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Dõgen
Zen poetry of Dõgen
twenty years
on the bookshelf
reading my mind
waiting its time
to catch my eye
Wave
All phenomena
appear and disappear like
waves on the ocean.
I am a wave deluding
myself I have existence
quite separate from
the ocean, and so worry
about everything
- work, money, illness, dying and
what will happen after death.
A conceit of course,
this sense of my importance,
my mind playing tricks,
putting me at the centre
of this thought-made universe
where everything
I do is to benefit
my important self.
Me at the centre, other
people less significant.
Waves on the ocean
are born and die dependent
only on the wind,
coming from the ocean then
returning to it, self less.
Waves, a metaphor
for my birth and death
which I take as real,
blind to the ocean from which,
unknowingly, I have emerged.
The metaphor, a
reminder to consider
that my place in
the universe is very
different from what I thought
so freeing me from
worry about everything
- work, money, illness.
Aware now death's just a wave
returning to the ocean.
Thoughts hitch
Thoughts hitch rides on words
that drift like leaves on the breeze.
Who will gather them?
Hook
Our eyes and ears,
which we like to think foster
closeness, in fact keep
us apart, holding us in
each our separate selves.
Truly knowing each
other means transcending these
greedy senses so
mind has no hooks on which to
hang notions of you and me.
Me
What if it is imagination?
All the things I see when I wake;
sunlight on the wall,
clock next to books propped on shelf.
What if I am seeing a scene
never been seen before?
I tell myself these things
were here yesterday
and the day before that so they
cannot be my imagination.
But what if these memories
are themselves my imagination?
They might come as a package,
the things I see on waking with
memory of seeing them before.
In which case, I only imagine
they are familiar; sunlight,
shelf, clock, books.
What if, as I get out of bed, this
body is just another aspect
of my imagination?
And the me
that inhabits this body?
Am I imagining myself?