Silly Mountain - Selected Poems

Purify Your Mind:
Your True Nature is deep, like still, clear water in a lake.
If you allow the bottom to be stirred by love and hate,
Waves of passion will arise.
What was clear will become murky.
With your vision obstructed, you will not notice
How your troubles are increasing.
If you look with desire upon people or things,
You throw mud into the clear water.
If you allow yourself to become another's desire.
You are like oil poured on passion's fire.
When the clamoring ego sinks to silence,
Burning hells will turn to ice.
Let your ego slip gently towards a muted death.
When the ego's eyes are closed, in vain does harm appear.
This death does not come easy.
Be on guard against old habits
That, haunting, come to quicken it.
Be steadfast and endure.
Alertness brings awareness and awareness is a light that in a
Searing flash obliterates all traces of the ghost.
Let your True Nature shine forth in perfect clarity.
Rest easy in the pure, serene stillness of the One.
Alone, you are a sovereign.
Yourself, a precious kingdom.
Reign with peace and harmony!
What external force can possibly invade?

Life and death, day and night;
Water flows and flowers fall.
Only today, I know that
My nose points downward!

In an instant of thought, this chaotic mind is put to rest.
Internally and externally, the sense faculties and objects
Became empty and clear.
Overturning the body—emptiness is now shattered.
The myriad forms and appearances arise and extinguish
[in their own accord].

From a clear sky the bright moon shimmers
On the stilled sea and snow draped shore.
In that holy light I cannot find the water's edge.

I've watched smoke spiral into the void of space.
In that bright mirror, I've seen a myriad things.
But last night a dragon gulped the shining moon
and in the blackness, I saw what I had missed.

Birth and Death. Day and Night.
Running water, stagnant pool.
Bud and fading flower.
Can I find the point at which they change
From one into the other?
Can my nostrils turn upwards?

When the mind keeps tumbling
How can vision be anything but blurred?
Stop the mind even for a moment
And all becomes transparently clear!
The moving mind is polishing mud bricks.
In stillness find the mirror!