(This is the complete archive of @kyotoghosts 's Twitter posts in the autumn of 2009. Read up.)



crows rawking like mad time for some wine
old pipe still has opium-smell
nobody in the bathtub but me this autumn evening
old twig pile frog jumps on shtkshh

lamp flickering in the night then it goes out the vast sea of darkness
maple tree on fire no it's autumn
playing my flute to the autumn sky clouds raining on clouds




cool and solitary river
the little boy died of his fever
tasting immensity ah the Han River
starry heavens want you to shatter
looking for stone flowers on the top of the mountain stone buddha meditating with shut eyes
the Taoist sage: utter weakling yet nobody can strike him
strength is the flower of weakness
Polanski, Polanski, Polanski, ah! -- Polanski!


two hours before dawn the shaman was blind drunk/Tiger-spirit danced alone in the rain around the smoking ashes
if you invoke Guru Rinpoche with his mantra/he will definitely appear to you in some form/and you don't even need to believe in him!
your newborn son or daughter a spirit back from the land of the dead amazing!
Belize songbirds
everything is something else
no thoughts no mind buddha as big as eternity
yet the vast emptiness is lifegiving
All the death in the world is Zen
"as cherries blossomed in japan/the next world war began"
it was springtime in outer space
mu-jackass brays/look out for steaming turds


shatter it, empty it, exert yourself to the utmost to rescue every living being! -- thus spake Buddha
All the suffering in the world is Zen
my Zen master is dead/yet people kneel in his tea house every day,/ drinking out of the ugly tea-bowls he made
I don't love myself/and I don't hate anybody:/but I'm crazy for the starry sky/ and a bottle of cold sake
weird that all the time I spent making love didn't actually make any love
Li Po will bring the brimming wine jug/Chuang Tzu will do a wrathful crazy wisdom dance/the tiger-spirit will arrive two hours before dawn
"we suffer because we love and hate -- Buddha taught deep wisdom"
I keep wanting/to cut all my hair off:/I keep seeing/a little mountain hut
"I hate feeling weak" -- thus arises all the extra suffering in the world
crying baby somebody lifts you and cleans up your shit:/complaining old person somebody lifts you and cleans up your shit/-- yes, feel weak!
@jellykish obsessed with getting love but in twenty years you will be obsessed with giving love after that who knows?
truth is the flower of absurdity
mind is the flower of bliss
suffering is the flower of intense desire
earth is the flower of the sea
the sky is the flower of space
Dzogchen is the flower of the Great Perfection which has no root at all
Zen is the flower of Vulture Peak
you are a flower of the fourth dimension
the Dharma is the flower of Buddha's Awakening
words are the flowers of emptiness
kisses are the flowers of night
shattering crack of bamboo sword on kendo helmet
praying before the stone buddha cold wind blasting the mountain summit
letting go of the past thrilling sadness thrilling joy
listening to the birds today's ringing Dharma
shaking stale water out of the canteen a gushing spring
summer climbing the Daibotsu Pass wiping sweat from your eyes
little trattoria with stiff white tablecloths caffe latte so hot it starts tears to your eyes
so dazzling these wildflowers so what if they'll dry and wither
picked more wildflowers to put on the box of ashes

it's the taste of today's crazy rain last year's empty fire
karma is no different from desire
shattering the day to bits cicadas
you little lunatic
a leaf floated down into the canal/I sat on a bench/feeling desolate again --why?
in Amsterdam/taking a walk in the mist/met myself going the other way
feeling up your glamorous coworker at the Christmas party/her loud husband laughing in the next room:/"please stop it now okay?"
through the wet grass calling out for your dog
young and beautiful and hysterical with desire
remembering your mother zipping up your raincoat
looking so lost and grief stricken your old passport photo

"dyin' ain't much of a livin' boy"
once upon a time in Sicily
vast clouds unfurling in blue space
the steamy windows of the caffe as it fills up with shouting Italian voices/clattering cups ringing spoons
tearing the bread apart on your plate
a beaming Roman beauty you look at her with kind eyes
wet umbrellas everywhere running down a stone street with a newspaper over your head
clouds in blue space holding their breath
sun hot on the drowsing cat
pine tree shattering the rain oh desire
a little girl on a squeaking swing windy morning
inexhaustible energy taking shape as everything utterly void and still
"the sixties were great I fucked everything with eyes"
pulling down her panties smashed my Fiat into a road sign ZONA PERICOLOSA
ciao, bella! here catch my hotel room key
dazzling starlets in bikinis/motorboats whomping across the lagoon/drinking absinthes all morning -- hey, Roman
deep in the woodpile a cricket
cricket trying out his saddest murmur -- chir - - - it
leaves flying out of the cold sky oh yes this is a storm
Polanski sitting in a cell/tries to locate his original self/Zen hurts sometimes
one's in a dark sweater she has soft cheeks her mother probably fucked Roman Polanski
two hotel chambermaids smoking on a bench soft musical voices
Venetian lagoon smashing the light to multicolored bits
small leaves wind-rattling across a graveled path the giardini publico
Rimbaud's elbow patches are worn out/Verlaine's weeping/it's five o'clock in eternity
that'll learn you
take that Polanski
walking down to the Tiber boys kicking a ball in the dusk
Adrianna fixing her lipstick in the mirror smiled at me
Li Po brought me a jug of wine and drank most of it/Wang Wei pissed himself and passed out cold/I sat up late playing my flute
slave ships with crisp white sails
passed out in the gutter the full moon
ten cigarettes later you're still a shitface
getting drunk on the sky it's not all about you
in the cafe nothingness a smirking waiter serves you crazy wisdom


one Zen Master used to reply to every dharma-question: "Just be careful."
when a Mu-jackass brays look out for the steaming turds
scowling Daruma came from the West/to wake up Emperor Wu:/"vast empty sky, no good or bad anywhere!"/-- pathetic!
a blue-eyed coyote sits on the bed you wake up talking to the dead
shooting across sky-twilight starlings
before sunrise Roshi left for the mountain/those are his footprints on the frosted grass
shooting across the twilight sky:/starlings
Om Ah Hung Benza Guru Pema Siddhi Hung/say in anywhere/and the Glorious Lotus Born/will fly to you like a rocket
when you're Lotus-Born it's all just a dream/but the rest of us are up to our necks in the shit/please help us, Guru Rinpoche
Padmasambhava is hiding out in Paraguay:/he keeps a private jet parked on his airstrip/and his hobby is breeding vampire bats
so much for Clear Light Yoga/you fucker:/how can you abandon us like this?
I am not fooling you. you are not fooling me.
Mishima spilled out his guts/Kawabata cut his own throat/Tanizaki's work just got dirty as porn:/how I adore Japanese literature



