Standing on Pure Lotus Land

Another identity-focused poem + interpretation combo (arbitrarily truncated, edited & annotated – see italics – by yours truly):

Zazen Wasan (Praise of Zazen) by Hakuin (1686-1769)

From the beginning all beings are Buddha (i.e. consciousness).

Like water and ice, without water no ice, outside us no Buddhas (i.e. all is one, one is all).

How near the truth, yet how far seek, like one in water crying “I thirst!” (you are enough).

Like a child of rich birth wandering poor on this earth, we endlessly circle the six worlds (of false identities).

The gateway to freedom is zazen samadhi (sit down in meditation to see the real you).

The pure lotus land is not far away (you cannot but be the real you).

And if we turn inward and prove our True-nature – that True-self is no-self, our own Self is no-self – we go beyond ego and past words.

(when we dis-identify from what we are not, we find the emptiness of awareness, which is the ground of our being, our true, essential “self,” our Original Face; when we dis-identify from the informational mind-dirt, when we go beyond the verbal/word self-definitions, we rediscover our essence, our “buddha-nature;” we are not mind, we are consciousness, not the objects of our awareness, but the awareness itself; the no-self isn’t a nothing, it’s everything).

Our form now being no-form (we aren’t form, we are essence).

This earth where we stand is the pure lotus land, and this very body the body of Buddha (we are the blossom itself, not the 1000s of its informational petals; we are the ground of being, not what grows on it; we are consciousness, not mind),