Ryokan's Meditations

The Japanese poet-monk Ryokan (1758 - 1831) is my Buddhist patron saint of  childlike simplicity.  He much preferred playing ball with the local children to discussing sutras with other monks.  Me too.  Give me a four year old with an unbridled sense of play any day of the week over a heavy-handed, overly serious academically inclined educator with their pet child development philosophies to impose upon the innocent.  

Let's just play. Here's an example of a Ryokan poem to that effect:

How long has it been since the teaching 

of pure essence was swept away?

Students are caught up with the written word

and Buddhist priests are stubbornly obsessed

with doctrine.  It's a shame that for a thousand years

no one has spoken seriously of this essence.

Better to follow the children 

and bounce a ball on these spring days.

Along with such simplicity and innocence comes an innate, or hard-won (who can say?) humility....

I'm truly simple

living among trees and grasses.

Don't ask me about illusion or enlightenment.

I ford streams with these thin legs,

and carry my bag in fine weather.

Such is my life,

but the world owes me nothing.

He joined a Buddhist monastery at the age of 17, forgoing the inheritance of his father, that of taking over the role of headman of his village.  Judging by his intrinsic sense of fairness, he probably would have been good at it but it seems he didn't want the trouble.  External trouble, that is.  Instead, he turned to the internal wrangling of zen.  

He studied for ten years with the master Kokusen, receiving Inka (recognition of his enlightenment).  When his master died in 1791, Ryokan left the monastery and became an Unsui (cloud and water) monk, wandering from place to place, rather than establishing his own dharma lineage or becoming an abbot at a monastery.  He chose simplicity.

But don't be fooled.  He understood the vagaries of the mind.  He couldn't have written this poem had he not --

Gazing at it, the boundaries are invisible

But as soon as even a slight thought arises,

ten thousand images crowd it.

Attach to them and they become real;

be carried by them and it will be difficult to return.

How painful to see a person trapped in the ten-fold delusions.

Of his own time, he says --

It is fine to see young people

stay home and enthusiastically compose poems,

imitating the classic styles of the Han and Wei

and mastering the contemporary styles of the Tang.

Although their style is excellent, even novel,

unless the poem says something from the inner heart

what shall we do with so many empty words?

I'm sure there are still monks in Japan.  In China, there are still hermits up in the mountains, trying to become "immortal" in the Daoist conception of the word.  Somehow, somewhere, someday, the world will give birth to new forms of spirituality, new waves of the spirit will resound through different cultures upon the earth, and depending upon the time, place, and circumstances of each locale, new forms of spiritual practice or focus will evolve.  I believe we will be there and will partake of these new forms, live and breathe the new energy that they convey, and our consciousness will grow, transform, and express itself in new ways.

I can't wait, but I can.  We have no other choice but to go with the flow of time as we experience it.  You can't push the river.

These poems and the gist of the text are from the volume "Between the Floating Mist," translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro, published by White Pine Press, 1992, 2009.

Summer Soldiers On

Yesterday in 106 degree heat I helped deliver a load of hay to a young family who just moved onto a farm in the area.  Tomorrow I'll unload eight pallets of freight in a cooler, so there you go.  Hot and cold, that's my life.

For the past two years I've done nothing but physical labor.  I needed that.  I was so stressed out from thirteen years in California that I needed to just put my head down, put it out of my mind, and work it out of my system.  When I saw my ex brother-in-law this spring the first thing he said was, "Wow!  You look healthy again -- all the stress is gone out of your face."

Two weeks ago, I was visiting old friends in Seattle, where I lived during the Eighties and Nineties.  My mid-twenties to mid-forties.  It was a good time to be young in Seattle.  It was growing but it wasn't over-crowded yet (it is now).  My first stop two weeks ago was at Green Lake, which was always the heart of Seattle for me.  I always oriented myself to it, no matter what part of town I was living in.  I must have run around that lake (2.8 miles) at least ten thousand times over twenty years, and loved each of those runs.  To my astonishment, Green Lake is even more beautiful now than it was then.  The trees and shrubbery have grown more lush and taller.  They protected the bike path around the lake and left the internal asphalt path to runners and walkers.  The wading pool is still full of little kids, there are still guys playing hoop on the courts outside the gymnasium, soccer games going on the field next to it.  The boathouse is expanded and of much higher quality.  Talk about a trip down memory lane.  Walking around that lake is like going back in time for me.

One old friend lives one block north of the lake, bought his house for about 35 thousand back in 1976.  I suppose it's worth a million now.  We talked for several hours.  He's a part of a spiritual group that I left, down in the Bay area.  He's happy as a clam.  The over-riding feeling that I had in discussing my experience was that of not being recognized for who I am.  Seems to be a theme of life.  For the most part, I've always accepted that as a matter of course, and in fact tried hard to keep who I really am hidden under the pretense of your usual social persona, but only because almost no one shares my obsessions in life.  I've spent fifty years trying to delve as deeply as I can into the meaning and purpose of life, as I've found it.  To some extent, I succeeded.  But of course, to find that answers exist is one thing; it's entirely another to try and integrate those answers into your character or your life.  In that respect, I feel I've mostly failed.  But that's okay -- it's a beginning.

Spent a day and a night in the beleagured town (again, a subjective perception) of Bremerton, a couple of days on Camano Island, and two days in the woods up above Sedro Wooley, at the west end of the North Cascade Highway.  I tried to drive that, got as far as Jack Kerouac's old stomping grounds at Marblemount, but a fire further on closed the road and I had to double back.

Since my return from that week-long excursion, I've decided to go back into education.  Teaching is really the only meaningful occupation I've had in this life.  I'm applying at the elementary school in my old hometown.  I may or may not get the job. Wish me luck.