When You Have a Question, Ask Your Dog

Poems Made Together in Retreat, Led by Zen Master Jeong Ji

Exquisite Corpse

A game in which each participant takes turns writing or drawing on a sheet of paper, folding it to conceal their contribution, and then passing it to the next player for a further contribution. The game gained popularity in artistic circles during the 1920s when it was adopted as a technique by artists of the Surrealist movement to generate collaborative compositions.

Is suffering necessary?
Holding on to this and that, where is freedom?[knocks on the ground, like a door], “is anyone home?”
Rain comes to wash away the doubts.

So much smoke wafting through the windows.
Enough mind is enough.
Light rays hit the eyeball, all is seen.
Our spines curve toward center. A square of sunlight is intact but bleeds.

So tired! Am I failing at enthusiastic practice or enthusiastically practicing fatigue?
The sun rises, the moon falls.
A crow calls, and freedom and bondage disappear.
Pine branches, waving in the wind.

Fear of death stalks like a tiger.
Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
When lightning flashes on the horizon, the clouds are filled with light.
The vapor of car fumes .. AH!

Isn’t traffic in Seattle always so terrible?
When you have a question, ask your dog.
One good joke brings laughter to the dharma room.
Good friends in a circle, writing poetry on a hot day.

Ten thousand pounds of problems carried on shoulders.
Even around inflamed speech, the Great Ones touch lip corners.
Harumph!
Stop the world – I want to get off.

Where does this mind that only seems to hop, skip and jump around come from?
Whirrrrr! goes the fans
Surrounded by such radiant beings!
Fan blows air across my cheeks.