Secular time stops
Sacred time begins
Nothing matters
We are such stuff
Gone chronos
Arrives kairos
Falling into unknown
Incalculable profound
Thursday, April 17, 2025
to walk on the earth, to bounce as babbling brook
I agree, wonders come of themselves.
People who study Buddhism
Should seek real, true
Perception and understanding for now.
If you attain real, true
Perception and understanding,
Birth and death don’t affect you;
You are free to go or stay.
You needn’t seek wonders,
For wonders come of themselves.
--Linji (d.~867)
Just a guy who wrote some stuff in China a while back.
What we now call the "United States" didn't belong to anyone, weren't states, not united, just land underfoot and sky overhead. Those who lived on that stretch of land hunted, trapped, fished, sat by fires and looked to the stars at night.
No one had the deluded belief that a few people should own that expanse, imprison those who thought differently, and live in the underworld of lies, deception, and false narrative.
But here we are.
Linji Yixuan (traditional Chinese: 臨濟義玄; simplified Chinese: 临济义玄; pinyin: Línjì Yìxuán; Wade–Giles: Lin-chi I-hsüan; Japanese: 臨済義玄 Rinzai Gigen; died 866 CE) was a Tang dynasty (618-907) Chinese monk and teacher of the Hongzhou school of Chinese Chan(Zen). Linji was the leading figure of Chan Buddhism in the Tang, and the Recorded Sayings of Linji (Línjì yǔlù), which contains his teachings, is seen as a major Zen text which exemplifies the iconoclastic and antinomian spirit of Zen.[1] He is also known by the posthumous title Huizhao Chanshi (慧照禪師, “Meditation Master of Illuminating Wisdom”).[2]
Linji was a student of Huangbo Xiyun and is also considered to be the founder of the influential Linji school of Chan. This school actually developed in the Song dynasty (960-1279) among descendants of Linji, who created various mythic stories about Linji in the process of founding their new school of Zen.[3] Today he is seen as the founder of the various Linji regional traditions, including the Japanese Rinzai school, the contemporary Korean Seonschools (all which consider themselves to be of the "Imjae" line, i.e. Linji) and the Lâm Tếschool of Vietnamese Zen.[4] (wikipedia)
Thich Nhat Hanh tells us this:
“Imagine two astronauts go to the moon, and while they’re there, there’s an accident and their ship can’t take them back to Earth. They have only enough oxygen for two days. There is no hope of someone coming from Earth in time to rescue them. They have only two days to live. If you were to ask them at that moment, “What is your deepest wish?” they would answer, “To be back home walking on our beautiful planet Earth.” That would be enough for them; they wouldn’t want anything else. They wouldn’t think of being the head of a large corporation, a famous celebrity, or the president of the United States. They wouldn’t want anything but to be back here—walking on Earth, enjoying every step, listening to the sounds of nature, or holding the hand of their beloved while contemplating the moon at night. We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from dying on the moon. We are on Earth now, and we need to enjoy walking on this precious, beautiful planet. Zen Master Linji said, “The miracle is not to walk on water or fire. The miracle is to walk on the earth.” I cherish that teaching. I enjoy just walking, even in busy places like airports and railway stations. Walking like that, with each step caressing our Mother Earth, we can inspire other people to do the same. We can enjoy every minute of our lives.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm
And it was Linji who gave us the koan: "If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him".
If Linji were around today and saying such a thing, he would be arrested and imprisoned, sent to an El Salvador prison for hate speech and terrorism, and be disappeared.
Our ability to subtly intuit what is true is being compromised. Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity -- the authentic and original -- are each suspect, and are being replaced by illiterate, illiberal, and ingracious ideologies focused only on appropriative false messaging and consolidation of power.
We are a complicated people.
So many long to follow someone who will liberate them from their fears and affirm fanatic beliefs as to who's good and who's bad, why we should never allow someone different to speak their understanding of what is true, and who will unrestrain them to deride, detest, and deny.
We will learn, someday, to disagree when those views are disagreeable, to counter and contest when views border on the edge of disgraceful dangerous escalation, and become educated in the fine art of measured opinion and dialogic combat.
We say we want love and freedom to prevail. But our instinct is to eliminate that which goes against our point of view, and to eliminate anyone holding that contrary point of view. God help us if someone had the power and the following to erase opposition and attempt to install a dominant minority to rule and lay siege to the land.
