The Hammock Papers: Reveal.

10 November 2019

Reveal.

33

Day after day I let things go
why worry about tomorrow today
the four afflictions are hard to predict
wealth and honor don't last
lakeside villas are swallowed by vines
streamside trails disappear into weeds
such things are easy for all to see
but no one is willing to look

34

A white-haired monk afflicted with age
living under thatch year after year
I've exhausted my life on simple passions
my movements all spring from the sacred mind
when birds don't come the mountain is quiet
ten thousand pines keep it dark green
from the kalpa of nothingness it's clear
a miraculous light still shines.

35

What can you say about profit and fame
to a solitary untroubled mountain monk
weeds of delusion don't grow in the mind
where flowers of wisdom bloom
bamboo shoots and fiddleheads blanket the slopes
dust seldom falls on moss-covered ground
I was over thirty when I first arrived
how many sunsets have turned my windows red

36

I was a Zen monk who didn't know Zen
so I chose the woods for the years I had left
a patched robe over my body
braided bamboo around my waist
mountain shade and stream light explain the Patriarch's meaning
flower smiles and bird songs reveal the hidden key
sometimes I sit on flat- topped rocks
cloudfree afternoons once a month

Stonehouse

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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