poem:
Absolute Contemplation means you do not have a distraction. To go into the Center is just a habit. The purpose of an iphone is just to type up a poem. You could just sit outdoors in meditation as your isolation. You can just stay in position. You can become highly populous and then an isolationists. You can pass through the throat center in your way to the Ajna Chakra. If you don’t have Sex your Kundalini can travel up your Spine and clean up your Mind. A human’s back should be straight if he wants to show any respect.
“When the monk finds himself in this position of dignity and respectability, living in the rock-cave of the Dharma where he enjoys the greatest happiness of a spiritual life, under the blissful protection of all the guardian gods of the Triple Treasure, is there any form of happiness that can surpass his?”
From Manual of Zen Buddhism
DAI-O KOKUSHI’S ADMONITION
You can just shelter at home and stay in lotus posture as if it were a 14 day meditation retreat. You can alter your cell structure just by repetition. My brain is forever in a dream that is why I like to go out of it. When I am sheltering in place I am given the opportunity not to move. Enlightenment is sort of like sitting like Buddha for a long time. You can have a great deal of piety and still end up a dead poet. It may make sense to listen to the last words of a dying Zen poet:
DAITO KOKUSHI’S ADMONITION
O you, monks, who are in this mountain monastery, remember that you are gathered here for the sake of religion and not for the sake of clothes and food. As long as you have shoulders [that is, the body], you will have clothes to wear, and as long as you have a mouth, you will have food to eat. Be ever mindful, throughout the twelve hours of the day, to apply yourselves to the study of the Unthinkable. Time passes like an arrow, never let your minds be disturbed by worldly cares. Ever, ever be on the look-out. After my departure, some of you may preside over five temples in prosperous conditions, with towers and halls and holy books all decorated in gold and silver, and devotees may noisily crowd into the grounds; some may pass hours in reading the sutras and reciting the dharanis, and sitting long in contemplation may not give themselves up to sleep; they may, eating once a day and observing the fastdays, and, throughout the six periods of the day, practise all the religious deeds. Even when they are thus devoted to the cause, if their thoughts are not really dwelling on the mysterious and untransmissible Way of the Buddhas and Fathers, they may yet come to ignore the law of moral causation, ending in a complete downfall of the true religion. All such belong to the family of evil spirits; however long my departure from the world may be, they are not to be called my descendants. Let, however, there be just one individual, who may be living in the wilderness in a hut thatched with one bundle of straw and passing his days by eating the roots of wild herbs cooked in a pot with broken legs; but if he single-mindedly applies himself to the study of his own [spiritual] affairs, he is the very one who has a daily interview with me and knows how to be grateful for his life. Who should ever despise such a one? O monks, be diligent, be diligent.1
Left to his disciples as his last words when he was about to pass away.
From the Manual of Zen Buddhism by Suzuki
A Poem by David Smith NYC
March 19, 2020