Copper or Gold, Which do you prefer?

From Tricycle’s Daily Dhama mailing

I’m trying to avoid little snippets and quotes like this, preferring spontaneious personal insights or experiences. This one struck me however because, for a very long time, I chose to hold onto my bit of copper rather than seek the gold. Perhaps you will see something of yourself in it.

Return to the Origiin

In a dream you may stray and lose your way home. You ask someone to show you how to return or you pray to God or Buddhas to help you, but still you can’t get home. Once you rouse yourself from your dream-state, however, you find that you are in your own bed and realize that the only way you could have gotten home was to awaken yourself. This [kind of spiritual awakening] is called “return to the origin” or “rebirth in paradise.” It is the kind of inner realization that can be achieved with some training. . . . You would be making a serious error, however, were you to assume that this was true enlightenment in which there is no doubt about the nature of reality. You would be like a man who having found copper gives up the desire for gold.

- Bassui Tokusho Zenji, “Dharma Talk on One Mind,” in Daily Sutras
from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

vine teacher

The mandevilla vine that is growing for me is about 10 or 11 feet long now, I’ve been watcing it for almost 2 years now. I forgive it being pink flowered because it makes so many of them and it grows as fast as grass.

As I add supports for it I watch what the long searching tendrils do in reaction. They seem suspicious of new things, as if they wonder if they will hold them safely or provide a tall enough height for them. They will touch the support, whatever it is and then will shrink back as if to consider if it’s a good place to start wrapping around. Often it rejects the branch or pole unless it has absolutely no other choice.

A month ago or so, it reached the top of the first pole but kept on growing. It did the smartest thing then. There were 5 or 6 tendrils and the wrapped and spiraled up forming a rope so they could grow straight up almost like a new tree. I thought they might be searching for a new branch or rail or whatever. Eventually it became so heavy it slowly curved down and did another smart thing. It un-twined itself and the different delicate vines spread out in all directions looking for something else to hook onto.

I have tried to train it just a little, really I just want to show it that I’ve put new suports up for it. I will hook the vine around the new stick or pole and wrap it gently. It stays there for a while and then rejects it and goes looking for its own place. Most of the time it comes back and acts as if it has found the new place all on its own, just like a cat.

Of coursre all of this is my imagination about how the vine behaves. How could I know. I don’t like to tink in terms of evolution or instinct, though I am not rejecting them at all. It is just that I can not get the teaching thinking that way.

The teaching is this. The vine thrives and grows all on its own. It doesn’t think “hmmm, maybe if I go left today I’ll find a new branch to grow on”. I don’t think it is even considered a sentient being in Buddhist terms. It is BIG MIND in action. “Spring comes and the grass grows all by itself”. You don’t have to push or pull it. It knows just what to do without thinking and so do I.

Daily Dharma (I keep re-reading this one)

From the Dharma for Today Yahoo group.

Only When I am Quiet and do not speak

Only when I am quiet for a long time
and do not speak
do the objects of my life draw near.
Shy, the scissors and spoons, the blue mug.
Hesitant even the towels,
for all their intimate knowledge and scent of
fresh bleach.
How steady their regard as they ponder,
dreaming and waking,
the entrancement of my daily wanderings and tasks.
Drunk on the honey of feelings, the honey of purpose,
they seem to be thinking,
a quiet judgment that glistens between the
glass doorknobs.
Yet theirs is not the false reserve
of a scarcely concealed ill-will,
nor that other, active shying: of pelted rocks
No, not that. For I hear the sigh of happiness
each object gives off
if I glimpse for even an instant the actual
instant –
As if they believed it possible
I might join
their circle of simple, passionate thusness,
their hidden rituals of luck and solitude,
the joyous gap in them where appears in us
the pronoun I

Jane Hirschfield

Daily Dharma

From Tricycle

Like Pulling a Rabbit Out of a Hat

The spacious mind has room for everything. It is like the space in a room, which is never harmed by what goes in and out of it. In fact, we say “the space in this room,” but actually, the room is in the space, the whole building is in the space. When the building has gone, the space will still be there. The space surrounds the building, and right now we are containing space in a room. With this view we can develop a new perspective. We can see that there are walls creating the shape of the room and there is the space. Looking at it one way, the walls limit the space in the room. But looking at it another way, we see that space is limitless.

–Ajahn Sumedho from Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Fall 1995

Daily Dharma

From Gratefulness.org.

Thanksgiving comes to us out of the prehistoric dimness, universal to all ages and all faiths. At whatever straws we must grasp, there is always a time for gratitude and new beginnings.

J. Robert Moskin

Daily Dharma

I was delighted to find this on one of my Yahoo Dharma groups. I have been a fan of Leonard’s for a long time, even before I knew he had become a Zen monk.

On the path

for C.C.

On the path of loneliness
I came to the place of song
and tarried there
for half my life
Now I leave my guitar
and my keyboards
my friends and s-x companions
and I stumble out again
on the path of loneliness
I am old but I have no regrets
not one
even though I am angry and alone
and filled with fear and desire
Bend down to me
from your mist and vines
O high one, long-fingered
and deep-seeing
Bend down to this sack of poison
and rotting teeth
and press your lips
to the light of my heart

Leonard Cohen

Yes, Really




From Tricycle’s Daily Dharma

Yes, Really

Practice can be stated very simply. It is moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others. That seems so simple–except when we substitute for real practice some idea that we should be different or better than we are, or that our lives should be different from the way they are. When we substitute our ideas about what should be (such notions as “I should not be angry or confused or unwilling”) for our life as it truly is, then we’re off base and our practice is barren.

– Charlotte Joko Beck, in Everyday Zen
from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book