Shodoka: Kinks in the Hose

What Chao Chou thought was Nyogen’s translation of Shodoka is actually another Aitken Roshi translation. One that, it turns out, is scattered around the web. Google for it if you’re so inclined.  Chao Chou will continue to use it, but correctly identifying it as Roshi’s work.

Roshi’s other version will be labeled Diamond Sangha Sutra Book TX version to indicate the source as the Amarillo Empty Sky Sutra Book. To be included when there’s a note worthy difference between it and the primary text.

‘nuf said. The flow is restored.

Me and Ikkyu Down at the Schoolyard

Writing something
To leave behind
Is yet another kind of dream:
When I awake I know that
There will be no one to read it.

Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu
translated by John Stevens

Ikkyu said it like that. I’ve heard it said that some days you’re the dog and other days you’re the hydrant.

No matter how deep your relization, Zen is still taking out the garbage on Tuesday. Even old Shakyamuni his self is only half-way there.

Cooking Your Life

Since preparing meals for the household falls to Chao Chou, it is no surprise that the Dogen’s Tenzo Kyokun, Instructions for the Zen Cook, gets a read every now and again. This tasty morsel floated up off the pages:

Even when handling just one leaf of a green, do so in such a way that the leaf manifests the fullness of its potential, which in turn, allows the illumination of buddha to radiate through it. This is a power of functioning whose nature is incapable of being grasped with the rational mind and one which operates without hindrance in a most natural way. At the same time, this power operates in our lives to clarify and settle activities beneficial to all living things. From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment: Refining Your Life – Dogen and Uchiyama

Reminded of something me-self scrawled after playing tenzo at a sesshin sometime back.

Cooking curry
with cayenne.

Hot! Hot!

Mañjusri
comes-up
out the pot.

Popped him
with a spoon.

“Get out!
We don’t need you!”

Cayenne’s hot, hot. Hot.

These days more like . . . It is almost pleasant here. Weenie-roasting weather.