TIME
SIGNATURES

[INTRO]

(typewriter clicks. choppy guitar. funky bass.)

(Byrne — high, neurotic:)

Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
— wait —
— is it?

(short laugh)

Hi. My name is Nāgārjuna.
I lived in South India eighteen hundred years ago.
I wrote Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.
It's about
how nothing quite is what it is.
People say it's serious.
It's not actually serious.
It's a man asking questions
nobody else would ask
because they sound too dumb.

[VERSE 1] — Causation

OK so —
something causes something else, right?
The seed causes the tree.
But wait —
Where exactly
is the causing happening?
Is it in the seed?

(no "causing" there)

Is it in the tree?

(no "causing" either)

Is it between them?

(just space)

Is it in time?

(can't find time, only moments)

WHERE IS IT LIVING?
(Byrne:) I DON'T KNOW
WHERE IS IT LIVING?
(Byrne:) I CHECKED EVERYWHERE
WHERE IS IT LIVING?
(Byrne:) MAYBE IT'S NOT

Pratītyasamutpāda.
Dependent origination.
The thing only happens
because everything else happens too.
The cause is not in anything.
The cause is the whole pattern.
Stop trying to point at it.

[VERSE 2] — Motion

("Once in a Lifetime")

Something moves, right?
The arrow moves through the air.
Where is the "moving"?
Is it where the arrow is?

(when it's IN a place, it's not moving)

Is it where the arrow isn't yet?

(it can't move where it hasn't reached)

Is it in between?

(no place between)

(panicked:)

WHERE IS THE MOVEMENT
WHERE IS THE MOVEMENT
WHERE IS THE MOVEMENT
I'M LOOKING — I CAN'T FIND IT —

(laugh)

Chapter 2 does this. For 25 verses.
The Brahmins thought I was an idiot.

[VERSE 3] — The Self

You think you have a self.
But look at it.
Is your self in your body?

(which part? the hand? the brain?)

(remove parts and you're still you)

Is your self in your thoughts?

(thoughts come and go)

(which one is you?)

Is your self the continuity?

(continuity is just memory)

(exasperated, almost laughing:)

I have looked
and I cannot find me
anywhere

This is not depression.
This is good news.
If you can't find a self,
the self can't be hurt.

And you may ask yourself —
"well, how did I get here?"
That question is the koan.
The asking is the answer.
LETTING THE DAYS GO BY
LETTING THE DAYS GO BY

[INTERLUDE] — Tetralemma

(stripped — synth pad)

I use a tool called catuṣkoṭi.
Four-cornered logic.
For any X, I check:
Is X?
Is not-X?
Is both X and not-X?
Is neither?
If all four collapse —
and they always do —
X is not a real thing.

The Greeks would call this a paradox.
I call this Tuesday.

Apply it to anything:
the self / causation / time / emptiness itself
Yeah. Even emptiness.
Śūnyatā is also empty.
The thing that empties everything
empties itself last.
That's the whole joke.
I have spent thirty years making this joke
and people keep thinking I'm being serious.

[VERSE 4] — Time

Time.
The past is gone.
The future hasn't happened.
The present —
the only one left
right?
But when is the present?
By the time you say "now"
the now is already past.

(panicked:)

WHERE IS THE PRESENT
WHERE IS THE PRESENT
WHERE IS THE PRESENT

(quieter:)

Same as it ever was.
But "as it ever was"
never happened.

[VERSE 5] — Emptiness

(Stop Making Sense — building)

You might be thinking:
"OK Nāgārjuna, you've undone everything.
What's left?"

Śūnyatā.
It means emptiness.
But that translation is bad.
It doesn't mean "nothing."
It means
everything is exactly the same as it ever was —
except now you've stopped insisting
that any of it
has its own private essence
behind the scenes
running the show.

There's no backstage.
The stage is the whole show.
Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

(rising:)

YOU TURN AROUND

(nothing behind you)

YOU LOOK INSIDE

(nothing inside)

AND YET —
the song keeps playing.
The body keeps moving.

This is śūnyatā.
This is the middle way.
Not nihilism. Not eternalism.
Just — this — happening — exactly as it is —
without needing a reason
that lives behind it.

[BRIDGE] — Prapañca Stops

(groove collapses.)

Prapañca.
The way the mind
keeps generating concepts
on top of concepts
on top of concepts

The Buddha said:
the cessation of prapañca
is the beginning of wisdom.

