zenscribe

Heading off to retreat in Portugal.
Thus stillness visits for a week in the absence of words here.
Yet the coming and going is open-ended.
And presence is neither here nor there.
How sweet it is.

There is still space for the weeklong retreat with the Wild Flower Sangha in France (Normandy)/Il reste de la place pour la retraite d'une semaine en France (Normandie) avec le Wild Flower Sangha:

August 23-30/ 23-30 août

Information/registration: zenscribe@free.fr

Unseen across gardens of indeterminate breath
a Countess lilts
her soaring wander of demise. She furrows
a night valley of love
lost in the singed foothills of afternoon.
Heat and an array of possible attempts
to give us voice
prevail. She airs her Don,
jambs unscrewed.
She divas him,
undivided behind narratives
without accompaniment
and offered singularly to us all
anonymous on charred lawns.

This morning, a butterfly in the garden was not like anything.
I sat. The butterfly fluttered, then it didn't, it folded and unfolded its hazel-brown wings.
I sat. The butterfly came and went nowhere, although it left my sight and entered it again.
I sat. Only a thought made the butterfly like my mind, a thought.
I sat, not like anything.

The pages filling please me.
I write to no end: The traces of doing gratify without reward apart from the doing itself, stroking to the drop-off.

I rest quietly and Apollonaire brings this to mind:

Emperor Shukuso asked Chu, the National Teacher, "After a hundred years (after you have died), what do you want me to do?''
"Build a seamless tomb for this old monk," replied the National Teacher.
"I ask the National Teacher, please show me the design of the tomb," said the Emperor.
The National Teacher rested quietly for a while, then asked, "Do you understand?''
"I do not understand," replied the Emperor.
"I have a dharma successor, Tangen,'' said the National Teacher, "please send for him and ask him about it."
After the National Teacher's death, the Emperor sent for Tangen and asked him what was his teacher's idea. Tangen said:
"South of Sho, north of Tan. Within it there is gold that fills the land. Beneath the shadowless tree, a ferry boat. In the crystal palace, there is no intellect."
Blue Cliff Record, Case 18

Apollonaire, on the nature of a memorial for a fictional poet:
"Il faut que je lui sculpte une profonde statue en rien, comme la poésie et comme la gloire."
(I must make him a profound statue built of nothing, like poetry and fame.)

What might that be --- "traces of the sacred''?
A museum tries many replies, all valid, yet ...
What of that which is not in the show --- the beggars and buskers, the fancy cars and cheap shoes, tired workers on the Métro returning home, girls reading celebrity papers, smokers outside cafés, kids on bikes, a hint of moon in the night sky not yet dark?
What of July?
What of cancer?
What of Turkish sandwiches, the Dalai Lama, the Chinese ambassador, Rafael Nadal, fireworks, beer cans, ice cream at the beach?
What of the museum itself? What of the visitors?
Ginsberg chants, "Holy! Holy! Holy!"
Bodhidharma, when asked by the Emperor Wu what was the essential principle of this teaching he brought from India, replied: "Vast emptiness, nothing holy."
This is it; it's all and nothing.

Summer is underway, and there is still space for a week of intensive practice, in Portugal or in France.
(Nous sommes en plein été, et il reste de la place pour faire une semaine de pratique intensive, au Portugal ou en France.)
Portugal: 1-8 August
France: 23-30 August
250 euros
Beginners welcome.
(Débutants bienvenus.)
Infos et inscriptions: zenscribe@free.fr

Someone dear to me, my dharma brother Frank de Waele, calls this morning to announce the birth of his daughter, Hannia. His joy shoots through the phone line, we are happy together across the kilometers, tears fill my eyes. We share this ancient transmission of life.
There is no transition when he then announces the terminal cancer of another friend. He may have only months to live. We share this ancient transmission of death.
There is no beginning or end to it.
There is nothing but amazing grace.

What is in question apart from me tonight?
Not a thing: Emptiness is what is not.
If I am not, then I, too, am not in question.
All that is is in question.
When I question I: the nature of I is revealed.
And to the question that cannot be answered, I reply, "Tu es cela." (You are that.)

I would like nothing better than to sit and read and write all this day, the first of summer, the year's longest, full with sweet charms of light and softness deep into the night.
But such is the inexorable course of day and night that I have other callings. Things to tend await my attention.
Long day, short night, sun and moon:
Off I go, reminded of the Ashvaghosha sutra: "Like as the birds that gather in the trees of afternoon then at nightfall vanish all away, so are the separations of the world."

Happy Bloomsday!
Celebrate Leopold Bloom's marvelous day in the life, Dublin, June 16, 1904!
Drink a pint! Take a walk! Eat a kidney! Serve breakfast in bed! Step out along the strand!
Dream! Sing! Love! Live!
Say yes!
Re-joyce!
Read Ulysses!

Everything moves. This instant, without limit, is already gone.

Bataille writes, "...l'énoncé se ruine à mesure qu'on l'énonce; même préciptée dans la possibilité du mouvement, ma pensée écrite ne peut l'épuiser puisque, écrite, elle a l'immobilité de la pierre.''

(...a statement is undone by its expression; even hurled into the possibility of movement, my written thought cannot exhaust it, for, written, it is immobile as stone.)

And the sixth patrirch of Zen, Hui-neng, asked his disciple, Ejo, "What comes thus?"
Ejo replied, "When anything is said about it, you miss the mark."

Thursday, June 12
20h-22h30
199 bis, rue Saint-Martin
75003 Paris

A rare opportunity:
Genpo Merzel Roshi, one of the leading masters of Western Zen today, will for the first time present his Big Mind, Big Heart practice in Paris on June 12. Genpo Roshi is the teacher of Catherine Genno Pagès Roshi, who is my teacher. He is the second dharma successor of the late Taizan Maezumi Roshi, founder of the Zen Center of Los Angeles.

Info: www.danasangha.org

Une opportunité rare:
Le 12 juin, Genpo Merzel Roshi, un des plus grands maître Zen occidental aujourd'hui, presentera pour la première fois à Paris sa pratique « Big Mind, Big Heart ». Genpo Roshi est le maître de Catherine Genno Pagès Roshi, qui est mon maître. Il est le deuxième successor de Taizan Maezumi Roshi, fondateur du Centre Zen de Los Angeles.