Friday, October 10, 2003

Reality is not what we think it is.

Wanting to go to the eastern cliff
Setting out now after
How many years
Yesterday I used the vines
To pull myself up
But halfway there
Wind and mist made
The going tough
The narrow path grabbed
At my clothes
The moss so slippery
I couldn’t proceed
So I stopped right here
Beneath this cinnamon tree
Used a cloud as a pillow
And went to sleep

- Han-shan

Reality is how we see it as.

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Visiting hermit in Stockton Springs.

I think of the other Sister who said of a group in Nova Scotia, "They lost their blessing."

The moon illuminates a thousand peaks
with the brilliance of daylight,
The sound of the bell falls
on my pillow of old friend’s poems;
In my thin monk’s robes,
unafraid of the frost’s harshness,
I rise, roll up the thin blinds,
sit in the depths of the night.

- Tesshu Tokusai (? – 1366)

In the depths of this current night -- I wonder if we have lost our blessing.

Moon full of itself over water from lighthouse across to Castine.

Neither here nor there.

Lost between.

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Cold sky. Clear moon.

The white clouds
On the mountain tops
Poke halfway into this thatched hut
I had thought too cramped
Even for myself

- Koho Kennichi (1241–1316)

Solitude is the way moonlight lives in clouds.

Passing through.

Sunday, October 05, 2003

Wind has gone by. Boats unjump. Lashings hold.

Francis of Assisi returns quietly to mountainside and sealight.

Yom Kippur comes with sundown.

If we see, we forgive.
If we abandon dark resentments, we let light within each other be seen.
If all is empty and open, what is seen is what is one alone, each in each and all.

Write this down, Brother Leo.

Hear O Israel!

If you are spiritually sharp,
you can open your eyes and
see as soon as you hear me
tell you about this.
Have not people of immeasurable
greatness said this truth
is not comprehensible by thought,
and that it is where
knowledge does not reach?
Were it not like this,
how could it be called
enlightened truth?
Nowadays, however, people
just present interpretations and views,
making up rationalizations;
they have never learned to be thus,
and have never reached this state.

- Foyan (1067–1120)

October!

Light.

Joy.