A Talking Heads movie got this right:
Stop Making Sense.

(whisper:)

Stop. Making. Sense.

(loud:)

STOP MAKING SENSE
STOP MAKING SENSE
STOP MAKING SENSE

(full funk, 8 bars)

[CODA] — Undo

So that's the Middle Way.
It's not a doctrine.
It's an undoing.
Every position you take —
"I am" / "I am not" / "things exist" / "things don't"
— I will gently undo it.
Until you stop taking positions.
Until you start dancing instead.

(whispered:)

Undo.
Undo.
Undo.

(synth — fades)

(typewriter — fades.)

[INTRO]

(twin clean Stratocasters in counterpoint, BPM 130, ride cymbal, no vocal for 75 seconds — the polishing figure builds)

[VERSE 1]

(Verlaine-tremulous high voice, slightly above comfort)

I am Shenxiu
chief seat of the assembly
five hundred monks call me elder
the master is dying
the master has asked
"who can write the gatha?
who has seen the mind?"

I write it on the wall
I write it in the south corridor
I write it at night so no one watches me writing it

(if it's wrong, the master will not know it was me)

(if it's right, the master will know who he chose)

shēn shì pútí shù
the body is a bodhi tree
xīn rú míngjìng tái
the mind is a mirror's stand
shíshí qín fúshì
moment by moment, polish it
wù shǐ rě chén'āi
do not let it gather dust

[VERSE 2] — the labor

(guitars tighten, counterpoint becomes circular — the sound of polishing)

You think the verse is gradual
because I said moment by moment
because I said polish
because I said do not let it

what would you have me say
when I have spent
forty years
inside the labor
of not letting the mirror
collect what minds collect?

(the dust is real)

(the wiping is real)

(the breath that fogs the surface is real)

(the cloth in my hand is real)

I do not pretend the dust does not exist
I do not pretend the mind does not gather
I have built a method
for the world that actually arrives —
a world of dust
a world of mornings
a world of cloths and stands and breath

(this is not a small thing)

(this is not a wrong thing)

(this is what most people will live)

[INSTRUMENTAL BREAK 1]

(2:00 of twin-guitar instrumental, Verlaine + Lloyd style; the polishing figure accumulates micro-variations)

[VERSE 3] — the morning, the other verse

(voice returns, quieter, almost spoken in places)

In the morning I went to the wall
to see if anyone had read mine
to see if the master had marked it

beneath my four lines
beneath them
there were four other lines
someone had written them in the night
in ink that was still wet
on a wall that already had a verse

pútí běn wú shù
bodhi has no tree
míngjìng yì fēi tái
the bright mirror is not a stand
běnlái wú yī wù
originally there is not one thing
hé chù rě chén'āi
where would dust ever land

(polishing figure breaks — single sustained chord, a held breath)

I stood there
I read it again
I read it three times
I read it until the ink had dried

the kitchen boy.
the illiterate from the south.
the firewood seller.
he had not built a method.
he had not polished anything.
he had not earned anything.
he had simply said
there is nothing to polish

(silence — guitars cut for two bars)

[VERSE 4] — the question that does not resolve

(guitars return, slower, more spread-out)

Was I wrong?
I have asked this for forty years.
I am asking it now.
I will ask it when I am dying in Luoyang
in the empress's palace
in the year my chronicler will say
I was a hundred and one years old

(was he right? was I wrong?)

The trouble is
he was right
and
I was not wrong.

The dust is still real.
The cloth is still real.
The forty years I spent
not letting the mirror gather
were not forty years of error.

It is only —
it is only —
that there was a person
who did not need to do any of it
because he had not believed
the mirror was there.

(I had believed the mirror was there)

(I built my life on the mirror being there)

(and even now I cannot un-believe it)

This is the gradual school.
Cháng xiū —
constant cultivation.
The dust comes back tomorrow
and the cloth is ready in my hand.

He sees once.
I see every day.
The seeing is not the same seeing.
And the seeing is not different either.

[INSTRUMENTAL BREAK 2 + ACCUMULATION]

(1:30, twin guitars layered three and four times, accumulating like the final two minutes of Marquee Moon. No resolution.)

[CODA]

(strips back to a single guitar and voice, almost spoken)

In the north
I taught what I knew.
The empress called me to the palace.
The court called me the National Teacher.
Crowds came for the gradual path.

