TREELEAF SANGHA online 2-DAY ANGO-JUKAI-ROHATSU RETREAT -- 2019 -- MAIN PAGE

[Shonin Risa Bear]

From the back cover of Soto Zen Ancestors in China by James Mitchell, said to be the rock where Shitou built his hut:

shitou.jpg

Here is a translation that caught my attention, at Terebess:

A Song About My Grass-Thatch Hut
Translated by Yasuda Joshu and Anzan Hoshin

Here, where nothing is worth anything,
I've set up a grass-thatched hut.

After eating,
I just stretch out for a nap.

As soon as it was built,
weeds were already growing back.

Now I've been here awhile
its covered in vines.

So the one in this hut just lives on,
unstuck,
not inside, out, in between.

The places where usual folk live,
I don't.
What they want,
I don't.

This tiny hut holds the total world,
an old man and
the radiance of forms and their nature,
all in ten feet square.

Bodhisattvas of the Vast Path
know about this but
the mediocre and marginal wonder,
"Isn't such a place too fragile to live in?"

Fragile or not,
the true master dwells here
where there is no
south or north, east or west.

Just sitting here,
it can't be surpassed:

below the green pines
a lit window.

Palaces and towers
of jade and vermillion
can't compare.

Just sitting,
my head covered,
all things rest.

So this mountain monk
has no understanding at all,
just lives on
without struggling to get loose.

Not going to
set out seats
and wait for guests.

Turning the light
to shine within,
turn it around again.

Vast,
unthinkable,
you can't face it
or turn away from it.

The root of it.

Meet the Awakened Ancestors,
become intimate with the teachings,
lash grass into thatch for a hut
and don't tire so easily.

Let it go,
release,
and your life of a hundred years
vanishes.

Open your hands.

Walk around.

Innocence.

The swarm of words,
and little stories
are just to loosen you
from where you are stuck.

If you want to know
the one in the hermitage
who never dies,

you can't avoid this skin-bag
right here.

gassho
old leather balloon sat today

[Tai Shi]

Hello Doyu, today I met my daughter face to face on face time on mom's apple phone and her apple phone. I looked long and hard at this thirty-year old woman, only to realize how young she is, how she loves to be with friends, that we are not the "friends," we are the parents. She is so young. When I was her age, I was married, had been married more than seven months, and now I know just why my degree of MFA was so difficult. The grades were much higher than other degrees. The other degrees came easily and naturally, but I was not married. I am happy. She is so young. Do monks who live in grass huts live young lives? Are they young and unmarried all their lives? Being a monk is different from being a parent, and I was 37 when our child was born. When arthritis hit four years later, I was sill a young man. I mean, when my daughter was born, I had lived a whole life; I was still so innocent, and now, I wish she loved me more, or less, or it will come if I sit quietly and allow the child to come to me, let the little one decide. Let her understand herself first, for as she gains yet another degree, like her father, she is unmarried and so very young like the monk in the grass, thatched hut.
Tai Shi
Gassho
sat/lah

[Byokan]

Hello Doyu, today I met my daughter face to face on face time on mom's apple phone and her apple phone. I looked long and hard at this thirty-year old woman, only to realize how young she is, how she loves to be with friends, that we are not the "friends," we are the parents. She is so young. When I was her age, I was married, had been married more than seven months, and now I know just why my degree of MFA was so difficult. The grades were much higher than other degrees. The other degrees came easily and naturally, but I was not married. I am happy. She is so young. Do monks who live in grass huts live young lives. Are they young and unmarried all their lives. Being a monk is different from being a parent, and I was 37 when our child was born. When arthritis hit four years later, I was sill a young man. I mean, when my daughter was born, I had lived a whole life; I was still so innocent, and now, I wish she loved me more, or less, or it will come if I sit quietly and allow the child to come to me, let the little one decide. Let her understand herself first, for as she gains yet another degree, like her father, she is unmarried and so very young like the monk in the grass, thatched hut.
Tai Shi
Gassho
sat/lah

Thank you for sharing this, Tai Shi. Marjorie is blessed, to have a Dad like you.

Young, old, single, coupled, educated, uneducated, parents, children, friends, free of pain, hurting, experienced, innocent. Most of us will embody most of these things at some time or other. May she be well. May we all be at peace, embracing all conditions of life.

Gassho
Byōkan
sat + lah

[Shonin Risa Bear]

Yes, Taishi, I have a 34 year old who is my youngest and the dynamics are similar.

As to monk age, Shitou appears to have done this early in his career, which was not unusual for future abbots. An exception was Shiwu (Stonehouse) who returned to his mountain after a five year abbacy and stayed until he died at eighty, right after producing a book of poems about being a mountain monk.

Gassho
Doyu sat today

[Tai Shi]

Hi Byokan, I always ask what my friends' names mean in Japanese, and I would also like to know what Doyu means. Our Japanese names are beautiful, our Dharma names. One friend is Stone Face, another, Strong Waters; you are Byokan young yet to be a priest-in-training; when I was young, I so wanted to be both poet and teacher, and I am trained to be both; thank you for telling me what I embody. Live, not non-life, life, I chose life. I know that at age 68, I can I am an embodiment of life-- I am not yet non-being or what I will be-- dead in 15 to 20 years if I am lucky according to my doctor, and certainly I am enjoying life-- how about all of you? Are you, anyone in our Sangha, are you enjoying life? For lunch today I had a piece of apple pie, and a hand full of roasted chestnuts. Every disease I have is stable and not threatening. Non-pain, relief of tension, as Jundo says, "When one sits, one sits." I say, "When one is happy, one is happy." I am so grateful for my friends-- all friends-- like just receiving Christmas wishes on my iPhone for good friendship-- I seldom speak of my Christianity in these pages now and because more and more, it is the man Jesus I'm interested in. As Anna pointed out, he was probably a short brown man with little to his name-- only the clothes he wore, like begging Buddhist monks, as the Buddha, and that first Sangha, and like John the Baptist, choosing to be poor. Wandering town to town seeking only to teach.
Tai Shi
sat/lah
Gassho