I will weep and weep for you, O Mind;
The world hath caught you in its spell.
Though you cling to them with the anchor of steel,
Not even the shadow of the things you love
Will go with you when you are dead.
Why then have you forgot your own true Self ?"

There is a yawning pit underneath you,
and you are dancing overhead.
Pray, Sir, how can you bring yourself to dance ?
See, the riches you are amassing here,
nothing of them will go with you.
Pray, Sir, how can you relish your food and drink ?

For ever we come, for ever we go;
For ever, day and night, we are on the move.
Whence we come, thither we go,
For ever in the round of birth and death,
From nothingness to nothingness.
But sure, a mystery here abides,
A Something is there for us to know.
(It cannot all be meaningless).

Whence I have come and by which way,
I do not know.
Wither I shall go and by which way,
I do not know.
Were I to know the end of it all
And gain the knowledge of the truth,
(it would be well, for otherwise)
Life here is but an empty breath.

I have seen a learned man die of hunger,
A sere leaf drop in winter wind;
I have seen an utter fool beat his cook
(who could not make a toothsome dish).
Since then I, Lalla, anxiously await
The day when the lure of the world will fall away.

My Guru gave me but one precept :
"From without withdraw your gaze within And fix it on the Inmost Self."
Taking to heart this one precept,
Naked I began to roam.

A thousand times my Guru I asked:
'How shall the Nameless be defined?'
I asked and asked but all in vain.
The Nameless Unknown, it seems to me,
Is the source of the something that we see.

This counsel to the body give, O Mind:
Wear only such clothes as ward off cold;
Eat only to satisfy your hunger;
Devote yourself with all your heart
to the knowledge of the Supreme Self.
Consider this body to be food for the forest ravens.

Let not your body suffer
from hunger and thirst,
Feed it whenever it feels famished.
Fie on your fasts and religious rites;
Do good: therein your duty lies.

They may abuse me or jeer at me,
They may say what pleases them,
They may with flowers worship me.
What profits them whatever they do ?
I am indifferent to praise and blame.

It is easy to read and to recite;
It is hard to practice what one reads,
And, reading seek out the Self within.
By constant practice, not by books,
Conviction grew in my heart.

Why do you grope thus like the blind ?
Pray, doubt not what I say to you:
If you are wise, enter within
And see the Lord Himself is there.
You need not search Him here and there.

Who can stop the eaves' drip during the frost ?
Who can hold wind in the palm of his hand ?
Who can see the sun in the darkness of night ?
He who holds his senses under control,
Can in the dark catch hold of the sun,
Can see the Light in the darkness of the soul.

 

Life is a gift. How will you use it? How will you fully appreciate it? This is the thing.

Gratitude is just a wonderful thing and it's available to all of us. So, what is it you plan to do with this wild and wonderful life that's been given to you? And how will you keep alive your awareness of the uncertainty of life in a way that doesn't intimidate you but that keeps encouraging you to practice as if to save your head from fire? To practice because it matters. How you live this life matters.

There is a verse that's sometimes chanted just before bedtime in many Zen monasteries. It is an exhortation to practice and goes something like this:

‘May I respectfully remind you: Great is the matter of birth and death.
All is impermanent, quickly passing. Be awake each moment.
Don't waste this life.'

We can take this realization of impermanence when it comes to us and turn it into a powerful support for living the life we want to live. For living as we really want to be and not putting it off.

Right now, in this moment, if we are dissatisfied, we are rejecting a moment of life. If we reject our life in this moment, in what moment will we accept it? Practice and realization can only be experienced right now. There is no other time.

We are already Buddha whether we realize it or not, but  "realize" means "to make real". In Buddhism the realization that is referred to is not something that happens just in our minds or to our perceptions.

Realization must penetrate every cell of our bodies, down to the marrow of our bones and out to each tip of our hair. This realization that penetrates our body and mind goes beyond our thinking process.

It is not even "we" who practice, but the Buddha we are who practices. We just resume our true nature, or our true nature resumes itself.

But because we are inherently complete, it does not follow that we should just lie back and enjoy it. We need to take care of ourselves, to support ourselves and take care of our lives, and to take care of the environment and help improve the living conditions of all beings.

