…Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. - David Whyte

…Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn

anything or anyone that does not bring you alive

is too small for you. - David Whyte

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting  
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things.

- Mary Oliver

(I think Dogen would be proud.) 

Who says my poems are poems?
My poems are not poems.
When you know that my poems
are not poems,
Then we can speak of poetry!
Ryokan, Zen Monk, Poet, Hermit, Artist

Ten Mindful Ways To Use Social Media

Two Monks Talk Ordinary Mind

  • Joshu earnestly asked Nansen: "What is the way?"
  • Nansen answered: "Ordinary Mind is the Way."
  • Joshu asked: "Should I direct myself towards it, or not?"
  • Nansen said: "If you try to turn toward it, you go against it."
  • Joshu asked: "If I do not try to turn toward it, how can I know that it is the Way?"
  • Nansen answered: "The Way does not belong to knowing, or not knowing. Knowing is delusion. Not knowing is blank consciousness. When you have really reached the Way beyond all doubt, you will find it is as vast and boundless as the great empty sky. How can it be talked about on the level of right and wrong?"
  • At these words, Joshu was suddenly enlightened.
Absolutely essential reading.

Absolutely essential reading.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.
Dogen

Late, great Zen master John Daido Loori, Roshi talks about hearing with the eyes and seeing with the ears.

Atonement.All evil Karma ever committed by me since of old, On account of my beginningless greed, anger and ignorance, Born of my body, mouth and thought. Now I atone for it all. (3X)

Atonement.

All evil Karma ever committed by me since of old,
On account of my beginningless greed, anger and ignorance,
Born of my body, mouth and thought.
Now I atone for it all.

(3X)

Take the backward step that turns the light within.
Thusness