Practice charity without holding in mind any conceptions about charity, for charity after all is just a word.
I was an old time bhikku in modern clothes, wandering the world (usually the immense triangular arc of New York to Mexico City to San Francisco) in order to turn the wheel of the True Meaning, or Dharma, and gain merit for myself as a future Buddha (Awakener) and as a future Hero in Paradise.
I’d huddle and meditate on the warmth, the actual warmth of God, to obviate the cold; then I’d jump up and flap my arms and legs and sing.
I was ornamenting this world with my sincerity.
That’s because they want them to realize mud is better than words, boy.
Climbing up cold Mountain path, cold Mountain path goes on and on, long gorge, choked with scree and boulders, wide creek and mist-blurred grass, moss is slippery though there’s been no rain, pine sings but there’s no wind, who can leap the world‘s ties and sit with me among white clouds?
Jagged scarps always snowed in, woods in the dark ravens spitting mist, grass is still sprouting at the end of June, leaves begin to fall in early August, and here am I high as a junkey.
It’s only through form that we can realize emptiness.
My karma was to be born in America, where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially freedom.
Besides all the background he has, an oriental scholarship, pound, taking peyote and seeing visions, his mountain climbing and bhikkuing, wow, Japhy Ryder is a great new hero of American culture.
“Big steamy clouds going by in the dark up there, it makes me realize we live on an actual planet.“ “Close your eyes and you’ll see more than that.“
If it wasn’t for your eyes, you wouldn’t see me.
Your Buddhism has made you mean Ray and makes you even afraid to take your clothes off for a simple healthy orgy.
You know old John Muir used to go up to those mountains where we’re going with nothing but his old army coat and a paper bag full of dried bread and he slept in his coat, then just soaked the old bread and water when he wanted to eat, and he roamed around like that for months before tramping back to the city.
The Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstasy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization.
Nobody thinks of crap anymore or realizes that their origin is shit and civet and scum of the sea. They spend all day washing their hands with creamy soaps. They secretly wanna eat in the bathroom.
It was way below freezing by now, and the stars were icicles of mockery.
By God it’s a haiku in itself.
It’s all the same old void.
And suddenly I realized this (in spite of my swollen foot veins) would do me a lot of good and get me away from drinking and maybe make me appreciate perhaps a whole new way of living.
The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream.
This is the way I like it, when you get going, there’s just no need to talk, as if we were animals and just communicated by silent telepathy.
You just can’t fall when you get into the rhythm of the dance.
Ray when you’re up here, you’re not sitting in a Berkeley tea room. This is the beginning and the end of the world right here. Look at all those patient Buddhas looking at us saying nothing.
I felt like telling Japhy everything I thought but I knew it didn’t matter and moreover he knew it anyway and silence is the golden Mountain.
The air itself was enough to get your drunk ass drunk.
You don’t realize it’s a privilege to practice giving presents to others.
“When you get to the top of the mountain, keep climbing.“ The saying made my hair stand on end; it had been such cute poetry sitting on Alvah’ straw mats. Now it was enough to make my heart pound in my heart, bleed for being born at all.
It’s impossible to fall off mountains you fool.
Whether you can fall off a mountain or not, I don’t know, but I had learned that you can’t.
A little weariness’ll change a lot of things.
The plum is ripe.
And anchovies will turn to dust!
I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution, thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of them Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happened to appear in their heads for no reason.
Mind is the maker, for no reason at all, for all this creation, created to fall.
Quit meditating and quit thinking about koans, as Ray says, and instead learn how to go to sleep and wake up.
You can’t live in this world but there’s nowhere else to go.
Don’t be a sucker all your life, dummy up, ya dope.
I intended to pray, too, as my only activity, pray for all living creatures; I saw it was the only decent activity left in the world.
With my dried foods, all packed tight and my bedroom and kitchen on my head, no trouble in the world.
Fun isn’t everything. You’ve got some responsibilities sometimes, you know.
I vowed to take his advice because he was Buddha.
Still magic America.
At dawn a little bird blessed me.
After all, a homeless man has a reason to cry, everything in the world is pointed against him.
Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, then sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.
Where would I find a quiet Grove to meditate, to live in forever?
One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.
What a horror it would have been if the world was real, because if the world was real, it would be immortal.
Let him become a fool, that he may become wise.
I’m gonna die! Because there was nothing else to do in the cold loneliness of this harsh in hospitable earth, and instantly the tender Bliss of enlightenment was like milk in my eyelids, and I was warm.
Then I’d run these words through my mind to train myself: “I am emptiness, I am not different from emptiness, neither is emptiness different from me; indeed, emptiness is me.“
There’d be a puddle of water with a star shining in it, I’d spit in the puddle, the star would be obliterated, I’d say “that star is real?“
Raindrops are ecstasy, raindrops are not different from ecstasy, neither is ecstasy different from raindrops, yeah, ecstasy is raindrops, rain on, oh cloud!
