The Hammock Papers: Look.

29 November 2016

Look.

One short pause between

The leaky road here and

The never-leaking Way there:

If it rains, let it rain!

If it storms, let it storm!

A Crazy Cloud, out in the open,

Blown about madly, as wild as they come!

Who knows where this cloud will go, where the wind will still?

The sun rises from the eastern sea, and shines over the land.

Forests and fields, rocks and weeds - my true companions.

The wild ways of the Crazy Cloud will never change.

People think I'm mad but I don't care:

If I'm a demon here on earth, there is no need to fear the hereafter.

Every day, priests minutely examine the Dharma

And endlessly chant complicated sutras.

Before doing that, though, they should learn

How to read the love letters sent by the wind and rain, the snow and moon.

Monks these days study hard in order to turn

A fine phrase and win fame as talented poets.

At Crazy Cloud's hut there is no such talent, but he serves up the taste of truth

As he boils rice in a wobbly old cauldron.

Bliss and sorrow, love and hate, light and shadow, hot and cold, joy and anger, self and other.

The enjoyment of poetic beauty may well lead to hell.

But look what we find strewn all along our Path:

Plum blossoms and peach flowers!

Ten days in this temple and my mind is reeling!

Between my legs the red thread stretches and stretches.

If you come some other day and ask for me,

Better look in a fish stall, a sake shop, or a brothel.

Returning to the City from the Mountains

Crazy Cloud blown by who knows what wild wind.

In the mountains by day, in the city by night.

I shout katsu and wield the staff when I see fit,

Even Rinzai and Tokusan would be no match for me.

Ikkyu

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL