Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a Happy and Peaceful New Year!

A Southwest Christmas Sunset

"Letter to a Friend," Written on Christmas Eve, 1513, by Fra Giovanni

I salute you. I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you that you have not got. But there is much, very much, that while I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future that is not hidden in this present little instance. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy!

There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see. And to see we have only to look. I ask you to look!

Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there. The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country home.

And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem.

Dui Yao

An elegant old combination
first of ginger, then adding green tea,
cured her icy blackened feet

Waiting almost too long to call,
my friend said her hands and feet
were always cold, not realizing

She might have lost some toes or even
a whole foot, but they're warm now,
as warm as a child's without a care

I haven't forgotten though;
the specter of gangrene still
scares the wits out of me

I experience the deepest gratitude
to those ancient Chinese physicians
who reach across millenia, teaching us

To invigorate blood, to dry dampness,
and to move qi, nourishing these bodies
we inhabit for a frantically short time

Allowing bodhisattvas to live out
their lives a little less encumbered,
helping us appreciate our precious gift

Poem for a Rainy Afternoon

the modest tedium
of having no particular
place to be,
of feeling small and slowed

green weeds still stand
amongst the brown,
resisting winter's
harsh inevitable pull

Snowy Mountains: A Chilly Winter Evening

Wrathful Dakini Manifesting

Last Light

Blake's Kind of Sky

For Valentyn Syl'vestrov: Happy 70th, Maestro!

Dharmakaya

Moisture Forms

Almost Full

Paleness

Wind Horse

Ehecatl, Aztec God of Wind

The Times of London Reports

August 4, 2007
China tells living Buddhas to obtain permission before they reincarnate
Jane Macartney in Beijing

Do they say WHERE the tulku should take the permission slip, having obtained it before dying, brought it successfully through the bardo, once he or she has been recognized as a living Buddha reborn? It must be REALLY ANNOYING to try to brand manage the rape of Tibet, what with His Holiness the Dalai Lama winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, attracting such huge crowds for teachings all over the world, bowing and smiling and preaching about compassion and kindness everywhere.

Now all China has to do is send some soldiers out to the lake where the high lamas envision the initials of the next Dalai Lama, ride along with them to the indicated village, and assassinate whichever four-year-old recognizes his glasses (out of a collection of five pairs) from a previous life. Really, you gotta hand it to 'em. Foresight plus world-class PR skills. Now I ask, and you MAY WELL WONDER, was George W. Bush Chinese in a previous life??

Oh dear, please forgive me. I just haven't been myself all day.

The Old Rabbit in My Field

wind rattles, rain pelts down,
and I wonder,
can the old rabbit in my field recall
it was my shouting that gave the dumb dogs
(who chase anything that runs)
a moment's pause in broad daylight
so he could tear to safety
through the sagging fence?

can he imagine it was my cat,
that fearless kitty body,
who leaped out the door into the mud
growling his territorial insults,
and gave those same two dogs
the fright of their lives?
(they will think twice before
wandering over here again)

could he hear my gasp of joy
when I came home one night
and saw him in my headlights
listening, very still?
could he understand how slowly
I inched forward, stopping
and starting, to be sure
he could sort out where to run?

perhaps he's old now,
a little deaf, or perhaps
just rudely blinded,
frozen for a moment
in the landscape of weeds
whited out by my lights;
then he sprints to safety
and we part

the tick and rumble of my truck
make me want to back out,
embarrassed to intrude--
can he ever know how grateful
I am when I glimpse
his huge hoary ears still here,
still tolerating my alien presence,
this old woman in his field?

Clouds of Offerings

The View Tonight

What If

(in appreciation of Nicholette)

it feels as if pain
comes instantaneously
from a place in
one's own body;
even though we say
sharp or dull
the experience seems not to be
mediated by conceptions

what if instead of "Ouch!"
we learned that pain is
a gift, a blessing
a chance to notice
the fence is too straight
the boundary too strong
better to be crooked
better to be permeable

best no bounds at all
then even boiling
water does not burn
no "mine" to reach
no "me" to injure
no "I" to rage
if the thief cannot steal
there can be no crime

instantaneously
we would feel pain
as the end of suffering
the profound opportunity
to refine our life
our practice of extending
compassion to numberless beings
across eons of time

Peeking Through

What Do You Say?