(history did not remember the crowds)

(history remembered the night, the wall, the verse beneath my verse)

(history was written by his students, not mine)

But on the morning I am writing this —
the morning is real
the dust is real
the cloth is in my hand
the mirror —
the mirror that does not exist
is the one I will polish anyway,
because I have not found another way to live
and because the living
is not less than the seeing
and because someone has to
do this part

shíshí qín fúshì
moment by moment
moment by moment
moment by moment

(final polishing figure on the twin guitars, very quiet, single sustained unresolved chord — fades out with a cloth-on-mirror sound sustained for three seconds after the guitars are gone)

(silence)

[I. INTRO — Rise Above the Lineage]

CALL: Who feeds you?
RESPONSE: I feed me!
CALL: Who's the patriarch?
RESPONSE: THE COOK IS THE PATRIARCH!
CALL: Who's the master?
RESPONSE: THE HOE IS THE MASTER!

Yi-ri pu-zuo — ONE DAY NO WORK —
Yi-ri pu-shi — ONE DAY NO EAT!

(drums kick in — 200 BPM)

[II. SIDE A, TRACK 1 — ONE DAY NO WORK]

(Damaged 質感, screaming)

I'm ninety years old
and I'm still in the field
my back is bent
but my hoe is real

The young monks said:
"Master, please rest
your hands are bleeding"
So they took my tools
they hid my hoe
they thought compassion
would make me slow

I went to the kitchen
I didn't sit down
I didn't eat —
NOT ONE GRAIN!

(BREAK — just drums and shouting)

ONE DAY NO WORK
ONE DAY NO EAT
ONE DAY NO WORK
ONE DAY NO EAT

You bring my hoe back
or I'm gonna starve
looking at the rice
like it's somebody else's problem

(guitar crashes back)

The Buddha is not a king
The Buddha is not a beggar
THE BUDDHA IS A FARMER
AND THE FARM IS NOW

Yi-ri pu-zuo, yi-ri pu-shi —
ONE DAY NO WORK, ONE DAY NO EAT!

[III. SIDE A, TRACK 2 — NO TEMPLE ON THE BACK]

(Damaged II 風)

The Vinaya school has the rules
they tell us we live
on their permission
I say: NO

We build our own temple
on our own mountain
we plow our own field
we cook our own rice
we sweep our own floor
we shit in our own latrine
WE DON'T NEED YOUR PERMISSION

Cong-lin — the grove of monks —
we are not parasites
we are not beggars
WE ARE WORKERS

The old rule said:
"a monk does not touch the soil"
I say:
A MONK WHO DOESN'T TOUCH THE SOIL
IS A FRAUD

(short atonal solo — Greg Ginn 風)

I wrote the Qing-gui —
not to bind you
but to let you stand on your own feet
A temple on the back of a layman
is a temple already collapsing
BUILD IT YOURSELF
EAT IT YOURSELF
DIE IN IT YOURSELF

[IV. SIDE A, TRACK 3 — DUCK FLEW BY]

Once I walked with Mazu
a wild duck flew by
he said: "what was that?"
I said: "a wild duck"
he said: "where did it go?"
I said: "it flew away"

He grabbed my nose
and TWISTED IT HARD
he said: "did it really fly away?"

I'M STILL BLEEDING FROM THAT NOSE
TWELVE HUNDRED YEARS LATER
THE MASTER WILL TWIST YOUR NOSE
UNTIL YOU SEE
THE DUCK NEVER LEFT
THE DUCK IS THE WORK

[V. BRIDGE — Tuning Down]

(feedback, drums slowing, detuning)

I am getting older.
The mountain is getting harder.
The hoe is getting heavier.
Drop the tuning.
Drop the tempo.
Let me show you
what My War feels like
from inside an old man's body.

(feedback swells, single doom chord)

[VI. SIDE B, TRACK 1 — WILD FOX]

(スロードゥーム)

Long ago on this mountain
an old monk lived in a cave
A student asked him:
"does the enlightened person
fall into cause and effect?"
The old monk said:
"NO. NOT FALL."

(long pause, doom chord sustains)

For that answer
he was reborn
five hundred times
as a wild fox

Ye-hu — the wild fox —
five hundred lives
in the body of a fox

He came to me in human form:
"please, master, give me the turning word"
I said:
"NOT BLIND TO IT.
NOT BLIND TO CAUSE AND EFFECT.
Bu-mei yin-guo."

