morning coffee
steam rising French roast
incense curls beyond cup rim
rain fall soft

where is Mind
need I bother examining
Buddha purpose trying to escape 
cage of causes conditions?

1,861 miles birth home to Seattle
mighty crow flight
body has come that far 

Mind?
one square inch* 
hasn't moved an inch. 

871 miles Seattle to Las Vegas
Catholic priest ordination 1985

4,897 miles Seattle to Eihei-ji
Buddhist lay ordination 2025

Spiritual miles years
same Mind same question
stubborn thing hasn't budged

lying in summer grass
six years old
clouds drifting 
first question
who am I?

Thirty-one years married
then she was gone
four years on my own
persistent question
who am I now?

_______________________________________________________________
Classical Chinese poets use "one square inch" to refer to Mind or what is deepest in the human person. It is small compared to the world but capable of vastness.

This the Zen I practice
dim lit Zen of an eve
gazing westward where
Chinese Japanese 
ancestors lay sleeping

some I know
having sat among their stones
on monastery grounds in Japan
others I know
their centuries-old words

written word voices
refreshing clear
as heard spoken beside me
walking together on a road
side by side laughing

if it were not like this
I'd find another way
I wish to walk 
with friends I know
though they never knew me

I sit in grateful sangha
with many long dead 
who could not have imagined
me my time my world
grateful for their holy company

meaning vanishes into holes
closes behind walls
human life with holes
imperfect ragged-edged
hiding around corners
no warning sudden
emptiness came lonely today
another day from around that corner
death will come hat in hand
holes open widen
no patches to mend or cure
too late for healing
ragged holes of life
old untended wounds
forgotten reasons
forgotten care
forgotten altogether
today an old wound opened
feeling like sadness
inside a hole emptiness 
Śūnyatā emptiness
all we believe fixed
form in ragged ranks
around a hole
round as all existence
wounds circle round around
held by a sacred opening
a hole - emptiness -
ragged-edged imperfect
nothing there
all is there

labyrinthine mysterious
no sign cairn track
word messages from past
who have gone their ways

Way calls to way
I hear from heart deep
dream whispers
tree branch singing

 

They come in all shapes and sizes
beings as important in the scheme of things
as you or I in all interesting configurations.

This one has shared an evening with me
as I've sipped wine on my veranda
coming and going more than once.

Deciding to come close for a portrait
understanding his regal appearance and bearing
would be likely to woo a companion.

I wish him all well in his travels and loves
perhaps he'll come again to join me here
on another sublime autumn evening on the veranda.

Zazen morning evening
cushion wall incense bell
true self sits in awakened state
within expansive opening -
stillness unencumbered 
freed from hard borders of being.

Known self orbits peripherally 
attributes seeming to represent life
drift about in thin air
that, when bell rings again,
I put on like clothing.
Still point dissolves.
Once more being in the world - dasein.*
______________________________

German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, in "Being and Time."
 
"Dasein [literally, being-there or there-being in German] is Heidegger’s way of referring both to the human being and to the type of Being that humans have. Its essence lies in its existence. It can respond to its circumstances, thereby choosing its ‘Being’. ‘Dasein’ is about the human being and its place in the world. Dasein is essentially in the world, because it continually interprets and engages with other entities and the contexts in which they lie. Only Dasein makes the world a unitary world at all, rather than a collection of entities. Dasein is the whole human being, and makes no distinction between body and mind. Heidegger rejected any purely psychological realm."

From Oxford Academic:  academic.oup.com

It comes in off the Sound
stealing in before rising sun catches
drives it scurrying away

I sit out marine layer mornings
feeling fine enveloping mist 
refreshing cool calm

uncertainty my companion
not able to penetrate it's veil
stealing in all around

sit still wait
what comes will come
I cannot slow the world's turn

drawn to the beguiling notion -
crossing to the other shore -
as if when born we step aboard our craft
beginning life's unpredictable journey

I've not sensed a previous life
though many claim they have
can I doubt those claims as I may doubt
samsara's cycle returning again and again

best to say I do not know
nor does it matter much
it is the poetic realm to which I'm drawn
that may at times reveal true things

shipping out again having alighted 
on that distant shore breathing 
light grace divine harmony of the spheres
a moment a kalpa a lifetime an exhale

knowing not what form awaits us
what rare ether or misty headland 
comes to catch us in our long fall
from one life to the next.

a dear friend said this of me
I unable to muster an objection
how could I being who I am?

it gets cold tonight sitting outside 
trying in vain to find stars
in the city lit night sky

no matter here I am
stars unseen and all else
city life offers my unusual soul

an old Chinese hermit questioned
considering opinions of those down below
"Am I really an idiot?"*

pretty certain I'm not an idiot
but, as master Hanshan mused,
"My reflections fail to solve the question."

difficult part remaining so -
staying true to who I am
not yet knowing who I am

we seek ourselves
from out of all we might be
or who some may wish us to be 

not easy finding our true selves
when world tugs this way and that
we must dig deep and sit

sit as if who we are depended on it
it is why we sit facing walls
making us all, as my friend says, unusual.

______________________________

*"All the people in the Kuo-ch'ing monastery 
They say, "Han-shan is an idiot." "Am I really an 
idiot:" I reflect. But my reflections fail to solve 
the question: for I myself do not know who the 
self is, and how can others know who I am?"

(Translated by D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series, 1953, Plates XV,a & b)

when young I had a dream
recalling only a body of water and a boat
either or both called Langford
understood to be a long crossing
over what or for how long I could not know

this unfamiliar clearly wrought name 
intrigued me on waking
not understood nor forgotten
on occasions without reason
rising unbidden from depths 

trying to discern that far shore
I cannot see but I come to know
already I am crossing over
sitting still in my wandering craft
wind swirls sea swales abound

Langford - passage over waters of the wine dark sea*
profoundly mysterious treacherous beguiling
in it on it's waves over its hidden deeps
fearful wondrous love enchanted 
holding on for dear life

___________________________


*Attributed originally to Homer, in The Iliad and Odyssey.

Langford: "the term itself is believed to be composed of two Old English elements: "lang," meaning "long," and "ford," referring to a river crossing or shallow place in a river. Therefore, the name can be interpreted to mean "long ford," which likely described a geographical feature where a river could be crossed."  (Ancestry.com)