by Dogo
If this answer was presented to me by a Zen student in dokusan, I would likely accept it if they could also answer some checking questions.
Next koan: Who is the true person of no rank who comes and goes through the gates of your face?
#zen #buddhism #maryhill #glasgow #koans #poetry #graffiti #DogoBarryGraham
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by Dogo
This is Burns Night, and it should be noted that, though he likely never heard of Zen or Buddhism, he was one of the great Zen poets of the West:
But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white – then melts for ever; Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place; Or like the rainbow’s lovely form Evanishing amid the storm.
#robertburns #zen #buddhism #poetry #scottishpoetry #impermanence #mononoaware #dogobarrygraham
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by Dogo
As part of last Sunday's Dharma talk, I read Sam Hamill's poem The Orchid Flower. I corresponded with him for years, though we never met. He is among the people who have died whom I cannot bring myself to delete from my email contacts. When he died in 2018, I wrote this poem:
Elegy for Sam Hamill
Two days ago you breathed out and didn’t breathe in again. You were in your bed at home in Cascadia. I’m on my couch at home in Glasgow, reading a book of your poems, one of the books you put in a package, took to a post office and mailed to me. I find you in the words, and I look for you in the spaces between.
#zen #poetry #impermanence #death #mononoaware #dukkha #samsara #buddhism #samhamill #dogobarrygraham
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by Dogo
I've become a regular writer at Buddhistdoor Teahouse. My page is here.
#zen #poetry #buddhistdoor #thewayofpoetry #dogobarrygraham
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by Dogo
At today's online sangha meeting, I gave a Dharma talk about jisei, Japanese death poems, particularly this tanka by Shimaki Akahiko:
Where did that dog that used to be here go? I thought about him once again tonight before I went to bed.
For more, read the book Japanese Death Poems, compiled by Yoel Hoffman.
#zen #buddhism #death #poetry #jisei #impermanence #mononoaware #dogobarrygraham
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