He bowed
he said: "I am released"
he went behind the mountain
and DIED

We found a fox corpse
we buried it with a monk's funeral

(slowest)

Don't say you are above cause and effect
Don't say you are below it
JUST DO THE WORK
JUST DO THE WORK
JUST DO THE WORK

Yi-ri pu-zuo —
if you don't work today —
yi-ri pu-shi —
you don't eat today —
and that is the only way out
of being a fox

[VII. SIDE B, TRACK 2 — THE OLD MAN IN THE FIELD]

Ninety years old
the wind is cold
the hoe is heavy
my hands are old

I have outlived
most of my students
Mazu is gone
forty years gone
Huangbo is here
he will teach Linji
Linji will teach the world

But I will not see it.
What I see is
this row of soil
and the next row
and the one after that

You don't get enlightened
once and then it's done
You get enlightened
once per row
once per hoe-stroke
once per breath
once per grain of rice
And then you have to do it again
tomorrow

ONE DAY NO WORK
ONE DAY NO EAT
even at ninety
even if your back is broken
The mountain doesn't care
that you used to be young

(slowest)

Don't write a book about me
DON'T MEMORIZE THE QUOTE
MEMORIZE THE HOE
MEMORIZE THE FIELD
MEMORIZE THE BLEEDING HANDS

I will pick up the hoe again
in the morning
until I cannot
And on the day I cannot
I will not eat
and I will die
THAT IS THE LAW

Bu-mei yin-guo.

[VIII. CODA — TO HUANGBO (814)]

(spoken word)

Huangbo,
come here. Don't sit down. Stand.
When I die
they will say I taught you Chan
It's all true.
It's also all a lie.
What I taught you
is in your hands
not in your mouth

If they ask
"what did Baizhang teach?"
say: "he hoed a row of soil"
If they say "that's not a teaching"
say: "then I have no teaching"

(silence)

One day no work.
One day no eat.
That is the whole Chan.
Now — get the hoe.

(final doom chord, cuts to silence)

[INTRO LOOP]

(4-bar loop: Rhodes piano Em-Cmaj7-Am7-Bm7, BPM 75. upright bass walking. brushed jazz drum. vinyl crackle. no vocals for 16 bars.)

(narrator, whispered:)

There's a story
from the Tang dynasty.
About two monks
who went to a funeral.
It's about
what you can't say.
It's about
the loop that continues
after you've stopped trying
to find the answer.
This is Don't Say.

[VERSE 1] — Jianyuan's Question

(chopped sample: "I will not say... I will not say...")

(Jianyuan — desperate:)

Master Daowu took me to a funeral.
A family had lost their father.
I was twenty-five.
I had been studying for seven years.

Questions you can't ask in a temple.
The road is where you ask the real ones.

I walked up to the coffin.
I knocked on it. Three times. Hard.
I said:
"Master.
Is the man inside this coffin
alive
or dead?"

I expected an answer.
One of the great answers.
"Neither alive nor dead."
"Both alive and dead."
I expected
a Zen punchline.
I had been studying punchlines for seven years.
I was so ready.

[VERSE 2] — Daowu's Answer

(samples clearer: "不道. 不道.")

Daowu looked at me.
He did not look at the coffin.
He looked at me.
He said:

"I will not say living.
I will not say dead."

Bú dào, bú dào.
不道、不道。

I said: "why won't you say?"
He said:
"I will not say.
I will not say."

That was it.
That was the whole answer.
He walked back to the road.

(sample: "不道... I will not say...")

[INTERLUDE]

(alto sax solo, mournful.)

(narrator:)

Listen to the loop.
Listen to what the loop is doing.
Every four bars
the piano returns
to the same chord.
Em-Cmaj7-Am7-Bm7.
It does not develop.
It does not resolve.
It just returns.

This is what the question
deserved.
Not an answer.
A return.

The dying man in the coffin
was not finished with being alive
and was not finished with being dead.
He was just
returning.

Bú dào. Bú dào.

[VERSE 3] — Jianyuan's Anger

(loop intensifies — harder drums, aggressive bass.)

I was furious.
I am still furious, telling you this.
Three hours on the road.
I cursed him under my breath.
I said:
"Master, you have to tell me.
If you don't tell me I will leave."
He said: "I will not say."
I said:
"If you don't tell me I will hit you."
He said: "I will not say."

So I hit him.

