Rumi 'I Am Wind, You are Fire'
Translation by Annemarie Schimmel
O you who've gone on pilgrimage -
where are you, where, oh where?
Here, here is the Beloved!
Oh come now, come, oh come!
Your friend, he is your neighbor,
he is next to your wall -
You, erring in the desert -
what air of love is this?
If you'd see the Beloved's
form without any form -
You are the house, the master,
You are the Kaaba, you! . . .
Where is a bunch of roses,
if you would be this garden?
Where, one soul's pearly essence
when you're the Sea of God?
That's true - and yet your troubles
may turn to treasures rich -
How sad that you yourself veil
the treasure that is yours!
Practice zazen with your eyes half opened. In this posture, look upon the original countenance that you had before you were born of your mother and father!
Before you were born of your mother and father means before they themselves were born, before heaven was separated from earth, before you took on human form.
Your original countenance must be seen.
In its original countenance a thing has neither color nor form, like formless emptiness.
Thus the Buddha has taught: “Buddha body and Dharma body are like emptiness; Buddha body and Dharma body are your original countenance.
- Daito
Bamboo Garden
The third one crooked;
The second one leaning
Bamboos have grown
By the stone steps of the garden; every year
There are more of them
Until now they are a forest
At the clack of a stone on a bamboo
Hsiang-yen shattered
The uncountable worlds,
But this garden
Continues in its green shade Just as before
- Muso Soseki
When spring goes
The hundred flowers wither,
When spring comes,
The hundred flowers bloom.
One thing after another,
Life passes before our eyes,
Old age comes on its own.
Don’t think that all flowers fall
As spring ends,
In the courtyard last night
A plum branch bloomed.
- Vien Chieu (909-1091)
In everyone it towers like
A mile high wall,
Flashing a great precious light
In everyone’s presence.
One thought ten thousand years,
Ten thousand years one thought,
Eating when hungry,
Sleeping when tired,
Who worries about the alternation
Of light and dark,
The change of the seasons?
- Daio (1235-1309)
The unborn Dharma disappeared in both Japan and China, and it has long since been forgotten. But now it has appeared in the world again.
Once you come to know without any doubt that the marvelous illuminative wisdom of the Unborn is the Buddha-mind, and that the Buddha-mind puts all things in perfect order by means of the Unborn, then you can no longer be deluded or led astray by others.
- Bankei (1622-1693)