Stacks and stacks
of wooden plaques:
Prayers on front,
Art on the back.
Each a wish
and a dream?
More an expression,
or so it seems.
Whatever prayer
may be writ,
There’s always
something
more to it.
A need to show
one’s unique soul:
To tell the world
that one is whole.
A life reduced
to a shingle:
Multitudes,
to a single.
Among other creatures this is what I was.
Abilities depend on the realm;
realm also depends on abilities.
At birth I forgot completely by which path
I came.
I don't know, these years, which school
of monk I am.
Translation by Kazuaki Tanahashi and David Schneider in Essential Zen. 1994. HarperSanFrancisco.
They say that a seven-headed Naga lives inside and has protected Laos from a Siamese invasion. (But, I did not see said Naga, and can give no testament.)
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 