My favorite time…
My favorite time to be at Dai Bosatsu Monastery in the Catskills is always the first week of October. The mountains surround the zendo, and the leaves start to change at the top of the peaks and then slowly the colors drift down. By the end of the week the monastery is surrounded by a brocade of color.
The large Bonsho bell in this photograph is nearly seven feet tall and five feet wide. It weighs about eight thousand pounds and its resonance can carry for twenty miles on a clear day. I”ll never forget the first time I ever heard it.
In was early morning, and still dark when it began to ring with an eerie sound, almost supernatural as though it came from the center of the earth. I was deep asleep when it rang out with one long boom. When the sound faded into the morning another boom echoed off the mountains. It penetrated through my dreams and I woke up completely mystified. What was that? I had never heard anything like it. It was mystical.
Zazen practice IS mystical. For me, it’s filled with mystery, awe, and fascination.
Because there is
I picked up a little book of poems titled The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy. After months of looking at Instagram and Pinterest and reading very little, it was a joy to discover these poems.
Lighthouse
Its vision sweeps its one path
like an aged monk raking a garden,
his question long ago answered or moved on.
Far off, night-grazing horses,
breath scented with oatgrass and fennel,
step through it, disappear, step through it,
disappear.
– Jane Hirshfield
The distant mountains
are reflected in the eye
of the Dragonfly
– Kobayashi Issa
The ink dark moon
It’s true, the wind blows terribly here.
But moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
– Izumi Shikibu (translated by Jane Hirshfield)
Sabi
Kirei sabi – refined beauty and lonliness
Kirei suki – taste for refined beauty
Sabi – lonliness, lonely beauty
Yugen – mystery and depth
On the day after an autumn rain
Today
Acorns falling
Frogs jumping
Leaves scattering
With you
On the day after an autumn rain everything moves one deeply. The fields are woven in a brocade of color. In the woods, under the oak trees, acorns fall in a torrent. Light evening rain; frogs cross a dirt road in the black night jumping everywhere.
We make up poetry.
