Thursday Poem - Mind Wanting More

Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.

The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.

But the mind always
wants more than it has—
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses—as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren't enough,
as if joy weren't strewn all around.

Holly Hughes from American Zen: A Gathering of Poets

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

In the past, I have been a cloud, river and the air. And I was a rock. I was the minerals in the water. This is not a question of belief in reincarnation. This is the history of life on earth.

Thich Nhat Hanh, 
11 October 1926 – 22 January 2022 

Thursday Poem - For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
The steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together,
learn the flowers,
go light.

Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island

Little Singers in the Trees

An annual cicada's song is the quintessential music of August, a sonorous vocal offering from jeweled beings who emerge from the ground, shed their nymph skins, climb high into the light-filled trees and sing for a handful of days before expiring and returning to earth. It's a joyful and ecstatic element in the slow irrevocable turning of one season into another.

I often find abandoned cicada shells on poplar trees in the Two Hundred Acre Wood but always feel fortunate when I encounter a newborn in all its pastel green splendor, sometimes still clinging to its discarded self. Imagos (adults) darken as their new exoskeletons harden and wings expand, but there is a fair bit of variation in coloration. Some will retain greenish wings all the days of their lives.

Only male cicadas sing but oh how they do sing, vibrating the complex abdominal membranes called tymbals over and over again to generate a raspy tune that will attract a mate. I have a lot to learn about identifying cicadas, but this one may be the bigger Linne's cicada rather than a Dog-day cicada. Whichever it was, my little visitor was absolutely gorgeous.

Call it "cicada mind" and cherish the notion. Our task is one of cultivating just this kind of patience, acceptance, rapt attention and unfettered Zen sensibility, of embracing our allotted days fully and singing wherever we happen to be, then dissolving effortlessly back into the fabric of the world when the time comes.

Thursday Poem - For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
The steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together,
learn the flowers,
go light.

Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island

Looking Through

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

When you breathe in, breathe in the whole universe.

When you breathe out, breathe out the whole universe.

Osaka Koryu

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world.  When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer  world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say inner world and  outer world, but there is really only one world.
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Wordless Wednesday - Simplicity

Wordless Wednesday - Light and Temple Bells

Wordless Wednesday - The Mind of Clover

Thursday Poem - Mind Wanting More

Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.

But the mind always
wants more than it has—
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses—as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren't enough,
as if joy weren't strewn all around.

Holly Hughes
from America Zen: A Gathering of Poets

The Sound of Winter, Scent of Snow

The long white season has arrived and it's here to stay this time - not just dropping in for tea or plunking itself into a Morris chair for the afternoon with a stack of books and a good reading lamp.  Thermal underwear and toque, anyone? Boots, parka, mittens and snowshoes?

Winter writes its own words and music, sings the score in a hollow timbre that rises and falls on snowbound streets and parks, across hills, woodlands and fields, and a thousand and one other places deemed too desolate for attention, but wonderfully alive in their frozen shapes and textures.

Sometimes, the best thing one can do is be silent and let the season speak or sing for itself - just turn the doddering artist/scribe loose in the white stuff and see what she gets up to without giving in to the compelling tug to describe it all in words.  How does one describe the scent of fresh snow and spruce needles anyway?

The season is infinitely more tuneful and eloquent than this old woman with her camera and notebook, and it knows best how to work with these artful crystals, these frozen bits of aromatic greenery. For all the winters she has been wandering the earth, every winter is something new and beguiling.

Watching the Light

A vaguely restless time, these middling weeks in February. At night, there are dreams of wild orchids, trout lilies and columbines, sunlight falling greenly through the trees and songbirds in the leafy canopy.  In the wee hours of the morning, I wander the fully leafed out understory, follow the movement of clouds across the western field, harken to bullfrogs in the beaver pond and bees in the wild apple trees by the fence.

By day, I measure icicles dangling from the roof, assess the strength of returning sunlight and the length of shadows in the landscape, watch as snowdrifts recede from favorite trails through the woods, leaving puffs of snow like cotton wool and a fine lacy fretwork behind as they go. Moving along, I find myself listening for the telltale sound of maple sap dripping sotto voce down tree trunks.