everybody's a buddhist time to get a new job
laughing naked girls turtle waving its legs
shiva's huge morning cock shakti's hot mouth all over it (for @driedshitzen)
sans sake life's pretty much hell
wiping off the sweat let's go sit in the shade
ants crawling out of a hole thoughts of eternity
moon rising: the great peak of the temple thrusts aside stars
buddhist priest playing the shakuhachi for a stray dog
green bamboo hollower than the Void
seeing clearly all the suffering beings/loving life, terrified of death/Amida decided to save the entire universe
surf hissing on the sand:/a pretty girl snaps my picture with her i-phone
no self, no emptiness/next you'll be saying there's no Zen:/have a heart!
the girl's smooth body/trying to kiss it everywhere
running out of the waves/to lie on the sand shivering:/don't worry, this sun will heat you up fast
shattering the blue of noon/drinking the Yalu River dry:/I'll give you the starry Heavens for a pillow/if you can say just one word of Zen
the temple bell's clong/sinking into stones:/speak up, cricket!


crows rawking in the late summer sky
sit down your thoughts infested corpse and I will teach it Zen


sit down your thought-infested corpse and I will instruct it/my teacher would scream with rage if he saw how you're shitting on the Dharma
circle square triangle: the ultimate mystery
if you got rid of everything in your mind right now/would there by any problems left?
poised to dive/snapping cold water from her swimsuit
newly planted bamboo grove/thin green jointed stalks held up by wires/the bluejay approves
oh golden Tathagata-tiger your forest is pure Emptiness
People have forgotten how to die, and they're not so much good at living, either
you'll only flinch if you look at it in the mirror
squeezing cold water out of a washcloth putting it on the cut
laughing like a bird warbles
oh golden Buddha bigger than one hundred billion suns
like springtime
seeing your eyes for the first time
she's long since back from Bardo probably a laughing teenaged girl now
I picked up some of the broken glass and rubbed it on my face
that friend I know who died in a car accident I went to the spot and stood over the tire marks
walking holding a dripping ice cream cone licks his fingers
remembering a hot summer day Rome the hotel bed stripped to its topsheet
shatter it all why not
so if you can't find yourself anywhere where are you
picking the last fat blackberries/my fingers getting bloody
pushing a car-killed squirrel off the road into a ditch with a stick/then placing the stick beside it almost reverently/Namu Amida Butsu
a Zen master said that searching for Reality in your body, mind, emotions, sensations, words, etc. is like searching for the moon in water

God bless you, Figaro
time to play the shakuhachi you always know
waving away sparks the moon's out
the heart in your mouth magic of being little
go to Venice look at the great art what are you waiting for?
how many more summers how many more autumns
late night in the kitchen: feeling gaunt about a thousand years old
crackling pine-fire dry sweet smell
the Tathagata wouldn't kill this fly:/he'd trap it carefully and take it outside:/sun-spark!


the great heart of lovingkindness starts now-here
"everybody loves life, everybody hates death and wants desperately to be happy" -- thus spake the Buddha!
"if it's Void it's just Void, nothing you can do":/no, you can be happy
scheming how to save all the stray dogs and cats in the world/steam rises from the teapot when I lift the lid
the kendo master sinks his thoughts into the Void:/his hands and sword flash out from empty space
last vegetables from the garden/: waking up, pull on a sweater
dried shit flaking off the latrine stick/Buddha wakes up in a cold sweat then relaxes:/Ananda's still kneeling in the doorway

listen!
a lotus/glistening white/ in a shitty dream
the mud buddha arrives:/shutting the temple, using sutrfor latrine paper
the wooden buddha arrives:/rice-planting flutes
the gold buddha is gone/chilly wind slaps at the gate



keeping your mind sky-clear:/look, Geppetto, it's the bright morning star!
if the thought of dying doesn't bother you:/give away all your things/say adios to your friends/write your death poem/and sit in lotus
Schrodinger's cat busted out Pavlov's dog/together they escaped into the 10th dimension (for @jellykish)
Ramana saw his own corpse decaying/Daruma sat staring at a wall for nine years straight:/Buddha said, "Be a lamp to yourselves" and died.
"The north wind, crashing all day in the great pine,/stops short: unbelievable silence. Look at the stars!" (for @driedshitzen)
Yet I've never met a single person who wasn't terrified by the thought of death. Even spirits are leery of it.
If the thought of death doesn't terrify you, there's no need to seek enlightenment.
why won't @driedshitzen shut up? he's giving my ancestors a headache
ducks exploding from the frozen reeds:/crack! crack!/just past dawn/the dog shaking light
bamboo grove creaking/on this moonless night/: breath? no, a spider's web (for @KrisLindbeck)
pine trees making kamikaze attacks on the blue sky:/toast them with a bowl of sake/burn your inka and scatter the ashes on the family altar



"In a village that was often lost in clouds, a young blind girl was learning to play the bamboo flute. Every night she spoke to spirits."
"Once upon a time in China, a boy died and after his body was burned he was reborn as a tiger."
I sat at my desk and turned on the laptop. Ching. The screen brightened. I clicked on a file icon and looked at the first two sentences.
She'd left a slipper on the carpet. I picked it up and put it next to the whisky bottle. Sunlight blazing in. I shut the soft drapes.
I went up the the elevator. Putting my head against the wall. It hurt. I shouldn't have gotten drunk. The elevator buzzed as it rose.
deep as a forest quick as a fire steady as a mountain strong as a river
Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, and Space appearing where?
breathing in the Gate swings, click, breathing out also: you are the Gate
sense-exhausted the spirit wakes
Joriki: cutting the mountains with a wooden sword HAI!
picking a flower the brightness of Dharma is nobody's
life the whole universe is in this body: breathe
spider-web rippling in wind she constructed it overnight



waking up: extraordinary things seem ordinary, ordinary things extraordinary
Buddha you old charlatan if you want there to be anything at all you've got to suffer
inside the darkness it's bright dreaming
doesn't go doesn't come it's the clear brilliance you see at night
praying to Amida the fly
waves in the heart beach day sun-dazzle
windrenched pine shattering the rain -- Shakti RT @mamasanta windswept pine taking the form of Shiva
so light's in your eyes are sounds in your ears?
remembers a hawk turning in flight oh the sky
walking uphill in Assisi dusty mouth dusty eyes
People leave behind traces of themselves when they should not, and do not when they should.
If each time you die is a shock to you you'll never be able to develop clear and penetrating attention.



