Daily, nothing particular,
Only nodding to myself,
Nothing to choose, nothing to discard.
No coming, no going,
No person in purple,
Blue mountains without a speck of dust.
I exercise occult and subtle powers,
Carrying water, shouldering firewood.
- Ho Koji,
Sitting alone amongst the forest trees,
The sixfold faculties always still and quiet.
It seems as if you've lost a precious jewel,
But have no pain of worry or distress.
In all the World your visage has no peer,
And yet you always sit with your eyes closed.
The thoughts of each of us possess a doubt:
What do you seek by dwelling in this place?
- Nagarjuna
You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you'll sweep petals from the floor.
Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say "I'm old,"
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are.
- Han Shan
Like the empty sky it has no boundaries,
Yet it is right in this place, ever profound and clear.
When you seek to know it, you cannot see it.
You cannot take hold of it,
But you cannot lose it.
In not being able to get it, you get it.
When you are silent, it speaks;
When you speak, it is silent.
The great gate is wide open to bestow alms,
And no crowd is blocking the way.
- Cheng-tao Ke
Even
a good thing
isn't
as good as
nothing.
- Wu-men
I'd like to
Offer something
To help you;
But in the Zen School,
We don't have a single thing!
- Zen Master Ikkyu
An inch of time is an inch of gold:
Treasure it.
Appreciate its fleeting nature-
Misplaced gold is easily found,
Misspent time is lost forever.
- Loy Ching-Yuen
I praise those ancient Chinamen
Who left me a few words,
Usually a pointless joke or a silly question
A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin
of a quick splashed picture - bug, leaf,
caricature of a Teacher -
On paper held together now by little more than ink
and their own strength brushed momentarily over it
Their world and several others since
Gone to hell and a handbasket, they knew it—
Cheered as it whizzed by—
& conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars
Happy to have saved us all.
- Philip Whalen
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