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10-08-2015, 11:52 AM | #31 (permalink) |
Shoo Thoughts
Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: These Mountains
Posts: 2,308
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A nightingale's song
Brings me out of a dream: The morning glows. - Ryokan Someday I'll be a weather-beaten skull resting on a grass pillow, Serenaded by a stray bird or two. Kings and commoners end up the same, No more enduring than last night's dream. - Ryokan In all ten directions of the universe, there is only one truth. When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same. What can ever be lost? What can be attained? If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time. If we lose something, it is hiding somewhere near us. - Ryokan How can we ever lose interest in life? Spring has come again and cherry trees bloom in the mountains. - Ryokan A cold night – sitting alone in my empty room Filled only with incense smoke. Outside, a bamboo grove of a hundred trees; On the bed several volumes of poetry. The moon shines from the top of the window, And the entire neighborhood is still except for the cry of insects. Looking at this scene, limitless emotion, But not one word. - Ryokan My life may appear melancholy, But travelling through this world I have entrusted myself to Heaven. In my sack, three sho of rice; By the hearth, a bundle of firewood. If someone asks what is the mark of enlightenment or illusion, I cannot say… wealth and honor are nothing but dust, As the evening rain falls I sit in my hermitage And stretch out both feet in answer. - Ryokan |
10-28-2015, 05:15 PM | #32 (permalink) |
Shoo Thoughts
Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: These Mountains
Posts: 2,308
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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 |
10-31-2015, 06:21 AM | #33 (permalink) | |
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11-05-2015, 07:06 PM | #36 (permalink) | |
Shoo Thoughts
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Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it. It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds. The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil. The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold. But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white feet of the trees whose mouths open. Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance? Haven't the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe, until at last, now, they shine in your own yard? Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education. When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking outward, to the mountains so solidly there in a white-capped ring, or was he looking to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea that was also there, beautiful as a thumb curved and touching the finger, tenderly, little love-ring, as he whirled, oh jug of breath, in the garden of dust? - Mary Oliver On a summer morning I sat down on a hillside to think about God - a worthy pastime. Near me, I saw a single cricket; it was moving the grains of the hillside this way and that way. How great was its energy, how humble its effort Let us hope it will always be like this, each of us going on in our inexplicable ways building the universe. - Mary Oliver |
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11-06-2015, 11:58 AM | #37 (permalink) |
Shoo Thoughts
Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: These Mountains
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I've already posted some of Li Bai's poetry but have come across some superior (or preferrred at least) translations. First a little about the man:
Li Bai (701-762) is best known for his love of wine and is widely acknowledged as China's greatest poet. It is said that Li Bai never ammended or edited any of his poems, that every one of his poems is a first draft - a remarkable fact if true. Rather unusually for the time, he was celebrated during his own lifetime and indeed recognised as a genius - a reputation that led him to become friend and advisor to the Emperor - a precarious position that later saw him imprisoned, sentenced to death, and eventually exiled. He was a controversial figure, a free spirit with a deep love of nature and even deeper love of Taoist values who championed intoxication and the nomadic lifestyle, and criticised law and order. Rumour has it he drowned while drunkenly reaching for the reflection of the moon on the river, which, ironically, is a recurring scene in many of his poems. You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain; I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care. As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown, I have a world apart that is not among men. - Li Bai This next one beautifully describes the dropping away of the self until Oneness is experienced: The birds have vanished from the sky. Now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains. - Li Bai More soon. |
11-07-2015, 09:52 AM | #39 (permalink) |
Shoo Thoughts
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In my golden cup, pure wine worth ten thousand a pint;
on a jade plate, fine food worth ten thousand coins. I stop drinking and put down my chopsticks, unable to eat, draw my sword to dance, look anxiously in all directions. I want to cross the Yellow River, but ice blocks my way; I want to climb Mount Taihang, but snow fills the sky. In idleness I drop a hook into the azure creek, suddenly I’m back in my boat, dreaming of distant places. Traveling is hard! Traveling is hard! So many forks in the road– which one to take? A great enterprise must find the right moment; I hoist my sail into the clouds and cross the mighty ocean. - Li Bai To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows, We drained a hundred jugs of wine. A splendid night it was . . . . In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed. But at last drunkenness overcame us; And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain, The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for cover. - Li Bai The living is a passing traveler; The dead, a man come home. One brief journey between heaven and earth, Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages. The rabbit in the moon pounds the elixir in vain; Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood. Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word While the green pines feel the coming of the spring. Looking back, I sigh; looking before, I sigh again. What is there to prize in the life's vaporous glory? -Li Bai If heaven loved not wine, A Wine Star would not be in heaven; If earth loved not wine, The Wine Spring would not be on earth. Since heaven and earth love wine, Need a tippling mortal be ashamed? The transparent wine, I hear, Has the soothing virtue of a sage, While the turgid is rich, they say, As the fertile mind of the wise. Both the sage and the wise were drinkers, Why seek for peers among gods and goblins? Three cups open the grand door to bliss; Take a jugful, the universe is yours. Such is the rapture found in wine, That the sober shall never inherit. - Li Bai |
11-07-2015, 05:18 PM | #40 (permalink) | |
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