It's a sickness for form to want to be formlessness, and vice versa.
"Form and emptiness are like the south and north side of a mountain. They're both the mountain."
Mountains are mountains. Water is water. Everything you see and hear is Avalokitesvara.
Spirits can be tormented by many things, but being dead is always right up there near the top of the list.
Lots of dead people thought and sometimes felt just like you.
Today I stepped into the same river twice.
All that you can ever do again is cry.
In the year 2091, a robot will attain Annutara Samyak Sambodhi.
In the future, Zen monasteries will be housed in the same buildings with particle accelerators.
Why do spirits appear? They're bored. You're bored.
Dreaming doesn't exist at the subatomic level.



everybody's a slut sometimes
buddhas getting drunk in a Ginza bar/putting their hands in all the wrong places
all the buddhas crowding into the room/they want to see what you're reading
nothing happened in the end but the beginning
mu-jackasses braying about infinite luminosity/please shut up/I'm trying to dream
getting reborn as a butterfly/getting reborn as a worm/you'll like different things
sitting quietly under the eaves/watching rice-paddies shimmer with rain/ten thousand billion galaxies can't be wrong
Britney Spears sucking cock/in Japan, in the Netherlands/no doubts remain
do dead people really have names?
the gold buddha left/a wooden buddha took His place
burnt seeds don't sprout flowers/everything's still "just like this"
this sky is the same sky and it is not the same/past life is nowhere to be seen
old dog/whimpering in a dream/paw twitches, click
arming themselves with flails:/the hot smell of barley-threshing
little girls jumping in the grass/picking up a wet turtle
dreaming about my old temple:/the bell was so real
ripe pears, delicious/evening sky
"A burst of tears" empties you out --/gasping for breath/nearing thunderclouds
knowing your name, too/will get erased:/shattered gravestones, buzzing grass
A butterfly settled on the grave-marker:/I put my palms together./Fluttering off --
Clouds don't obstruct the mountain peaks:/fish snapping insects in the drizzle
@anyothercity To stop other people from doing wrong, you will have to be in a position to control them, and they will resist.
Being happy is good.
If I say "Hiroshima," it's true, you may begin to suffer. Later, looking at white clouds, you don't think "Hiroshima," you feel fine.


We are in the starry sky.
You can write it down but it doesn't live until it's sung. Pablo Cassals' cello groaning, so deep and clear it knocks all your breath away.
Maybe dying isn't death, because it isn't anything, it has no body and no force, and living is like a piece of music.
Wherever you go there's just Venice in the winter, palazzi shining along the Grand Canal, and it leaves you hurt. Maybe inconsolable.
Nobody had ever loved, nor ever written, anything. It was all a kind of distracted, stupid dream.
It expanded and broke. The aria stopped. I breathed in deeply through my mouth. The cold water was clapping.
They're all dead, I thought. But it was just words. Nobody was dead. The maid's dazzling little voice rose.
I hugged myself, rubbing my arms through the thick dark sweater.
I went down to the lake where the water was slapping glassily. Puffs of white cloud, distant pine-tree thick islands. It was a little cold.
There was a jet cutting a path through the sky high, high up in the dazzling blueness, leaving a trail of white breath.
I saw the maid pass by a window carrying a bundle of sheets. She'd stopped singing, leaving cut roses in my heart.
I sat down by the fountain and looked up at the flashing windows. The sun was starting to go down. Go down in the West.
It sounded like a bird warbling. She was singing in a high, pure voice. It was an Italian opera. I felt very sad.
I went out onto the lawn. I heard the maid singing in one of the upstairs bedrooms.



hard frost:sky freezing inside me lonely without crickets

bamboo forest/stalks clicking in rain: /the sky-buddha's gone to the north star

Mu-jackasses just bray. Useless.




You will have to eat all your words in Bardo:/so make sure they are not too bitter.
On my path I often meet and try to console spirits who deeply regret doing something or not doing something in life. Don't be like them.
To insist on a verbal teaching is ridiculous. "Cut off the way of words and speech in an instant; Reality is right before your eyes."
A true Dharma teacher doesn't insist on the details of the teaching, only on the student realizing for him or herself.
Shatter the mirror of thought by ceasing to see your "self" there.
Why cause endless more aeons of transmigratory suffering by turning other beings away from the Dharma with clever wit and abusive remarks?
I hold up a flower; you smile. This is Perfect. This is just "Thus." Why try to turn it into something one person has and another doesn't?
The salvation of all beings is simply a matter of shattering thought and trusting your own intrinsic mind, which is the substance of Dharma.
Do not be confused. Do not trust any Buddha outside your own mind. Do not set up any mental images at all.
Sometimes malign spirits in the disguise of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Chan Buddhist masters will manifest to confuse you. -Daruma
Vomit out all at once everything ever taught to you by hungry-ghost and tortured spirit teachers.

@driedshitzen Accept whichever of these views is offered to you by a teacher with deep loving kindness-eyes. Forget the rest.
Guatama falls over laughing at the stupid poem:/Mahākāśyapa goes away tearfully, shoulders bowed --/This is the "Zen" of Hell-realms!
Buddhas, demons, suffering people, and lost spirits appear in the same distorting mind-mirror; smash it and they're all gone.
dipping my hands into the rain-water bucket/shattering the moon to bits/everywhere in tonight's sky, the same light
This pure Dharma-body is realized only through non-conceptual meditation that accumulates prajna the way an empty bucket fills with rain.
The stainless Dharma-body devoid or any arising, staying, or cessation cannot be attained by claiming it or arguing about it.
Getting rid of thinking-mind, not clinging to pieces and aspects but resting in the Whole Universe is Liberation.
Nobody was ever a buddha, unless stones and pieces of wood can be buddhas:/seeing this is called "becoming a buddha."
No one exists any where or at any time to get enlightened;/perceiving this is called "getting enlightened."




Upon which Guatama Buddha, just as spontaneously, asked to hear Mahākāśyapa's "enlightenment poem."
@mujaku In tears, Mahākāśyapa prostrated to the Buddha and cried:/Awakened by the Mind Flower!/I stake my whole life on this subtle Dharma!
@mujaku After holding up the flower/The Tathagata glimpsed Mahākāśyapa's mysterious smile./Yet nobody said a word about "Luminous Mind."

