Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Monday, February 11, 2013
“The harmony of this tune requires
you to be a connoisseur before you can appreciate it.”
Now it is 2013, not 2011. This could
be no other. It could not be written in 2011.
Meeting all of the dead: Living with
each other: A ghost of a chance to break free.
Still we lift everyone. Ever
reaching, this moment raised stands alone, a collaboration, but really, do I
know what you are saying or am I integrating you into my own fabric as in the
imagined one, the one who would cut off his arm to meet himself.
Meeting the dead who are everywhere
walking, standing, or talking.
Saying goodbye to our own wished for
beings that have never materialized – even if we believe and act as though they
have.
You are my teacher. Maybe so. Only in
the story, the imagined and named.
But the sweater unravels. No knots at
either end ~ the yarn not only comes from emptiness it returns to emptiness ~
is emptiness already without making and even as making. It is gone.
The tautology of the attempted
explanation of our being here…just keeps spiraling, but this is before the
spiral or even the fugue.
I am grateful to Nina Simone… without
whom, this particular book of poems would never exist.
I write for people, to people,
particular people; generators and recipients of words.
Some vague audience does not exist.
That’s not to say people who read these words who are not the generators
instigator recipients will not benefit from reading. It is just to say the benefit is in the
acknowledgment of the gift of inspiration and encouragement to come forward.
Without these people, dead and alive
and to be, truly far flung; more dead and we hope more to be than are right
now. But right now is when this reading takes place.
Not only is it intended to benefit
all being but it is the beneficiary of all beings coming forth from this inmost
request we all share and express so differently.
One heart blossoms cruel across the
dawn of word speaking.
John High introduces us to the land
of our making, Dongshan’s territory that can only be covered by each of us –
the territory that can only be covered for us by each of us – the territory no
one else can cover for us and which we are inspired, encouraged and welcomed to
by others – all others – the dead, the alive, the to be.
I am not talking about history. I am
talking about each of our lives an inheritance and gift, a direction of
gratitude and grace in a land of Love.
Utterance: the shape of the
choreography of our movement seeming through space but as space and not in time
but as time being; Only Love For The Time Being .
Kotatsu Roko
Monday, 11 February 2013
Prospect Hill
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Longing is Light
Ah!
This very longing,
The light of being, transmitted.
There is nothing else.
John Bailes:
Kotatsu Roko
In response
to Douglas Penick’s poem
15 November
2012
Prospect
Hill, Somerville
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
the scepter that arises from heart which is all good, always.
Tuesday,
13 November 2012
We,
The Monmouth Zen Circle, had a great time sitting zazen last Saturday at Blue
Moon Yoga in Shrewsbury NJ. Two brothers, twins, Bassem and Sofi joined us in
the afternoon just before the dharma talk. Bassem and Sofi are in third grade.
They courteously sat through zazen instruction, and then a good ten minutes of
zazen. When I asked them if they had any questions, Sofi asked me about right
speech. It didn't take long to get from Right Speech to Jedi Knights and the
Force and the light and the dark. I showed them the Jedi Scepter Norman Fischer
gave to me. We talked about Bodhisattva's, Warriors, the Light, the Good, the
Dark and Beyond light and dark and beyond good and bad. We talked about how
posture is deeply related to the light and the good. We talked about good
posture as the doorway to "All's Good" and the importance of vertical
and horizontal and the scepter that arises from heart which is all good,
always. Bassem and Sofi understood this directly. They know. We adults know too
but somehow what we call life has gotten in the way. That life is really death.
It is not even real death. It is more like purgatory or some kind of hell where
we are all waiting for something and we are all hiding from something. If it
were real death we would be completely alive. The open heart is scepter, a
wand, that makes all good. Open heart is beyond life and death.
Friday, October 19, 2012
We all are or have been tortured souls...
We all are or have
been “…tortured souls… trying until the very end to express the inexpressible.”
Each of us ought to practice complete respect for each human being’s
existential dilemma.
I was deeply touched
by this anecdote Freeman Dyson tells about Ludwig Wittgenstein from Dyson’s
days as an undergraduate at Cambridge University in the UK for two reasons: 1.
It brought to mind Norman Fischer’s talk on Tara and women’s place in Zen
practice at the recent Everyday Zen sesshin http://www.everydayzen.org/index.php?Itemid=26&task=viewTeaching&sort=title&option=com_teaching&id=1279.) 2. I think most
remarkable is Mr. Dyson’s change of view and understanding of Mr. Wittgenstein plight
as years passed and even death, the seeming ultimate signpost of the transitory
and ephemeral nature of this life, appears to help transform Dyson’s
understanding of Wittgenstein’s situation .
“When I arrived at
Cambridge University in 1946, Wittgenstein had just returned from his six years
of duty (as an orderly) at the hospital. I held him in the highest respect and
was delighted to find him in a room above mine on the same staircase. I
frequently met him walking up or down the stairs, but I was too shy to start a
conversation. Several times I heard him muttering to himself: ‘I get stupider
and stupider every day.’
Finally, toward the
end of my time at Cambridge, I ventured to speak to him. I told him I had
enjoyed reading the Tractatus, and I asked him whether he still held the same
views that he had expressed twenty-eight years earlier. He remained silent for
a long time and then said, ‘Which newspaper do you represent?’ I told him I was
student and not a journalist, but he never answered my question.
Wittgenstein’s
response to me was humiliating, and his response to female students who tried
to attend his lectures was even worse. If a woman appeared in the audience, he
would remain standing silent until she left the room. I decided he was a
charlatan using outrageous behavior to attract attention. I hated him for his
rudeness. Fifty years later, walking through a churchyard on the outskirts of Cambridge
on a sunny morning in winter, I came by chance on his tombstone, a massive
block of stone lightly covered with fresh snow. On the stone was written the
single word, ‘Wittgenstein.’ To my surprise, I found that the old hatred was
gone, replaced by a deeper understanding. He was at peace, and I was at peace
too, in white silence. He was no longer a charlatan. He was a tortured soul, the
last survivor of a family with a tragic history, living a lonely life among
strangers, trying until the end to express the inexpressible.”[1] Freeman
Dyson, What Can You really Know? NYRB, 11.08.2012.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
On relating with a teacher...difference becomes clear..
From the pine tree
learn of the pine tree,
And from the bamboo
of the bamboo.
Basho
Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
The silence of speaking and hearing...
—Kotatsu Roko as quoted by John High in his new and soon to be published book of poetry: you are everything you are not
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
