https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhbGXmtCuGs
​

​   If you don’t know the kind of person I am
   And I don’t know the kind of person you are
   A pattern that others made may prevail in the world
   And following the wrong God home we may miss our star.
   For there is many a small betrayal 
   In the mind
   A shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
   Sending with shouts the horrible effects of childhood
   Storming out to play through the broken dike.
   And as elephants parade holding each elephants tail
   But if one wanders
   The circus won’t find the park.
   I call it cruel 
   And maybe the root of all cruelty 
   To know what occurs 
   But not recognize the fact.
   And so I appeal to a voice
   To something shadowy 
   A remote, important region in all who talk.
   Though we could fool each other 
   We should consider 
   Lest the parade of our mutual life
   Get lost in the dark
   For it is important that awake people
   Be awake
   For a breaking line may discourage them
   Back to sleep.
   The signals we give 
   Yes or no or maybe
   Should be clear
   The darkness around us is deep.
 
 
                                                      William Stafford.
 

​A young woman goes to the Laundromat and puts in a load of laundry. When it is done she puts her clothes in the dryer and sits next to an old lady who is mumbling.  She realizes the woman is not mumbling; she's actually praying, offering up a prayer mantra of some kind that she cannot quite discern.
 
 And so she sits with her for a while and then this lady gives her a card that says “You might be wondering why I come here. I lost my son in the Vietnam War and this is where he used to do his laundry and so I come here to pray for him.
 
The young woman came at the same time each week and would sit with the old lady way past the time that the laundry was finished.
 
One day the woman who was doing the silent witnessing found the older woman to not be there. Over the weeks she realized she was no longer coming back. Then one day another woman showed up. She was much younger and well-dressed and was looking around for somebody.  They struck up a conversation and it turns out this was the daughter of the old lady who had been praying for her son. The mother had asked her daughter to give a note to the woman who had been sitting silently with her.
 
 “In the beginning when I came to this place I came in sorrow. I sat and remembered my boy and prayed.  People cast glances my way and acted as if I were a bit crazy. I sat in the same place he sat and prayed that he would know I love him still and that I was so proud to be his mother.
 
 One day you came and sat beside me. As time went by you continued to come.
 I said my prayers in your presence. I wondered how you could understand, let alone decipher what I was saying.  Somehow you understood.  In this life I try to be good, to be someone who others can look up to and I feel that my intentions were always to assist never to harm anyone. You asked me for nothing and you gave me something that I will carry until with me until I leave this Earth.  You gave me acceptance and respect and treated me with a gentle regard for the person I was. What you may not realize was that coming here became a time I truly looked forward to.  I looked forward to meeting you dear friend. I never even knew your name.  I'm going to meet my son very soon. I wanted to write this while my mind was clear and my daughter Alice would carry my wishes to you. Your presence and acceptance has meant so much to me. No one has ever been so kind without expecting something in return. You gave me the priceless the gift of acceptance and time spent with an old lady that others had decided was sick.  I will forever be in your debt and you'll forever be in my heart.

​"Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing:  the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not.  And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.  I am impermanence itself in a rapidly changing human form that appears solid.  I fear to see what I am:  an ever-changing energy field.  I don't want to be that.  So good practice is about fear.  Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing.  With all that activity we create a cloud cover to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice.  True practice is not safe; it's anything but safe.  But we don't like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our version of the personal dream.  Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality.  The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal searchlight:  seeing things as they are.  When the personal barrier drops away, why do we have to call it anything?  We just live our lives.  And when we die, we just die.  No problem anywhere."
--Charlotte Joko Beck,  Everyday Zen
 

  In this passing moment
     by Shodo Harada Roshi
In this passing moment karma ripens
and all things come to be.
I vow to choose what is:
If there is cost, I choose to pay.
If there is need, I choose to give.
If there is pain, I choose to feel.
If there is sorrow, I choose to grieve.
When burning -- I choose heat.
When calm -- I choose peace.
When starving -- I choose hunger.
When happy -- I choose joy.
Whom I encounter, I choose to meet.
What I shoulder, I choose to bear.
When it is my death, I choose to die.
Where this takes me, I choose to go.
Being with what is -- I respond to what is.
This life is as real as a dream;
the one who knows it can not be found;
and, truth is not a thing -- Therefore I vow
to choose THIS dharma entrance gate!
May all Buddhas and Wise Ones
help me live this vow.~ Shodo Harada Roshi (1940 -
​

