The fields, the mountains, the flowers, and my body too are the voice of the bird -- what is left that can be said to hear?
-- From The Hidden Lamp, Caplow, ed., et. al.
Xiangyan sat for many years, then his life turned around when he heard the tile strike the bamboo.
I
like to think I have had many moments like that, but I'm very stubborn
and mightily resist turning. There's maybe half a turn, then the noise
sets in.
I drove once a month for years to Bird Haven Zendo. Sit,
kinhin, sit, bow, jundo to altars, reflect, receive instruction, eat,
trim candles, sit, kinhin, sit, join kitchen table dharma, smile
goodbye, drive home.
It was only one day a month, but I count it
as steadily ongoing training of a sort, as it set the tone, or it seemed
to me it should have, for all the days in between, gardening, making
tea, walking with the dog to the river.
Some days, every sight
or sound was itself. Others, they gave rise to wandering thoughts. And
more wandering thoughts, and more wandering thoughts.
It's as if I am just underwater, and can see the shining sunlight right there above me in a cloudless sky.
I'm
the most industriously lazy monkey-mind I know of! It's frustrating
because I know the effort to halt this is like paddling to cross to the
other shore when there is no paddle.
Gardening, making tea, walking all happen before there is a single delusion.
-- shonin
Your
unborn mind is the Buddha-mind itself, and it is unconcerned with
either birth or death. As evidence of this, when you look at things,
you're able to see and distinguish them all at once. And as you are
doing that, if a bird sings or a bell tolls, or other noises or sounds
occur, you hear and recognize each of them too, even though you haven't
given rise to a single thought to do so.
-- Bankei, The Unborn tr. Norman Waddell.