Zen Master Seung San said, "Forget about ‘zen mind.' We don't know anything about zen mind. Just meet each person with the thought ‘How can I help you?' Everyone you meet, just meet them - ‘how can I help you?" Knowing that you are connected to everyone; knowing that you are all water, just different waves in the same ocean. Meet each person with an open heart and with generosity. This is how we can make a difference in our world.

In his final words to his disciples under the sala trees, the Buddha uttered something like these words: "Under my teachings, disciples should respect each other and refrain from disputes; they should not repel each other like water and oil, but should mingle together like milk and water. Study together, sit together, practice the teachings together. Do not waste your mind and time in idleness and bickering. Enjoy the blossoms of enlightenment in their season and harvest the fruit of wisdom and compassion."
"Make my teaching your light! Rely upon it; do not depend upon any other teaching. Make of yourself a light. Rely upon yourself; do not depend upon anyone else."  Do this and you will indeed be my discples." 

Taking refuge in Buddha, 
Immersing body and mind deeply in the way, awakening true mind.

Taking refuge in Dharma,
Entering deeply the merciful ocean of Buddha's way.

Taking refuge in Sangha,
Bringing harmony to everyone, free from hindrance.

Zen is serious, and Zen is play.
The playful business of being serious about what we're doing.
The serious business of being playful with what we're doing.

Here's some poems by the Korean Zen poet Ko Un. Enjoy!  :)

THE HERMIT
Jang Ku-Song the hermit was busy shitting when he heard frogs croaking. It made him recite,
'The croaking of frogs on moonlit nights in early spring pierces the world from end to end, makes us all one family.'

Look, if you've had your shit, wipe yourself and get out of here.


THE LOTUS SUTRA
The Lotus Sutra. Ultimate reality. So far you've been bashing me badly. Now I'll cudgel you, bastard. Oh! Ouch! Take that too. Oh! Ouch! Oh! Ouch!

The Lotus Sutra dashed away. Fields open wide, once the farmers have gone.


A SMILE
Shakyamuni held up a lotus so Kashyapa smiled. Not at all. The lotus smiled so Kashyapa smiled.
Nowhere was Shakyamuni!


WHY KILL?
Let be. Please, let be. Kill Buddha if you meet him? Kill mother and father if you meet them? Why kill? Things made of clay all fall to bits once soaked by monsoon rains.


ANANDA
Even Shakyamuni could never tame Ananda but Kashyapa kicked him out and tamed him. Throw away all you know. Throw away all you don't know. Then and only then one star shines bright.


A SHOOTING STAR
Wow! You recognized me.

So sesshin this time round had some wonderful teachings for me.

This time round i was the Ino.
At one point on the 4th day i saw a thought arise which was saying something like, "wow this is the easiest sesshin i've ever sat. Not one moment of physical pain or mental distraction. This is a walk in the park!"

Later that evening i found myself sitting for 2 or 3 periods of zazen with the notion that if the Doan didn't ring the bloody bell sometime about right now, then i might just get up and ring the bell with the Doan's head.

So what changed?  Well its the first time i'd be the Ino, and i'd found the role pretty fulltime.
We become the role and there's little opportunity for the small self to voice its petty concerns.
Inside the zendo we're responsible for whats happening, trying to make sure that things happen 'correctly' so that everyone else is clear on whats happening or about to happen without having to overly engage in cognitive confusion. Not always straightforward when there are students and teachers from different lineages present who in their own helpful way can interfere a little.  :)
Sometime that means asserting our role and making adjustments. Sometimes it means letting it go 'wrong'. Its a wonderful instant judgement call where judgement isn't really the right word. This was a big teaching for me, criticism in the realm of the absolute and relative.
Outside the zendo on breaks in the schedule we seem to always have something to plan or take care of for the rest of the group.

By the fourth day though everything was running so smoothly that i found myself with a break completely to myself.  So i sat down outside, lit a cigarette (so much for my having stopped smoking) and allowed myself to be carried off into the world of thinking. And small self spotted the opportunity to start shouting. Small self felt disrespected by a remark which had passed straight on through the previous day. Small self didn't want others interfering with its pronouncements inside the zendo. Small self wanted everything to be perfect so that my teacher would see what a good job i was doing. etc. etc.
And so after the break the next few periods of zazen were hell on earth. In a way i forgot the basics of practice and sat absorbed in thought. In another way i didn't forget because i could observe myself doing this and hold it lightly without self criticism.

