snow

Song of the Bright Mirror Samadhi

Gill Washington Dongshan, Enlightenment, Practice, Spirituality, Truth, Zen , , , , , , , 0 Comment

 Dongshan

From: Essential Zen

Edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi & Tensho David Schneider

This dharma as it has been directly entrusted
by buddha ancestors.
Now that you have realized it
you must guard it mindfully.

Snow heaped in a silver bowl,
a heron fading into the bright moon.
Similar but unequal.
Place them side by side
and you will see which is which.

The meaning is not in words.
Inquiring students seek further.
Moving forward creates pitfalls.
Avoidance leads to a standstill.

Faced with a great wall of fire,
turning your back on it and touching it are both wrong.
Expressing it in colorful words
only stains it.

Midnight is bright,
dawn brings no dew.
Things are truth itself
to be used for removing delusion.
This is not created
and yet not inexpressible.

As form and image face each other
in a bright mirror,
you are not it
but it is you.

It is like a baby
perfectly possessing five freedoms:
Not coming, not going,
not rising, not staying…

And goo goo wa wa –
words that are not words.
In the end nothing is grasped
because speech is not precise.

In the double-split hexagrams
the particular and the general integrate.
When the lines are closed they become three,
and its final change makes five.

A blade of zhi grass has five flavors,
A vajra has five points.
Within the general, something marvelous lies.
Drumming and singing go together.

Penetrating the source, penetrating the paths.
Here is a short path, here is a long path.
If you miss it, that’s a good sign.
Don’t neglect it.

What is natural and inconceivable
belongs neither to delusion nor enlightenment.
Causes and conditions right at this moment
shine completely in silence.

So minute that it penetrates any space.
So enormous that it exceeds all bounds.
The slightest difference
puts it out of tune.

Because the basic teachings of sudden and gradual
have been set up,
the Zen school has become divided.
These ways have become standard.
Even though you master such teachings
the truth keeps on escaping.

You may sit still but waver inside –
a tied up horse, or a cowering rat.
The Ancient Teacher pitied us
and transmitted the dharma.

Because of our delusions
we say black is white.
When delusions disappear
understanding reveals itself.

If you wish to conform to the old ways,
take a lesson from the past.
People trying to attain the buddha way
by gazing for ten eons at a tree
are like a tiger with tattered ears
or a hobbled horse.

A greedy mind sees
rare treasures.
A surprised mind sees
raccoons and white bulls.

Legendary bowman Yi with his skill
shoots the mark a hundred paces away.
When arrowheads meet head-on,
is it only a matter of skill?

Right when a wooden man sings
a stone woman gets up and dances.
It’s not within the reach of knowledge
nor does it admit ideas.

Retainers serve their lord;
children obey their father.
Without obedience there is no respect;
without service there is no civic virtue.

Conceal your practice, work inside.
Be ignorant, look foolish.
Just keep on doing it.
This is called host with host.

 More Zen Writings

 

Snowfall

Gill Washington Poems, Sara Teasdale, Spirituality , , , , 0 Comment

By Sara Teasdale

“She can’t be unhappy,” you said,
“The smiles are like stars in her eyes,
And her laughter is thistledown
Around her low replies.”
“Is she unhappy?” you said–
But who has ever known
Another’s heartbreak–
All he can know is his own;
And she seems hushed to me,
As hushed as though
Her heart were a hunter’s fire
Smothered in snow.

Read more poems from Sara Teasdale

Index of poets on Allspirit

 

A Winter Night

Gill Washington God, Poems, Sara Teasdale, Spirituality , , , , 0 Comment

By Sara Teasdale

My window-pane is starred with frost,
The world is bitter cold to-night,
The moon is cruel, and the wind
Is like a two-edged sword to smite.

God pity all the homeless ones,
The beggars pacing to and fro,
God pity all the poor to-night
Who walk the lamp-lit streets of snow.

My room is like a bit of June,
Warm and close-curtained fold on fold,
But somewhere, like a homeless child,
My heart is crying in the cold.

Read more poems from Sara Teasdale

Index of poets on Allspirit

 

The Snow Man

Gill Washington Poems, Spirituality, Wallace Stevens , , , 0 Comment

By Wallace Stevens

 

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Read more poems from Wallace Stevens

Index of poets on Allspirit

 

The Snowstorm

Gill Washington Poems, Ralph Waldo Emerson , , , 0 Comment

 
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driven o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swanlike form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Mauger the farmer’s sigh; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

 

 

Rubies

Gill Washington Spirituality , , , , 0 Comment

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

THEY brought me rubies from the mine,
And held them to the sun;
I said, they are drops of frozen wine
From Eden’s vats that run.

I looked again,–I thought them hearts
Of friends to friends unknown;
Tides that should warm each neighboring life
Are locked in sparkling stone.

But fire to thaw that ruddy snow,
To break enchanted ice,
And give love’s scarlet tides to flow,–
When shall that sun arise?

Change Upon Change

Gill Washington Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poems , , 0 Comment 

Five months ago the stream did flow,
     The lilies bloomed within the sedge,
And we were lingering to and fro,
Where none will track thee in this snow,
     Along the stream, beside the hedge.
Ah, Sweet, be free to love and go!
     For if I do not hear thy foot,
     The frozen river is as mute,
     The flowers have dried down to the root:
     And why, since these be changed since May,
          Shouldst thou change less than they.

And slow, slow as the winter snow
     The tears have drifted to mine eyes;
And my poor cheeks, five months ago
Set blushing at thy praises so,
     Put paleness on for a disguise.
Ah, Sweet, be free to praise and go!
     For if my face is turned too pale,
     It was thine oath that first did fail, --
     It was thy love proved false and frail, --
     And why, since these be changed enow,
          Should I change less than thou.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning