One Mind Zen Poetry - Vesak 2023

one mind

Vesak Edition

poetry Issue 2, May 2023

The Poets Ven Myeong Jin Eunsahn

3-4

Mike Jinji Wood

5-7

Cheolsoeng Prajna

8

Haengdal Citta

9 - 11

Scott Watson

12, 13

Robert Koho Epstein

14 - 18

Emily Epstein

19

Brad Hunter

20 - 25

Min’ui Maitr

26 - 30

Hwamin Citta

31

What, again? (for Wonji) It’s so bright, where am I? Oh, here again?

What am I going to do about this?

Hmmmmmmmm……..

May I share something with you?

How may I help you?

No coming, no going, it’s all good

Don’t be a, just be Don’t be a Buddhist Don’t be a bodhisattva Don’t be anything Don’t meditate for anything Don’t look for enlightenment Don’t take one step See your true Nature Help all beings Be a Buddha

Ven Myeong Jin Eunsahn Abbot & Guiding Teacher One Mind Zen Collective

Welcome back, Bodhidharma Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?

No mirror, no cypress tree No dust, no tea, no bowls, no bowels stick Pixels glow, speakers breathe in and out Scent of incense, taste of seltzer, The cushion’s a little hard today, I think

Ven Myeong Jin Eunsahn Abbot & Guiding Teacher One Mind Zen Collective

Zazen When you let everything happen to you It all exists, a gentle farce that nips the little eye on your leg; then you sit, then you leave and, without a home, it only floats by without a mouth.

Mike Jinji Wood

What have I got under my hat?

My brand new home hidden all day like cooling soup

Mike Jinji Wood

A special day beyond beyond gone beyond words turning directly to the one who said no days are special but that everyday is good

an hour ago it is not quiet cat in the litter box washing machine another cycle anticipating the snow storm trying to stay awake not anxious but a bit restless Mike Jinji Wood

Oh, There it Is Mind wanders...returns...

It looks for answers It thinks it knows things Maybe it does, but at best it's only partial.

Put it down.

No need to figure it out.

Oh. There it is!

Cheolsoeng Prajna

Looking for something Which cannot be found Wandering aimlessly Rain soaking the earth

As a Zen priest I light candles and incense, And bow in a most proper way Before continuing to be a fool

Haengdal Citta

6

What is the sound of dharma on a loading dock?

Freight banging on trailer floors Horns and backup alarms Not so pleasing as the bell in my priest's bag But that is picking and choosing Calling with the same mind - just wake up

Haengdal Citta

Source and stream are not different Flowing is simply what flows Try to stop it, it moves on Try to find it, it is gone

Haengdal Citta

new green leaves earth-rooted silences poetree

The fact of life is the act of life and the act of life is its art which is how words are made by breathing

There are no images to suit my idea of a life that is sane.

That's why I'm invisible.

Scott Watson

万流庵

All-Flowing Cottage Sendai, Japan

The Essentials

What happens if we outgrow knowledge like toys we played with put away now here we are not knowing growing a ring of any tree

For ancient Greeks, things as they are celebrate as they suffer things as they are.

Sophocles noted birds still sing, but how do they do both at once?

That's the how of how things are.

Scott Watson

万流庵

All-Flowing Cottage Sendai, Japan

tiny swans of dusk hiding in the shadowed reeds subterfuge of birds

nothing to do here though the mind remains restless waves of the ocean

To lie still in a field and become like the flowers, To lie in a bed and dream of the cold clear rivers.

Robert Koho Epstein 7

Lone white fluffy reed Swirling in green company

resisting the grip of the forces of control opening the door

Robert Koho Epstein

Two poems for NL: Out into the Mystery Out into the mystery, which we fully embrace with open arms.

What we are and always have been, we will become.

Love and Light to you, forever and always arisen again.

Free of the body Free of his body No more aches and pains Unlike those who go to heaven We dissolve in the light.

Robert Koho Epstein

Doors

Each of the old broken doors has its own special formula for opening.

There is the broken door of the unhinged mind.

There’s the door of the heart swinging slightly open and then getting stuck.

There is the door of the window longing for what is beyond.

There are the six sense doors, and the doors of the feet treading the earth.

There are the insistent doors that keep slamming and reminding you of what happened, and the doors that open out onto a wide landscape where you are running and running, either for adventure or trying to get away.