I learnt from this. And the fifth day saw sesshin become effortless effort once more.

Perhaps i relearnt trust in the bigger picture where there is less need to have control. Perhaps i relearnt great patience.   Perhaps i relearnt that soft flexible mind is the Way.
What a wonderful sesshin!

Here's something i read this morning by Sojun Roshi. Maybe a copy should be kept under the Ino's seat for the nest sesshin...   :)

"During sesshin little things happen that create emotional reactions in us. Someone does something, something causes us to start laughing. Laughter in that way sometimes becomes uncontrollable. It's a way of letting off the pressure. There are lots of ways of letting off pressure. How do we keep ourselves contained and watchful, aware of the feelings that we have that sometimes catch us? We often take these feelings seriously when actually they're just like the thoughts that are continually bubbling up into consciousness. They have no real root. They pop up like weeds. We can easily create a fantasy around some thought or feeling that we take a dislike to, or when it looks like people are doing something wrong. If we go to another zendo for sesshin we often think that people are doing things wrong, because every place does something differently. When I am in Berkeley, we do things in our own way and when I go to San Francisco it's different, when I go to Tassajara it's a little different, and when I go to Green Gulch it's a little different. I have to remember everything in four different ways, and I'm really bad at remembering things anyway. [laughter] I'm continually having to make this adjustment.

When we go to another practice place, sometimes we think, "What are they doing? They are doing service all wrong." Critical comments come up and we get caught in small mind. Small mind is continually creating this kind of critical attitude and we fall for it. And then when we fall for it we lose our sense of humor and our flexibility. The other side is that it's easy for us to feel that we are doing something wrong. When we do something that's "off" someone may correct us. But we turn that into a judgment called "wrong." It's not necessarily that someone is telling us we did something wrong. But if we're doing something and someone says, "No, that's not the way to do it," then we feel criticized. During sesshin if someone corrects us, because of the pressure and focus we can feel crushed. So these are the two sides, one of them being crushed, and the other crushing. We create the problem of right and wrong. There is a way to do things wherever we are but when we start forcing the way to do things then we fall into right and wrong.

When we're sitting zazen this is the unconditioned realm, the realm of big mind, where there is no attachment to right and wrong, good and bad, where there is no judgment. Yet when we proceed to do something, there is a way to do something correctly and a way to do something incorrectly. So we're operating in these two realms. The absolute realm of big mind where there's no leaning on right or wrong, and the relative realm where there's a right way and a wrong way. This is the existential problem. In our daily life we're mostly operating in the world of differentiation, the realm of comparative values. We rarely step back and let everything be just as it is, which is resting in suchness or absolute equality. In the realm of right and wrong, either a thing is correct or it is incorrect. But in suchness, everything is just as it is, not right, not wrong, not good, not bad, simply as it is. When we sit sesshin, we're sitting in the palm of suchness even though within that suchness there is a right way and a wrong way. Both exist at the same time. But if you stick to the side of "everything is OK," the side of the absolute, then you can't do things correctly. If you stick to the side of "the thing is either right or wrong," then you lose your base, you just get caught up in right and wrong.

Just in between is where our complete activity takes place. We have to be very careful. This is reflected in the Genjokoan. Right here, right in this place is where our practice of Genjokoan arises, moment after moment. In each moment we have to deal with the fact that everything is just as it is, and at the same time, there is a right way and a wrong way, a good way and a bad way. We have to see all this without getting stuck. So what do we do? This is our koan of continuous practice, moment after moment. Sometimes it's better to let go of our idea and let it be just as it is, to suspend judgment, so to speak. Sometimes we have to catch something and make sure that it's done right. There is a way to do things and a way to not do things. In this space I am aware of what people are doing.

