Robert Aitken Roshi

Using the Self  (1981)

In the Ts'ai-ken t'an, a seventeenth-century Chinese book of brief essays and fables, we find this passage:

The wind blows through the bamboo grove, and the trunks clatter together. When it has passed, the grove is silent once more. Geese crossing the sky are reflected in a cold, deep pool. When they are gone, no trace remains. For the sage, when something comes, it is reflected in the mind. When it goes, the mind returns to the void.

We can test our practice with these metaphors. "What is it that does not die down in our mind?" Ask yourself that. It will probably turn out to be something that centers on yourself.

-oOo-

If the bomb goes up at last

I vow with all beings

To relinquish even the Earth

To the unborn there all along

From, The Morning Star, by Robert Aitken. Pages 179, 228