the sound of one hand clapping

Last weekend I had the chance to spend a day in meditation practice and listening to a wonderful  Zen priest, named Zoketsu Norman Fischer. Here’s a poem from his book, Slowly but Dearly, published by Chax Press:

ANOTHER PLANET

in tall grasses
we are thinking
of what we are in
sunshine wondering
where we came from
among flowers listening
to sounds of birds, black-
birds trilling lasciviously
extending themselves toward us
beside the pond we are dutifully
imagining what our life will be like
after we are dead and will have no wish to
think or feel or worry about anything anymore
in the sky we fondly speculate about dear loved
ones who are lost far away probably also looking
for us among the tall grasses of our displaced thinking
we who are still thinking  beside the pond as the frogs
croak and the cicadas shriek and the owls strangely (because
it is day) hoot as they never have before under the clouds in the trees whose
branches are knocking together in the breeze among the shade of the trees beside
the creek winding by where the willows are gesturing flagrantly in new bud we
are calculating how we’ll spend our remaining days our lifetime storehouse of
gathered information and music sensation and grief: how strange that in these
               purported places we mimic
a colorful life we’ve never lived worry about a determining death we’ll never die
scheme  out desires we’ll never fulfill sighs we’ll never sigh loves we’ll never love
and dreams too painfully real for our impassioned slumbers

– Zoketsu Norman Fischer