I'm usually aware when we are doing something right or not. I used to be more critical, even though you may think that is not the case. Whenever I come into the zendo, I adjust the incense bowls and all the things on the altar, which can be construed as a kind of perfectionism. My intent is not to be perfect, but to create a harmonious relationship between things. When I offer incense I like the incense bowls to line up right in front of the Buddha, and when I bow, I like to have the mat right in front of the altar. I have a feeling for alignment so I adjust it that way. Secondly, I feel that this is the way I'm teaching, without saying anything. Someone may feel criticized by my doing this. Maybe I should just leave it alone. That might actually be more magnanimous, in a sense, so sometimes I just leave it alone, and adjust myself to the way it is.

Most of the time, I don't say a lot. I don't necessarily react to what I see not being done. If I reacted to everything I saw that wasn't done "correctly," I'd be constantly correcting people. So more and more, I just let things go. Even though I see something is not happening, I just don't say anything. It may not be right to let it go, but on the other hand, sometimes the feeling is better if I let it go. So sometimes I opt in favor of the feeling, rather than in favor of making it right. I don't know which is right. Sometimes one is right and sometimes the other is right. There is no formula for how to act. I have to consider every situation, and decide which way to go with it. These two exist together, and you can't forget the one or the other. You can't say which is compassionate and which is strict, because sometimes being very strict is compassionate, and sometimes letting things go is strictness.

More and more, I trust that letting go provides an opportunity for things to take care of themselves. Letting go is a kind of trust. When we hold on tightly to things, it's often because we don't trust that things will be taken care of. So we take a very tight rein, which we must do at times. But the more that we can trust a situation, the more we can let go of it. Even if things aren't going right in the small sense, in the big sense they will most likely come around or fall into place. Things have a way of cycling or circling around. Somehow when they come around again they balance themselves out, or correct themselves. More and more, I trust the big picture. There is not so much need to worry about things. And not so much need to always have so much control of them. This is the spirit of great patience, and teaching by example."

You have an idea of yourself.
It is a kind of building.

This building stands on the sound
of your heart-beat,
the imaginary width
of rhythm.

All night
it stands there.
On a sound,
an imaginary width.

Wake up. Day calls you
to your life: your duty.
And to live, nothing more.
And look at people.

Rest doing no more than adding
your perfection to another day.
Your task is to carry your life high,
and play with it, hurl it like a voice to the clouds
so it may retrieve the light already gone from us.

That is your fate: to live
Do nothing.
Your work is you, nothing more.

Silence is not a lack of words.
Silence is not a lack of music.
Silence is not a lack of curses.
Silence is not a lack of screams.
Silence is not a lack of colors
or voices or bodies or whistling wind.
Silence is not a lack of anything.

Silence is resting, nestling
in every leaf of every tree,
in every root and branch.
Silence is the flower sprouting
upon the branch.

Silence is sound
And silence is silence.
Silence is love, even
the love that hides in hate.

Silence is the pompous queen
and the harlot and the pimp
hugging his purse on a crowded street.

Silence is the healer dreaming
the plant, the drummer drumming
the dream. It is the lover's
exhausted fall into sleep.
It is the call of morning birds.

Silence is the star kissing a flower.

Silence is a word, a hope,
a candle lighting the window of home.

Silence is everything --the renewing sleep
of Earth, the purifying dream of Water,
the purifying rage of Fire, the soaring
and spiraling flight of Air.

It is all things dissolved into no-thing
-- Silence is with you always.

Empty skies. Dark vacuums of night.
Visions. Revisions. Innocence.
I've seen All the empty spaces yet to be filled.
I've heard All of the sounds that will collect
at the end of the world.
And the silence that follows.

Waves lapping on the shore....
Skies on fire at sunset....
Old men dancing on the streets....
Paradox and possibility....
Fools and fine intelligence....
Chaos and clean horizons....
Vague notions and concrete certainty....
Optimism in the face of adversity....

Now we have to admit we can't know ourselves, we can only know about ourselves.
And I am not interested to know about myself any more,
I only entangle myself in the knowing.

I'm alive, I believe in everything
I'm alive, I believe in it all.

I just discovered John Safran about 6 months ago and i really like his films.
Very irreverent. Very funny.
I think Zen gets off pretty lightly here compared to how scathing he can be with other traditions.