Dzogchen will tell you
clouds are obscurations
visualize
the cloud-less desert sky
and luminous sun
of clear space

Zen will tell you
be like water
be like clouds
the moment you name it
you have lost your way
neither one nor two

More Clouds

No Time To Lose

two small white butterflies
chase madly, racing
through a forest of weeds
no more than a week to live
they know there's
no time to lose

if I could feel
the fire on my head
seconds going up in flames
this lovely afternoon
would not seem like
all the time in the world

Clouds Last Night

This Precious Life

chattering--
the daily details
going here
there when
and for what
no content
not a thing

what am I thinking?
this tiresome
quibbling old habit
itself chattering
about not chattering
shut up!
this precious life

Mirrors Everywhere, Too

a fine new paring knife
impossibly sharp; strawberries
squirm, bouncing around
in the sink--mirror of myself

Just Look

my cat snores gently on his bed
a neighbor's saw whines away
a fan cools my feet this summer day--
gateless gates everywhere you turn

Wet Spring

a monarch lifted past
catching little thermals; so big
I thought it was a bird

By An Open Window

the moist, unexpected scent of
rich earth floats in on
tonight's dry high desert air--
as odd as black crocus
on my calendar for July

About the book, Mind at Ease

In the first chapter of this extraordinary book, Mind at Ease, the author, Kyabje Traleg Rinpoche (Traleg Kyabgon), poses the question, "What is Mahamudra?" He quotes Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Thaye, the great Kagyu master (1813-1899):
As for ground mahamudra:
There are both things as they are and the way of confusion.
It does not incline toward either samsara or nirvana,
And is free from the extremes of exaggeration and denigration.
Not produced by causes, not changed by conditions,
It is not spoiled by confusion
Nor exalted by realization.
It does not know either confusion or liberation.

Traleg Rinpoche explains further: "Ground Mahamudra [the ground of being] is an open state of being that is identical to our authentic condition. It is the ground from which all our experiences originate. Our liberating experiences arise from it, as do our experiences of imprisonment, constriction, and constraint. It is completely impartial in terms of both samsaric and nirvanic experiences--pain, pleasure, happiness, unhappiness, and so on. Our authentic condition is totally open and undifferentiated. As soon as we speak of our own authentic condition as being this or that, as inclining toward nirvana and away from nirvana, we introduce a dualism that simply does not exist in reality."

As he concludes: "Although the spiritual journey is a homecoming of sorts, it is still indispensable to proceed on the path in the first place." Mind at Ease (Shambhala Publications, 2004, pp. 15 and 226).

The founder of the Kagyu E-Vam Buddhist Institutes in Melbourne, and in Chatham, New York, Traleg Rinpoche provides what he calls "a practice manual" for realizing ground Mahamudra/fruition Mahamudra that is at once precise, authoritative, and unadorned. For clarity, never mind which "school" you come from, it doesn't get much better than this. No wonder Dogen-zenji felt impelled to travel to China.

Indeed, Pierre, dear Kuma-san, neither one nor two, and, I imagine, both one and two. As ever, my deepest thanks for your wonderful inspiration. With blessings and gassho.

Edge of a Storm

thunder roars
hollering across lifetimes
crickets answer right back

Independence Day

fresh lemonade
this independence day
can't assuage the grief

Full Moon

a full moon hides behind
clouds of flying white
displaying ineffable yin

Two More

not as strong now
doubt still niggles
weeds reach for water


comparing one
with the other
just silly chit-chat

New Poems

body language
aches and pains
live-in tutor


bumpy road
a fat rainbow
shows the way