Kobun Chino Roshis says and I agree...

"The main subject of this sesshin is how to become a transmitter of actual light, life light. Practice takes place to shape your whole ability to reflect the light coming through you, and to regenerate your system, so the light increases its power. Each precept is a remark about hard climbing. Maybe climbing down (to the very ground of your being). You don't use the precepts for accomplishing your own personality or fulfilling your dream of your highest image. You don't use the precepts in that way. The precepts are the reflective light world of one precept, which is Buddha's mind itself, which is the presence of Buddha. Zazen is the first formulation of the accomplishment of Buddha existing. The more you sense the rareness and value of your own life, the more you realize that how you use it, how you manifest it, is all your responsibility. We face such a big task so, naturally, such a person sits down for a while. It's not an intended action, it's a natural action."

Kobun Chino Roshi

Philip Whalen says and I believe him...

“…I know now that imagining myself to be a responsible intellectual and a revolutionary was nonsense. Today, it is very clear to me that the Palatine Anthology and the poems of Frank O’Hara are greater revolutionary documents than the entire literary production of N. Lenin or Chairman Mao.

The necessity for compete political revolution is very clear to me. The economic system of finance capitalism and international monopoly is manifestly evil. It is killing us all with wars and machines and is swiftly burying the surface of the world in  slag and garbage and poison. The governments whose job it is to protect us from depredations of these monopolies have simply become instruments of the industries they were supposed to control. So of course the big government big monopoly combine must be dismantled very soon. It will be necessary to hang an “out to lunch” sign over Washington DC and sit down together and figure out a different way of managing our affairs. The answer certainly does not involve the manufacture of oatmeal poetry, unless perhaps, one were to take the quality of the poetry for a symptom of the truly desperate change I’ve been talking about.

I have a hunch that if I write a really good poem today about the weather, about a flower or any other apparently “irrelevant” (I suppose the proper word, now is “nonrelevant,” if we are to be understood) subject, that the revolution will be hastened considerably more than if I composed a pamphlet attacking the government and the capitalist system. If you think about it a moment, the reason becomes obvious.”

Philip Whalen, Preface from Decompressions

William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

The voice of the Devil.

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors.

1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.

But the following Contraries to these are True

1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3 Energy is Eternal Delight




Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.
And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, & the Governor or Reason is call'd Messiah.
And the original Archangel or possessor of the command of the heavenly host, is call'd the Devil or Satan and his children are call'd Sin & Death.
But in the Book of Job Miltons Messiah is call'd Satan.
For this history has been adopted by both parties.
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out, but the Devil's account is, that the Messiah fell, & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss.


This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the comforter or Desire that Reason may have Ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire.
Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah.
But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the five senses, & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!
Note: The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.

William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Fourteen Actors Acting

The flavor of tasting

stands, itself a

cello wrapped in

legs, a smoke or

a drop – this Cave,

this Redhead, Vortex

lips & tongue: release

without a knot

or even a phone!

John Bailes/Kotatsu Roko

Prospect Hill

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Everyday Zen Sesshin

Everyday Zen Sesshin

Eating lunch in silence

the sound of crisp pickled cucumbers

fills the dining hall;

rain on a tin roof.

For Tenzo Laura

John Bailes/Kotatsu Roko

Santa Sabina Center

San Rafael. California

17 September, 2011

Is grace light standing?

Grace is light,

                             Standing.

Grace

Is

Light

Standing.

John Bailes/Kotatsu Roko

35,000 feet

Tuesday, 20 September 2011, early morning

Flying west to east in the middle of the night I think of John High

Flying west to east in the middle of the night I think of John High

You once wrote, and it is still written and in print too:

“why did you never ask me (if I love you)”.

I say, if I love you, will you ask me, or do you ask you, or do I ask me?

How particular is this asking? 

Is it always or never?

Basking whales roll in the sea slipping through, occasionally eyeballing humans lucky enough to see being seen. 

Most of us do not know our own seeing and especially being seen.

(Maybe there are vague inklings.)

John Berger wrote an entire book, maybe two, “On Looking” and “On Seeing.”

Does one have to look to see?

Does seeing occur only when there are no eyes?

Even when we think we have eyes, no eyes are seeing. 

Always say I love you even if I never ask.

Is grace light standing?

Grace is light,

                  

                             Standing.

I make up everything I say, even me, with a lot of help from my friends, the kindness of strangers, the albino deer, the one-eyed boy, the lake and the mere grain of sand I am.

With love,

John Bailes/Kotatsu Roko

35,000 Feet

Tuesday 20 September 2011, early morning.