"Setting the skeletal boat adrift/I dry the tears with my long unkempt hair./Tonight, the moon is thinking about both my parents."
@driedshitzen "Rain and wind won't touch my hair:/The temple bell stopped mid-bong./Dripping with lightning-bolts, I laugh like a baby."
Thus Mahākāśyapa's enlightenment poem: "The universe smashed into pieces:/Hail Buddha!/Wild ducks float down to sleep in the reeds."
@mujaku Mahākāśyapa's smile was due to the sudden and complete iron-rod sharp shattering of false distinctions between Form and Mind.


picking blackberries/staining your fingers red/wild Tantra
Buddha said nothing exists/but you can still feel it
a snail holding the gate shut/pines drenched in wind/last night I drowned in starryness
stop all your raving mad sick talk about "emptiness"/it's just the Mind Flower itself
nothing is like that/nothing is like anything really
the one who hears/the one who sees/you can't grasp him can you
deep in the heart/everything's perfect/clanking wind chimes
most people I know are dead/I don't hold it against them/wind's cold tonight
Mind this, don't Mind that/it's just the same Mind everywhere
people so old they're like a bundle of sticks/shuffling around in pain/still full of Mind
picked up some water in my hands/freezing cold/moon shining broken in it everywhere
If you sense something, in a sense it is there/And in another sense, not. Right?
Going down to the basement to get laundry/sensing a "spirit"/don't scowl so much, please
@DriedShitZen Nothing exists in Zen/not shit, not the vast blue sky/it's all holy
Playing the flute low-pitched/a few notes together surprise me/Perfect
Bouncing on wind currents/a river snaking across the brown landscape/Seat Belt Sign Is On
Eating a ripe banana/the sky clouded over this morning
Washing my bowl in the stream/ fingers go numb


that is not also, to another perspective, a "function." Thus, the "essence" cannot be grasped apart from the function, in itself. No-self.
Profundity of Zen and esoteric Buddhism: though every phenomenon shows "essence" and "function," you can never find the essence --

The lamp is temporary; it will break, and that's the end of it. Light is not temporary; it goes out only to reappear someplace else.
It seems to me that most of the positive references to "self" in the Dhammapada should be read like this.
Why? Because of the preciousness of light.
When Buddha said "Be a lamp to yourselves" and "Do not rely on anyone else" he was referring to taking care of the vehicle, the lamp.
The lamp is the "refuge" for light. Without it the light could not survive. But the lamp is not the light itself.
In the same way that a lamp is the vehicle for flame and gives light when you need light -- but only if you take care of it.
@mujaku With respect, I believe the Buddha meant that the temporary self is the only possible vehicle for enlightenment.


And it doesn't stain the "seeing" or "hearing" nature anymore than the images projected on a movie screen ever stain or haunt the screen.
Empty of anything but the luminous nature of its magical "appearing" which is really just a phase or mode of utter non-appearing! Aha!
That is, whatever arises is luminous because it's originally just mind appearing to itself, and it's empty because it isn't anything but.
That's where the "emptiness" of the Heart Sutra comes in. No eye, no hand, no mouth, no cock, no Britney Spears.
For one in deep samadhi, there isn't even the possibility of noticing whether Britney Spears is sucking cock or not, even if she's not there
For samadhi, the question of where Britney Spears is when her video image is sucking cock is not even that interesting. It's just funny.
But the real problem is that you're getting drawn away from instantaneous samadhi, the before thoughts state, the "h'ua tou."
You can't have one without having the other, yet once you've had the other, you can't ever get back to the one.
This example shows both intrinsic voidness and luminous original mind-nature.
Two people on different sides of the earth watch the "same" video of Britney Spears sucking cock. Where is Britney Spears?
Intrinsic voidness and luminous Mind are not two.
If you're in the habit of suffering you'll have to stop.
No intellectual tradition can cover this terrain. No religion or yoga has special access to it.
In the "before thoughts" state your mind doesn't fix on or chase after any phenomenon that arises, so it doesn't get trapped or obsessed.
The "before thinking" state is complete in itself. Unquenchable, unkillable, it doesn't require any special talent, nor demand vindication.

"I exist! Here's my story. It all started . . . "
"Gather 'round and hear my fucked up story. All true."
When a person's story disappears, sadly, the person seems to disappear too. "Whatever happened to that guy?"
Nothing has ever appeared anywhere or at any time outside of somebody's mind.
Movies are the Buddhism of our time.
What happened to all that neon-smeared Los Angeles rain falling in Blade Runner? Where did it go?


Like a fire going out in the rain.
Nirvana is where concepts stop.
In "the West," we've had all this completely turned around. The "thing" is real, and its opposite is "nothing."
Especially if the "potential" state was seen (as it likely often was) as the more "realized" state. The state of yogic bliss.
But to Buddha and other people of that time and culture, there was nothing "nihilistic" about phenomena returning to underlying potential.
When Buddhist texts were first translated into Western languages, starting with German, people were depressed by the "nihilism."
of "one" underlying reality.
To the Indians, as to the pre-Socratic Greeks, any instance of "fire" was likely seen as a fleeting aspect or appearance --
Might it be something like the contrast in quantum physics between probability wave-function and the emergence of "particles"?
What was the Buddha trying to get at by comparing Dependent Arising to a fire, and Nirvana to the cessation of a fire?
That is, before the fire is lit, and after it goes out, there is just the potential for fire -- every time lightning strikes.
It seems that to the early Buddhists, the potential state of fire was actually more real, more true, more realized than its actual state.
Buddha in the Pali texts often uses this metaphor: the whole world is on fire.
To shine.
You're like a fire that will try to eat up as much fuel as possible. Why? To burn, that's all.
You know you're never going to be satisfied.
Where does a fire go when it burns out its fuel?
Practicality seems not to have been a concern in the invention of this universe.
If your samadhi wasn't total shit sometimes you'd never know when it was clear.


Then you'll start a cult, and in the end everybody will go crazy and commit mass suicide, or worse yet "get disillusioned by spirituality."
But you'll grow out your beard and become stupid, like Osho, and start changing your name all the time.
True, the sex will be unbelievable, electrifying, like having a psychedelic cattle prod shoved up your ass.
However, just stirring up your kundalini will only accomplish one thing -- it will make you a boring, irritating, Love-fanatic.
Which it will open like a cosmic golden lotus.
Kundalini shakti, at the base of your spine, has only one intent, and that is to rise up to and through the crown of your head.

