Koan 53, Blue Cliff Record
Pai Chang’s Wild Ducks
Why did it take a twinge of pain to wake me up?
The pain was real
Or at least I feel it
Asleep so comfortably,
Mixed with dreams of geese (I transposed)
Flying away
Or landing
Or swimming in the reflecting pool in front of the Jefferson Memorial (I am dreaming)
They flew off course
Attracting crowds and iPhones clicking
As if to confirm Thomas’s
Republican dreams.
.
Or did the somnambulist bump into a door
realizing the traffic just beyond
Might be real danger
Even being totally alert does not guarantee that I will survive
I feel as if sometimes I dance with your answers,’Ma,
Was it a real question
Or just words, They are just words,
Sounds connected with a dream or twinge of pain
Master Ma talks as if there were a sequence of events
Let me correct him.
That has meaning.--flying, landing, then flying away
There is no causal sequence of events in dreams
They have no existence
Dream on.’
Listen to Keith Jarrett
He gets the dreaming sequence right
Mysteriously connected
Without pain.