He concludes, "Buddhists in the West are generally ignoring the best part of Buddhism...beating people with sticks."
:)

And it goes to show, never listen to a monk who pretends to help you with a koan answer.
Monks and roshis are a little mischievous...
:)

So a great and venerable monk with many followers was visiting the monastery.
His head was very full of dharma, like a great heavy boulder.

On his way up the mountain he passed by the shack where the old hermit lady lives.
She isn't so impressive as he, but has a wonderful flowing quality about her, like a little stream.

As they eyed each other up, the great monk stopped and said,
"Well, do you have any followers?"

The hermit lady said "Yes!"

He asked "So where are they?"

She replied "The mountains, rivers, and the whole Earth, the plants and trees, all are my followers."

He asked "Are you a nun?"

She asked "What do you see me as?"

He answered "A layperson!"

She replied "You can't be a monk!!"

He said sternly "You shouldn't mix up Buddhism."

She replied confidently "I'm not mixing up Buddhism."

He asked "Aren't you mixing up Buddhism this way?"

She said "You're a man. I'm a woman. Where has there ever been any mix-up?"

The great monk said nothing, but bowed and walked on, smiling.


In Hawaii there's a word, Kahawaii.
It means 'sudden little stream that can move boulders'.

The great monk heard the roar of dharma in this encounter.
All his habits of mind were overturned, like great boulders lying in the path of a deceptively small stream suddenly being overturned by roaring floodwater.

He had still been stuck in 'man' 'woman' 'nun' 'layperson' 'mixing up' 'not mixing up'.
He had been seeing through the part-adapted eye of the conceptual mind.
He had been missing entirely the whole which the hermit lady laid out so uncompromisingly before him.

When you see with the whole-adapted dharma eye you may realise that all your previous talk of realisation was just talk, intellectual understanding, just words, useful bullshit.

When you see it experientially, you may just remain silent, or bow, or smile.

Still when the humble monk reached the monastery he did say something.
There is still the human condition.

When I was young I lived with God,
And in my innocence I loved him,
Beard and all.

But he was old, and with a sense of sin
And jealous in a very nasty way.

So anytime my youthful eye would stray
He'd drag me home, take down his Book,
And read to me of love that others gave.

One day God caught me in a field with Homer,
Who also had a beard. (But his was red.)
God let out such a roar
that Homer fled,

But when he stuck out His Sacred Foot
For me to kiss,
I clutched it to me, stood up
And hurled Him down.

He hit his head
Upon a common stone,
And god was dead.

I buried him there amongst the wheat;
The work was easy, for his weight was light.
Then I went home and burned his book
And on his altar wine stayed six days drunk,

To wake up sober
In an empty room.

How smoothly the creek's okesa
Folds across the shoulders
Of the rocks.

Bowing through the incense smoke
I catch the scent
Of dry leaves wetted by the rain.

Arriving for your shuso ceremony,
I am met by two monks
Raking raindrops.

Bowing we feel our old teacher
Enter the unfinished kaisando.
Cool morning breeze.

Service is over, but the owls
keep chanting the names
Of all the Buddhas before Buddha.

Whose yellow calligraphy
On the wet flagstones?
The wind's. In pine pollen.

On the bridge,
waiting for dokusan,
Three monks and a dog.

Silence is the sound
Emptiness makes
Going about its business.

From inside this flowering plum tree
See?
Rising Moon and setting Sun.

Slipping through I crossed a single field,
And found my way
Easily to the Source.

The droplets that were once my life,
"All gone, roshi. All gone."
And yet, and yet.

"In courses where once
The mighty rivers ran,
Rivers will flow again."

Ever higher grows the tree,
Its fragrant heart transformed by fire.
Triumphant now, a living spire.

No likes, no dislikes,
No Buddhas, no harbours, no boats,
Only this:

Birth and death,
The eternal way.
A sharp wind through the tree.

"If someday you should ever make it back,
Remember this,
You may not want to see what you have found."

Its bad news if you live in the United Kingdom, well according to Richard Turnbull anyway.