Then there are all the closed doors, the doors that used to be open, or the ones that have always been shut, the proud etched doors that have detail work that they really don’t do anymore, the plank doors that were thrown up in a commune and were perfectly fine, and matched the old couch exactly well.

There are doors that never got finished.

They sit half open, half shellacked, partly painted, reminding you of unfinished tasks and parts of your world that are unseen, unknown, or undone, places that need repair.

Sometimes those parts or places are not important enough to get any attention.

Those places are sad.

Then there are also destroyed doors, doors turned into tables, doors that have the knob in the wrong place.

Every time you enter you have to bend down.

Doors that don’t match their people are also sad.

And sometimes when you go through a door, there’s a new world on the other side, Robert Koho Epstein and sometimes you go through an invisible door and only discover it was there much much later.

9

The Great Mirror The Great Mirror reflects everything.

Nothing is omitted.

The universe is a mirror.

I am a reflection.

I may want to pick and choose what things in the mirror I like or dislike, change or dissect the mirror. but the whole, with all of its connections, makes up the whole "me."

There are no gaps.

I try to control.

I try to grasp.

I am out of control.

Time is out of control.

I always feel like I am out of time.

The great mirror is relentless.

It goes everywhere like water or mercury.

Robert Koho Epstein

The Present The present moment stands at a distance Its reflection Coated in metallic waste Off of which sunlight bounces repeatedly, But never pierces through Tastes of sweaty, twisted bed sheets And hollow, desperate promises of change Looping, piling onto one another, The crunch of bone against bone, Rubbing raw, collapsing inward to reveal Dead corpses once so flushed with the color of life, Once vibrating, the pleasant hum of the body syncing with the mind and the ever-shifting mood, Resonating with the tune of the day

Emily Epstein

Yeah I know, confusing isn’t it?

INCURABLE (Lullaby for Ego)

Some time ago you were there, And it was like that.

Then you were like that, over here, Just like this— And what’s it like now?

Like a complaint from a TV commercial?

What happened to retirement!

‘Manage and slow The spread, Best we can hope for.’

Eventual outcome, the only certainty.

All else is an answerless mist, unyielding fog.

Lifetimes of the mind’s blueprints, Cobwebs in a forest fire.

When is anything ever fully completed?

Rats of impermanence gnawing at the footings of each new construction And stripping the wires off the engines themselves— Even the tenuous scaffolding riddled with rot.

Continued.........

Was there ever a final flag to drive into blowing sand?

While titles and names, faces and achievements fall away, Faster than they arrived.

When has becoming ever led to Being?

The tongue never quite reaches the taste.

The beauty beheld always abandons the eye.

Experience never sticks and stays, Regardless of our clawing and grasping.

The molecules of the body vibrating quicker than thought.

Some galaxies moving away at the speed of light.

Moving where? Away from what?

Silence and space between each instant, The very ground of every moment.

No need to birth your head above the horizon’s lip Of Unknowing and Stillness.

A divine ether flows in and flows out— Breath, of course—but so much more than that!

When all the knots and bindings come loose, There remains the ceaseless ease of presence, Through the limitless peace of absence.

Brad Hunter

In a foggy grove In a foggy grove of saplings A young boy shivers. Alone, Wandering in reverie.

Time steps away from space.

Body begins to hum.

Gazing into the uncanny mist over the St. Lawrence river He is startled, suddenly seeing himself recalling This very moment far in the future.

The branches and air bear witness.

And today, An elder looks at the back of his Spotted hand-How like the veins of a fallen maple leaf.

As he rubs palms together.

Moist and smooth and slippery, There appears the shiny bark of saplings , Decades upstream, By a river, Left long ago.

He traces the rings of time Circling the vast cove of the breast.

The temporary harbor of a timeless heart.

And I remember a young boy Remembering me Remembering him.

Brad Hunter

One day you might find That you have been throwing your life

One Day

Against some invisible wall Longer than you can remember.

On that day a crack may appear in that wall You never knew existed.

Because you’ve stopped looking, it comes into view, And just below the crack you might notice a handle In this nonexistent wall, And you realize there is a nonexistent door In this wall that never was.

This handle beckons for a turning, And this time you approach, As one approaches things that may not be there, With a curiosity, trust and gentleness you’ve never known, And you turn with a turning borne of endless endurance And the unshakable focus of a child in rapture.