... and the birds. That gentle hoot is the unforgettable call of a Great Horned Owl (bubo virginianis) communicating with her mate - he is sitting on their nest in the old oak as she hunts nearby. Other monotonous (and repetitive) notes are the swooping courtship ballad of the Saw-Whet Owl (aegolius acadicus), that fierce little harbinger of the approaching maple sugaring season.

There are all these snowy trees, tiny red buds and artfully frosted grasses to ponder as I wander about with field notebook and camera, and my restlessness vanishes like smoke as I potter - I am contented just to be here and watching as the day unfolds, and the light ebbs and flows.  It's a late winter Zen thing, its appearance always an honored guest on the threshold.

Zen Rakes, Bicycles and Blooms

Something happens to my eyes around this time every year.  After a winter spent tracing the artfully scalloped nautilus curves of ice and snow and drinking in the plethora of blues on offer during the long white season, I get hung up on all sorts of colors and shapes in May.  If past experience is any indication at all, I will probably be this way for weeks, wandering around with an expression dazed and intoxicated, finding profound pleasure in throngs of prosaic and unlikely things.

It doesn't have to be a flower or a leaf or a stem.  It could be almost anything, a tantalizing (and occasionally mundane) structure of some sort with patterns or shapes or flowing curves built into the equation and calling out for rapt and thoughtful attention.

Pottering off to the market on foot yesterday under a leaden sky with rain falling and more rain in the cards for days to come (it's raining now, in fact), there were soggy tulips and daffodils everywhere I looked.  It was the rake leaning casually against a tree with a stucco wall nearby and a bit of bicycle in the background that followed me home and stayed with me as I opened the front door of the little blue house in the village.

The posture of the unhanded garden implement might have been forlorn, but it was serene, and it pleased this elderly eccentric eye as much as a whole bed of dancing blooms in sizzling shades.  Does a simple garden rake have Buddha mind?  This one seemed to be the very essence of Zen, and the question as I sat down to write this morning was simple, paradoxical and something of a koan.  Was the leaning rake not complete within itself, and did it really need any words from me at all?

This Too Is the Journey

And so it goes, or rather comes and goes.  Much of my time in the last while has been spent with a friend (in her eighties), who is sometimes panicking as her formerly active lifestyle undergoes a seachange and occasionally seems to be vanishing like smoke.

An artist by birth and by calling, my friend is a wild, fierce and goddessy woman with a sharp tongue, a passionate regard for art, travel, poetry, mythology, photography and just plain old watching the world go by.  Now, she is losing her eyesight, her physical equilibrium, her ability to paddle a kayak or drive a motorcycle (a Harley-Davidson Night Rod no less), to pilot an aircraft or simply (as she puts it) go places and do interesting stuff.  It hurts, and there are times when she is frightened, but she is a warrior, and she is working things out.

The lady rocks, and she has always been a mentor and an inspiration. We used to go off on photography expeditions together, climb bluffs and wave our canoe paddles around with abandon.  My own deadlines slip away now, meals are forgotten or charred beyond recognition, television documentaries are missed when she calls, and I roar off to see her, take her hand for a while, tell her stories about my mundane and not-so-mundane potterings, laugh together and rummage through her music collection for a little Mozart, Vivaldi, Miles Davis or Bonnie Raitt.  We probably don't have much time left to journey on together, and I want to be there when she needs me.

"I remember everything", she says, "and behind my eyelids, the colors of the world are dancing like bokeh, like sunlight on the water, summer fireflies or tumbling snowflakes".  In these sweet, poignant and fleeting days, I seldom think of my own health issues except when I must, or when, like a vigilant Zen priest with a Kyosaku stick, a certain one gives me a sharp physical reminder of its presence - something the crab is very good at doing. It too is a right fine teacher.

The Sound of Snow

This image of Kyoto's Golden Pavilion, arrived with holiday greetings from a Japanese law firm I dealt with when I did intellectual property work downtown years ago.  I remember the day it arrived well - deadlines and court filings were almost piled up to the ceiling in my office when I opened the envelope and extracted the jewel inside.  Some bright spirit had patiently assembled the card by hand, fixing the image to the front and tucking a holiday greeting in both English and Japanese inside.

All the cares of the dismal day passed away like smoke, and I caught my breath in delight, knowing that the card was a "keeper", something I would retain and look at, time and time again.  The image is framed now and tucked away for a goodly part of the year, but it has come out of hibernation to grace the western wall in my studio during the winter months.

