Absolute Silence

Koan, 2nd try: How do you get out of a stone grave which is locked from the outside?

Version 1—What to do when you are in a stone grave and the key is on the outside.

Koan: Bring me the peel of orange you ate yesterday.

Koan: Bring me the peel of orange you ate yesterday.

When the world was created #3

When the World was Created #2

When the world was created...

Feed the Hungry Ghost

River #2

River Koan

Ol' Monk

Sibling 2

 

Siblings

Vimalakirti 10'x10'

Show Me an Immovable Tree in an Heavy Storm

How do you become one with a sailboat?

What is the Proper Way to Display the Flag?

How's the Practice?

No Imagination

After being married to my imagination for 3/4+ of a century, I'm having trouble not doing that. When I try to become one with the sounds of the world, I have no trouble imagining horrific and pleasurable sounds (the sirens) from the past present and future. But what about dropping the stories and just being with the sounds themselves in this moment?

Buzzing, Rain on Roof, Wife's TV, Phone Ringing, More Buzzing, Clipboard Hitting Table, Coffee Mug Making Noise As Lifted Out From Holder

[With] Each with these I drop self and hear sound.

Wash Your Bowl

The Sound of the World 2

What came together today was shikantaza (just sitting), buddha fields, and the world. All are just this... whatever is right here right now (as the cliché goes). Sound is sound, but it is also any phenomenon that creates a sensation [IMHO]. The five-clouded world is on top of my ear. It is exploding my ear drum. Someday it might be so quiet that I could hear a pin drop [which I've never heard [yet].

Become 1 with the Sound of the World 1

Opps. 6 fingers. Earth on 5 GIANT cloudy day. Buddha Dharma Sangha (3 treasures).

They told us in school [with a straight face] what was the world. It wasn't where I road my bike [in the alley]. I heard sirens and saw Patty the One-arm who had a difficult birth. She reminded us how privaledged we all were. I can still see her every day walking down the street...always alone, with one arm dangling. [Next life I'll buy her a milkshake at Walgreens.]

My first intensive was at a Vietnamese monastery. I asked if you can be in the present thinking about past. A monk took an hour to answer me. He said yes, you could.

Wash

I am the bell. It was distant until I heard it & then I stepped into the bell [gingerly] and got showered with the sound and the vibration of the bell jiggled jiggling me thru & thru [actually more times than the sands of the Ganges]. Soon there was a dharma talk and the words didn't stop [hearing the peal of the hammer before, during, and after] but permeated through the pores of skin making & shaking all my cells as the talk rained over me. I didn't listen in the same way that the fish don't know they are in water until they aren't.

The Virtue of Irrationality

Damn! All day long I was thinking about the virtue of irrationality and then I got squelched by all the wise bodhisattvas in the Vimalakirti Sutra reasoning so brillianty describing non-duality and I thought they were so awesome using such rational thought to describe non-duality and I was convinced I was all wrong and that Buddhism is really all rational and then I [realized I] was not so far off when Manjusri [mon not man] said there is no use for syllables, sounds or ideas. Finally [I found] a comrade [or 2] in my quest for irrationality. —Kim Mosley 9/8/25

Become One with the Sound of a Distant Temple Bell

I was misconstruing “embodied” to mean taking something inside oneself. So I put my nocelf [sic] inside a classic 8734 model Acme kasket [sic]. Then I was really isolated from the sound of the distant temple bell. So I created a spirit to rise out of the casket to become one with the sound. God is looking on. She is not thrilled with this strategy. It is good that I'm smoking a pipe in the casket becuase then the spirit could come from the smoke. First thing I bought when I went to college was a pipe and tobacco. I had just turned 17 and I was going to be grown up.

Bad

I tried so hard to B Good I was bad. So then I Decided to be bad & that didn't work either. So then I just became myself and that worked much better. Why didn't anyone tell me it would be so much easier to just stop trying so darn hard? [My student of 50 years ago said, “because you didn't listen.”] [I'm balancing two MTnesses. Maybe juggling? One is impermanence and the other is no essence. And of course they are 1.]

2 People

When can 2 people really agree about anything? Maybe when they are both fully realized [that's crazy... though there is one dharma, it would still be seen from different vantage points and not appear to be the same as we see in the Vimalakirti sutra where each of the bodhisattvas see non-dualism from a different perspective.] Why? Because not knowing is the ultimate realization. [not knowing is most intimate—maybe they'd at least agree that they don't know.]

Mortals

Mortals yearn for boundaries. [Are there any boundaries when you open your hand?] It makes us feel safe like how we wrap a distressed babe in a tight blanket. But what really gets done wrapped up? If liberation is anything it is floating away on a blanket. [I wish I would have said, "...it is floating home on a blanket to our original self."]

Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form

Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form

1) When we grab the steering tightly our knuckles turn light pink & we stress out really bad and we are forgetting about how beautiful the world is and we are breathing shallowly (if that was a word).

2) When we open the hand [of thought] and feel the weightlessness of life we breath deeply and smile. It is laughable how simple and beautiful it all is. Embrace it [all} with your heart.

3) But the truth tells we need to hold on for dear live and we also open our hand [of thought] and feel the bird as it flies away effortlessly.*

*–"Eternity" by William Blake

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the wingéd life destroy

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity's sun rise.