The secret life of nembutsu
The plane’s television monitor tells us
we’re passing over northern Canada, toward Calgary,
while outside, below, the white sheet stretches
well beyond what any eye might imagine,
what any words might clearly say.
Buddha’s teaching of nembutsu, the mindfulness
of utterance,
is like this too: no need at all to add anything
—saying itself, deep and whole
in and through the silent expanse of the heart—
only listening will do
Namuamidabutsu,
Namuamidabutsu
**
What do poets do?
Light struggles through tangled shadows.
In waiting branches, dark acacia leaves chill,
still to the windless morning’s entreaty to the new spring
come quietly between grey rain days
that leave the last of that which only they can bring.
Cold Mountain, the poet-monk, tells us
similar scenes appear over and again;
it’s what we do with them
that differs.
**
Certain mysteries
Clear blue, the Saturday sky lifts
from the crisp green hills,
arching invisibly over the roof top,
waiting, watching,
a lingering presence supposed, but not known,
not seen;
perhaps then, lifting
simply lifting…
**
End March
The day unfolds utterly absent uncertainty, each morsel
of air-buoyed water running its inevitable course, specific
to conditions within the collective spread called clouds
that span a breadth of hilltop some three miles in length.
I sit watching this, faltering in a mind a’swirl with ambiguity
at what the weather might bring, what that might mean,
while the day simply continues its quiet way, delivering all
it has to give.
In search of those still practicing, Bill Porter,
once known as Red Pine, roamed near-empty crevices
of modern China, and reports:
every adept he met followed some regimen
of chanting and meditation, morning and evening--our practice,
our teachers say, brings us to nembutsu, song, twice a day,
the straightforward gathering of body sound and sense,
turned in the direction of full completion
of living gratitude.
**
Best friends
Placed in a small black vase
in the corner on the alter
below the framed scroll,
flowers with white petals
and yellow centers
call into the chill and dim light…
Hearing this implies
a world alive,
the resonant pulse of wholeness
linked and woven,
the tiniest thread
a call of fully extending family,
a world of best friends…
