live in as a shattered palace, once lovely now degraded by war, overpopulation, pollution and such, degraded by our own disappointments and false views. I had been thinking of ourselves as the suffering Christ and our own scared hands. The cup as the life that we live, drinking perpetually this less than perfect, wounded moment. This moment, this life itself, as the sacred chalice. If life is not sacred, then what could be? If "sacred" lives at all, surely it is living no other place than in our own hearts and minds. It is our knowing and living itself that gives life to the sacred. How could anything be sacred if tainted with fear or rancor?

But my friend's story forced home a more specific view. Here is one small life, one man, his life now ended. His body a shattered palace, certainly, but his dreams and cares, his feelings of love and friendship lie shattered too, now at an end and shattered by his own inaction. Up to the end, the bitter cup he was forced to drink was of his own making.

Lets us take heart and courage from the knowledge that we are the sacred chalice, we carry the light of life within us all. Lets us all, my friends and loved ones, take warning from the sorrow of another. Let us keep this cup we drink sweet with love, let us share the love we feel with others and when we depart, let us do so with a glad heart.

Use care as you prepare

The cup before you,

Sweet wine or gaul,

Remember,

It is you who

Will drink it.

The lovely broken chalice above is the work of craftsman Ron Chamberlain. It and more can be seen on his website: http://www.rdchamberlin.com/Home.html

Lines on Viewing the Full Lunar Eclipse

Dawn's early light,

The full moon itself,

Drawing veil,

Eclipsing.

Face full masked,

She drops,

Glowing crimson,

Behind distant trees,

Now gone,

And morning fresh delivered.

- 12/10/11

Image from: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/lunar-eclipse-photos/

Dreaming of an Old Friend

In the silent early hours,

When moonlight reveals

Those things that daylight misses,

The shades of memory

Are quite free to come and go.

Thus a visit from an old friend,

Dead now twenty years and more,

With a smile as warm as ever,

But a hand as ungraspable

As mind itself.

In June of 2008 I had a life-saving operation, a liver transplant. After regaining consciousness, I lay immobilized in intensive care for a few days and nights. One night, the nurse who usually hovered nearby, was called away to help deal with another patient in the next room who was dying. All of the staff became so focused on this man that I was left alone for a rather long time.

Lying there alone, I felt suddenly felt a great need to have someone there with me. I was dependent on an oxygen line and uncertain that I could keep breathing if I lost consciousness. Focused powerfully on my breathing, and powerless to move an inch, I turned to my own mind for help. I began to visualize an old friend of mine who had passed away a few years before.

Gene had suffered greatly in his life, surviving both tuberculosis in his youth and lung cancer as an adult. In the years we were friends, he walked with painful deliberation and struggled constantly for air. But he had such a powerful spirit, he never let his difficulties get in the way of his passion for the things he loved, art, music, history, literature and an appreciation for the beauty of women. Gene taught all that knew him by example how to face pain and adversity with courage, good humor and a relentless zest for life.

He was just the sort of friend I needed at that moment and so I conjured him up. I felt his presence and I could almost see him standing by my bedside. Gene was a fierce atheist, a product of an Irish upbringing that forever soured him on anything that smacked of God or an afterlife. I apologized to him for dragging him back from non-existence, for giving him a life of sorts again, if only for a short while, to help me in my moment of need. He seemed to understand and we had a great conversation about memory, existence and where it is that life actually lives. We agreed that it lives in the mind, where the past, the present and the future all have their existence, and where we were in fact having our conversation. It is also where we are at this moment, writing and reading this blog.

When the crisis in the other cubicle reached its' natural conclusion my nurse returned. I bid Gene farewell and allowed him to return to his beloved non-existence, thanking him for allowing me to use him in the way I had.

Now that three years have passed, I am once more undergoing another medical ordeal, this time it's interferon treatment to clear my system of the virus that has caused all the problems in the first place. It will go on for a year and it can be very demanding physically. I admit to feeling some anxiety about doing it, as it is not without serious risks. But a few nights ago, in the early hours when moonlight reveals those things that daylight misses, I had a dream visitor, my old friend Gene. He didn't say anything, he didn't have to. Although I could not grasp his hand, his smile told me all I need to know.

Thanks, Gene.

"The past is ungraspable, the present is ungraspable,

the future is ungraspable."

~ The Diamond Sutra

Our photo today is of the eery beauty of a night-blooming cactus, photographed hours before the dawn.