I turn to Ryokan’s poetry over and over again. For me, nobody captures in poetry the magical essence of the spiritual life, indeed, of life like he does. How wonderous his words, painting pictures – pictures that rest in the heart, illuminating form and emptiness, and their interplay.
When all thoughts are exhausted
When all thoughts
Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A pile of shepherd’s purse.
How resonant the image of this old monk, settling his mind in Samadhi, then gathering this simple plant / herb. What action do we take when we rest in nondual awareness, in Rigpa? What is to be done?
Just life. Life as it is. Anything at all. Plain or elevated. Simple or complex. Inward or outward. But whatever it is, it is done from the heart – the heart of nondual awareness, this pristine naked knowingness, that is primordially pure, and ever expressive.
We don’t have to do the most profoundly ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ activities. We don’t have to prove our spirituality by doing some things and not others. We don’t have to get somewhere fast, so focus, focus, focus – on intense practice and exercises.
No, just abide in this Rigpa. Rest in this natural state. And be.
Simply. Just there.
Then all of life unfolds as a magical display. An endless unfolding of the dance of awareness. Expressing itself. Utterly empty. Yet full of expression. Expression that itself is utterly empty.
Whether high or low, spiritual or not. Just this, with a heart abiding in Rigpa. Then all of heaven and earth is as it is, all in the right place. All wondrous and perfectly complete.
Like the little stream making its way
Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
How beautiful the clear stream winding its way through the rocks, flowing gently where it needs to – indeed, flowing where life guides and embraces it. Not fighting against life, not resitting or grasping. Knowing the Tao, unfolding the Tao. Being the Tao.
When we find our way to resting in how things are, simply and completely resting – whether within activity or stillness it matters not. Then we turn empty and transparent, and all self and other drops away. And all solidity in thoughts, emotions and perception drops away too – leaving them utterly empty and pure. Not different from that empty awareness itself.
Nobody here, nobody home, nothing to do, nowhere to go.
The flower invites the butterfly with no-mind
The flower invites the butterfly with no-mind;
The butterfly visits the flower with no-mind.
The flower opens, the butterfly comes;
The butterfly comes, the flower opens.
I don’t know others, Others don’t know me.
By not-knowing we follow nature’s course.
The flower doesn’t get lost in the complexity of thought. Neither judging or evaluating. Making life so difficult in the endless pursuit of happiness and not suffering.
We can open our heart-mind and just be the empty luminosity. Just be from this empty luminosity. Be as this empty luminosity.
Then we invite life fully. We open to all of life. Not just the parts we think will bring us happiness. But all of life. Life enters us and becomes us.
Life doesn’t have that scheming, calculating mind, which plans and evaluates – endlessly weighing up phenomena.
Life comes. Life arises. Life ceases. But nothing ever truly happens. Yet it all happens all by itself.
No-mind.
Who can tell what truly happens? You act, and something happens?
Something happens deep down unseen in the subconscious or unawareness, causing you to act?
Look closely – do you choose anything? Or do things happen, and your conscious mind then makes a show of ‘deciding’ and ‘acting’? Look.
All I know is that when you truly open, truly let go, and rest in this naked simplicity. Then life becomes at once an astoundingly magical display, and nothing at all. Perfectly complete. Completely perfect.
You don’t need to know others, or yourself. You don’t need all the knots of concepts. The tangles of analysis.
Just find this Rigpa. This natural mind. This no-mind. And rest there, in activity or stillness, it’s all the same. Empty yet luminous. Nothing, yet full. Impermanent, yet primordially complete and perfect.
If you let go of the addiction to conceptual evaluation you may find your way to this vast, spacious awareness that remains perfectly and silently pure, stainless and empty.
Utterly alive.
Simple and lucid.
Beyond all words and meanings.
And then life can unfold. Free of attachment. Free of suffering. Free of coming and going. Free, primordially free.
My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest
My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;
Every year the green ivy grows longer.
No news of the affairs of men,
Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.
The sun shines and I mend my robe;
When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems.
I have nothing to report to my friends.
If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after
so many things.
This beautiful Zen hermit lifestyle – deep in the forest, away from the affairs of mankind, and devoted to practice. The simplicity of this life, where the seemingly everyday becomes pregnant with meaning. All revealing the way, revealing the Tao.
Yet of course it’s not necessary for everyone to go that way – the way of the renunciate. Perhaps it will help you? Perhaps not? Though a little renunciation along the way may not hurt you in weaning you off of grasping at this and that. Wanting and not-wanting!
Ryokan tells of his life in the mountain forest, far away from where the supposedly important matters of life take place in towns and cities, endlessly cycling, on and on – weaving their bewitching dreams of complete satisfaction and happiness.
The green ivy grows longer. How wondrous!
Is anything more miraculous. More meaningful. More complete in itself?
He mends his robe. The sun shines or not. He has nothing to say to his friends in terms of ‘what’s new’ with him. Just being ‘being’. Just ‘life-ing’ life. Just letting go of action born of dualistic mind. Then everything is done. Just as it needs to be. Just as it is. Just this. Just ….
When we learn to let go of dualistic grasping. Of preferring this to that. To thinking that our happiness depends on this thing. Or this thought. On not that, not this.
Then this open, spacious pristine nakedness shines forth. Perfectly pure. Utterly ungraspable – the notion of grasping become hilarious!!!! And the meaning rests there.
Simple.
Complete.
The open secret.
So close we cannot see it.
So simple we look beyond it.
So wondrous we cannot believe it.
So …… just this.
