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