Kill Everything In You / D.S.Z. Roshi

When you’ve killed everything in you
that might interfere with the Clear Sky (the Dark Expanse)
light and darkness are just the same nothing.

How could anything be different?
It’s clearly the same.
How could anything be the same?
It’s clearly different.

How could anyone suffer?
Who exists to have a mind
or to become a Buddha?
Cure yourself of sick thinking,
and the un-ease of life is gone.
Gone beyond, utterly beyond,
bo-ji so wa-ka!

Hearing all day long you hear nothing.
Seeing all day long you see nothing.
Laughing you don’t laugh.
Crying you don’t cry.

You’re liberated, and can live as you want
and you don’t understand the idea of “bondage”
or getting “caught up in something.”

You’re always a golden buddha.
You’re always a temple in calm starlight.
A demon playing the bamboo flute,
a samurai hiding in the long grass —
whatever! you’re always just THAT.

If the darkness comes cut it down.
If the brightness comes cut it away.
If people come don’t answer them.
If the Clear Sky comes shatter it completely.
If the Void ever comes, slash it with your sword.

Destroy all thinking, let it go
and both objects and subjects disappear.
What’s left can’t even be imagined,
so how do you expect me to give it to you?

There isn’t any one or any body left anywhere
to experience this,
to pretend or deny IT alone “exists”
or to ever say a single word about anything.

 

— D.S.Z. Roshi

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