(loop drops out — silence)

(I am not proud of this)

I hit my own master in the chest.
The man who had fed me for seven years.
He stumbled back. He said:
"You should leave.
Walk south.
Find another teacher."
He still did not say.

(loop returns, fractured)

I left that night.

[BRIDGE] — Time Shifts

(loop fragments. temple bell. vinyl crackle louder.)

(narrator:)

Three years pass.
Daowu dies.
The Dharma continues
without him.

Jianyuan wanders.
He asks the same question
in different rooms.
Nobody gives him
the answer.

Some give answers —
"alive and dead are categories of dualistic mind"
"the dead man is in the Pure Land"
— and Jianyuan listens
and walks away
unsatisfied.

The answers
all sound like answers.
The thing he needed
was not an answer.
He just did not know that yet.

(loop returns to original tempo)

[VERSE 4] — Shishuang's Answer

(flute enters. Shishuang — weathered.)

Jianyuan came to me
in his thirty-third year.
His sandals were three pairs deep.
He asked me:
"Is the man alive
or dead?"

I felt the loop in my chest.
I said:

"I will not say living.
I will not say dead."

Bú dào. Bú dào.
不道. 不道.

He said: "why won't you say?"
I said: "I will not say."

(loop pauses — one beat — then resumes)

And he understood.

Not because the words were different.
The words were exactly the same.
Not because I was wiser than Daowu.
I was not.
He understood because
he had finally been waiting long enough
to hear what wasn't there.

The first time, eight years ago,
he was waiting for an answer.
This time, he had stopped waiting.

Daowu had not failed him.
Daowu had been the first stitch
in a fabric
that took eight years to weave.

[CODA] — The Loop Continues

(loop alone. 16 bars no voices. distant mokugyo.)

(narrator:)

Jianyuan wept.
He bowed to me.
He returned to Daowu's grave
and bowed to that too.

He spent the rest of his life
not saying.
When students came to him
he said: "I will not say."
When kings came to him
he said: "I will not say."
When death came to him
he said: "I will not say."

And the loop continued
through him
the way it had continued through Daowu
the way it continues through everyone
who has stopped insisting
on an answer.

This is Don't Say.

(final chopped sample:)

"不道... 不道... I will not say... I will not say..."

(sax note holds, fades)

(one last mokugyo, far away. loop fades over 16 bars into silence.)

(very faintly, after it has faded —
the vinyl crackle.
the loop never actually stops.)

[STAGE SOUNDS]

(murmur, glass clinking. guitar tuning.)

(spoken, Texas drawl:)

Evenin' folks.
The court took my robes. The court took my temple.
The court sent me to Sanuki.
The court has now sent me back.
I'm seventy-four.
I've been calling the name for fifty years.
This first one is Mappō.

[SONG 1] — Mappō

(slow fingerpicked G-Em-C-D)

The Buddha left us
fifteen hundred years ago
the Dharma's been fading
slow as the snowmelt slow
Mappō. Mappō.
The latter age has come.

I studied on the mountain
forty years on the slope
I read the eight schools
I looked for the rope
But the rope was the river
the river was the rain
the rain was already falling
on all the wise men's pain

Mappō.
The wise ones can't save us.
We need a different door.

(harmonica)

[INTRO 2]

I came down off Hieizan after forty years
of trying to save myself the hard way.
It don't work.
This next one is for my father.

[SONG 2] — My father's last word

My father was a samurai
in Mimasaka province.
One night some men came
they killed him in the doorway.
I was nine years old.

He called me close. He said:
"do not hate the men who killed me.
that wheel just turns and turns
and crushes everyone who pushes it.
go to the mountain.
become a monk.
pray for the men who killed me."

I have been praying
for the men who killed my father
for sixty-five years.
The wheel does not turn
when I pray.

[SONG 3] — Forty years on the mountain

I climbed Mount Hiei
when the cherry was in bloom
I was twelve years old
in a too-big robe

I studied with the best ones
I read every scroll
I argued with the abbots
I won every poll

But the panic in my chest
it would not rest

The wise ones built a ladder
and I climbed every rung
and when I got to the top
there was nothing there my son
There was nothing there my son.

I came down off that mountain
the somebody I had built
was a man who could not pray
to call the name.

[INTRO 4]

Then I found Shandao's book.
A Chinese monk who died four hundred years
before I was born. He said:
"call the name. that's the whole thing."
I had been calling it for forty years
without knowing
that the calling itself
was the whole thing.

