By Shih Shu
(1660? - 1740?)
English version by James H. Sanford
as flowing waters disappear into the mist
we lose all track of their passage.
every heart is its own Buddha;
to become a saint, do nothing.
enlightenment: the world is a mote of dust,
you can look right through heaven's round mirror
slip past all form, all shape
and sit side by side with nothing, save Tao.
-- from A Drifting Boat: Chinese Zen Poetry, Edited by J. P. Seaton / Edited by Dennis Maloney
"Shih-shu" is a term that can be translated as "rock and bark poetry" -- nature poetry that often poked fun at the bustle of city life and city mind. Rather than brushed onto fine paper, shih-shu poems were scratched into pieces of bark, bamboo, or rocks.
In the early 1700s, one poet took the term as a nom de plume, making it difficult to know much about the author... other than through the poems themselves.
every heart is its own Buddha
Poetry Chaikhana
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. . . the sky like nature of our mind, utterly open, free,
limitless; it is so simple and natural that it cannot be complicated,
corrupted or stained, it is merely the immaculate looking at itself.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
posted to GardenMystics by Tom
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The ancient masters were subtle, mysterious, profound, responsive.
The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable.
Because it is unfathomable,
All we can do is describe their appearance.
Watchful, like men crossing a winter stream.
Alert, like men aware of danger.
Courteous, like visiting guests.
Yielding, like ice about to melt.
Simple, like the uncarved blocks of wood.
Hollow, like caves.
Opaque, like muddy pools.
Who can wait quietly while the mud settles?
Who can remain still until the moment of action?
Observers of the Tao do not seek fulfillment.
Not seeking fulfillment, they are not swayed by desire for change.
- Lao-tzu
Tao Te Ching
Translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English
posted to AlongTheWay
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There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace.
You will find that deep place of peace right in your room
your garden or even your bathroom.
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
I believe that the universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. (This is physics, I believe, as well as religion.) The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars; none of them seems to me important it itself, but only the whole. The whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it, and to think of it as divine. It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and that there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one's self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions ... the world of the spirits.
~ Robinson Jeffers, 1934
If thy heart were right, then every creature would be a mirror of life and a holy doctrine. there is no creature so small or abject, but it reflects the goodness of God.
~ Thomas 'AKempis, Imitation of Christ
Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind - listen to the birds.
And don't hate nobody.
~ Eubie Blake
Mazie Lane, posted to GardenMystics