My heart is like the autumn moon
Shining clean and clear in the green pool.
No, that’s not a good comparison.
Tell me how shall I explain.

The birds have vanished into deep skies.
A last cloud drifts away, all idleness.

Inexhaustible, this mountain and I
gaze at each other, it alone remaining.

One minute of zazen,
one inch Buddha.

Like a lightning flash,
thoughts just
come and go.

Look once
into the ground of mind
and nothing else
has ever been.

A fish swims, making the water murky. A bird flies, shedding its feathers.
The ultimate mirror is difficult to escape. The great void is boundless. 
Once you go, you go endlessly.
By virtue of causation, the one who practices completely lives five hundred lifetimes.
Thunder cracks the mountains and storms shake the ocean. The color of purified gold does not change. 

Within differentiation there is oneness.
Within oneness there is differentiation.
Drifting in the human world hundreds and thousands of years, again and again we want to depart but cannot.
In front of the gate just as before, weeds abound. 

Why, it’s but the motion of eyes and brows!
And here I’ve been seeking it far and wide.
Awakened at last, I find the moon
Above the pines, the river surging high.

This field I’ve plowed and sown
has been bought and sold
but it’s always new:
look at the young sprouts.

I wander into the Buddha Hall
tiller and hoe in hand.

Breathing in, out,
forward, back,
living, dying.

Two arrows meet in mid air,
slice and sail on through
into open space.

I turn around.

From long ago
I have been coming along,
never arriving.
Even the old have far to go:
for that is the way with this Way.

I’m just a festering mass,
a beast amongst humans.

For years I minced barefoot,
adopting some “Continental” style.

Now,
monk’s straw sandals on my feet,

I touch my nose.