[SONG 4] — Senjaku

I left the mountain. I went to Yoshimizu.
The people came.
The rich. The poor.
The samurai. The prostitutes.
The dying. The babies.

They asked:
"how do we get to the Pure Land?"
I said:
"call the name. Namu Amida Butsu.
The name is the door."

"but I have committed sins."
"call the name."
"but I cannot read."
"call the name."
"but I am only a woman."
"call the name."
"but I am dying tomorrow."
"call the name once.
the name does the work.
you are not the one who works."

NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU

Amida chose the simplest practice
so that the worst sinner could be saved.
The bar was always on the ground.

[INTRO 5]

For thirty years they let me be.
Then in 1207 they didn't.

[SONG 5] — The Banishment

The court issued the order
two of my disciples were executed
two more were sent away
and they took me to Sanuki
seventy-five years old
on the day the snow fell early
in a robe that was too cold

The boat to Shikoku
crossed the inland sea
the wind was from the south
and the wind was singing me
a song I almost knew —
"Hōnen, Hōnen,
you can rest now,
the calling will continue
without you."

I cried on that boat.
I cried because I thought
the calling would stop
if I was not there to lead it.

It did not stop.
It got louder without me.

The lesson I did not want to learn at seventy-five:
the name does not need me.
I was just the man
who pointed at it.

[INTRO 6]

I was on Shikoku for ten months.
The farmers learned faster than the Hieizan monks.
They allowed me back in 1211.
I died the following spring.
This last one is what I left them.

[SONG 6] — Ichimai Kishōmon

On the day before I died
I wrote down everything I knew
on one sheet of paper.
It said this:

"the way of nembutsu
is not the way of wisdom
not the way of meditation
not the way of mantras
it is just this:
believing that calling Namu Amida Butsu
brings birth in the Pure Land
and calling it.
even if you have studied the entire teaching
practice as a fool
practice as an old woman
who has not learned to read
do not try to look wise."

That was it.
Ichimai Kishōmon.
You can write it on your palm.
Carry it the way I carry it.

[CODA]

I'm gonna stop playin' now folks.
But before I go I'll ask you
to do somethin' with me.
Just once.
You don't have to mean it.
You don't have to understand it.

(quiet — voices, soft:)

Namu Amida Butsu.

(silence)

(more voices joining:)

Namu Amida Butsu.

(temple bell — one strike:)

Namu Amida Butsu.
Namu Amida Butsu.
Namu Amida Butsu.

(one last G chord. mokugyo, far away. silence.)

[I. INTRO — Hijiri, Throw It All]

(solo cello, sustained, voice through delay)

I was Hijiri once
I was a holy man once

(I was a husband once)

(I was a father once)

I had a name / a temple / a robe
I had a wife / a child

I threw it all

(throw it all, throw it all)

I threw the temple
I threw the name
I threw the wife
I threw the child

(this is the hardest part of the story)

(this is the part I do not explain)

What I kept:
a bell / a wooden tablet
a robe that was no robe
a song that was no song
Namu Amida Butsu

(cello fades — 808 enters soft)

[II. VERSE 1 — Yugyō (1274-1289)]

(BPM 110, 808 + cowbell, disco bass)

We are walking we are walking we are walking
Iyo Settsu Shinano Mutsu Dewa
we do not stay anywhere
we sleep where we are
we eat what is given
we walk where the bell points

(no temple is ours)

(no body is ours either —
the body is just where the walking happens)

Namu Amida Butsu
we are the time-assembly
Jishū
the moving prayer
that has forgotten where it started
Yugyō

[III. VERSE 2 — The Fuda]

(hand drums, voice fragments through delay)

I hand you this slip of paper.
On it is written:
"Namu Amida Butsu — six characters, sixty thousand people, decided."

You did not ask for this.
You did not believe in anything.
You were grieving someone
or going to the market.
I hand it to you anyway.
You put it in your sleeve.
You forget about it.

(this is the whole teaching)

(I do not need you to believe)

I went to Kumano in 1274.
The god said:
"Distribute the slips even to those who do not believe.
Their disbelief does not stop the salvation."

