The migrating bird
leaves no trace behind
and does not need a guide. – Dogen
So this is like, Turfing 3.0. New design, and now you can view it on your mobile devices! Thanks to Morgan for suggesting the wp software. I am playing with backgrounds etc. until I get the feel of it.
Perhaps the most important item on Turfing today is the Trifecta link. Check it out, please!
If you have any feedback on design, looks, or the feel of the new Turfing, let me know, or just drop a comment, they are always appreciated!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Trifecta
The Links
Red Sparowes – We Stood Transfixed…
The Prince And The Beggars
Two Poems, Three Poets
Grimes – Heartbeats (LAUREL HALO Remix)
Art: Thomas Cooper Gotch
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Trifecta
So, I wanted to hip you to a new film project: Trifecta. that Rowan is involved with his friends Adam and Robert. They are putting together 3 different film projects, (each directing one) and working in collaboration on each others projects! Check out the video, and help out if ya can!
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Links
Why I Don’t Dig Buddhism
Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators
Top Five Regrets For The Dying
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Red Sparowes – We Stood Transfixed…
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The Prince And The Beggars
Here are some stories about a Muslim whose name was Ibrahim ibn Adham. Like the man who became the Buddha, he was a prince in a small Kingdom in Persia. Ibrahim was very pious and spent many hours a day at prayer. He said his prayers in a beautiful gem-studded chapel of his palace. One day while praying he heard a terrible noise above him on the roof. It sounded like the clattering of horses’ hooves! Rushing out, he looked up to the roof and, sure enough, there was his palace guard — twenty men on horseback. (In such countries the roofs usually are flat.)
“What in the world are you doing up there?” Ibrahim shouted.
“Your Majesty,” yelled the captain of the guard, “we are searching for our camels that have wandered away.”
“But why, O fools, are you searching camels on the palace roof?” asked the prince. “We are only following the example of Your Majesty, who seeks for God while living in all the luxuries and power of a royal palace,” came the reply.
The prince also had a charitable nature. He arranged a place where wandering beggars and holy men could come and receive free food and drink, on one of the porches of the palace. This facility closed, however, at nightfall and no one was allowed inside the palace after dark.
One day a tall strong man of radiant appearance arrived just at sunset and asked for food. When he had eaten his fill he told the guard that as he had nowhere else to stay he wished to spend the night in the screened porch. The guard told him it was against the rule and asked him to leave at once.
“I demand to see the master of this rest-house and I will not leave until I do,” said the stranger.
“This is not a rest-house, and His Majesty is saying his prayers,” the guard replied. So the argument went on until finally the servant went to the door of his master’s chapel and knocked.
“There is a beggar on the porch, sire, who calls the palace a rest-house and refuses to leave. He insists on speaking to Your Majesty.”
The prince was astonished. “Let me just go and hear this madman,” said he, and went out to the end of the porch.
They met, the prince and the beggar. “You have heard the rule of this place,” said the former, “why have you not left as others do?”
“This is a rest-house,” the wanderer replied. “The night is chill, and I wish to spend it here under Your Majesty’s protection.”
“What do you mean, a ‘rest-house’,” said Ibrahim. “Do you not see that it is a palace?”
“Did you build the palace?”
“Certainly not. I have inherited it.”
“Did your father build it, then?”
“Not even he. His father’s father built it, long ago.”
“And each of these has come and gone, passed through this palace and out of it again?”
“Of course,” said the prince, impatiently.
“And you too will do the same. Yet you say it is not a rest-house!”
The eyes of Ibrahim’s understanding were opened. He brought the wise man into the palace and the two talked long into the night.
When Prince Ibrahim one day looked from his palace window he saw near the brook a beggar dressed in rags, weary and hungry, pulling from his knapsack a chunk of stale bread. The man dipped this in the water, sprinkled some salt on it, and hungrily devoured it. Then he lay down on the hard ground and fell asleep. After some time Ibrahim sent a messenger to ask the man to come and meet him at the palace gate. The beggar, in wonder, stumbled to the gate. The prince asked him if he had eaten to his satisfaction. “Praise Allah, sir, I did.” Then he was asked if he had slept peacefully on the ground. “Indeed, I did, sir, for I have no worries, thanks be to God.”
It is said that Ibrahim, comparing the wanderer’s life with his own, so full of anxiety, thought deeply about his own unhappiness with life. That very night he changed his royal robes for castoff rags and leaving his family and palace, went out to a life of poverty and wandering.
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Two Poems, Three Poets
Hakuin:
Past, present, future: unattainable
Past, present, future: unattainable,
Yet clear as the moteless sky.
Late at night the stool’s cold as iron,
But the moonlit window smells of plum.
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You no sooner attain the great void
You no sooner attain the great void
Than body and mind are lost together.
Heaven and Hell — a straw.
The Buddha-realm, Pandemonium — shambles.
Listen: a nightingale strains her voice, serenading the snow.
Look: a tortoise wearing a sword climbs the lampstand.
Should you desire the great tranquility,
Prepare to sweat white beads.
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Meng Hao-jan:
A Night on the River
Moored in island mist,
as the sun sets, a traveler’s grief arises.
Beyond the great plain, the sky closes on trees.
On this gentle river, the moon arrives.
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Master I’s Chamber in the Ta-yu Temple
I-Kung’s place to practice Ch’an:
a hut in an empty grove.
Outside the door, a single pretty peak.
Before the stair, deep valleys.
Sunset confused in footprints of the rain.
Blue of the void in the shade of the court.
Look, and see the lotus blossom’s purity:
know then that nothing taints this heart.
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Dogen:
Like Tangled Hair
Like tangled hair,
The circular delusion
Of beginning and end,
When straightened out,
A dream no longer.
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True person manifest throughout the ten quarters of the world
The true person is
Not anyone in particular;
But, like the deep blue color
Of the limitless sky,
It is everyone, everywhere in the world.
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Grimes – Heartbeats (LAUREL HALO Remix)
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Because the flowers blooming
In our original home
Are everlasting,
Though springtimes may come and go
Their colors do not fade. – Dogen