Turnbull, the embattled principal of the Anglican evangelical training school Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, is in the news again. Stephen Bates has a piece in today's Guardian under the headline "Theologian damns most Britons to hell".
He reports comments from Dr Turnbull's speech given last October to the annual conference of Reform, a conservative evangelical pressure group within the Church of England.

"We are committed to bringing the gospel message of Jesus Christ to those who don't know [him] and in this land that's 95% of the people: 95% of people facing hell unless the message of the gospel is brought to them."

Dr Turnbull speaks about the strategic importance of evangelical control of theological colleges, and the need to "capture" those colleges -- comments which assume new interest given his recent experience at Wycliffe Hall. He also takes some time to explore the meaning of "evangelical identity", prompted, it seems, by concerns about a degree of drift in the meaning of the term "evangelical". One of evangelicalism's defining doctrines, he argues, is "substitutionary atonement", a view of the cross that has been increasingly dividing evangelicals in Great Britain.

Perhaps Dr Turnbull been noticing some of that semantic drift amongst his staff at Wycliffe, since he warns his audience of the need to be aware of liberalism "in our own midst".

I wonder if his colleagues at Wycliffe Hall are comfortable with the claim that ninety-five per cent of the British population is destined for hell. Who's included in that figure? Even granting that hell exists, how would one arrive at an estimate like that?

Is it worth even feeling annoyed by people like Turnbull?
Let's face it, hes not exactly in the Jerry Falwell league of lunacy.

Worth it or not sometimes i do feel annoyed. I may even think "shut the fuck up!"

But really i guess he's doing his best. And theres something pretty wonderful about that.

Life is one endless mistake. Every stupid deluded religious sentence...every act of war...every imposition of intolerance and naked hatred...all are someones best response in the life they find themselves in.

We look on and think 'well how did that ever seem like a good idea? to say that? to do that?"
But it did.  We have to accept that.

This is not helpless surrender on our part.
We can have compassion for them, as we can compassion for our own deluded sense of moral superiority to them.

We maintain our own freedom, remain centred, without anger, and then respond in the way which seems like a good idea to us.
What is our best response?
Maybe its silence sometimes.
Maybe its educating them sometimes.
Maybe its calmly opposing them sometimes.
Maybe its even 'Shut the fuck up!!'

This is the human condition. What does life ask of us? How will we respond?

It seems this is a 'shut the fuck up!' kind of day.

Thats what i get for reading newspapers, which is not a regular thing for me.

In my last post i offered the sentiment to the Anglican theologian Dr. Turnbull.

So remaining centered, not seperating or taking the moral high ground, calmly wondering how it could have possibly seemed like it was a good idea to say what he said, i'd like to offer a 'shut the fuck up!' to Benedict as well.

Reading Eamonn McCann's article in the Belfast Telegraph, i have discovered that the indigenous peoples wiped out during the european colonisation of Latin America had been asking for it. In fact, "longing" for it.

So Benedict explained during a papal address in Brazil on May 13th.

"the nations of latin america and the caribbean had been silently longing to receive Christ as their saviour" long before the arrival of the europeans.

Christ had been "the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking without realising it".

The colonisation of the continent was not so much a conquest as an "adoption" of the indigenous peoples.

The colonisation "did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it an imposition of a foreign culture".

The effect of the extirpation of ancient religions and the forced conversion of whole peoples had been to make their cultures "fruitful" by "purifying them".

How many of the millions, who died in the religiously inspired genocide which followed the conquest, felt more fruitful i wonder? How many of the few enslaved survivors felt purified i wonder?

Sandra Tuxa is the leader of a coalition of indigenous tribes in northern Brazil and a lay catholic activist. She described Benedict's remarks as
"arrogant and disrespectful... to say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening."

The international press, when they bothered to pick up the story, have tended to be astonishly apathetic. Reuters offered the following bland explanation,
"Many Indian groups believe the conquest brought them enslavement and genocide."

This is the equivalent of remarking that many Jewish groups believe the Holocaust brought them enslavment and genocide.
Anyone crass enough to refer to the Nazis' Final Solution in these terms would immediately be excluded from respectable discourse as an Holocaust denier.

The Pope however is immune from any such judgement. Maybe its an infallibility thing.
Or maybe the forest tribes of Brazil just don't qualify for consideration in this context.

