One Bright Pearl

I have always loved the poems of Han Shan. One of my favorite is number 26 -

Since I came to Cold Mountain
how many thousand years have passed?
Accepting my fate I fled to the woods,
to dwell and gaze in freedom.
No one visits the cliffs
forever hidden by clouds.
Soft grass serves as a mattress,
my quilt is the dark [...]

Total dynamic function, or Zenki, is our life.
What does this mean? Who am I? What is this!? I ask myself these questions regularly. I remain curious, letting go of what I think.
With no inside or outside, no second person, it is radically different than what I think. And yet, this thinking is not outside of [...]

one
drop
splash!

What are we doing? Are we waking up, or captivated by our dream? Just what is the dream?
The dream is everything you think. What I am writing right now is nothing but the dream, but as an old teacher once told me, there is a difference between a high order dream and a low order [...]

A large, spacious room, unfolded before me. It seemed to be part of a rustic lodge, with beautiful blonde ash woodwork, framing a grand window, that looked out upon a natural mountain vista.
Outside the window, a herd of ancient buffalo, or perhaps muskox, munched placidly in a high alpine meadow. I noticed that their coats [...]

no dust at all
not a single speck
wiping it away
with wonder
-

In response to a visitor’s comment, I felt compelled to expound a little of what has been shared with me.
It is all Buddha Nature… or is it? It is indeed. Buddha Nature pervades the entire universe, right here, right now. The pure lotus land unrolls moment by moment. But do we know that in our [...]

Let people think whatever they may think. Let them even call you crazy. If you spend your whole life practicing in accordance with the Buddha-Way and refrain from what goes against the buddha-dharma, you needn’t worry about what people think of you. Tonsei, retreat from the world, means being free from the sentiments of worldly [...]