Five-Storied Pagoda 1

“Take out a five-storied pagoda from a teapot.”

Jesus said, “With God all things are possible,” when speaking of entering the kingdom of heaven. The zen teacher Norman Fischer is a great champion of imagination. Yet I was stuck with this simple act. Again, I was trying so hard to “figure it out.”

A Stone Grave 2

“How do you get out of a stone grave which is locked from the outside?”

We speak of nirvana and samsara as both being part of life, and each being a necessary ingredient for enlightenment. What do I do when I'm in an intolerable situation? My difficulty was that I wasn't being honest.

A Stone Grave 1

“How do you get out of a stone grave which is locked on the outside?”

At first it seemed like a situation I would probably never encounter—and then realizing now, in retrospect, it is my life, being in this body and world that I have so little power over. Though I can think of death as inevitable... I could flip that and consider life—really tasting life—as a possibility.

Peel of Orange 2

“Bring me the peel of orange you ate yesterday.”

What can we really deliver? What can I bring today?

Peel of Orange 1

“Bring me the peel of orange you ate yesterday.”

I seem to be feeling around for my pillow in the dark...and not finding it. Where am I, in yesterday or in today?

When the World was Created 3

“When the world was created, what was god (the creator) like?”

The second I refer to “I,” a messy duality is born. Maybe I should adopt a pronoun like “they.” Sometimes with these koans I feel like screaming, “Stop messing with me!”

When the World was Created 2

“When the world was created, what was god (the creator) like?”

It makes sense that the head is so big in this drawing because I was so full of my head. Why didn't I see that I was simply being born, one moment ago?

When the World was Created 1

“When the world was created, what was god (the creator) like?”

I should have sympathy for those parts of my brain that are activated by such questions. Why haven't they learned to simply ask the body? So I guess I'm blaming them a little, like I might blame a kid who raises his hand in class to answer a question and who always misses the point.

A Hungry Ghost

“Save a Hungry Ghost”

Yesterday I thought about how the fulfillment of a desire doesn't end craving. Maybe it does for the first few bites, but then we start worrying about how much the ice cream cost, or whether it will make us fatter, or whether it will give us cavities. So we can't even enjoy the ice cream. Or we might, and then instantly start craving something else. Hunger isn't ended by feeding. Suffering is caused by craving, but is ended by other means than eating (i.e., the Eightfold Path).

River 2

“Stop the Fighting Across the River.”

This is a great lesson on what I can do. And hopefully, if I stop fighting, there will be a little less war.

River 1

“Stop the Fighting Across the River”

I'm surprised how agitated I appear in the drawing. Now it is almost six months after I drew this, and I see myself as the one with the peace [sic] pipe and the man sleeping on the beach as the one I'd like to be. I tried to represent the fighting as a bunch of twisted branches in a fire. I wish I could stop the fighting. And I wonder whether the fighting is really occurring.

Ol' Monk

“Without using your hands, make this old priest get up.”

I was on the phone with a grammar school and high school classmate earlier today. I asked him if he saw himself as an old person, being almost 80. He kept saying, “That's a really good question.” I said, ”Growing up, we'd call someone who was almost 80 old." “Yes,” he replied.

Thinking of these koans as tricky puzzles is where I go wrong. Better to be naive and uncomplicated.

Siblings 2

“The girl over there, is she the elder or the younger sister? If the student is a woman: That guy over there, is he the younger or older brother?”

Gradually I've been learning that there really is no “over there.” Photographers say that the subject of a photograph is the photographer. Perhaps the subject of a koan is the reader.

 

Siblings 1

“The girl over there, is she the elder or the younger sister? If the student is a woman: That guy over there, is he the younger or older brother?”

This suggested a little suspicion (paranoia?) in me when I jumped to the conclusion that maybe someone was trying to fool me, like the kid who sold me a two-headed nickel, only to discover it had been soldered together. Koans are another lesson to exhibit curiosity rather than jumping to conclusions.

Sailboat

”How do you become one with a sailboat?”

Hsin Hsin Ming: “...in this ‘not two’ nothing is separate, and nothing in the world is excluded.” In the storm, one feels part of the boat as it rocks violently from side to side.

Vimalakirti 10'x10'

Show Me an Immovable Tree in an Heavy Storm

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.

Buddha Fields

Contemplation on Depth in Practice Reading

I love the description of Buddha fields in tonight’s reading, of each of us as the cultivator and cultivated, each as teacher and facilitator to the other.

I love the vision of Buddha fields that this reading holds, as both internal and external, as both specific to one and at the same time expansive & indistinguishably interconnected with all buddha fields.

And how this reading is, as our practice is, a poetic reminder of the interwovenness of all things, all moments, all activity, be they our thoughts and actions or those happening around us. And a further reminder of how the teachings, although limited by mere words, weave into our bodies, minds, and emotions, and soften our limited notions, much like a basket weaver softens grapevine and reshapes each part of the vine into a new creation with each part intersecting, overlapping, intertwined, and indiscernible as separate from all other parts.

I so love how the teachings and our practice re-form us, much like the grapevine is reshaped, softening and inter-weaving us with the lives of others to co-create a life of less suffering for ourselves, for each other, for all.

—Nelda Adamson

++++++++++

"So it is, Ānanda! It is as you say, Ānanda! There are buddhafields that accomplish the buddha-work by means of bodhisattvas; those that do so by means of lights; those that do so by means of the tree of enlightenment; those that do so by means of the physical beauty and the marks of the Tathāgata; those that do so by means of religious robes; those that do so by means of food; those that do so by means of water; those that do so by means of gardens; those that do so by means of palaces; those that do so by means of mansions; those that do so by means of magical incarnations; those that do so by means of empty space; and those that do so by means of lights in the sky. Why is it so, Ānanda? Because by these various means, living beings become disciplined. Similarly, Ānanda, there are buddhafields that accomplish the buddha-work by means of teaching living beings words, definitions, and analogies, such as ‘dreams,’ ‘images,’ the ‘reflection of the moon in water,’ ‘echoes,’ ‘illusions,’ and ‘mirages’; and those that accomplish the buddha-work by making words understandable. Also, Ānanda, there are utterly pure buddhafields that accomplish the buddha-work for living beings without speech, by silence, inexpressibility, and unteachability. Ānanda, among all the activities, enjoyments, and practices of the buddhas, there are none that do not accomplish the buddha-work, because all discipline living beings. Finally, Ānanda, the buddhas accomplish the buddha-work by means of the four Māras and all the eighty-four thousand types of passion that afflict living beings."

Not Seen

Mañjuśrī declared, “Householder, it is as you say. Who comes, ultimately comes not. Who goes, ultimately goes not. Why? Coming is not really known in coming, and going is not really known in going. What is seen is not to be seen again, ultimately.”

There is no fixed self. Coming and going are fabrications… stories… perspectives. Each moment arises and then disappears like a shooting star.