The story goes that when a thief broke into a little hut at the foot of a mountain, the wise Zen master Ryokan, very much undisturbed by the intruder, welcomed him with open arms and said, “You have come a long way to visit me and you should not return empty-handed.” And then, in a compassionate and non-judgmental way, he added, “Please take my clothes as a gift.” And so he gave up the only thing he ever possessed in his life.

Two thousand and five hundred years ago, the Buddha defined the desire to possess or craving (tanha in Pali) as the Second Noble Truth of his all-embracing teaching and the source of all human folly.

Whatever relationships we may have with our personal possessions, the awareness that they are so essential to our modern way of life, so much the bone and marrow of our self, makes Ryokan’s gesture touchingly relatable; that he chose to give up the last thing he owned in so generous a way is a testament to his enlightened state of being. What is most thought-provoking about this Zen story, however, is not the gesture itself but the last thing Ryokan said after the thief had left his little hut. As he sat naked watching out the window at the night sky, he mused, “Poor fellow, I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.”

Given how famous this Zen koan is among spiritual seekers, it is rather odd that we rarely consider it from the viewpoint of the ordinary, unenlightened, and desire-bound mind of the thief. There, a narrative-driven glimpse into what might have happened — the untold story of a minor character who heard Ryokan’s last words — can teach us the most profound lesson about the blind pursuit of something that each of us already has in the core of being.

Such an uncommon poem-turned-Zen-story-sequel is what Fannie Stearns Davis envisions in her marvelous “Moon Folly” included in the collection Myself and I. The role of the moon thief is played by a young boy by the name Samuel Chelpka who recites the poem in the TEDx video below. The video is almost ten years old and the young boy is not so young anymore, but it doesn’t take away one bit from the adorable performance we witness before our eyes. Please enjoy!

MOON FOLLY FROM THE SONGS OF CONN THE FOOL
by Fannie Stearns Davis

I will go up the mountain after the Moon:
She is caught in a dead fir-tree.
Like a great pale apple of silver and pearl,
Like a great pale apple is she.

I will leap and will catch her with quick cold hands
And carry her home in my sack.
I will set her down safe on the oaken bench
That stands at the chimney-back.

And then I will sit by the fire all night,
And sit by the fire all day.
I will gnaw at the Moon to my heart’s delight
Till I gnaw her slowly away.

And while I grow mad with the Moon’s cold taste
The World will beat at my door,
Crying “Come out!” and crying “Make haste,
And give us the Moon once more!”

But I shall not answer them ever at all.
I shall laugh, as I count and hide
The great black beautiful Seeds of the Moon
In a flower-pot deep and wide.

Then I shall lie down and go fast asleep,
Drunken with flame and aswoon.
But the seeds will sprout and the seeds will leap,
The subtle swift seeds of the Moon.

And some day, all of the World that cries
And beats at my door shall see
A thousand moon-leaves spring from thatch
On a wonderful white Moon-tree!

Then each shall have Moons to his heart’s desire:
Apples of silver and pearl;
Apples of orange and copper fire
Setting his five wits aswirl!

And then they will thank me, who mock me now,
“Wanting the Moon is he,” —
Oh, I’m off to the mountain after the Moon,
Ere she falls from the dead fir-tree!

Can you do better than this little fella? Before you undertake this Herculean task and go up on stage to recite “Moon Folly” from Myself and I, practice by beating the adult recitations of these poems: Mary Oliver’s “Percy,” Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard” and “Dharma,” Emily Dickinson’s “I Dwell in Possibility,” Pablo Neruda’s “I Like for You to Be Still,” Gregory Orr’s “This is What Was Bequeathed Us,” and Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man.”

“If you know how to make good use of the mud, you can grow beautiful lotuses,” wrote Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh while reflecting on the Buddha’s teaching. “If you know how to make good use of suffering, you can produce happiness.”

The mystery of life distresses and frightens us in many ways. Sometimes it comes as a formless phantom, and our soul trembles with the worst of fears — that of the monstrous incarnation of non-being. But we also know that anything and everything, depending on how we see it, is a marvel or a hindrance, an all or nothing, a path or an obstacle. To see something in constantly new ways is to renew and multiply it. This is what great sage Lao Tzu considers in one of the chapters of his timeless Tao Te Ching.

TAO TE CHING
by Lao Tzu

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty
only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good
only because there is evil.