In this passing moment karma ripens
and all things come to be.
I vow to choose what is:
If there is cost, I choose to pay.
If there is need, I choose to give.
If there is pain, I choose to feel.
If there is sorrow, I choose to grieve.
When burning -- I choose heat.
When calm -- I choose peace.
When starving -- I choose hunger.
When happy -- I choose joy.
Whom I encounter, I choose to meet.
What I shoulder, I choose to bear.
When it is my death, I choose to die.
Where this takes me, I choose to go.
Being with what is -- I respond to what is.
This life is as real as a dream;
the one who knows it can not be found;
and, truth is not a thing -- Therefore I vow
to choose THIS dharma entrance gate!
May all Buddhas and Wise Ones
help me live this vow.~

​ Shodo Harada Roshi (1940 -

​https://hollyhock.ca/p/3253/mindfulness-compassion-in-times-of-covid-19-an-online-retreat/

JJeni Couzyn:

A Death In Winter

Beside the exit, seated at a table
is a grey clerk with a ledger.
At his feet is a kind of box --
a trunk perhaps, a hope chest or
a rubbish bin.

Cross-legged in the doorway
my friend sits, watching light
stream in through the opening.
It soaks her in beauty.

She has given back her future.
In character, neatly folded, she placed it
carefully in the box
and the clerk ticked it off.

Now she takes off her feet, like shoes
gently, one beside the other;
she takes her speech and returns it
syllable by syllable
she unpicks it thoughtfully, like knitting
unravels it, one plain, one purl
meaning by meaning;
she gives back her hands --
lays them down in the box with a smile.
There is no regret in her.
She knows their excellence.
And now she gives back continence, choices,
understanding the strange
comings and goings about her.
Everything she returns is fine and cared for.
The clerk ticks it all off in his ledger.

She is hardly human now
she is almost entirely love
she has given back her children
and very little of the personal #is left in her heart.

To the left of the doorway is a linen basket.
A plump girl, laughing, kneels besides it.
She is handing out gifts
to the souls who come trooping
in through the opening like sunlight.

Hands to grip a finger
feet to walk
the first smile
Mama, Papa, I want, I think
all the trappings of the journey.

My friend smiles across at the girl
as if she were a daughter.

The radiance streams in and over her
soon she will take off the last of her body
and step out
into the stillness.
th In Winter

Beside the exit, seated at a table
is a grey clerk with a ledger.
At his feet is a kind of box --
a trunk perhaps, a hope chest or
a rubbish bin.

Cross-legged in the doorway
my friend sits, watching light
stream in through the opening.
It soaks her in beauty.

She has given back her future.
In character, neatly folded, she placed it
carefully in the box
and the clerk ticked it off.

Now she takes off her feet, like shoes
gently, one beside the other;
she takes her speech and returns it
syllable by syllable
she unpicks it thoughtfully, like knitting
unravels it, one plain, one purl
meaning by meaning;
she gives back her hands --
lays them down in the box with a smile.
There is no regret in her.
She knows their excellence.
And now she gives back continence, choices,
understanding the strange
comings and goings about her.
Everything she returns is fine and cared for.
The clerk ticks it all off in his ledger.

She is hardly human now
she is almost entirely love
she has given back her children
and very little of the personal #is left in her heart.

To the left of the doorway is a linen basket.
A plump girl, laughing, kneels besides it.
She is handing out gifts
to the souls who come trooping
in through the opening like sunlight.

Hands to grip a finger
feet to walk
the first smile
Mama, Papa, I want, I think
all the trappings of the journey.

My friend smiles across at the girl
as if she were a daughter.

The radiance streams in and over her
soon she will take off the last of her body
and step out
into the stillness.
 
​