Clinging to Samsara with a Vengeance²
Letting go a Presence for an Expectation³
So long as you are conscious of Space &
Time, Zen keeps respectable Distance from
You: your holiday is Ill-Spent, your sleep is
Disturbed – and your whole Life is a Failure⁴
If there is but a Hairsbreadth Deviation from the
Way – it is like the gap between Heaven & Earth⁵
Contriving, you are Defeated – Grasping you Lose⁶
We find Consolations, we find Numbings, we learn
Skillful ways to Delude ourselves, but the Essential
Thing: the Path of Paths – that we do not find⁷
Renounce thy Seeking – confess it Feigned⁸
You can Outdistance that which runs After
You but not that which is runs Inside you⁹
We Seek throughout the World for what
Is the Closest of all things to ourselves
And look into every heart but our own
For what’s hidden in no other breast¹⁰
¹ Aeschylus tr. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Prometheus Bound
² Maggie Nelson, Bluets 126
³ Emily Dickinson, Renunciation
⁴ D.T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism
⁵ Dogen tr. the Soto Zen Text Project, Instructions for Zazen
⁶ Lao Tzu tr. Charles Muller, Tao Te Ching 64
⁷ Hermann Hesse tr. Joachim Neugroschel, Siddhartha
⁸ John Milton, Samson Agonistes
⁹ Rwandan proverb
¹⁰ Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ethan Brand