Lao-Tzu was a "navel" man, as were most Chinese and Japanese Zen masters.
A lot of people in India, including the Buddha, had strong ki in the center of the forehead.
Most people in our culture are stuck in the "heart" or the "mouth." Or both. Feeling too much, they babble a lot.
There's also, of course, your "heart" -- at the center of your chest -- and the throat and mouth region, which is already pretty developed.
Not a good idea to open that up unless you're ready to dispense with this whole human adventure.
Likewise, the spot at the crown of the head is good for completely transcending your "self" and rejoining the infinite.
The center at the base of your spine, where the kundalini rests, has its own dynamic. Nothing to do with you personally.
Using the spot about two inches below your navel, you can develop your ki in a darker, more yin-like way, like a deep iron bell ringing.
Using the spot between the eyebrows, you can develop your ki in a "visionary" way, dream lucid dreams, and so on.
There are basically two centers in your energy body that you can use to develop your prana (ki, chi): navel and center of forehead.


"Decadence" means a loss of energy, a draining of ki strength.
We are living in the third or fourth and most extreme "decadence" of Zen Buddhism. Read Nietzsche to find out what that word means.
The proper way to do Zen meditation is to cultivate the eerie feeling that someone is always ready to cut you down with a naked katana.
Do not trust in any words. Do not trust in yourself being clever. Do not trust your thinking head. Find the letter "A" deep in your hara.


"Mountains, rivers, even the Great Wall cannot obstruct it."
"never perished, never increased, never decreased, never been impure or holy. Never good, bad, come, gone, right, wrong, man, woman . . . "
"Mind, from the beginningless beginning, is not different from that which it is at this very moment. It has never been born nor died . . . "
Consider how he handles his students' astonishment. Everything he is telling them is completely turned around from what they "know."
Such were Bodhidharma's verbal instructions to students at the Shaolin monastery, recorded in the "Hsieh Mai Lun" scrolls.
Do not rely on doctrines, such as the teaching of emptiness, or the Pure Land.
Do not rely on written words or speech.
Do not trust or rely on any Buddha outside your own mind. Where else could Buddha be? Do not set up any mental images at all.
Furthermore, if you go on a pilgrimage, and a Buddha or Bodhisattva appears to you, beware: it could be a demon or evil spirit.
If you dream that you are wandering in darkness, pay close attention to what happens there, because this is a sign that you are stuck.
But do not speak about this to anyone.
If you see a bright light while alone, brighter than lightning, or the moon and stars appearing in your dreams, your mind may be clearing.
Do not show respect to external Buddhas or Bodhisattvas. (Mind is Buddha). Do not rely on chanting, sitting for long periods, bowing, etc.
Please consider what Bodhidharma said about Zen training.

It is just you. But not the calculating, worrying, selfish you. It's the great you.
Hui-Neng, the Sixth Chan Patriarch, stated that ultimately "it" is neither light nor dark. "It" is beyond such terms of contrast.
There is no person who can become enlightened. There is just the enlightenment, which doesn't happen to anyone. It's your true mind.
It's the mysterious "ajikan" -- the original, primordial source.
It's the end of even of grasping at "luminosity" or "purity."
Just as it annihilates space and all phenomena, including thoughts. It's the end of grasping.
It doesn't last over time. It annihilates time.
Enlightenment is not something anyone can give you, or that you can have. The reason for this is that it is timeless.
"Luminous, oh monks, is the mind," said Buddha, according to the Pali sources. Did he mean that the mental aggregate is luminous?
"Consciousness" regarded as an "aggregate" means the conditioned, shaped, discriminating, calculating, me-consciousness.
All the "aggregates" --the five skandhas -- are nothing but the voidness of Mind.
Do not take a "dualist" position that there is the luminous Buddha-nature on the one hand, and the "aggregates" on the other.


enlightenment that comes and goes is not enlightenment
But sort of exciting, in a weird way, right?
Even demons and spirits are just waiting for you to wake them up to it. What a task!
Consider the possibility of realizing in an instant, sans thoughts, that every being has the same clear, shining light-mind as you.
Consider the possibility of an awakening so wonderful that the possibility of having holes in your shirt will no longer bother you.
Consider the possibility of Buddha turning you back toward your true self. The one you lost when you became "selfish."
Consider the link between clear mind and compassionate action in terms of "bodhicitta."
Consider that the clear and luminous mind can take you quite far -- in fact, all the way. Beyond, utterly beyond.
Consider whether your "selfish" approach to life hasn't been highly misguided and "unproductive" of anything but anguish.
Consider that real education might begin with a compassionate person encouraging you to remember who you are.
Consider the current plague of "overeducated," hyper-verbal people, who wouldn't know what to do with an axe and a woodpile.
Consider that strong clear "bodhicitta" may be your only possible refuge from harm by such demons (in human form and otherwise) and spirits.
Unless you develop your luminous "citta" through the right approach to meditation.
Consider that there are in fact many dark, vicious, meddling, malefic beings made of "energy" who can play with you at will --
Consider now that there are "spirits" whose only intention (when they come to you in your dreams, for example) is to drain you.
If you become a Buddha you can "liberate" such beings. Otherwise, you will meet and suffer from them.
Consider now that there are "demonic" human beings who live their lives solely in order to torment and engulf and reduce others to despair.
"It's neither the banner nor the wind moving -- it's your minds."
"Two stalks crooked, three stalks straight."
"Go scrub out your tea bowl with snow."
That's the Light, naked.
"The kitchen, the dining-hall, the meditation hall, the mountain gate."
If you ask them to find their Light, all they can see "in there" is a dark passageway festooned with spiderwebs.
This intrinsic luminosity gets all wrapped up and nearly obliterated in most people.
"Luminous is the mind." Said Buddha.
Want to spend a few more kalpas "suffering?"
Hasn't this dream gone on long enough?
"All is Mind only."
Mind not instantaneously recognizing Itself leads to "matter, space, time, energy, and information."


Britney Spears is Dead a novel

Mine too, of course.
You wouldn't even need to tell anybody about it. This could be your secret.
Suppose you turned all that energy to achieving strong meditative concentration on Reality -- you could be a Zen master in no time.
The power to hold an image of self where there is really nothing but formlessness -- a body walking up a mountain -- is truly amazing.
Yet although the "self" doesn't exist where you are locating it, in a certain mysterious sense it does exist, as the Locating.
Feeling misery because you can't achieve something you want, or because you lost something you had -- that's the bad side of it.
You should admire how powerful your mind is, to still be able to hold onto a four year old child as "yourself." "The same person."
What energy, what passion, what attachment, what power that "holding" requires, to discriminate an ongoing "person" out of formlessness.
When you take a walk up a mountain, and get to the top, and realize you are still holding onto the "self" that started up the mountain --
Holding onto the notion, idea, or conception of a "self" takes great energy.

