Bodhi Day 2023 Poetry Slam

BODHI DAY

2023

ONE MIND ZEN COLLECTIVE

Poetry Slam

Zazen

by Mike Wood (Jinji Sunya)

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

Waking

by Jonson Miller When sleeping, we believe our dreams.

When awake, we believe our madness.

What is there to wake up from?

What is there to wake up to?

Wake up from believing.

Don't believe, love!

The Unawakening

by Daean Citta

I hate that guy who’s always ranting on the internet about people he hates. He makes me feel awful.

—Have you tried meditation?

Once, but my mind kept racing so it didn’t help.

—Maybe hatred is making you feel awful; have you tried giving up hatred?

But there’s so much to hate! I want the world to be a better place!

—Wanting things to be different than they are makes you feel awful.

Have you tried giving up wanting things?

No, that’s stupid. People want things.

—And people suffer. Do you like suffering?

I hate suffering. And I’m starting to hate this conversation.

—Have you tried meditation?

salad

by Robert Koho Epstein

As I ate the salad The glass rang the bell.

enlightened vanilla

by Robert Koho Epstein

“Are you enlightened?”

“No I'm just vanilla.”

Winter Haiku

by Bryant Shunya Guy

Giant metal pipe Carries impure waste water To be purified

River languidly flows next to bikers flowing Hastily past it

Where cold water meets with other cold water ducks Splashing happily

Bitter cold river But the ducks keep diving in For the food below

Many types of grass All unique species but in Winter the same brown

Water wants to flow And the ice laughs as it flows again as water

One white gym shoe left In the cold brown grass somewhere There is one cold foot

No weapons allowed Nor even sunflower seeds Everything Keep Out!

Brightly painted wall Of turquoise and gold stands out In this brown landscape Duck's head tucked tight in Folds of feathers woven tight Against winter's cold

Trees tagged for study But they've been studying us Quizzically for years Just a stump is left Of a tree that grew for years Beaver needed it Just a stump is left A tree that grew for years is Now a beaver dam Sculptures made by man Surrounded in a park by Nature's sculptures -- trees

Miracle of Being

by Robert Koho Epstein

To realize the miracle of being a living being.

Wonderful and unfathomable.

Those who are gone astonish us with their absence.

Those who are here surprise us with their presence.

Trick or Treat Santōka

by Scott Watson

山頭火

万流庵 2023

Gimme saké I tell you how a haiku drank the crickets.

What's so free about free speech?

Moon rock flowers stars, A universe enjoys imagining itself.

If talking were walking would we know what we're walking about?

It took as many years as I am old to unlearn who I am.

casting my bread on the water

by Robert Koho Epstein

casting my bread on the water emptying my pockets relieving the bones and muscles of weight drifting into the sun

Languorous leaves float downstream, sun dappling the creek.

Pause a while and breathe.

--Daean Citta

Monk

by Ven Cheolsong

There once was a monk from Nantucket, Who polished his mind like a nugget, But mind is a thing Like an instrument string All one need do is to pluck it.

There once was a monk from Nantucket, Who polished his mind like a nugget, But mind is a thing Like an instrument string All one need do is to pluck it.

Ancestors (A sijo)

by Myeong Jin Eunsahn

Ancestors, Why did they come? Was the East not good enough?

Did they know before they were leaving home What’s to be done?

No sitting underneath the tree did the dharma come to them?

TWELVE-FOLD CHAIN POEMS

by Jacob J Billingsley

0. (argument) Each of twelve lines can be read as a corresponding nidāna or as language touching one meaning misunderstanding or inquiry into these twelve links

i.

Not knowing How it comes to be The mind finds it In 10,000 things In six kinds of feeling It would seem that it’s The rough trunk and skin Something you need But just keep going A real elephant walking As real as your practice While it can practice

ii.

You can’t yet say: Both karma and will: What realizes can see I just call out to it: Feeling and hearing Now are felt and heard: The bell is ringing.

The bell in its ringing Was never so nice as now.

I just put bell on mantle and will let it sound each day.

