Daily writing prompt
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?
A Buddha / Bodhisattva (if there’s one about these days.) Why? To feel how his (or her) subjective experience compares to my own.
PROMPT: For a Day
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Tag Archives: Buddha
“The great road has no gate” by Tiāntóng Rújìng [w/ Audio]
The great road has no gate.
It leaps out from the heads of all of you.
The sky has no road.
It enters into my nostrils.
In this way we meet as Gautama's bandits,
or Linji's troublemakers. Ha!
Great houses tumble down and spring wind swirls.
Astonished, apricot blossoms fly and scatter -- red.
Translated by Mel Weitsman and Kazuaki Tanahashi; printed in: Essential Zen. 1994. HarperSanFrancisco, p. 136.
Note: While Rujing was Chinese he was teacher to the prominent Japanese Zen Teacher, Dōgen Zenji, the latter published this and other poems, hence the dual categorization of it as Chinese and Japanese Literature.
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DAILY PHOTO: Scenes from Xieng Khuan [Buddha Park]
DAILY PHOTO: Great Buddha Land, Fo Guang Shan
Worldly Concerns [Kyōka]
Buddha's lap,
a pigeon lands:
a monk shoos
the bird away,
but Buddha didn't mind.
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Gold [Free Verse]
I wonder how the Buddha
would feel about always being
depicted in Gold?
If the desire that he warned
about had color, surely
it would be Gold.
Nobody has ever murdered
over teal or mauve or cornflower
(heated words with
contractors notwithstanding)
but Gold's body-count is staggering.
Helen's puny thousand ships have
been multiplied over by orders
of magnitude for the cause of Gold.
I think the Buddha, looking at his
reflection in one of those well-
polished Gold statues would say,
"Did I teach you nothing?"
Tiger Riding for Beginners 