Mountain home sleeping
No dreams of dust.
Three robes are plenty;
Who says I’m poor?
One for my pillow,
One to serve as a mat,
And at the thunder of my snoring
Heaven and Earth disappear.
Posts Tagged → emptiness
the house of spiritual light
Heaven is calm and
clear, earth is stable and peaceful.
Beings who lose these qualities die,
while those who emulate
them live.
Calm spaciousness is the
house of spiritual light;
open selflessness is the
abode of the Way.
translated by John S. Major & Sarah A. Queen
years of hunger beneath gojo bridge
A master’s
handiwork cannot
be measured but still priests wag
their tongues explaining the “Way” and
babbling about “Zen.” This old monk has
never cared for false piety and my
nose wrinkles at the dark smell
of incense before the
Buddha.
Crazy Cloud
speaks of Daito’s unsurpassed
brilliance but the clatter of royal carriages
about the temple gates drowns him out and no
one listens to tales of the Patriarch’s long
years of hunger and homelessness
beneath Gojo
Bridge.
In order to deepen his Zen understanding, Daito Kokushi (also known as Shuho Myocho, 1281-1338), the founder of Daitoku-ji, passed a number of years hiding out among the beggars clustered about Kyoto’s Gojo Bridge.
how to live with all things
if you live on the breath
If you live on the breath,
you won’t be tortured by hunger and
thirst, or the longing to touch. The purpose of
being born is fulfilled in the state
between “I am” and
“That”.