Skip to content →

Category: Buddhism

POEM: Proof Of Life

Proof Of Life

The condensation on the windows is proof of life
for passersby who might try to see past the curtain
or the blacked-out covers into the interior
of my not-exactly-a-home on wheels.
I’m sitting upright, my bottom half in a sleeping bag,
my top half shrouded in a wool blanket,
meditating because it seems like the right thing to do.
There’s an insistent bird in the leafless tree
outside the rear window of the van, its song
one I would have been able to name just a few years ago.
That knowledge, like so much I used to contain,
has passed through the bone safe of my skull
into the poorly designed container of the world.
In more than twenty years of meditation
I have rarely quieted the dancing monkey
who jumps from one sparking synapse to the next
          with a shrill laugh.
I keep at it because I don’t have a control group,
so no comparison can be made.
A text from my sister: “Peace and stability are just ahead.”
She is not, as far as I know, clairvoyant,
but I’d rather believe her than lend credence to myself.
The bell dings and I use the remote starter
to turn on the van I’m sitting in.
It’s easier than crawling up front.
Soon the heat will kick in and I’ll do the crossword
and the bird will keep singing or else it won’t.

/ / /

20 April 2022
Pittsfield MA

(NaPoWriMo Day 20)

Leave a Comment

haiku: 27 July 2021

this morning: metta
“happy, healthy, safe, at peace”
then: a weed whacker

/ / /

27 July 2021
Greensboro Bend VT

Leave a Comment

haiku: 22 July 2021

stained glass, warm sunlight
there’s nobody here but me
or not even me

/ / /

22 July 2021
Greensboro VT

Leave a Comment

POEM: Buddha beside the highway

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 Comment

POEM: vespers

vespers

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

Leave a Comment

POEM: star stuff

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

Leave a Comment

POEM: for Kodo Sawaki

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

Leave a Comment

POEM: redwoods

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

Leave a Comment

haiku: 11 December 2020

warm December day;
a puff of white ash
as I seal the incense jar

/ / /

Jason Crane
11 December 2020
State College PA

One Comment

POEM: the dharma according to Norman

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

One Comment

POEM: Prayer

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

Leave a Comment

POEM: The still small voice

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.”

Leave a Comment

BOOK REVIEW: Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind by Maura Soshin O’Halloran

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.

Leave a Comment

POEM: Petals

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

One Comment