“Master Linji used language that was particularly harsh and strong to remind the monks in clear terms that the only role of a practitioner is to live simply, as an ordinary person, and not to put on airs. This is still a fundamental challenge for us today.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Battles: Modern Commentary on the Teachings of Master Linji
Is it possible to move forward healthily and productively by erasing unclarity and holding nothing in mind? Delusion, anger, and greed hover around us and within us. We want so much to believe the one who tells us we can be better, we can be great, we can be rid of those different than us, that if we love the leader we will be saved.
They try to draft Jesus into their ideology. Wherever and whoever Jesus is in this metaphor, I don't think he's ready to sign up, get a hat, pocket the signing bonus like some basketball or football substitute for religious celebration replete with sneaker endorsement and advertising contracts.
Our traditional holy season is co-opted by the new metaphors of saviors, crunch time, redeeming heroes, playoff messiahs, ideas of the holy that focus on golf swing, three point arc, newly shaped bats, pitch count, fashion shows for arriving players, diva podcasts, and five hundred million dollar contract extensions.
Stadiums and amphitheaters are the new replacements for medieval cathedrals and desert monasteries.
Rinzai is the Japanese name of a school of Zen Buddhism. It originated in China as the Linji school. Rinzai Zen is distinguished by its emphasis on the kensho experience to realize enlightenment and the use of koan contemplation in zazen.
In China, the Linji school is the dominant surviving school of Zen (called Chan in China). Linji also strongly influenced the development of Zen (Seon) in Korea. Rinzai Zen is one of the two dominant schools of Zen in Japan; the other is Soto.
History of Rinzai (Linji)
Rinzai Zen originated in China, where it is called Linji. The Linji school was founded by Linji Yixuan ( Lin-chi I-hsuan, d. 866), who taught in a temple in Hebei Province in northeast China.
Master Linji is remembered for his outrageous, even harsh, teaching style. He favored a kind of "shock" Zen, in which skillful application of shouts and punches would startle a student into an enlightenment experience. Much of what we know about Master LInji is from a book of his collected sayings called the Linji Lu, or record of Linji, known in Japanese as the Rinzairoku.
The Linji school remained obscure until the Song Dynasty (960-1279). It was during this period that the Linji school developed its distinctive practice of koan contemplation.
https://www.learnreligions.com/rinzai-zen-449854
It is a morning of cream of wheat, plain donuts, and three day old coffee. It is a version of both the Jewish Pesach and Christian Last Supper. We do what we can with what we have.
"If you meet Jesus on the road, kill him." It's a trick sentence.
Some literal-minded bastards -- who wouldn't understand Linji if he tattooed those words on their foreheads and placed a selfie stick with fully-charged iPhone in their hand to snap their visage every three minutes walking down streets for ten years -- would not see anything but their own prejudices salivating retribution and revenge over being slighted in their lives. There are guns in waistbands and dead-eyed stares at passersby.
Jesus, on the other hand, holds nothing in mind other than his original face, and lets that go, step after step, until there is only you looking out as babbling brook.
Yes, you,
looking out
(as)
babbling brook.
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
instead, shepherd's pie
in back seat
dark Volkswagen
at new butcher store
new mother breast-feeds
new baby
as I look for olive bread
(not today again)
returning to truck
vw still running
infant still at breast
I keep custody of eyes
delighted this newly
discharged mother/child
on way home
found space and time
to begin the world
again one tiny suckle
after another
one, two, three, four
as usual
the boat captain
(off season)
comes back from
family gathering
carrying their gift
coughing, aching
down for the count
this sunny wednesday
I bring tea
with honey
to her room
dog stays outside barn
cats, up from dirt cellar
empty mouthed, nap
and is speaking the universe into existence
Kanji: Mind Heart Now
The Kanji (Japanese ideogram) for mindfulness. nen. is comprised of two elements. The upper character. ima. the roof-like peak signifies this present moment. the Now. The symbol beneath is Kokomo or shin. translated as Mind and/or Heart. Combined. ima and shin symbolize the unification of mind and heart in this present moment, in full awareness and appreciation of one's lived experience. https://ca.pinterest.com/pin/kanji-mind-heart-now--191403052906922982/
When intention and act are simultaneous, Alan Watts is saying, the devil doesn't know what you are doing.
We defeat ourselves when we follow a belief we think we should follow. Or a person. Or an idea.
Speak only what breath surrounds.
The philosophical/poetic process:
No ideas but in things; (William Carlos Williams)
To the things themselves; (Edmund Husserl)
And things are made of words. (Robert Creeley)
Neal Douglas Klotz puts it this way:
On the Aramaic alphabet:
Each letter in the ancient Hebrew and ancient Aramaic alphabet--and this is also true in classical Arabic and Koranic Arabic--each letter was seen by the ancients as a living being, as an activity. These are not just scribbles on a page words, they don't just simply describe an outer reality that's already there, but sounds, letters, and words are the way in which, I'll say this carefully, that reality-- the great Mystery, speaks and is speaking the universe into existence.
