Page 6

Kōshō Uchiyama

Monastery tenzo,
serving meals for monks. His way
of cooking his life.

Birds

Watching birds at the feeder,
I understand them to be
images coming to mind.
Nothing here to be thought

separate or permanent.
If they are images with
nothing real about them, what
is the role of my eyes and

ears? Am I seeing birds?
Am I hearing their songs?
Are they not living objects
witnessed by me as subject?

No, because Pete L, who seems
to be here on the inside
looking at birds on feeder
on the outside, is just one

more image coming to mind.
Nothing in me to be thought
solid or separate, with
my small mind dividing things

into subject and object -
part of the ignorance in
dualistic thinking, things
imagined as opposites.

Why then such beautiful birds
appearing to my mind?
What appears in my world
in this moment, here, now is

not in my conscious control.
They come from actions, words and
thoughts accumulated as
seeds in the world’s memory,

seeds that can germinate when
conditions fall into place
for hungry birds or other
appearances to mind.

Square

It was an imperative.
Not to leave the square.
The chalk marks were clear.

Who had drawn them? Had she?
Was she imagining these boundaries?

She could see on one side
all her old pains, joys and regrets
coming now to mind.

On the other, her hopes,
fears, ambitions and dreads.

She knew it was safe to look.
But leaving her square to cross over
to either side meant death.

She crouched down to stroke the cat
rubbing against her leg.

Bird needle

bird, needle-beaked,
stitch-stitch-stitching his dawn song
onto my still mind

Cat

I can understand
‘no self, person, living being
or life span’. But I
must still get off my cushion
to give the cat her dinner.

There is

There is nothing that
is not here in front of me -
only this, here, now.