Therefore having and not having arise together;
Difficult and easy complement each other;
Long and short contrast each other;
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow each other.

Therefore the wise go about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease,
Creating, yet not possessing,
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.

Complement the Tao Te Ching with Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching on the delicate interplay of suffering and happiness and how to manifest beautiful lotuses out of the mud of life.

“All great religions postulate love as one of the greatest accomplishments,” said humanist philosopher Erich Fromm in a rare 1958 interview. “If it were that easy, or as easy as most people think, certainly, the great religious leaders would have been rather naive.”

Have you ever truly loved? More often than not, what we love is the idea we have of someone. It’s our own concept — our own selves — that we love. Two people say “I love you” or think it or feel it, and each has in mind a different idea, a different life, perhaps even a different color or fragrance, in the abstract sum of impressions that constitute the soul’s activity. The relations between one soul and another, expressed through such uncertain and variable things as spoken words and professed gestures, are deceptively complex. Or are they? This imperceptible ying-yang of complexity and simplicity comes vividly alive in a Zen story titled “If You Love, Love Openly” included in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings (paperback | audiobook). Narrated here by the hypnotic voice of Freda Cooper. Please enjoy!

IF YOU LOVE, LOVE OPENLY
from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Twenty monks and one nun, who was named Eshun, were practicing meditation with a certain Zen master.

Eshun was very pretty even though her head was shaved and her dress plain. Several monks secretly fell in love with her. One of them wrote her a love a letter, insisting upon a private meeting.

Eshun did not reply. The following day the master gave a lecture to the group, and when it was over, Eshun arose. Addressing the one who had written to her, she said, “If you really love me so much, come and embrace me now.”

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is vitally necessary in its infinite totality. Complement with an in-depth video study of The Kiss where James Payne at one point asks the question, “Could The Kiss, long thought to be the most romantic painting in history, be a depiction of a platonic relationship?”

“If you think you’re enlightened,” spiritual teacher Ram Dass famously said, “go spend a week with your parents.”

No matter how tough we may think we are, the ultimate test of faith often comes at the ruthless hammer of our parents’ judgement. Whether our belief shatters to pieces or stands like a rock depends on one simple thing — the ability to let things go and let them be as they are. This subtle art of moving on without regret is what beloved author Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) explores in a portion of his autobiographical novel The Dharma Bums.

“Days tumbled on days, I was in my overalls, didn’t comb my hair, didn’t shave much, consorted only with dogs and cats,” Jack Kerouac writes while describing his tranquil spring days at his parents’ house. And then he adds:

Sunday afternoons my family would want me to go driving with them but I preferred to stay home alone, and they’d get mad and say, “What’s the matter with him anyway?” and I’d hear them argue about the futility of my “Buddhism” in the kitchen, then they’d all get in the car and leave and I’d go in the kitchen and sing, “The tables are empty, everybody’s gone over” to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “You’re Learning the Blues.”

“I was as nutty as a fruitcake and happier,” writes Kerouac. However, this carefree existence is interrupted when, while meditating under a tree, an astonishing thought pops in his mind, “Everything is empty but awake!” Feeling exhilarated, he decides the time has come to explain everything to his family. “You and your Buddha, why don’t you stick to the religion you were born with?” says his mother. “If things were empty how could I feel this orange, in fact taste it and swallow it?” adds his brother-in-law. To which Kerouac replies:

Your mind makes out the orange by seeing it, hearing it, touching it, smelling it, tasting it and thinking about it but without this mind, you call it, the orange would not be seen or heard or smelled or tasted or even mentally noticed, it’s actually, that orange, depending on your mind to exist! Don’t you see that? By itself it’s a no-thing, it’s really mental, it’s seen only of your mind. In other words it’s empty and awake.

“Well, if that’s so, I still don’t care,” is all he hears after his impassioned speech. Forgoing the futile attempt at breaking through the brick wall of ignorance, Kerouac writes:

All enthusiastic I went back to the woods that night and thought, “What does it mean that I am in this endless universe, thinking that I’m a man sitting under the stars on the terrace of the earth, but actually empty and awake throughout the emptiness and awakedness of everything? It means that I’m empty and awake, that I know I’m empty, awake, and that there’s no difference between me and anything else. In other words it means that I’ve become the same as everything else. It means that I’ve become a Buddha.”

Complement The Dharma Bums with Jack Kerouac’s meditation on the golden eternity, silence, and emptiness.