Examples of what is lost in translation
Wherever in the gospels it says, or Jesus is quoted to have said, "Believe in me", he uses the preposition Bet. We had it in d’bwashmaya. Now the preposition Bet, which is the second letter of the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabet, means with or alongside of or within, all at the same time. So really Jesus is saying, have trust, which is the word for belief. Don't believe in a concept, have the same trust as though you are with me and within me. And it's the same where he says to his students, at one point, pray in my name. What he says is pray beshemi, pray within my shem, within my sound, within my atmosphere. You could say within my feeling or with and within. So it's always with and within and alongside of. This is why in Luke and in Matthew, in one of these you have the kingdom of heaven is within you and in the other, you have the kingdom of heaven is among you. It depends on which translation you read. In both cases he always said both, because within and among is the same preposition. Now that's hard to get your head around unless you start to look at reality, or outer reality, differently than we do today.
https://www.servicespace.org/blog/view.php?id=33262
This "...each letter was seen by the ancients as a living being, as an activity" is the ground upon which we walk, is the water within which we exist, upon which we float. But, more often than not, such reality eludes us.
Let Robert Creeley say it:Water Music
by Robert Creeley 1926 – 2005
The words are a beautiful music.
The words bounce like in water.
Water music,
loud in the clearing
off the boats,
birds, leaves.
They look for a place
to sit and eat—
no meaning,
no point.
(From The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975. Copyright © 1983)
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
about joel and ellie's unwillingness to concede
someone (I like)
wondered
if a talk show guy's
cheery encounter with
an irreparable reprobate
would change my opinion
of the deeply cynical
chameleon hypocrite --
Nope, I said.
It is holy week
I remain unconvinced
I renounce Shaitan *
(Arabic: شيطان)
and all his works
and all his cheerful
unconstrained wealthy
suckups -- I'm not
the last of us
... ... ...
* Shaitan, or Satan, is a term derived from the root Shiin-Tay-Nun, which means to distance, deviate or go far away. In most of the Quranic uses, Shaitan (pl. shayatin) is a symbol of all the rebellious evil Forces inside our mind that distance or deviate us from the inner guidance and thus from divine mercy. https://lampofislam.wordpress.com/2022/02/02/meaning-of-shaitan/
the solitary note in a deep dense woodland
In prison yesterday we spoke of music, of the 12 notes in Western tradition how it astonishes how many variations of beginnings of songs there are, how so many melodies arise
But then we concluded that the reception of any song, the memory elicited from those 12 notes reach an infinite permutation due to the fact that each recipient of any song is subject of every glance in geography
Every moment of experience, again and again and again during the hearing of piece or song, a multiplier of variational perceptions echoing in ear and mind reverberating endlessly billions of opportunities
And so, for the songwriter who thinks they are composing one song, they are not — they are collaborating with unending time and space, incidents and appearances, variations of perception, unencumbered mood
and association, atom nucleus proton neutron quark and possibility — each and all probability co-authoring with them song or poem lyric or phrase at origin and extension for the life of that tree and
Offspring, outgrowth, seedling, molecule hidden in some northwest forest sequestered and protected by love and imagination, this chord, those notes, these words, redwood resolute, out earth into sky, ah, birds
Monday, April 14, 2025
this week
It’s Holy Week. I’m told that when truth is put to death it resurrects.
We experience contemporary cruelty these days with a shuddering trust truth and decency will not stay under malicious condemnation in our land.
Mais oui passover, mais oui resurrect, and prevail over corruption and false power.
Sunday, April 13, 2025
as slogans go, so goes decency
I don’t think the Secretary of State means to lock people up in foreign prisons
He just does so
Nor does the president mean to crash the economy and make a killing on the market
He just does so
I don’t think the speaker of the house means to abdicate congress’ authority to do its job
He just does so
“Just do it”
No longer cuts it
hide and no seek
No palms
Just sitting zazen
With Augusta sangha
Grey cat
Uses me
As zafu
Someone from
Years ago writes
Asking if we sit
I must think
We are still
Quarantined
As solitude
surrounds, but
it is just gift
To a recluse
To have to do
What you prefer
Forgetting the scare
Is over but the fright
Sits deep within
The fright
Of not being
Found
as time goes
All day rain
cats sleep
I watch sweet
episode 3 about
Bill and Frank
listen to Linda
Ronstadt, rain
still falling
long long time
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