It could always ring this way.

iii. anything can change its mind and answer by tasting cool water cannot nourish except by being cool water becoming warm

iv. what was continues as it’s seen made visible the pupil looks within/without so you’ve heard what all this—about do you need—it you do now need this moment just as it goes v. the dark earth still under your feet is thinking microbes the deep biosphere I guess the smell of earth is there become stone-made-soil and abyssal muck where you trample so lay your body down like a whalefall and its stinking blubber become bone

vi. just abyss until submersed in the godmind an ocean in-brighten’d an eye seeing far like a bale of straws dropt in clearest water drinking and drinking the brine salt thirsting after what lives there mineral and water breaking the membrane

In the Zone

by Myeong Jin Eunsahn

Being “in the zone” It’s nothing special you know?

It’s just samadhi

Irreverent (Tanka)

by Myeong Jin Eunsahn

Shakyamuni sat In the rain with birds and snakes And then he woke up Wiped the sleep out of his eyes And had a bowl of porridge

...

I stand with People Not with any Governments Governments don’t bleed Avalokiteshvara Hears their cries and cries herself

approaches

by Robert Koho Epstein

One goes to the library and studies up on all things; Another goes to the sea, watching the waves and feeling the flow; The third shakes out their sleeves, and jumps into the water with no destination.

sax reed

by Robert Koho Epstein

sax reed scruffy cut up split and something took a bite out of the tip yet somehow "miraculously" still plays the squeaky scratchy notes I want to get out of it in a flurry and a hurry Unlike George Coleman I don't care where the notes land oftentimes they land in outer space irretrievable And I don't notice anyone jumping up in the air to try to pull them back down to earth the reed scratched up and broken is the most real component of my playing like the relationship to life everything is a little broken but still kind of plays

Poetic reflection on the Phena Sutta

by Brad Amaronanda Hunter

1) Studying the mountains and rivers sutra In the back of my hand.

They say there is a ‘farther shore’.

But it’s increasingly cold and unpredictable outside And anything can happen in this icy boil of change.

But closer to home, Before the senses are even born, The raft of deliverance begins to naturally float Inwards and downwards, On currents of ease and release, Following the scent of a peace that surpasses understanding And the sweet salty taste of freedom in the heart.

2) An abandoned old ship Sank to the floor of the sea.

For years the heavy wet dust Has been filling the hull daily, Securing it firmly in the Ground of the depths.

The ghosts of ancient sailors periodically Rise again to the surface, restlessly wandering on In their wanting—sheer habit and sense of poverty.

But even they have grown weary of the rising and falling Of the waves, And the endless parade of strange beasts Easing in and out of the portholes.

All the while The ceaseless current of the unmoving Hums throughout the rust and the rot.

3) My failure is almost complete.

Non-becoming is the greatest success.

Being no one is the sublime ease.

As the body continues its inevitable slide Towards compost and dust, My name escapes me.

My life’s work, Dreams on a forgotten shore.

The radiance of a timeless moon dawns in the heart.

I rest in the light of the Unborn.

4) In the middle of the night, The pellucid full moonlight Penetrates to the bottom Of the ancient mountain pool.

It perfectly illuminates and reflects The infinite variety of ungraspable apparitions Darting up and down, here and there.

And even when the water roils and rages, The moonlight does not get wet.

Neither waves nor depths are churned in this radiance.

5)

Relinquishing clinging To the thingness of things And the I-ness of I— A timeless light illuminates The sense fields and gates.

The ten thousand things, Transparent fabrications, Just as they are, Continually preach the Dharma In this Clear Radiance.

6) At the edge of a desert mirage I pulled a magic trick— Planted a banana tree in dry sand.

Tried to sustain it in vain, Wrapping the tree in a cloud of foam, Sprinkling it constantly with fleeting bubbles.

The Buddha is Hungry

by Myeong Jin Eunsahn

The Master asked the assembly, “What did Buddha have for breakfast?!?

“Mangoes,” “Rice porridge,” “bananas,” “Don't know.”

“Oh, Buddha is still very hungry!”