I cannot but admire
that patience and that eye
caring and knowing
how to treat a roll of silk
where mulberry bloom,
smoothly spun, become
what a woman wears on her skin,
one that slows down
fleeting radiance of light
to a brush of painting touch.
O how I cannot but admire
that patience and that eye
that bring such spangled silk
to the brink where poems breathe.
Student: Who am I? I am bones, skin, and blood.
Where do I go from there? Perhaps to this:
to become one with eating. … But to be honest,
I have no burning desire for kenshō—
for seeing (見) "nature" or "essence."
I get easily tired — the Way is terribly long.
—Roshi Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen
Whence do the roots of false views come?
Those that gnaw and feed
on what always knows within?
Oh, what is one's own
when one dies,
and what is the truth?
Is it like a body one thinks one controls,
one's exclusive claim,
a property with sequestered access?
Why, can't you hear how the gods laugh
just now?
Just think how much emptiness
one has to stir, build, inflate
to keep the truth away, at bay,
to let what is false and wrong stay,
be one's familiar company
whether in life or death.
Ever rising as they go or come
with heels up high,
striking thus a note,
even the soundless
tremulous treble,
Trismegistus,
“three times
greatest”
spiraled clef—
set to undo—open up
new melodies
not unlike when it comes to
the transfixing sight
of eyes melded in one lock
with that lock itself
turning into its own
allowing key,
and, in that elation,
the unheard-of
forges its own hearing
and the unseen yet
makes time itself
both agape and still
and yet seeded,
enraptured, rich—
like the flesh of fruit.
