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#2296
- Monday, October 24, 2005 - Editor: Gloria Lee
May you live
all the days of your life.
~ Jonathan Swift
What Is There Beyond Knowing?
What is
there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me? I can't
turn in any
direction
but it's there. I don't mean
the leaves'
grip and shine or even the thrush's
silk song, but the far-off
fires, for
example,
of the stars, heaven's slowly turning
theater of
light, or the wind
playful with its breath;
or time
that's always rushing forward,
or standing still
in the same
-- what shall I say --
moment.
What I know
I could put into a pack
as if it
were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,
important
and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained
and unexplainable.
How
wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly
to its
logical end.
I have done this a few times.
But mostly
I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing
in and
out. Life so far doesn't have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.
If there's
a temple, I haven't found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass
and the weeds.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(New and
Selected Poems Volume Two)
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/What_Is_There_Beyond_Knowing.html
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“A wooden
chicken is swimming in the water.
A stone fish is playing in the sky.
Form-body and karma-body come from thinking.
Dharma-body is pure and clear and infinite
In time and space
On the water of a thousand rivers,
A thousand moons are reflected.
There are no clouds over ten thousand miles,
Only blue sky for ten thousand miles.”
~Seung Sahn
From the book, “Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings
of Zen
Master Seung Sahn,” published by Grove Press Books.
posted to Daily Dharma
"We are always
putting the question of what is possible. If you put an
impossible question, your mind then has to find the answer in
terms of the impossible - not what is possible."
~ J. Krishnamurti
posted by Ben Hassine
Even if you can
explain thousands of sutras and shastras,
unless you see your own nature, yours is the teaching of a moral,
not a Buddha.
Boddhidharma
This is what religions have done for thousands of years.
They have taught that the words are what is important.
Remember, even what you are reading here is not important.
What is important is your True Nature.
posted to Conscious Oneness
The Hidden Singer
The gods are less for their love of praise.
Above and below them all is a spirit that needs nothing
but its own wholeness, its health and ours.
It has made all things by dividing itself.
It will be whole again.
To its joy we come together --
the seer and the seen, the eater and the eaten,
the lover and the loved.
In our joining it knows itself. It is with us then,
not as the gods whose names crest in unearthly fire,
but as a little bird hidden in the leaves
who sings quietly and waits, and sings.
~ Wendell Berry ~
posted by know_mystery
If all of life is our sadhana,
then every moment a koan arises
that stops the conditioned momentum,
and how we think or see or listen then
is all part of it too.
Xan
*
* *
The fundamental koan shatters the conceptual mind—eventually.
What is left?
Today I was sitting,
And watching Soufi the cat.
He is so majestically beautiful,
His eyes wide open:
Hearing the raindrops against the window.
What you say above I can see as well.
The purpose of my life is to be here, to be here awake, and to
breathe.
There is no other goal, no other purpose than being here as I am—as
I am awake.
It is hardly a purpose,
Though it is better than ‘good.’
I am nothing fixed, not in oneness, nor in emptiness, not in flux
or any other thing.
I float as all things interconnected against the palette of
emptiness.
Other than that I am that rock of reality.
I am that rock because I am nothing in particular.
During class I couldn’t speak,
and was taken away by the view outside,
autumn trees blowing in the wind.
Guess we are not supposed to speak of that in class J
You can see cosmic infinity in eyes,
and are in love with everything:
Such a fool.
There is not a thing in the world.
See it shine!
Ben.