"Master, please teach me Perfect Enlightenment." -"Did you shit today?" "Yes." -"Go wipe your ass then."
Each Zen sect thinks the others are wrong. Shingon priests think Zen is for children.
There are different gong'ans for each of the 84,000 states of enlightenment. Each one sweeps away all the others.
Two people, one in the Netherlands, one in Japan, are watching a video of Britney Spears sucking cock. Where is Britney Spears?
We mystically become what we behold, which is why watching TV isn't always such a good idea.
Do you hear the rain falling from the gutters? I asked you this, and you didn't before, but now suddenly you do. What changed?
When you hit a gong, a person here hears it, a person there hears it -- where is the sound "really"?
Where has your mind come by this concept "Labor Day?" Is it real or unreal? Is it absolute, or relative?
Is it really Labor Day or are you just saying it is?
Will Bhutathata will or will Bhutathata won't?
Do Dharmadhatu do or do Dharmadhatu don't?
Is it a hand, or is it a fist? Don't answer, thirty blows from my stick. Do answer, thirty blows from my stick.
"Buddhas with Sun Faces, Buddhas with Moon Faces."
Are you the Inconceivable Field of Potential, or are you a particular being with eyes and a brain reading this?
It's like the smiling face of a gold Buddha. Is it gold, or is it Buddha?
The "extended" states of being are all really just baseless hallucinations. The non-extended state is neither true nor false.
"I hated being in Bardo, so I plunged back into this stinking manure pile. Too bad too sad!"
Who's beholding your universe today? Who got up this morning thinking sadly they had to go along with the "rules"?
"Life" and "death" are just words we give to what really isn't one or two or anything.
Sometimes a particular "universe" gets stuck in certain spontaneously generated "rules" and goes on running like a busted toilet.
It makes everything up as It goes along.
The Inconceivable Field of Potentiality gives birth to every universe there is ever was or will be.
"I am a child of earth and the starry sky/but heaven's my real home." - Orphic tablet
you died/thought oh shit I'm dead/then got born again/how many times you going to repeat the same fucking mistake?
spirits walking around crying/it's all "me me me"/why not just sink into the sky
luminous mind/isn't born, doesn't die:/get some!
thinking about my father's scowl/he's dead/but he seems pretty real to me right now
flowers tangled in grass/cicada rasping/the summer everybody died at last
rain making ghost shapes: mountains disappearing/spirits forgetting they died
waking up knowing/you'll die/how about some pancakes?
moon rising: splendid sky tonight/too bad everybody died
Everybody who ever achieved enlightenment -- died. They're all dead. Ironic, no?
Did you really think you'd get away unscathed?
A spaceship crashed into the earth and everybody died. You too, without a doubt.
The moon crashed into the earth and everybody died. You especially.
on the battlefield:/lances, bodies,/lonely crickets
Didn't you hear?
There was a big battle near here and everybody died. Including you.


All at once gnosis.
Keep mind in its unborn state, free of clutching at objects or thoughts or emotions, and you will behold your original face.
The teaching of Sudden Illumination is primordial Buddhism. All other teachings are derived from this.
"The Lamp is lit."
"With no dwelling place, the mind in its unborn state attains supreme realization. Buddha enters the hall. This is most auspicious."
"Can you reach the place where mind stops, thoughts cease to function as self, and the world of objects is revealed as void?"
"The Buddha taught two realizations: 1) the identity of form and void; 2) the true, eternal reality beyond all concepts, all opposites."

"You desire life. You feel horror at death. You believe with utter conviction that you are a soul, a person, a body, an ego."
The priest said, "Young man, you are suffering as a ghost, because you have not ceased to attach yourself to objects, to life and death."
He sat.
Had even divined, instantly, the state of his emotions. Wracked by sadness, despair, loneliness, disgust.
And now this humble wandering beggar-monk had seen him. Instantly.
The samurai was awe-struck. He had never been glimpsed. He, who had observed the world from beyond the world for over twenty years.
He said to the darkness beyond his little fire, "I perceive that you are suffering. Please sit down and listen."
Nobody has ever "seen" the samurai, but on his first night sleeping in the ruined temple, the Zen monk -- a Fuke sect priest -- did.
"Those who strive in this way attain the state of no-birth, the end of strife, the samadhi of universality."
"Strive on how? What should I do?" "Let things happen without making any response; keep your mind from dwelling on anything whatsoever."
"Strive on! Strive on! Sentient beings must save themselves; Buddhas cannot do it for them." -Hui Ha.

This was, of course, a reference to the Nirvana Sutra.
His alms box, which he wore around his neck, bore the legend: "Without Existence, Without Extinction."
This Zen monk had walked all over the country, begging and playing his flute.
The bamboo flute still had the knotty base attached, where roots had held it into the earth.
He sought out a Zen priest to answer these questions. The priest was a komuso in a basket hat, playing a flute made from a bamboo stalk.
Were the impurities what made it burn so bright, so lingeringly?
Was it all just desire?
So was it all a painful dream? Why did emptiness have to take such shapes? Why did it have to see, hear, touch, taste, smell?
It was the last cricket left alive of that late autumn dusk, and that very night there would be frost.
When a cricket chirped, it sent a thrill of sadness through him.
This was almost like being just the clear shining of Mind itself. A little lonely and remote and cold, though.
He couldn't see himself in mirrors, or water.
When he walked in the grass, he didn't leave any footprints.
Did he enjoy being partly insubstantial? Able to walk through walls and such?
Did he feel that, qua ghost, he had a superior because once-removed vantage point on life, and so was loathe to give it up?
Was the samurai in my story becoming "attached" to being a ghost?
Who could blame you if you "forgot" that your essence was the clear ringing of void?
So used to being nowhere at no-time, suddenly "here" and "now."
"Amazed, utterly amazed to be here."
Stunned wonderment.
The essence of the physical world is wonderment.