Maybe the logging companies currently scything through the forest peoples could consider hiring chaplains to explain that the Ha-ha-hae, the Rio Parde, the Arara, and the Macuxi have, all unknownst to themselves, been silently longing for such adoption down the years and can now consider themselves purified.


But this isn't about religion, christian or not. Its about power.
I think of the minister at the Congregational Church near me, the Rev. Lewis.
I think of Brother David Steindl-Rast who i met in the U.S.A.
These men are examples of living Christian compassion.

Why is it the lunatics who always get into power?
Or does their power make them lunatics?

So Basho asked after a visit to the zoo,
"They were a society of flightless creatures, content, secure,
well fed and well taken care of. But were they pink flamingos?" Good question!

The cosmologist Brian Swimme points out that the comfort path for we human beings is a secret misery. The comfort path looks so easy and sells so well that the entire earth and most of its species have been placed in great precariousness.
Swimme asks "what is the quality of hawkness?"

The "hawkness of the hawk" depends on the extraordinary speed of mice. Its bloody hard to be a hawk and stay alive. If it were easy to catch mice, if mice were fatter and slower, and tended to wander leisurely past hawks, then gradually hawks would become fatter and slower. Their eyesight would grow less keen and they might even need spectacles after a while. Their ability to lurch toward a passing mouse as if their very life depended on it would gradually diminish. They would become bereft of the deepest part of their own strength until one day we'd look at them and ask "where is the quality of hawkness?"
It would have gone, disappeared into the secret misery of comfort.

This can teach us a lot about living, about life and death.
Life is an endless cycle of giving and receiving. Human life itself is granted as an extraordinary gift, as far as we know one of the rarest gifts in the Universe!
Do we really appreciate that in the way we live our life, in how we live and appreciate this very moment? Or are we drifting along comfortably in our own little stories?

Everything on from the Big Bang through eons of pure energy, then through eons of matter, then through eons of life coming into being, life after life after life, has yielded to open the way to you and to this very moment.
Everything that has ever lived is laying down its life all the way, like a great royal road leading exactly to this life, this consciousness, and this rarest of human chances.

What a gift!  If you look into a newborn baby's eyes you can see the gift there still so clearly, the planets and the stars still turning in the baby's eyes.
Everything is given, where it comes from nobody knows.

When you open yourself to the falling away of a life, theres the other revelation of the true nature of the Universe, that everything is also asked.

The gift is passed on entirely. It leaves our hands and goes back around the corner into the dark. We don't know where it goes or need to know.

This wild animal body that we walk about in is simple and ultimately fearless in how it meets suffering. It is here for all kinds of suffering and all kinds of joy.
It doesn't hold back.  It knows how to do it: how to be born; how to continue to be born deeper and deeper into life; more and more richly layered by experience.

And then, it knows how to let go, to give way and disappear back into that dark.
But something blocks us from truly knowing what the body knows. Something balks in us and says 'no not me, i've been granted an exception!'
This is the comfort path of secret misery, which has little true curiousity, or real creativity, or lasting joy. "Where is the quality of hawkness?"

The roar that wakes us and saves us from all our doubts is complete intimacy with life, inseperable from intimacy with death. It might be the Buddha's glimpse of the morning star, the fleeting sight of a plum tree in blossom, or a twig breaking underfoot.

The great teachers spoke of realisation, of seeing into the core of our own being, which is the core of the Universe, as the Great Death. It is an intimation of death, cessation, stopping, that opens up our Great Life.

Dogen Zenji's teacher shouted "Body and Mind dropped away".

The old Hebrew prophets sang of it, "For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace, the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands."

The mystery at the heart of each blade of grass, pebble, cloud, dream, and human body is intimate with death, lit by death, flooded by life. Right now!

It is said that until you've wept deeply, you haven't meditated.
Tears can be the first sign of grace.

The stubborn human heart must break open completely so that everything may be here, fully itself, just as it is, at last.

Grace comes easily.
One mind shared
with the Universe.

No dimensions, no barriers...
And yet too soon,
all of it back again.

Seated on your lotus throne,
your smile so constant,
your hardwon peace.

