In Place 62

 

With apologies to Shitou 

 

I've built a fiberglass-roofed hut
where there's nothing to take away.

After eating,
I conk out.

When the hut was completed,
it was a children's playhouse.

It had long been abandoned —
covered by blackberries.

Sometimes I live at the hut,
trying out Nagarjuna.

No need to go shopping.
No movies, no popcorn.

Though the hut is nine feet square,
Nowhere is there a place not here.

Within, an old nun
gawks out the window.

With her "instinctive knowing what to do"
she trusts being/time.

The neighbors can't help wondering —
what's going on in there?

For now, the old crone is present,
losing track of Meaning.

Knowing she does not know up or down,
she looks straight ahead.

A wide window below green cottonwoods--
five star hotels can't compare with it.

Just nestling in her zero-g chair
all things are settled.

Thus, this mountain nun
doesn't squint at circumstances.

Living here she no longer
hankers for escape.

Who would proudly arrange place settings,
trying to lure guests?

Doing as a Buddha does
cannot not be what a Buddha is.

Thusness can't be
looked toward or away from.

Meet the lineages and spiritual friends,
absorb their guidance.

Salvage fence boards to build a hut
and don't give up.

When your begging bowl breaks,
which it will, relax into your day.

Open your face
and walk, de-stressed.

Thousands of teachers
babble, but the message isn't garbled.

If you want to benefit
from dwelling in your hut,

Don't expect to be polishing that begging bowl
forever.

 

 

In Place 61

Last day in this hut, she takes in

sun, shadow, familiar walls;

collected things seem to her

reluctant as she to leave

The farm has passed beyond her strength and will, and she turns toward town.

Though we do not preach the doctrine,
Unasked the flowers bloom in spring;
They fall and scatter,
They turn to dust. 

--Ikkyu, tr. R. H. Blyth

In Place 60

Set up screen and altar, face the sangha,

Bow and bow again, repeating words,

Shaving (being shaved), 

Becoming (being remade)

 

It's April 2020, the pandemic is in full swing, and this in-person transition from private to public nun-hood takes place by remote means. Some forty people attend. Shonin's spouse handles the handing over of razor, robes and bowls.

If you have a rule, go by the rule; if you have no rule, go by the example.
-- comment on verse appended to 85th case of the Blue Cliff Record, tr. Cleary

 

In Place 59

A plague strikes; she moves to the hut

for ten days. Wheezing Heart Sutra

is hard, so just think the words

and pretend it is not thinking 

 

 

In the first week of March, 2020, the farm's gate is closed on advice of the government. It turns out she has already inhaled something. Things seem a little crazy in the hospitals out there, so she elects to sit it out alone, visiting the family through the laptop's video camera. She treks to the hut with baskets of food and sets up cough-keeping. Not sufficiently aware of her precarity to be frightened, she lives slowly, cooks small meals, drinks homely teas, wonders how the little dog is doing.

Without hindrance, the mind has no fear.
--Heart Sutra

 

In Place 58

Second Rohatsu in the hut, she feels

cycles of living/not living,

fallen leaves and fallen foxes

fallen snowflakes, falling rain





Sesshin, kinhin, walking meditation, twenty people shuffling gently on the laptop screen behind her; she picks up her cup in passing and pauses to count starlings. When did they begin to stay all winter?

The cries of crickets are already scarce and far between. 

The trees and grass have lost their proud summer colors. 

The long night often requires a new filling of my censer. 

Chill on my skin forces upon me a pile of thick garments. 

Let us use our diligence while we may, my gentle friends, 

Time flies like an arrow and lingers not a moment for us. 

--Ryokan, tr. Nobuyuki Yuasa, Zen Poems of Ryokan, 75

In Place 57

 

She chases light with her cot and desk

in winter, looking south,

in summer, looking north.

in the morning, sun. At night, stars

 

With the large windows, which she had retrieved from a salvage pile, she finds company in sunbeams, songbirds, even a passing fox. At night, lying on her cot, she discovers the Milky Way entangled in bare twigs and branches. What is there to discuss about koans that is not like arguing over the color of the sky?

Out of the way, I don’t seek the carriages of the eminent.
At dawn pear-blossom rain splashes my secluded window,
At dusk I borrow fragments of stars to mend broken tiles.

