spiritual rest, inward stillness

The opening of the spiritual eyes is a glowing darkness and rich nothingness... 

It may be called: Purity of soul and spiritual rest, inward stillness 

and peace of conscience, refinement of thought and integrity of soul,

 a lively consciousness of grace and solitude of heart, 

the wakeful sleep of the spouse and the tasting of heavenly joys, 

the ardor of love and brightness of light, 

the entry into contemplation and reformation of feeling...

A real pilgrim going to Jerusalem leaves his house  and land, 

wife and children; he divests himself of all that he possesses 

in order to travel light and without encumbrances. 

 

 Similarly, if you which to be a spiritual pilgrim, you must divest yourself

 of all that you possess; that is, both of good deeds and bad, 

and leave them all behind you.  Recognize your own poverty,

 so that you will not place any confidence in your own work; 

 instead, always be desiring the grace of deeper love, 

and seeking the spiritual presence. 

 

 It you do this, you will be setting your heart wholly

 on reaching Jerusalem, and on nothing else.

~ Walter Hilton (1340-1396)

Hilton wrote the masterpiece The Ladder (or Scale) of Perfection,

 first published in 1494, written in English but also known under its Latin title, Scala Perfectionis.

dark pines and strange rocks remain unknown to those who look for mind with mind

 

 

41

 

The ancients entered mountains in search of the Way

their daily practice revolved around their bodies

they tied heavy stones to their waists to hull rice

they carried their hoes in the rain to plant pines

it goes without saying they moved dirt and rocks

and never stopped hauling firewood and water

the slackers who wear a robe to get food

don't hang around an old Zen monk

 

42

 

Everything's growth depends on old roots

why argue about who's tall or short

the road to success is a tunnel of fire

the door to buddhahood is a wall of ice

my hut sits alone among brambles and weeds

the cloudy Isle of Penglai is a crane's universe

my hair has turned white in the cliffs and gorges

how often have I leaned on a fence rail till dark

 

43

 

I moved to the cliffs in order to practice

I didn't need others to judge my faults

when natures are simple old habits end

when thoughts are pure awareness arises

planting pines and weeding have strengthened my body

reading sutras and sewing have sharpened my sight

the world's anomalies are funny indeed

the refugees of Ch'in are called hermits too

.

44

 

I searched creation without success 

by chance I found this forested peak

my thatched hut pokes through clouds and sky

the moss-slick trail cuts through bamboo

favor and shame arouse the ambitious

I grow old on the stillness of Zen

dark pines and strange rocks remain unknown

to those who look for mind with mind

 

 

 

 

~ Stonehouse
translated by Red Pine

art by Wang Chien

.

note:

43.  In his Peach Blossom Spring, T'ao Yuan-ming tells the story of a group of people fleeing the oppressive rule of the Ch'in dynasty, which unified China in 221 BC.  In the course of their flight, these refugees discovered a hidden valley.  When a fisherman stumbled onto their sanctuary several hundred years later, he found a peaceful farming community.  Eventually the fisherman returned to his own village and told others about his discovery.  But the refugees obliterated the traces he left to mark his route, and their valley was never found again.

 

 

 

.

perception

 

...perception is the first stage of the conceptualisation process, 

and the two elements -perception and conception -

 form one whole, and that one whole is the mechanism

 whereby we create samsara.

 

What we are required to do is the contrary, 

to lay everything down, to be nothing, to know that we are nothing,

 and thereby leave behind the whole process of conceptualisation. 

 So-doing we cease to be that which we never were, 

are not, and never could be.

 

That, no doubt, is nirvana, ... 

at that moment we are sitting in a state of perfect availability. 

 We re-become integrally that which we always were, 

are, and forever must be.

 

...because THIS can never be thought or spoken, for this,

 being purely non-objective, is in a different "direction of measurement" 

from any conceptual dimension, being the source of all 

dimensionality and phenomenality.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Wei Wu Wei

(All Else is Bondage)

 

 

 

THIS-HERE-NOW

Every time you try to name THIS-HERE-NOW

 you are an eye trying to see itself.  

 

You cannot objectify THIS WHICH-YOU-ARE, 

and that which you can objectify is THAT-WHICH-YOU-ARE-NOT.

 

THIS which is seeking is THAT which is sought, and

THAT which is sought is THIS which is seeking.

 

When Bodhidharma told Hui K'o to bring him his mind

 so that he might tranquillise it, 

and Hui K'o failed to find it, 

 

Bodhidharma said "There you see - I have tranquillised it for you,"

 what then enlightened Hui K'o?  

 

He saw that the sought was the Seeker, 

and that the seeker was the Sought.

 

 

 

~ Wei Wu Wei

(All Else is Bondage)

 

 

 

 

 

on another's sorrow

Can I see another's woe,

And not be in sorrow too?

Can I see another's grief,

And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,

And not feel my sorrow's share?

Can a father see his child

Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?

Can a mother sit and hear

An infant groan, an infant fear?

No, no! never can it be!

Never, never can it be!

And can He who smiles on all

Hear the wren with sorrows small,

Hear the small bird's grief and care,

Hear the woes that infants bear --

And not sit beside the next,

Pouring pity in their breast,

And not sit the cradle near,

Weeping tear on infant's tear?

And not sit both night and day,

Wiping all our tears away?

Oh no! never can it be!

Never, never can it be!

He doth give his joy to all:

He becomes an infant small,

He becomes a man of woe,

He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,

And thy Maker is not by:

Think not thou canst weep a tear,

And thy Maker is not year.

Oh He gives to us his joy,

That our grief He may destroy:

Till our grief is fled an gone

He doth sit by us and moan.

 ~William Blake

from Songs of Innocence

art by guy denning

this place is a dream

.

