Beginning this month, we will gather around one or two carefully selected poems (or occasionally a longer verse text) and explore together how they speak to our practice, our lives, and the Dharma in general.

Poetry has long been interwoven with Buddhism—and Zen, in particular. One reason for this is that poetry can be a powerful means of using language to point beyond language, expressing something of the ineffable that cannot be fully captured in words. Yet, as words are what we have to work with, poets have used them (often quite sparingly) to point towards the Dharma in unique and insightful ways.

The format will be simple. Around the 15th of each month, I will post one or more selected poems in this forum. Everyone is invited to read, reflect, and participate in your own way. You may join us for a monthly live discussion via Zoom (typically on the third Sunday of the month), and/or share your reflections here in the forum.

Our selections will be drawn primarily from Zen literature, but will also (from time to time) include poetry and verse from other contemplative traditions and writers whose work resonates with common Zen themes such as impermanence, interconnection, simplicity, silence, and direct experience.

There are no formal commitments and no books to buy.

“Then Śākyamuni Buddha, in the order on Vulture Peak in the Western Country, India, among an assembly of millions, picked up an uḍumbara flower and winked. At that time the face of Venerable Mahākāśyapa broke into a smile. Śākyamuni Buddha said, ‘I possess the right Dharma-eye treasury and the fine mind of nirvana. I transmit them to Mahākāśyapa.’”

...

In this way the true ancestral masters of successive generations have each passed on the face-to-face transmission through the disciple regarding the master and the master seeing the disciple. ... When master and disciple have definitely seen each other, have been seen by each other, have given the face-to-face transmission, and have succeeded to the Dharma, that is the realization of the truth which resides in the ancestors’ face-to-face transmission. Thus, master and disciple have directly taken on the brightness of the Tathāgata’s face. In sum, even after thousands of years, or myriad years, or hundreds of kalpas, or koṭis of kalpas, this face-to-face transmission is the appearance of the face of, and the realization of the transmission from, Śākyamuni Buddha. ... Even before a word is comprehended and even before understanding of half a word is transcended, when the master has seen the back of the disciple’s head, and the disciple has regarded the master through the crown of the head, that is the authentic face-to-face transmission

In conclusion, the great truth of the Buddhist Ancestors is nothing other than a face giving and a face receiving, and the reception of a face and the giving of a face, beyond which there is nothing surplus and nothing lacking. We should rejoice in, delight in, believe in, and serve whatever has had the opportunity to meet this face-to-face transmission, even if it is our own features