The original Golden Pavilion was part of a retreat complex created in 1397 for the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitusu, who had just abdicated the throne in favor of his son. The grounds contained a pagoda or two, living quarters, temples, a bell tower and formal gardens. When the old shogun died a few years later, the pavilion became a Zen temple in accordance with his wishes, and so it remains to this day, a revered shariden formally called Kinkaku-ji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion) or Rokuon-ji (Deer Garden Temple). Enshrining relics (ashes) of the Buddha, the temple exudes a timeless sense of peace in its exquisite garden setting.  The present structure is covered in gold leaf and looks ancient, but is a replica erected in the fifties after a mad monk torched the original.

The companion piece in my studio during the winter months is a fragile rendering of the same temple done on rice paper, and it also graced the wall in my downtown office once upon a time. At difficult moments in my working life, the two images always conveyed peace and serenity, and now they continue to give both pleasure and peace here at home. Both scenes are beautifully drawn, and I can almost hear the snow falling and coming to rest among the trees.

There is nothing on my little gem of a card to indicate who the artist was, and I don't really need to know, but I wish I could say "thank you". It (the card) arrived in my harried corporate life at just the right moment, and it continues to bring pleasure now, many years later.

Small Worlds

For the late Zen master and renowned photographer, John Daido Loori, I suspect it was tide pools, beaches and heron spiced estuaries - they drew him like a magnet to faraway shorelines, carrying his camera, tripod and lenses. He loved the shapes and the colors, the contrasts, and he could stand for hours, watching the play of wind across waves and rock, rippled sand and seawashed kelp.

Far from such salty places, I have eloquent expanses of my own, an inland sea shaped of foothills, gorges and quiet grassy coves, winding rivers and gnarled old trees, flowing fens and dancing reeds. Not for me, at present anyway, are the pacific bays and beaches near Point Lobos which Daido loved so much, the fog wrapped headlands and promontories graced by weathered stones.

My earthy inland sea sings like the sirens of old, and it holds beauties beyond measure in every season. In November, there are fields of blowing silky milkweed as far as the eye can see here, and they beguile the eye in perfect panoplies of cream and taupe and gray. In sere and austere arrays, they draw like a magnet, and I dissolve in their midst like a contented and wind tossed leaf.

Words for a Snowy Day

24. Fu / Return (The Turning Point)

The time of darkness is past, the winter solstice brings the victory of light... After a time of decay comes the turning point. The powerful light that has been banished returns. There is movement but it is not brought about by force... the movement is natural, arising spontaneously. For this reason the transformation of the old becomes easy. The old is discarded and the new is introduced. Both measures accord with the time, therefore no harm results. Societies of people sharing the same views are formed. But since these groups come together in full public knowledge and are in harmony with the time, all selfish separatist tendencies are excluded, and no mistake is made. Return is based on the course of nature ... and the course completes itself. Therefore it is not necessary to hasten anything artificially. Everything comes of itself at the appointed time. This is the meaning of Heaven and Earth.

In winter the life energy, symbolised by Thunder, the Arousing, is still underground. Movement is just at its beginning, therefore it must be strengthened by rest so that it will not be dissipated by being used prematurely. This principle, i.e. of allowing energy that is renewing itself to be reinforced by rest applies to all similar situations. The return of health after illness, the return of understanding after an estrangement: everything must be treated tenderly and with care at the beginning, so that the return may lead to a flowering.

From the I Ching (Book of Changes)
Translation by Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes

Returning refers to the time when the climate is at its coldest, yet the water in the wells is still warm... This is the thunder of the winter solstice that is stored within the earth. The power of returning yang energy to the earth is at its highest, yet it only moves in accord with time... young yang must be kept peaceful and calm to allow its growing - do not act to dissipate it.”

From the Yi Jing: Book of Change,
Translation by Gia Fu Feng, Sue Bailey and Bink Kun Young

The I Ching gifts us with lovely words for a day like this one, when the world beyond the windows is an endless flowing ocean of white, and the patient evergreens are bending under the weight of falling snow in a peaceful Zen-ish kind of way. As gray and hushed and still as it may be "out there" this morning, green realms lie sleeping underneath the whiteness - a lush and shaggy blooming lies within.