“Nirvana is the moving paw.“ I’d say, seeing the first thing I saw, as I opened my eyes from meditation, that being Bob’s paw moving in the grass as he dreamed.
What does it mean that I am in this endless universe, thinking that I am a man sitting under the stars on the terrace of the Earth, but actually empty and awake throughout the emptiness and awakedness of everything?
Like the ants that have nothing to do but dig all day, I have nothing to do but do what I want and be kind and remain nevertheless, un influenced by imaginary judgments and pray for the light.
This was my first and last “miracle” because I was afraid of getting too interested in this and becoming vain.
Don’t let the blues make you bad.
It was the evil city and I had my virtuous desert waiting for me.
I practice do-nothing.
I liked the fact that he had started out as a physicist at the university of Chicago, then gone from that to philosophy, and finally now to philosophy’s dreadful murderer, Buddha.
I was really sincerely keeping lust out of my mind by main force and gritting of my teeth. And the best way was to keep my eyes closed.
I even got down on my knees and talked to the ants.
I am the Buddha known as the quitter.
The sky is blue because you wanna know why the sky is blue.
“Compassion is the guide star,” said Buddha. “Don’t dispute with the authorities or with women. Bag. Be humble.“
Who were all these strange ghosts rooted to the silly little adventure of earth with me?
It was going to be a great day, we were back in our element: trails.
Think what a great world revolution will take place when East meets West finally, and it’ll be guys like us that can start the thing.
I’ll sing at the top of my voice for the first time in my life.
Trails are like that: you’re floating along in a Shakespearean Arden paradise and expect to see nymphs and flute boys, then suddenly you’re struggling in a hot broiling son of hell and dust and nettles and poison oak… Just like life.
May you use the diamondcutter of mercy.
He wanted to get to that other shore and get onto his business. His business was the Dharma.
I wished the whole world was dead serious about food instead of silly rockets and machines and explosives using everybody’s food money to blow their heads off anyway.
Yeah, those who were good stay in heaven, they’ve been in heaven from the beginning.
Suddenly, I felt so free. I began to walk on the wrong side of the road and sticking out my thumb from that side, hiking, like a Chinese saint to nowhere for no reason, going to my mountain to rejoice.
Poor little angel world! I suddenly didn’t care anymore, I’d walk all the way.
There are more horses’ asses than horses in this world.
400 more miles north.
Adoration to emptiness of the divine Buddha bead.
It was miles and miles of unbelievable mountains grooking on all horizons in the wild, broken clouds, Mount Olympus and Mount Baker, a giant orange sash in the gloom over the Pacificward skies that led I knew toward the Hokkaido Siberian desolations of the world.
The further north I hitched the bigger the mountains got till I finally began to feel afraid.
As I looked up the clouds assumed, as I assumed, faces of hermits.
Everything was everlastingly, loose and responsive, it was all everywhere beyond the truth, beyond emptyspace blue. “The mountains are mighty patient, Buddha-man“ I said out loud and took a drink.
And it was all mine, not another human pair of eyes in the world we’re looking at this immense cycloramic universe of matter.
The little flowers grew everywhere around the rocks, and no one had asked them to grow, or me to grow.
I paced in the bright silver stillness with pink horizons in the west, and all the insects ceased in honor of the moon.
Let the mind beware, thatthough the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.
One night in a meditation vision Avalokitrsvara the Hearer and Answerer of Prayer said to me “You are empowered to remind people that they are utterly free.”
Are we fallen angels who didn’t want to believe that nothing is nothing and so we’re born to lose our loved ones and dear friends, one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?
I realized, “there is no answer.“ I didn’t know anything anymore, I didn’t care, and it didn’t matter, and suddenly I felt really free.
I went outside and suddenly my shadow was ringed by the rainbow as I walked on the hilltop, a lovely-haloed mystery making me want to pray. “O Ray, the career of your life is like a raindrop in the illimitable ocean, which is eternal awakenerhood. Why worry ever anymore?
Whenever I heard thunder in the mountains, it was like the iron of my mother’s love. “Thunder and snow, how shall we go!”
I called Han Shan in the mountains: there was no answer. I called Han Shan in the morning fog: silence, it said. I called: Dipankara instructed me by saying nothing. Mists blew by, I closed my eyes, the stove did the talking. “Woo!”
Sixty sunsets had I seen revolve on that perpendicular hill. The vision of the freedom of eternity was mine forever.
Go away, thieves of the mind!
Desolation, desolation, I owe so much to desolation.
Down the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said “God, I love you” and looked up to the sky and really meant it. “I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other.

Blog