this morning: metta
“happy, healthy, safe, at peace”
then: a weed whacker
/ / /
27 July 2021
Greensboro Bend VT
Category: Buddhism
stained glass, warm sunlight
there’s nobody here but me
or not even me
/ / /
22 July 2021
Greensboro VT
Buddha beside the highway
US 17 South
near Remington, Virginia
suddenly he’s there
in a glass box as large as a house
looking out serenely over the highway
spotlights above & below
who put him there?
who pays the electric bill?
who knew there’d be a Buddhist
in a van on this of all nights
needing a little reassurance
on the highway?
/ / /
6 July 2021
Greensboro VT
(recalling something I saw early in my van life)
Leave a Commentvespers
the house is quiet
a chickadee sings nearby
cars pass on the road below
somewhere close the dog naps
yet again my attention is drawn
toward the great question
at the heart of all people
the question that cannot be answered
I was, I wasn’t, I am, I’m not, I will be, I won’t be
I shot twenty-four arrows this afternoon
one hit the small pink target on the hay bale
the rest disappeared into the mist
I have a post office box & a driver’s license
am I real now?
/ / /
2 June 2021
Greensboro Bend VT
star stuff
I honestly don’t know how you did it
not the sitting under the tree bit
that I can more or less understand
it was all the stuff before that
leaving home behind
starving yourself
attacking your own body
all for a chance at true vision
who does that?
at that point the tree must have
seemed like a relief
even though you were starving
a little shade
maybe some support for your back
and then the gift of rice from the young woman
I think I’ve got that part right
by the time the dawn star rose
feeling one with everything
was a natural result
“I’ve reduced myself
to the barest essentials,
to the star stuff of which
we’re all composed”
I made up that quote but still
/ / /
23 April 2021
State College PA
for Siddartha Gautama
the Buddha
for Kodo Sawaki
we never met
we couldn’t have
we’d have disagreed about the war
but agreed about most other things
to be fair, even with a time machine
my Japanese these days
is at an elementary school level
you would have to dumb things down
but I’d enjoy having tea
just sitting there
maybe with a ballgame on
not giving in to group stupidity
until our team scores
/ / /
18 April 2021
State College PA
redwoods
as high as a football field is long
unlike the field they have no goal
a perfect example of practice
///
10 February 2021
Lady Bird Johnson Grove
Humboldt County, CA
crisp new year morning:
I sit zazen beside the
Little Cahaba
/ / /
3 January 2021
Birmingham, AL
warm December day;
a puff of white ash
as I seal the incense jar
/ / /
Jason Crane
11 December 2020
State College PA
the dharma according to Norman
4:14 a.m.
he jumps on my ribs as
I sleep on my side
I get up to pee, then
lie on my back
he settles on my chest
5:30 a.m.
this time he meows &
gently bumps my nose
we get up, trying not to wake Owen
I put on shorts & a t-shirt
beside the kitchen table, then
feed Norman
6:10 a.m.
three bells ring
I bow as I finish zazen
turn to find him sleeping
on the recliner behind me
he yowls softly as I scratch his tummy
/ / /
Jason Crane
5 August 2020
Tucson, AZ
Prayer
Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva,
I’m putting you in this poem
to sound more like Allen Ginsberg.
Kannon Bodhisattva,
I just cleaned the toilet
then looked at myself in the mirror.
Jizo Bodhisattva,
protector of travelers & children,
I am a wandering boy putting distance
between himself & his past.
I worry less about the
ten thousand things
than I used to,
but let’s not kid ourselves.
/ / /
Jason Crane
30 May 2020
Tucson, AZ
The still small voice
(for Fr. Edgar Holden)
A lotus tattoo & a statue of the Buddha;
I turn halfway to look down the road behind me.
Flinching from the name of God like a slapped child,
I yearn for the gentle mysticism of Merton,
for a life among flagstones & evensong.
There are burrs on my clothing & scratches on my skin
from running through fields to evade my pursuers.
At night I hear the still small voice:
“How’re you going to make your way in the world
when you weren’t cut out for working?”
Twenty years ago I took a monk to a quiet spot
in the Sonoran Desert, left him there with his brothers
to bathe in the sunset & silence. I drove back to town
wondering whether I should have stayed there with them.
/ / /
Jason Crane
2 April 2020
Tucson, AZ
Note: The two lines in quotation marks are from Warren Zevon’s song “The French Inhaler.”
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I came across this book at Bookmans in Tucson during our apartment-hunting trip a couple weeks ago. I’d never heard of the book or of Soshin O’Halloran, but I’m an admirer of books about the lives of Buddhist monastics and other practitioners. Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind is a collection of diary entries and letters published after O’Halloran’s death in a car accident at the age of 27. She was on a tour of Asia following three years as a Buddhist nun in Japan. It’s a lovely book; honest and forthright and brimming with zeal for her newfound Buddhist practice. At times the focus on kensho (englightenment) was a little much for me, but that’s because the flavor of Buddhism I practice doesn’t emphasize that aspect of Zen to the extent that Soshin’s did. It’s a worthwhile book, made bittersweet in the knowledge that she died just weeks after receiving transmission and being given permission to teach.
Petals
“that which would kill you /
bursts into flowers”
— Jessica Smith
Soshin immortalized
an iris on the page.
She herself gone
at twenty-seven.
You & I seek
the same permanence;
faces turned toward the sun
till a breeze carries us away.
/ / /
Jason Crane
19 February 2020
State College PA
I Got Me Babe
Curled up before the fake fire,
wrapped up in a book about
the Great War
(wars not make one great),
I am myself.
I’ve spent minutes & hours & days
& years peering intently into
the 6 or so inches inside my skull.
It’s all in there, or so I’ve read.
Some days I think I can see me.
I see my face in my mind’s eye
& it looks just like me.
I run my fingertips over
the denim of my jeans
& feel like I’m supposed to feel.
Other days I sit at a metal desk
with fake wood on top,
entering data & answering phones
& helping things get from here to there.
Well, I say “I” but it isn’t me.
Whale Dave says you can be yourself
at the 7-Eleven. Or at the Pentagon.
Or in a shed on the Cape. Hmmm. Maybe.
I haven’t tried any of those spots yet,
but I’ve tried 40 or so different towns,
an equal number of jobs, and it’s only
occasionally, just every once in a while,
that I’m myself. Like on a Sunday afternoon
or a Wednesday morning.
Times like that.
My radio plays “I Got You Babe”
one morning, like the guy in the movie.
I reach over to shut it off but I can’t find it.
I open my eyes to see my bed
floating through space.
/ / /
Jason Crane
25 November 2019
State College PA