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Articles by Sangha Writers

Haiku from a Yangon Temple

Joan Shigemoto

Monsoon in Burma.

Soft feet on teak floors.

Thunderous rain on tin roof.

The silence begins.


A Buddhist nun walks.

Pink and saffron robes.

Shaved head and tinted glasses.

Billows past and burps.


The fan cuts the air.

Tiny hairs stand up.

Can it be bliss or the breeze?

Move away from fan!


Right foot.  Shifting.  Bending.  Lifting.  Placing.

Gone.

Left foot. Shifting.  Bending.  Lifting.  Placing.

Gone.

Right foot.  Shifting.  Bending.  Lifting.  Placing.

Gone.

Left foot.  Shifting.  Bending.  Lifting.  Placing.

Gone.

Each step a perfect moment.

Within it all things in the universe.

Aligned just so.

Each step a perfect moment.

Gone.  Gone.  Gone.

It is raining inside.


An intention to shift.

Lasting a nanosecond.

I catch it!

Do not move.  Sit.  Watch.

It grows.

Takes shape.

Lodges in the heart center.

Squeezes.

Feels like desire.

It grows larger.

Pulsates.  Heavy in my heart.

Feels like longing.

Moves like lightning to the eyes.

Pushes out tears.

Suffering.


No longer my hips.

No longer my back.

Red hot glowing lava.

No longer my pain.


A Heian princess

Her eyes cast downward.

In step with a whale’s heartbeat.

Is walking nowhere.


Deconstructing body.

Deconstructing mind.

Into its natures.  Into qualities.

How complex the workings!

How exquisite the life force!

Self-propelled.

Non-self.


Eerily floating

High to pristine air.

White rainbow on mountain top.

Awestruck!  Samadhi!

Categories
Articles by Sangha Writers

Anatta

Joan Shigemoto

Sometimes I want to be a frozen river and hide all my secrets below the ice.  Other times I want the ice to melt.  There have been many times that I’ve felt I hadn’t been heard or seen, as though the person stood on the riverbank and saw only the surface waters of me and didn’t bother to look closer. 

They didn’t know that the frozen river merely looked solid and unchanging but under the ice its waters were constantly flowing and changing.  I know that now; that the body is not a solid unity. It is an entire inner universe of parts—impersonal moving parts–brought together temporarily through a coalescing of conditions.

The Buddha said that there is no eternal ego or personality that survives death.  He also said that the death of this body is not the end of existence.  This is not a contradiction.  We are not separate and solid and unchanging entities.  It only looks that way.  It’s an illusion.  We are actually continuously changing processes of energy, connected to a larger fabric, and that process of change will continue after the death of this particular mind/body.