Still, can you hear it?

Consult the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings:


The scope of our various projections
intermingle, overlay, pass through
and never touch...


The beauty of standing here with you
cannot be known.


Still, can you hear it?

John Bailes/Kotatsu Roko
Friday, 3 August 2012
Bloc 11
Somerville

Two?

Two flew here,

            Two flew off, --

                      Butterflies.

by Chora

not everything is missing...

Tuesday 17, July 2012

Dear M.

Thinking of you so far away,

Nothing is complete –

Not everything is missing –

Entirely lovely each one.

Love,

John

One Heart, One Word, One Flower, One Moment: One Real Life

A life to Defend

A life to Defend

Imminent rotund responses roil up

Bioluminescence of an enormous ignominious ocean

Bolus of a life spent in specious argument.

John Bailes/Kotatsu Roko

Tuesday, 26 June 2012

Prospect Hill, Somerville MA

Vegan Apple Crisp, Great Blue Herons and Restless Native American Spirits

Flight home from Samish Sesshin:

Trusting what we give fully

in this way just one word

fills the entirety of space and time,

permeates all being.

Nothing prepared

everything rises

as the occasion is

one real life.

John Bailes/Kotatsu Roko

Saturday, 23 June 2012

United Airlines Flight 594 K

Somewhere over Wyoming

Another take on Completeness and Doubt

We always want to nail it down. We cannot hold on to it. It is us, even in our holding. We are so funny.

From Tom Cleary’s introduction to Timeless Spring: A Soto Anthology

“After Dongshan left Yunyan, he still had some doubt, until one day he happened to see his reflection when he looked into a river as he crossed over and was suddenly greatly enlightened. Then he uttered his famous verse,

‘Just don’t seek from another

Or you’ll be far estranged from self.

I now go on alone

Meeting it everywhere

It now is just what I am

I now am not it.

You must comprehend in this way

To merge with thusness.’

Not seeking anything outside of fundamental completeness, one relizes the self that is self because there is no other, and the self that is no self because there is no other."

Dongshan is the founder of the Caodong School of Zen which is the Soto School in Japan and locally.