Because his mind is not located anywhere, it is capable of being "everything at once."
Like a Zen swordsman, his mind doesn't stop anywhere. No matter how many the opponents, he strikes and goes on to the next.
Buddha looks upon everything as upon a passing cloud. Nowhere does his vision become "fixed." He sees everything drifting.
Maybe, before he could be liberated, he had to live long enough to see every living person die.
Maybe that was why he had to become a ghost. A spirit wandering in the ruins of old temples.
Though he'd killed often with his sword, the samurai had a distaste for death. He couldn't bear to think about it.
Why? Because somehow the image of a perfect sand-castle has taken hold in his mind's eye. One so strong the tide can't take it.
It's like a child building sand castles at the beach. As soon as the tide destroys one, he starts on another.
Though in the end the "body" is just a creation of this mind.
The body serves the deep Alaya-mind, does its will, senses and experiences what it believes it must sense and experience.
mounting a new horse in the blink of an eye, after being knocked off of a previous one in the dust of battle.
He began to see how his formless consciousness -- the Alaya, or eighth consciousness -- had leapt "into" a new body, like a horseman
Everything arises from causes and conditions, and the samurai's growing insight was no different.
They were not really "his" lifetimes, but they had caused who he thought and felt he was now in the "present."
Gradually, the samurai began to remember his previous lifetimes.
Innumerable Mind-realms run on Mind the way software runs on a computer hard drive.
The original Buddha is the Buddha of "no-thought and no-mind." Many Buddhas arise from this buddha, all illusory.
Waking up to it is usually accompanied by a great shout of laughter.
Buddhas upon buddhas -- as many as clouds in a sky -- have seen through it and awakened.
It all rises from no-root.
Even the so-called "third attention" is subject to karma.
The "physical" side of infinity is the side where you are "reborn" again and again and you suffer.

The spontaneous perfection of wisdom. Nothing to do, nothing to cultivate. Nothing to trouble you. Nothing ever to be reborn.
The ringing of emptiness.
Clear.
In the end, was it even "mind" or was it just "knowing" without any "thing" to be known anywhere? Vast, silent, brilliant, deep.
Was it ever like a mirror at all? Did anything ever appear in it? Was there ever even the illusion of dust? Deep mysteriousness.
When all the karmic "seeds" are burnt up, the Alaya isn't even a mirror. Where could dust settle?

Then we walked slowly down the path toward O-Kyoto, playing a slow melody on his flute as he went.
He chanted NAMU AMIDA BUTSU.
The Fuke priest gazed at these dark footprints in the frosted grass, until they began to fade in the rising sun. He put his palms together.
Heading away from the temple and up the mountain where nobody lived.
That dawn's hoar- frost showed the samurai's footprints.
The samurai began to cut pine branches with his sword. Pine needles, twigs, and branches showered down on him as he cut.
The last cricket gave out a last unbearable chirp.
The Fuke Zen monk began snoring quietly. The samurai left the temple. He stood outside it in a grove of pines. He tasted the dew.
He drew out his sword and looked at it. It hadn't rusted. The shining edge was still sharp. It could cut through almost anything.
It all felt so real. It was real. Yet it had melted away. His wife was dead. His daughters too. He was holding onto a handful of rainwater.
He remembered holding his wife. He remembered his daughters' shining faces. The cricket cage he'd once made for them.
The samurai sat there for a long time. He didn't feel wretched anymore, nor even sad. He listened to the crickets. Calm.
When the Fuke priest finished speaking, he put out his fire with sand, put his sandals under his head, and went to sleep holding his flute.
THIS.
No delusions in it, no struggle, no effort, no coming or going, no production or extinction.
It's like the image of Buddha gradually fading from a rock.
It has no likeness. It cannot be contained in words.
The birth-less state is also deathless. But it is "lifeless," too; it doesn't struggle in the dust.
They are born senselessly, and die without having divined a single truth about life.
Most people live and die as if drunk.
He'd awakened to the Buddha nature one night in the mountains, listening to another Zen monk play the flute hauntingly.
The Six Dusts really have no place to settle, since the mind isn't a mirror.
He didn't say that this radiance was the same as the phenomenal world, and didn't say it wasn't either.
When the monk spoke of the Tathagata's inherent radiant state, he was speaking from his experience, sitting deep into the nights in samadhi.
Emptiness is just another word for Ultimate Reality.
Words are the flowers of emptiness.
Ever?
Nothing is outside Mind. What do you imagine could be outside it?
Outside Mind there are no dharmas.
Presumably, these other "persons" have minds like yours. But where and what is your mind?
by objects. Then there are those strangest of objects, other subjects who can but be perceived "objectively" as bodies, actions, words.
Everything is structured in this dream, this floating world, to protect the illusion that a "subject" confronts and is troubled or gratified
Mu.
This primordial Buddha is Mind in its natural, originally clear and thought-liberated state.
The Great Illumination Buddha received his Dharma teaching from the Buddha of No-Mind and No-Thought.
"Mind is Buddha, Buddha is Mind."
Attaining the Way without any thought-obstructions.
The Precious Flower of the Dharma is just "thus."
In Shingon we say that in this very life you can become a Buddha in mind, speech, and body.
Walk on the wind but do not ask others to admire your skill.
Those who say "I am a Zen Master" are falling into Avici (Lightless) Hell.
Those who say "I have attained the Zen Mind" are introducing dissension.
Yugen.
The moon shone in clustering clouds.
"How does the original purity give rise to mountains, rivers, the great earth?"
By morning, the samurai's Mind Flower had awakened. He saw not only the utter emptiness of all phenomena, but attained Reality.
All that night the Fuke Zen monk gave the samurai Mind Dharma teaching as I have described it.
You've got to solve your problems in this life. Be happy. Don't take any grief with you to the other world.
Taking refuge in this body -- bad idea?
Who knew that you were once a spirit?
All at once ghosts.


YOH
At the instant when that cold water hits your head, exactly who are you? Where did all your clever thoughts go?
This isn't even the gateway to yogic knowledge yet, it's just a good way to begin to "wake up" from your dreaming mind.
If you start each day by dousing yourself with a bucketful of cold water, your thinking will sharpen, but you'll take it less seriously.
How certain "Buddhists" manage to make this whole wild adventure boring is beyond me. But they pull it off with such aplomb.
It's amusing to read books explaining what Buddha taught that completely miss the mark.
Yogic knowledge isn't logic: it's like "holding an amala fruit in the palm of your hand," or "meeting your father in the marketplace."
People who shuffle words and concepts for a living haven't a clue about real knowledge.
Answer, the Zen stick hits you thirty blows. Don't answer, it hits you thirty blows.
Existence/Non-existence, Full/Empty, Noumenon/Phenomena. What's wrong with these conceptual pairs?
Isn't that amazing?
Who dreams it? You. Right now. Who are you?
Do not cling to phenomena as being "empty"; do not cling to a noumenon as "non-empty." Or vice versa. Phenomena and noumenon: both a dream.
What if, only upon His awakening, did the Buddha understand the true amazement of this phenomenal world? All is only Mind.
What if He actually awoke to the greatness, the true wonder, of impermanence?
Some say Buddha awoke FROM the phenomenal; but what if he really woke IN and TO the phenomenal?

