(When Buddhas are truly Buddhas, there is no need for them to perceive they are Buddhas. Yet they are realized, fully confirmed Buddhas--and they go on realizing Buddhahood continuously. Seeing forms and hearing sounds with body and mind as one, they make them intimately their own and fully know them. But it is not like a reflection in a mirror, it is not like the moon on the waves. When they realize one side, the other side is in darkness.)
 
 

As Soon As (That is to say When) When Does Not Appear

Outside, in the garden, a walk is taken
and someone has clothed her feet
with clogs. These just miss the snail
during her --no, their-- morning stroll
with thoughts of future dinner
that will confirm him as guest,
her as host.
 
That is, if the snail
is solid enough ground
for this day's next step.
 
She passes snail, variegated shoots,
blossoms strangled with sleep being reborn,
tossed weeds dying on garden's indefinite
edges.
She doesn't see the sun lean
on the snail's vague immediacy--wave
of virtual motionlessness--
as a crutch. Instead
 
she wonders,
 
will dinner be like this:
carefully chosen varied ingredients
prepared with the love of morning light,
splinters held in the cupped skull
soup bowl of between star darkness?
 
 


 
(To learn the Buddha Way is to learn one's self. To learn one's self is to forget one's self. To forget one's self is to be confirmed by all dharmas. To be confirmed by all dharmas is to cast off one's body and mind and the bodies and minds of others as well. All trace of enlightenment disappears, and this traceless enlightenment continues on without end. The moment you begin seeking the Dharma, you move far from its environs. The moment the Dharma has been rightly transmitted to you, you become the Person of your original part.)
 

Unhatchability of Eye's Eggs
(The contents of her invitation)

 
Come eat.
 
Watch eye eggs awaken,
hatch into sight, lids discarded
like ivory shells revealing
those who fail to grasp
how trace betrays
 
Eat to stop all evil...
 
prey are doomed to betray
not only repetition but also
 
to practice good...
 
those who fail to betray
what they see (as well).
 
to see Sight see.
 
Lift the voice of your lids. Watch
egg's eyes shut. Taste
an egg in hatching
of realization
that learned eyes
can never be heard.
 
 

 

(When a man is in a boat at sea and looks back at the shoreline, it may seem to him as though the shore is moving. In like manner, when a person tries to discern and affirm things with a confused notion of his body and mind, he makes the mistake of thinking his own mind, his own nature, is permanent and unchanging. If he turns back within himself, making all his daily deeds immediately and directly his own, the reason all things have no selfhood becomes clear to him.)
 

Sides of When

 
Miscellaneous soup recipes
tell her suchness
of the you and I things
is the us-ness
of non-being
 
as she remembers him telling her
that coconut soup was his favorite.
 
Non-being?
Look,
here is a recipe for that very appetizer.
 
 Us-ness?
Watch the cult of dawnist-wind leaves
perform their ritual on temple autumn ground
she hears the window say.
 
    Perhaps
she will answer the liquid of ocean
--how much more so soup?--
is the potential dewiness of a leaf.
 
(Which leaf? It's gone.
Buried in the soup stirred
in her peripheral vision.)
 
She extends the page to light,
and deciphers ingredients blurred
to her vision. She knows future wetness,
cupped as it will be in a bowl's defining
emptiness, can only be a beginning
in a context of beginnings.
Slanting it
toward window light she is drenched
by its touch.
Outside,
no one notices the snail's
unattempted announcement
of garden soup discovery.