Then you realize that it is not you turning, But you that is turned.

For an instant you recognize you have not thrown yourself against anything And perhaps for the first moment of your life You have truly rested in your own presence.

You find yourself bathed in an unspeakable radiance and smile, While the world opens in wide grin and whispers-Welcome Home.

Brad Hunter

Empty Theatre

On the stage of the ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows, All the main characters have killed themselves off.

The audience leaves in disgust and demands a refund!

The stage and seats now empty, a certain grief hangs in the curtains And the stillness of the air.

The theatre itself slips into the void of Neither host nor guest.

Yes, the show will still go on-The foolish comedies, the tragedies, the romances-All the trauma and drama.

But we already know the ending.

After all, who wrote the script?

Brad Hunter

Seems like another realm.

I was still young and the old man Was barely 50, When I said excitedly ‘I slipped on the razor’s edge And cut my face off!’

And yet, Ever since that long night Of Solitary Brightness, I still tend to get real nervous around All nouns and names and pronouns!

Brad Hunter

Further along Sid’s road less traveled Still, I ran to the river and chopped off my hair, Vowed never again to succumb to that pit viper’s snare.

By donning a robe of ocre, I swore, To set foot in Mara’s house no more.

Six years on the path, I learned to breathe deeply, No more sex, drugs or rock and roll, in a manner of speaking.

Yoga and zen, it all merged in my mind, But I knew in my heart there was still more to find.

Mangos are tasty, but hurt when they fall, So I searched through the trees and examined them all.

That ficus was big and tall and round, So I pledged not to arise til my mind fully unwound.

Some presume that it took me a full 49 days, But in just one night my mind broke through the haze.

Mara tested me with thoughts of great pleasure and pain, Seeking to prevent the great ‘wakening that came.

Min’ui Maitri

Min’ui Maitri 14

I had sorted it out, all that delusion and greed, No self was left, all impermanent, indeed!

But those seven weeks, in Bodh Gaya, I stayed.

I had found my Nirvana, no longer dismayed.

Thus began my 45 year-long mission, Teaching liberation and peace to all who would listen.

True self, is no self, let go of it all, Compassion is present in both big and small.

Aged 80, it seems is a good round number.

Afterall, my two buddies had gone before me to slumber.

This life was my last, the war had been won, My Samsara ended with my last setting sun.

Min’ui Maitri

Mutta

So freed! So thoroughly freed am I! — from three crooked things set free: ​from mortar, pestle, & crooked old husband.

Having uprooted the craving that leads to becoming, I'm set free from aging & death.

Therigatha, Chapter 1, Verse 11 https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/thig/thig.01.00x.than.html#sutta-11 Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī

Min’ui Maitri

Awakened! Hero! Homage to you, highest of all beings— you who’ve released me and many other people from suffering!

I’ve comprehended all stress, dried up craving, the cause, developed the eightfold path,1 and touched cessation.

Before I was mother, son, father, brother, grandmother.

Not knowing things as they were, I wandered on without respite.

But now that I’ve seen the Blessed One, this is my last body-heap.

Birth & wandering-on are totally ended.

There is now no further becoming.

I see the disciples gathered, their persistence aroused, resolute, constant in strong exertion: This is the worship of the Buddhas.

Truly for the benefit of the many Min’ui Maitri did Māyā give birth to Gotama, thrusting away the mass of pain of those mired in illness & death.

Therigatha, Chapter 6, Verse 6 (https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/KN/Thig/thig6_6.html)

Through many a birth in samsara have I wandered in vain, seeking the builder of this house (of life).

Repeated birth is indeed suffering!

O house-builder, you are seen! You will not build this house again.

For your rafters are broken and your ridgepole shattered.

My mind has reached the Unconditioned; I have attained the destruction of craving.

Dhammapada 153-4

To cease from evil, To do what is good.

To cleanse one's mind: This is the advice of all the Buddhas.

Dhammapada 183

Min’ui Maitri

Without a mouth I bite into the blueness of a seed syllable.

The eyes explode into gravity where shapes are mythical clouds that have one face of

emptiness.

With no line the sea and the sky are one.

The light is in front of the mirror combing darkness strand by

strand.

On each dial of a universe a lotus emerges.

Identical yet

separate.

Iris.

Eyeballs.

Eye lashes.

Who is this looking at me ?

Hwamin Citta

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