What is the Pure Land?

A monk asked Zen Master Joshu, “What is the Pure Land?”
Joshu said, “A puddle of piss.”
The monk asked, “Can you show it to me?”
Joshu said, “Don’t tempt me.”

Vipassana Wolf

Creator unknown.

You Zen Like a Sailor

that stone Buddha deserves all the birdshit it gets
I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind

-Ikkyu Sojun

Shyenez

Lao Tzmith

Small Change

like the sun
i carry what is small
buddha's half smile
evaporating from hot
distant bricks
im in the world
there is no reason
to believe

"It Doesn't Matter"

I wonder about
the roach I found
drowned in a dog's
food bowl
I wonder if he was afraid
of the future
it doesn't matter now
the future is humble
like fungus
growing in the dark

but then
sunlight
waking light
I have seen what is
good in me
what in me just begins
fruiting in this light

I wonder if words know how
philosophies spring up
from feeling
how action itself
seems in a trance
and tongues
mothers of storm
cast far their hardy seeds
into the many winds
of difference

but then
a sharp tongue will
carve out many shapes
and become dull
then
let these words
be humble
let thought never
injure truth

I have learned
it does matter

Natives in Rain

broken trees
broken bones
in edgeless tempests
of gentleness
all is gone

broken wisdom
broken brains
in love all is transparent
all see it
laughing in the rain

ManMan

to be a god among man
appeals only to man

seeing through the heart
i am not a man
i aspire to nothing above
nor below
i am only a man

No Imagination

kamma before Venus
love brooding over skill
let it be said
I had a clear, bright heart
and no imagination

That's Watts Up

"...but it doesn't matter a bit if you don't understand, because each one of you is quite perfect as you are, even if you don't know it. Life is basically a gesture, but no one, no thing, is making it. There is no necessity for it to happen, and none for it to go on happening. For it isn't being driven by anything; it just happens freely of itself. It's a gesture of motion, of sound, of color, and just as no one is making it, it isn't happening to anyone. There is simply no problem of life; it is completely purposeless play—exuberance which is its own end. Basically there is the gesture. Time, space, and multiplicity are complications of it. There is no reason whatever to explain it, for explanations are just another form of complexity, a new manifestation of life on top of life, of gestures gesturing. Pain and suffering are simply extreme forms of play, and there isn't anything in the whole universe to be afraid of because it doesn't happen to anyone! There isn't any substantial ego at all. The ego is a kind of flip, a knowing of knowing, a fearing of fearing. It's a curlicue, an extra jazz to experience, a sort of double-take or reverberation, a dithering of consciousness which is the same as anxiety.
Of course, to say that life is just a gesture, an action without agent, recipient, or purpose, sounds much more empty and futile than joyous. But to me it seems that an ego, a substantial entity to which experience happens, is more of a minus than a plus. It is an estrangement from experience, a lack of participation. And in this moment I feel absolutely with the world, free of that chronic resistance to experience which blocks the free flowing of life and makes us move like muscle-bound dancers. But I don't have to overcome resistance. I see that resistance, ego, is just an extra vortex in the stream--part of it—and that in fact there is no actual resistance at all. There is no point from which to confront life, or stand against it."

 -Alan Watts, The Joyous Cosmology

Why Meditation Feels Like Shitting Razorblades... At First

From Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana:

Meditation is a tough job. It is an inherently solitary activity. One person battles against enormously powerful forces, part of the very structure of the mind doing the meditating. When you really get into it, you will eventually find yourself confronted with a shocking realization. One day you will look inside and realize the full enormity of what you are actually up against. What you are struggling to pierce looks like a solid wall so tightly knit that not a single ray of light shines through. You find yourself sitting there, staring at this edifice and you say to yourself, "That? I am supposed to get past that? But it's impossible! That is all there is. That is the whole world. That is what everything means, and that is what I use to define myself and to understand everything around me, and if I take that away the whole world will fall apart and I will die. I cannot get through that. I just can't."

 And then you barely notice that a ray of light is hitting you directly in the chest. And you wonder, was the wall ever there?

Read Mindfulness in Plain English here:
http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html