-- Wang Duanshu (1621–ca. 1680), tr. Zong-Qi Cai

In Place 56

 

Bright windows prove helpful

old eyes look for a needle's next

plunge. Where will it come out?

Every time, it seems to surprise

  

Her teacher tells her she is a nun. She begins sewing a black robe. It's too hot for that, so she pokes a hole in the wall, to run a fan. For a break, she sits in the shade of the cottonwoods, sipping switchel. Quail run across her legs, one by one.

Let go of emptiness and come back to the brambly forest.
Riding backward on the ox, drunken and singing;
Who could dislike the misty rain
pattering on your bamboo raincoat and hat?
In empty space you cannot stick a needle.
-- attr. Dongshan Liangje, The Five Ranks tr. Leighton in
Cultivating the Empty Field, 77

In Place 55

 

The old woman adopts 

technology in the hermitary

and prepares to sit zazen

with people from everywhere

This image is from 2019, with no pandemic in sight. She discovers an online sangha and becomes involved, supplementing her local participation and broadening her considerably limited experience.

Each moment of zazen is equally wholeness of practice, equally wholeness of realization for this and for that. This is not only practised while sitting, it is like a hammer striking emptiness; before and after, its ringing pervades everywhere. How can it be limited to a place? 

-- Dogen, Bendowa tr. Hoshin and Dainen

In Place 54

 

After snow, deluge. 

The hut travels a bit 

toward the creek, expounding

the first noble truth

Awakening to find trees and fences down, the old woman instinctively checks her pulse, as if to discover how many beats remain. When we are told we are one with the universe, we nod in agreement, but also tend to grab something and hold on.

 

Of all the waters in the world
The Ocean is greatest.
All the rivers pour into it
Day and night;
It is never filled.

--Chuang-Tzu, tr. Thomas Merton

In Place 53

Tramping through unexpected drifts 

she finds the hut even more silent

trees fold into themselves

road noises vanish, birds hunker down

 

 

 

Delighting in the quietude, though she finds even the interior of the hut bright enough to make her squint. The old woman makes tea and gazes in wonder at the distant hills. "It's like New Hampshire," she thinks, never having been to New Hampshire. The distant hills remain themselves.

 

When Layman P'ang took leave of Yao Shan, Shan ordered ten Ch'an travellers to escort him to the gate. The Layman pointed to the snow in the air and said, "Good snowflakes­; they don't fall in any other place." -- Blue Cliff Record, tr. Thomas Cleary and J. C. Cleary

In Place 52

 

Han Shan was not young

his ability to scale slick rock faces

in rainy winter stuns her; what

does falling down on her pasture path mean

 

 

She sits by her space heater in the hut reading of Han Shan's adventures in a thin robe high in the mountains year round and shivers at the thought. Just getting back to the house after an evening's introspection will be enough adventure for her old bones. Is there anything left in her flashlight's batteries, she wonders. The bridge! That rushing high water! Thus the exurbs become wilderness. 

 

Down to the stream to watch the jade flow
or back to the cliff to sit on a boulder
my mind like a cloud remains unattached
what do I need in the faraway world

--Cold Mountain (Han Shan) tr. Red Pine

In Place 51

 

Home-dyed blue muslin and cranberry thread

stubby fingers advance a millimeter

something something Shakyamuni

eyes cloud over, hands shake

 

Promising, with thin fabric, to make promises to herself, she takes up the unaccustomed needle. Sew a straight line to represent walking a straight path.

 

Though there is no space even for needle to enter,
Yet it controls all the mountain peaks around.
It is not unusual for a tiny particle to contain the whole world.
Mt Sumeru enters into a mustard seed and becomes one with it.

-- Songs of Preceptor Naong (1320–1376) tr. Whitfield and Park

In Place 50

 

Quietly hazel roots explore duff

twitching past rotting cottonwood

to sip snowmelt as it rushes past.

old brain trustingly mimics hazel

 

 

With the little dog, she investigates the nearby river. Water flows over stones, never the same water twice, but also never the same stones twice. A hazel tree attends hazel-ness. An osprey hammers the water surface and carries away surprised protein.

Fish and dragons live in the water without being aware
And they move around with the currents and the waves.
Since from the beginning they never left it, they neither gain nor lose,
If there were no delusions, then whence might enlightenment come?