.

This place is a dream.

Only a sleeper considers it real.

Then death comes like dawn,

and you wake up laughing

at what you thought was your grief.

 

But there’s a difference with this dream.

Everything cruel and unconscious

done in the illusion of the present world,

all that does not fade away at the death-waking.

It stays,

and it must be interpreted.

And this groggy time we live,

this is what it’s like:

 

A man goes to sleep in the town where he has always lived

and he dreams he’s living in another town.

In the dream, he doesn't remember

the town he’s sleeping in his bed in. He believes

the reality of the dream town.

 

The world is that kind of sleep.

The dust of many crumbled cities

settles over us like a forgetful doze,

but we are older than those cities.

 

We began as a mineral.

We emerged into plant life

and into the animal state, and then into being human,

and always we have forgotten our former states,

except in early spring when we slightly recall

being green again.

 

That’s how a young person turns

toward a teacher. That’s how a baby leans

toward the breast, without knowing the secret

of its desire, yet turning instinctively.

 

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,

through this migration of intelligence's,

and though we seem to be sleeping,

there is an inner wakefulness

that directs the dream,

and that will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

always been

.

Birth, old age,

Sickness, and death:

From the beginning,

This is the way

Things have always been.

Any thought

Of release from this life

Will wrap you only more tightly

In its snares.

The sleeping person

Looks for a Buddha,

The troubled person

Turns toward meditation.

But the one who knows 

That there's nothing to seek

Knows too that there's nothing to say.

She keeps her mouth closed.

~ Ly Ngoc Kieu

translated by Thich Nhat Hanh and Jane Hirshfield

The earliest known woman writer of Vietnam, 

she was a Zen Buddhist nun in the eleventh century.  

Born a princess, she became a nun after being widowed.

.

sleeping in the forest

.

I thought the earth

remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds. I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees. All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness.  All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom.  By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

.

~ Mary Oliver

.

trees in winter

All the complicated details

of the attiring and

the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon

moves gently among

the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold.

~ William Carlos Williams

photo by Callahan

they will not observe their own minds

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's tragic. People have been deluded for so long.

They do not recognize that their own minds are the true Buddhas.

They do not recognize that their own natures are the true Buddhas.

They want to search for the Buddha, yet they will not observe their own minds.

 

All the Buddhas of the past were merely persons who understood their minds.

All the sages and saints of the present are likewise merely persons

who have cultivated their own minds.

 

the ordinary man is deluded, he assumes the ...elements are his body

and ...thoughts are his mind. He does not know his own nature... he

does not know that his own numinous awareness is the true Buddha.

 

He looks for the Buddha outside his mind.

While wandering aimlessly, the entrance to the road might by chance

be pointed out by a wise advisor.  If ... he then follows the light and

sees his own original nature,... innately free of obstruction. 

...sudden awakening. 

 

Although he has awakened ... the beginning-less habit-energies 

are extremely difficult to remove suddenly and so he must continue

to cultivate...Through this gradual permeation, his endeavors 

reach completion. This process can be compared to the maturation

of a child.

 

 

 

~ Robert E. Buswell, Jr.

from Tracing Back the Radiance

Chinul's Korean Way of Zen

 

 

the baseless fabric of this vision

Be cheerful, sir:

Our revels now are ended.  These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

~ William Shakespeare

(1546-1616)

inside the river

Inside the river is there a river? -
it could follow slow water the way
the real current follows a stiller
shore. And in your life the life that
hurries could pass, and pass its
open neighbor the earth, and its shore
the sky. To be here, and always to find
places in the current, the dreams
the river has - surely we bubbles
ought to tell about it?

Listen: One of the rooms the river has
after its bridge and its bend in the mountains
is a place waiting for the sun every
afternoon, when the sun dwells
at a slant under a log and finds
that little yellow room and a waterbug
trying to learn circles but never making
one its shadow approves. Miles later
the river tries to recall that dream,
turning with all of its twisting self
that found gravel and found it good.

Just before the ocean that river
turns on its back and side and slowly
invites the world and the air and the sky,
trying to give away everything, everything.

  ~ William Stafford

When your consciousness has become ripe

 

 

 

 

When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen —

 pure like clear water,

like a serene mountain lake,

not moved by any wind — 

 

then anything may serve as a medium for realisation.

 

 

 

~ Yamada Kôun Rôshi

 

 

 

 

learned from a rainstorm

.

There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. 

When meeting with a sudden shower, 

you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. 

But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, 

you still get wet. 

When you are resolved from the beginning, 

you will not be perplexed, 

though you will still get the same soaking. 

This understanding extends to everything.

~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo

all is being changed

By expenditure of hope,

Intelligence, and work,

You think you have it fixed.

It is unfixed by rule.

Within the darkness, all

Is being changed, and you

Also will be changed.

Now I recall to mind

A costly year: Jane Kenyon,

Bill Lippert, Philip Sherrard,

All in the same spring dead,

So much companionship

Gone as the river goes.

And my good workhorse Nick

Dead, who called out to me

In his conclusive pain

To ask my help. I had

No help to give. And flood

Covered the cropland twice.

By summer's end there are

No more perfect leaves.

But won't you be ashamed

To count the passing year

At its mere cost, your debt

Inevitably paid?

For every year is costly,

As you know well. Nothing

Is given that is not

Taken, and nothing taken

That was not first a gift.

The gift is balanced by

Its total loss, and yet,

And yet the light breaks in,

Heaven seizing its moments

That are at once its own

And yours. The day ends

And is unending where

The summer tanager,

Warbler, and vireo

Sing as they move among

Illuminated leaves.

 

~ Wendell Berry

from Given, Sabbaths 1998, VI

.