Throughout those late summer months I have but one meal in the morning: sliced tomato with a dab of mayonnaise, on a piece of toast. Morning after morning. 

PZI musicians Michael Wilding and Jordan McConnell join us this Monday night for a concord of sweet sounds, playing and talking about the source of sound and music.

There is something wonderful and special about just-this-ness. The just-this-ness of Chan-Zen is a fullness, an enoughness, a wholeness. That is so great because we are the complete package, whatever mountain we sit on, even if we are sitting alone on no-courage mountain. 

“What is in these poems [haiku] can’t be had elsewhere. About the things of the world, and the mind looking at the things of the world, and the moments and the language in which we try to express them, they have unusual wakefulness and clarity.”

—Robert Hass

Basho’s travels to the interior are not different from our own journey inward. We begin this path thinking it narrow and perhaps even perilous. But with time, with practice together, our hearts and minds begin to open and widen and we feel more generous.

In Dongshan’s verse, there is no need to explain (and grow horns), there is no need to search for the Buddha, who, after all, is right here. The time of vast emptiness is our time, and it is a world of not-knowing. Moment by moment, we and the universe appear fresh and new. So why go seeking all those sages who have nothing to add?  

Living without fears, or living with fears, Dongshan’s infinite distinctions and endless differences, are, after all, our natural way.

Hidden deep in the mountains, we are fortunate enough to see the moon bright, the air clear, and a beautiful dawn breaking. This is not a dream, Dongshan is saying. This is our life.

Yasutani writes that even with the bath, the makeup, the new set of clothes, the true ‘making oneself beautiful’ is not only of the body, “but of the heart-mind.“

The Way of the Sage King is from The Record of Dongshan, appearing soon after his Five Ranks, equally rich in poetic expression and serving as markers on the path of awakening.