Did you too, sometimes,
exchange your birthright,
and sigh?

Was it hazy walking alone
in that red sky?
For there is no other way...

I sit inside
the compassionate Buddha,
who sits inside this world of things,

which sits inside the universe,
which sits inside the great void
which sits inside my heart.

Water birds
coming and going
their traces disappear
but they never
forget their path.

Sangha is pretty wonderful. Sangha can also be damn frustrating.

In any case, today the skies are blue, dogs are barking, children are laughing, the Sun is shining, and the dark earth feels warm and refreshing beneath my feet.

I so love this world.

The Earth, Buddha's family and the Ancestors are where the dream within the dream unfolds. It is in the Earth, in Buddha's family, through practice, through the teachings of the Ancestors that the awakening in awakening can be found: the dream unfolds itself within the dream.

This is the turning of the wheel of the Buddha Dharma; turning in every direction, it is from here that the oceans, the jewel mountain and the land all rise.

Every earthly manifestation is a dream, the clear splendour of all phenomena.
It is beholden to us to learn that grass, roots, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit, light and colours are all a single, great dream.

Explaining the dream within the dream regards all places; the wheel of Dharma turns on all things -great and small- and blows freely like the wind

so today the world is very vivid, very alive with endless possibilities.

will i stay put, or go to Hosshin-ji in Japan, or Fuden-ji in Italy, or back to San Francisco Zen Centre?
or something else entirely?
who knows? I'll talk some with Roshi and see what arises for me, but Fudenji seems to call me.

first though i get to go work and earn some money. Have to repay a loan and buy a plane ticket before i go anywhere!  :)

"You cannot stop your life, you know.  You are always changing into something else.  Always.  Incessantly... What you have done is already over.  And you are doing something quite new.  So there is no reason why you should be discouraged... When you are just as you are, through and through, there there is enlightenment." -Suzuki Roshi

So this past couple of days have felt very nourishing.

During my walks, instead of visiting the wild places of nature i usually favour, i decided to get to reknow some of the parts of Belfast i haven't visited in years.
So much has changed in this city recently, so much demoltion, new money, rebuilding.

Each back street seems to have its own treasures to present.
Its own smells, colours, discarded rubbish, urine stained backdoors to trendy clubs, neon lights. Its own mix of people trying to make a living, getting in each others way and helping each other out.

Just as when we take the time to stop in the mountains and recognise ourselves as everything around us, and to be recognised by everything around us, so too with the streets of the city. Each one is us, recognises us, is home to us.

I've met  people who sleep outside, people who every day canoe up and down the river Lagan that runs through the city centre, people who are too drunk to get on their bus, people who've come from the other side of the world to tour the trouble spots of our recent history, people who push past you, and people who sit down beside you and unexpectedly insist on telling you their life's story.

I went to a bar for the first time in years and had a very chemical tasting, very cold, very refreshing pint of beer.  I've eaten way too much dulse, which is a local dried purple seaweed still covered in crusty sea salt.

I've heard the government Minister For Equality pronounce that gay people in N.Ireland are harmful to themselves and harmful to society. What a way to kick off the new political dispensation, i've thought.

I've spoken with wonderful friends and honestly admired their efforts to make amends. I've watched my own pride prevent me from saying, ok lets just forget it.
I've watched as i softened to allowing disagreements to pass, but still held onto the need for a little distance.

I've seen the useless parts of my practice which are somehow still about me not getting hurt, and i've seen them without judging myself. 
I've seen how i identify with every deluded person out there who doesn't practice and seems to be fucking up royally, and how compassionate and accepting i can be with them.
I've seen how i treat other practitioners differently and expect some sort of perfection from them.

I've learnt that we're all practicing as best we can according to our own understanding of the world, and of the teaching. This is me. This is the world. Enlightenment and delusion. How boring would it be if we had one without the other?

Thankfully we don't have to worry about that because both are always presenting themselves. We do though get to choose whether to respond from our own deluded ego mind or from our soft, flexible, enlightened mind.

Deep down there's a part of us that always knows what the right thing to do is, even if our sense of self gets in the way of us actually doing the right thing.
And that's why practice is neverending.