Monthly Archives: August 2009

may all who journey – remember


DSC_3191

may all who journey


DSC_3208

Show Me Your Anger

There’s an old koan about a monk who went to his master and said “I’m

a very angry person, and I want you to help me.” The master said,

“Show me your anger.” The monk said, “Well, right now I’m not angry. I

can’t show it to you.” And the master said, “Then obviously it’s not

you, since sometimes it’s not even there.” Who we are has many faces,

but these faces are not who we are.        –Charlotte Joko Beck

Boomerz


Boomerz

I live only in memory.

The day to day does not inspire me,

Only wanting to sit here and think of what used to be

Strung out on the drug America.

Safe only in my own home,

Locked doors, paid taxes, insurance policies protect me.

TV-petrol- chemicals nourish me.

People not like me, outrage me.

Paper


Paper

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “Inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be… Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, it is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here–time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. –Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step

DSC_0447

may all who journey



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 basa nuvo


Morgana

I was awake, stars like angels

I spoke to about you and me.

A golden moon so fine only by a whisper

Was it kept from disappearing.

Tiny drops of water leaned from  every green thing

Flightless fairies yearning nourishment.

Your name deep measureless breath,

A hum of whales sky Blue enough

So every inch of everything could

Hear deep in their minds, repeated.

Across high, seldom slack, storming

Sightless of any land oceans I have written.

Have you lost more teeth?

What makes your tap dancing men stay still?

Can immortality ever be mellow?

How other than stupor could it be done?

Answerless. As if the right combination could instigate response

I keep trying new ones, like

A girl with stones;

Started with daddy but now she’s alone;

Names, dates, standard rates – charges extra for more.

Or maybe warm coffee streets,

Silence pressed around places we used to go,

Faces we used to know, now no longer clearly

Rather believed in, things thought and sometimes still

Do think are true, even of ourselves;

Dancing on the lake once covered Kathmandu valley.

Sipping flowers fell from a sky beyond stars.

Smiling children marked by turquoise cobras.

Great roots of great trees where

Grey matchless undisturbed as dust,

We’d rest.


from bassa nuvo


September on Mira Bay

A Carmen butterfly day

Lemon yellow birch leaves

Hints of orange on the maples

Thumps of falling apples

Morning shadows the colour of honey

Distantly the ocean grey diamonds in repose

A fierce and terrifying band of samurai


A fierce and terrifying band of samurai was riding through the countryside, bringing fear and harm wherever they went. As they approached one particular town, all the monks in the town’s monastery fled, except for the abbot. When the band of warriors entered the monastery, they found the abbot sitting at the front of the shrine room in perfect posture. The fierce leader took out his sword and said, “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know that I’m the sort of person who could run you through with my sword without batting an eye?” The Zen master responded, “And I, sir, am the sort of man who could be run through by a sword without batting an eye.” – as told by Sylvia Boorstein in Shambhala Sun, vol16, #3, January 2008

http://stores.lulu.com/pdlyons


basa nuvo poems

basa nuvo poemsbasa nuvo poems (book)

Print: €9.00

Download: FREE

pdlyons is an eclectic writer, inspirations coming from daily life, past, present and future. drawing on experiences of living and loving as an american in ireland, travelling with horses and enjoying the constant revelations that family provides.

Oh!


Oh!

One day the Buddha held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks and nuns. He did not say anything for quite a long time. The audience was perfectly silent. Everyone seemed to be thinking hard, trying to see the meaning behind the Buddha’s gesture. Then, suddenly, the Buddha smiled. He smiled because someone in the audience smiled at him and at the flower. . . . To me the meaning is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. If you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled. That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.
– Thich Nhat Hanh, in Peace Is Every StepDSC_0284

%d bloggers like this: