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Since I came to this T’ien T’ai temple,
How many winters and springs have passed?
The mountains and the waters are unchanged;
The man’s grown older.
How many others will watch those mountains stand?

- Shih-te

Bitter-season pure, dharma masters
illuminate all they nurture deep:
minds settled beyond appearance
and yet devoted to their students,
they wander among leaning rocks,
rest beneath simple thatched roofs.
In the steady vanishing seasons
they know the deceit of possessions,
and looking across time's three regions,
they find only dream.
They embrace the Six Paramitas,
cultivating Way through them,
and blending thought and silence
into a tranquil anchorage,
they cherish the recluse depths
of living the inner pattern.

- Hsieh Ling-yun (385-433)

A world without
The scattering of blossoms,
Without the clouding
Over of the moon, would deprive
Me of my melancholy.

- Saigyo (1118-1190)

There are no mountains or waterfalls here
A cinderblock house, a driveway, a street
My cat's around here somewhere
According to convention this would be
A good time for the owls to talk, but they don't
Well, this is just how it is

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.


Maya Angelou

Into a person,
Absolutely free
From thoughts and emotions,
Even the tiger finds no room
To insert its fierce claws.

- Shinkage-ryu sword school

Carrying vitality and consciousness,
Embracing them as one,
Can you keep them from parting?
Concentrating energy,
Making it supple,
Can you be like an infant?
Purifying hidden perception,
Can you make it flawless?
Loving the people,
Governing the nation,
Can you be uncontrived?

- Tao-te Ching

As the gate of heaven opens and closes,
Can you be impassive?
As understanding reaches everywhere,
Can you be innocent?
Producing and developing,
Producing without possessing,
Doing without presuming,
Growing without domineering:
This is called mysterious power.

- Tao-te Ching

Heaven is calm and clear,
Earth is stable and peaceful.
Beings who lose these
Qualities die,
While those who
Emulate them live.
Calm spaciousness is the
House of spiritual light; Open selflessness is the
Abode of the Way.

- Huai-nan-tzu

How can a being find peace?
By staying patient till the stream clears.
How can a beings life keep its course,
if he will not let it flow?
Those who flow as life flows
know they need no other force:
They feel no wear,
they feel no tear,
They need no mending and no repair.
~ Lao Tzu

Feel the dustiness of this traveler’s life.
You, the Zen master,
I, a lover of wine—
We are brothers,
Way beyond the people of the world.

- Yuan Hung-tao (1568-1610)

Sitting before the silent,
Burning incense
I watch the moss thicken
On the stone bridge.
Don’t ask me why.
I’ve been out of step
With the world since my youth.

- Wonkam Chungji (1226-1292)

How joyful to look upon the awakened
and to keep company with the wise.
Follow then the shining ones,
The wise, the awakened, the loving,
For they know how to work and forebear.
But if you cannot find
Friend or master to go with you,
Travel on alone

- Dhammapada

I spent the morning digging out orchids,
afraid frost wouid soon leave them dead,
passed the night among fringes of cloud,
savoring a moon up beyond all this rock,
chortles telling me birds have settled in,
falling leaves giving away fresh winds.
Sounds weave together in the ear, strange
unearthly echoes all crystalline distance,
though there's no one to share wonders
or the joys in wine's fragrant clarities.
We'll never meet again now, I sit beside
a stream, sun-drying my hair for nothing.

- Hsieh Ling-yun (385-433)

You ask why I perch On a Jade Green Mountain?
I laugh, but say nothing

My heart, free like a peach blossom In the flowing stream going by
In the depths, in another world
Not among people
- Li Po (701-762)