 

-- Collected Poems of Muuija (1178–1234) tr. Whitfield and Park

In Place 49

Once a month a silent retreat

with sangha, otherwise

every day no other sound

than wind, or rain, or creek.
 




The old woman's current community meets monthly at a rural home an hour's drive from her farm, to spend the day in group zazen and a few other practices. She's torn between her habitual hut practice and the notion that Buddhism requires company -- what even are precepts for in the middle of nowhere, alone? But every beloved poem by Han Shan, or Stonehouse, or Ryokan convinces her she's doing real work. As does the rain, as does the moon behind clouds.


    Movement isn’t right and stillness is wrong
    and the realm of no-thought is confusion 
    instead the Patriarch didn’t have no-mind in mind
    any thought at all means trouble
    a hut facing south isn’t so cold
    chrysanthemums along a fence perfume the dusk 
    as soon as drifting clouds start to linger
    the wind blows them past the vines

    -- Stonehouse (Shiwu) tr. Red Pine

In Place 48

Mornings roll past, putting shadows 

in motion. Darkness caresses each

object; each object caresses light.

The old woman's eyes adjust

 

One of her children, long grown, has left behind a celebratory birth quilt; she spreads it as an altar cloth. In a shallow raku dish she places maple seeds. Moving them from one dish to another, she offers them as "incense;" a mouse accepts the offering. Shadows of ash and cottonwood chase one another as yet another day, amazingly, for no reason she can discern, brightens.

Absolute truth is emptiness of all dharmas,
Hence there is no reason to be obsessed with things.

-- Collected Sayings of Preceptor Baegun (1299–1375) tr. Whitfield and Park

 

In Place 47

In late summer this work began;

in another summer she brings pears

and apples to sit and pare

while watching the sun go down





It could be objected that the old woman having a retirement income is hypocritical in presenting the half-hermit life as if it were a thing. Her response is that she's suspended by her obligations between the way of a householder and the way of a hermit. Yet there can be value in reflection wherever one is.

Do not look back on the past, nor anticipate the future, but take whatever is brought forth by the present and endeavor to dispose of it as best you can.
—Hung Ying Ming, Discourses on Vegetable Roots (tr. Isobe)

In Place 46

In spring, dandelion and nettle tea,

in summer, mint and blackberry tea,

in fall, chicory and mulberry tea,

in winter, fir needle and dried vegetable tea

She sees that with the cultivation of a little knowledge, one understands the earth is inclined toward generosity. She reciprocates by treading lightly -- has gardened without chemicals for fifty years, and, to the extent possible for her, used hand tools. She knows she has not been as faithful to these principles as she could have, and that this has not dented the world's problems, but when she goes from garden to zazen, seldom feels that nagging sense of something left unaddressed. It is in the present moment, and only there, that there can be this simplicity.

Sacred refers to that which helps take us (not only human beings) out of our little selves into the whole mountains-and-rivers mandala universe.
--Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild 94

In Place 45

Food and drink, free for the labor,

are the proper business

of humans; she strives to make

gratitude her main possession

She grows more vegetables than she needs and puts herself in a position to give some away, thus paying her debt of gratitude.

The Buddhist path itself is understood as something that brings gratitude and joy.
-- Paula Arai, Women Living Zen 151

In Place 44

Plant vegetables; this provides

exercise and sharpens observation

as well as making food and tea

available to you and others





We cultivate ourselves indoors and we cultivate ourselves outdoors, hoe in hand.

A couple of beds inside the fence, of kale, chard and potatoes mostly, keep the old woman busy in her tiny kitchen. As she waters the garden, small birds dart through the spray to catch a drop.

We empty our minds in the hall for creating buddhas, where some naturally open their flower of awakening in this monastic garden in the hills.
-- Hongzhi, quoted by Dogen in Eihei Koroku, 250 (tr. Leighton and Okamura)

In Place 43

Inspired by her stairs,

the old woman undertakes

to clear more stream bed;

instant rock garden





Between the stones she has tucked comfrey, mint, and mosses. In drought, she waters the stones, hopefully keeping the “garden” alive till winter.

Plans and events seldom agree
Who can step back doesn't worry
We blossom and fade like flowers
We gather and part like clouds
—Shiwu (Stonehouse, tr. Red Pine)