It's Light.
Yet this "nobody" isn't "nothing."
Nobody has ever been there for you to defend, promote, or kill.
Buddha said you can just forget about either exalting or killing your "self" -- you can't change what doesn't come or go.
Yet the Buddha-yoga has too often been mistaken for nihilism.
People who are attracted to Buddhism tend to be "right on the edge" in terms of the assaults of despair.
It's interesting to consider the relationship between Buddhism and despair.
It's said that Fuke priests were banned from the pleasure quarters of Edo, because the sound of the flute encouraged "love-suicides."
Demons and spirits, especially, are attracted to the bamboo flute, so you have to be strong as a mountain, yet fluid as a sea.
Shakuhachi playing is said to be "the study of the self."
Chasing impermanent phenomena as if you could grasp it -- that's the eternal slapstick.
Cowards hide from themselves. Mind-Realization in the Zen sense leaves no place for "you" to hide from you. Astringent, to be sure.
So you could say that the essence of being human is "mystical."
Human beings have a special ability to become what they behold.
This is an art that some have tried to describe using terms such as yugen, sabi, wabi, and shibui.
To be able to "enjoy" the objects of the senses clearly, as Bright Awareness, without having one's Heart shattered by grasping desire.
Nothing is "apart" from it. The deadening influence of mere concepts has no place to enter here.
Zen's "Nothingness" isn't the negation or absence of shapes, colors, sounds, and so on. It's a brilliant, deep ringing.
The brilliant clarity of all the kendo master's motions. Rising out of emptiness, pointing back to stillness, yet never just "nothing."
The circulation of Ki is of the utmost importance: otherwise the Yoga becomes dull, dead, a stagnant rather than vibrating calm.
Inner Yoga achieves a special sense of Emptiness: clear open interpenetration of all, overflowing with life-energy.

This is wisdom that appears spontaneously, once you begin to practice inner yoga. It lights your way.
It's said that Bodhisattvas need a special kind of wisdom to avoid falling into either the abyss of nihilism or the Ego-delusion.
The Lankavatara explains that the skandhas themselves do not "exist" -- so, neither body nor discriminating mind are objectively real.
However, a magic that plunges you into aeons of wandering in samsara, fitful and miserable, is not necessarily one to be admired.
It rises from no-root, and what it does is a kind of magic.
But the discriminating mind doesn't have any signs, marks, or characteristics either -- it neither comes nor goes.
This discriminating mind is driven by the compulsion to try to attach, identify skandhas as the Self.
Signs, marks, characteristics -- all are falsely imagined as objectively real, external, true, by a discriminating mind.
No inherent signs, marks, or characteristics to any being or thing -- this is the highest view of Sunyata (Emptiness).

And offers little or no support for the view of "scientific materialism" which claims that there are definitely objective things and beings.
So far as I can determine without being a particularly deep mathematician, quantum physics tends to support the shamanistic view.
"Everything is contained in the One" and "the One is experienced within everything."
Some Mahayana sutras refer to Buddhas being able to create or evoke infinite Buddha realms on a single hair or in a pore of their skin.
It's like blocking the view of Mt. Fuji with the tip of your finger.
Waking up to this, one begins to perceive that the "Unseen" -- which is eclipsed by the "Seen" -- is quite boundless in depth and extent.
Yet it appears often in distorted form in dreams, like the image of the moon appearing instantaneously in a sewer.
All shamanistic traditions recognize that behind and before the "Seen" world there is an "Unseen" world. Most people are blind to it.
Or a hollow piece of bamboo thrumming with water.
As for literary writing, it's not so unlike being a spirit-channel.
Faith is not necessary; just quickness and daring.
Do not trust any of your "hard" or "soft" conceptual categories. They are delusion itself. Trust only what you discover in deep meditation.


It's clear that the only way for anything to be objective would be for it to be nothing at all.
Make it appear to my non-mind devoid of any "perspective." Show me ALL the sides of a globe at once. Not far away, but not close either.
I say if there are any objective things or beings, then produce one -- show it to me without it ever appearing in my mind.


And it is no different than My body.
Your body is actually made of light.
Such is the practical way to "become one with the universe."
Inhaling, envision your ki going in a radiant lightning to all the universe. Exhaling, envision it sinking infinitely calm into your navel.
A story told to help children get to sleep.
Whereas the real world is just a myth.
It has always been thus.
It is just "thus."
Heaven begins here.
Even though they say heaven is ten million light years away, may it settle like refreshing dew in your heart.
When you sleep may you talk easily with the dead and learn what they might have to teach you.
May your lion's roar shake all the universes. Those made of form, those without form, and those plunged in bitter desire.
Manjusri's sword.
May your sword never rust. I speak, of course, of the sword of prajna.
May horrible spirits disperse at your glance.
May the Buddha favor you with everlasting Nirvana.
Shall I write these lines? Is anybody reading them? I salute and bless you.
Untouched and unborn, shining everywhere at once -- that was clear wisdom. Buddha-self. The body of empty bliss.
To let go of his grief. To merge with the pure untrammeled light.
At the moment he shut his eyes for the last time, and breathed out a great wracking breath, he was unable to let go.
He barely even remembered his life as a samurai, yet he was still suffering from it.
It couldn't let go of this floating world that is like a dream, an illusion, a hallucination, moonlight shapes appearing on water.
The samurai's ghost knew it haunted ruined temples by moonlight because of karmic seeds -- severe debts from the previous life.
You only live twice, or so it seems: one life for yourself, and one for your dreams.
So is all this a dream?
Pregnant voidness.
All the karmic seeds burnt up in the fire of supramundane insight. What insight? The insight into utter voidness.
When Buddha purified his consciousness, nothing was left in it -- all the karmic seeds burnt up. No seeds, no sprouts. No rebirth.
Consciousness -- the fifth skhanda -- contains the karmic seeds that will be transmitted to another mind and body. Another "life."
"Cool and appeased am I," he said, entering the shade of Nirvana.
Nothing could attach or fix or distort his mind anymore, therefore it is said that in an instant he rose higher than the gods.
When the Buddha attained supramundane wisdom in enlightenment, all obstacles fell away.
Was it ever finished?
Will it ever be pure?
Do you love me? Does it hurt? Is it over?