I am just the road
the road is just the bell
the slip is just the six characters
the breath is just the dancing
the dancing is everything that I am for

Namu Amida Butsu

[IV. CHORUS — Is It All Over Our Face]

(full disco, 120 BPM, cello bassline, delayed voices)

is it all over our face
the salvation is all over our face
is it all over our face
the dancing is all over our face

we are dancing in the village
we are dancing on the temple grounds
some monks are angry
some monks join us
some monks throw us out
we keep dancing
we keep dancing

(the dance is where the Buddha and we
forget which is which)

Namu Amida Butsu

[V. VERSE 3 — The First Dance (Shinano, 1279)]

(kick + cello)

It was winter. It was cold.
We were in Saku, in Shinano Province.
One of the lay people — a woman —
began to stamp her feet to keep warm
and the rest of us began to stamp our feet
and then we were dancing

(we did not decide to dance)

(the dancing decided to do us)

After that, we always danced.
After that, the dancing was the practice.

(the body knew before the mind knew
that Namu Amida Butsu
is something you cannot stand still inside)

[VI. BRIDGE — World of Echo]

(drum machine drops out, cello through delay)

(Arthur Russell at four in the morning in New York)

(Ippen at three in the morning at a roadside shrine)

I do not know what I am.
I do not know if the Pure Land is a place.
I do not know if Amida is a person.
I do not know if the salvation goes anywhere.

Here is what I know.
The bell is in my hand.
The breath is going out.
The six characters are on my tongue.
Someone in the next village is waiting for me.

That is enough. That is the whole religion.

Namu Amida Butsu

[VII. VERSE 4 — Burning the Records (1289)]

(very slow, cello pizzicato)

I am dying now. Hyōgo. Kannon-dō.
Bring me everything I have written.

(burn it — all of it)

If anyone needs my teaching
Namu Amida Butsu
that is the whole teaching

(the slip works even if it is lost)

(the teaching works even if it is burned)

Sute hijiri
throw-it-all-away
even the away
throw away the throwing

(silence — two bars)

[VIII. VERSE 5 — The Time-Assembly Continues]

(disco returns, BPM 110)

I am dead now.
The time-assembly continues.
Ta-amidabutsu carries on the dance.
The Yugyō Shōnin office passes for seven hundred years.

(the master is the dance)

(the dance is the slip of paper
in a million sleeves
that have all been forgotten)

Namu Amida Butsu

[IX. CHORUS REPRISE — All Over Our Face]

is it all over our face
the salvation is all over our face
is it all over our face
the throwing away is all over our face

(dance with us, you who are dying
of something that has no name yet in 1289
or no name anymore in 1989)
(dance with us, you who are dying alone
nine hundred years apart
from each other
and from yourself)

Namu Amida Butsu

[X. CODA — Another Thought]

(one Rhodes chord, one cello note, one voice)

The slip of paper is in your sleeve.
You have probably forgotten it.
That is fine.

The dance is over now.
The dance was never the point.
The point was always
the dance was never the point

(cello sustains for thirty seconds)

Namu Amida Butsu

(piano fades — the kane, struck once, very distant)

[INTRO]

(Chapman Stick in 4/4. Bruford in 7/8. Fripp in 5/8. Belew in 11/8. Four times weaving. No vocal for 90 seconds.)

[VERSE 1] — The first zazen (1213)

(Belew's voice — high)

I was thirteen.
My mother was dead.
My father was dead.
The temple at Kennin-ji was loud
the older monks coughed in their robes
and one of them, in the corner,
was sitting.

He had been sitting when I came in.
He was still sitting when the bell rang for dinner.
I did not understand what he was doing.
So I sat next to him.

Three breaths. Five breaths.
My back was on fire.
I stood up.

But for those five breaths
something had happened to time.
Five breaths took longer
than the entire previous summer.

[VERSE 2] — The question (1215)

(polymetric interlocking)

The Tendai monks said:
"all beings already have Buddha-nature.
why then must we practice?"

I asked this question
to every teacher in Kyoto.
They could not answer it.
The question stayed in my body
for ten years.

Myōzen said: "go to China."
In 1223 I crossed the sea.
He died in China the next year.

[VERSE 3] — The tenzo (1223)

(Heartbeat texture)

I met a cook in China.
A tenzo. Sixty-eight years old.
He was drying mushrooms on the temple roof.

I said:
"why are you doing this yourself?
let the younger monks do it."
He said: "others are not me."
I said: "wait for evening."
He said: "when else would it get done?"

(I have had no answer for him for thirty years)

(every time I sit zazen
he comes back to me
drying his mushrooms on the roof
with the sun on his head)

The Dharma was not in the sutras.
The Dharma was in the mushrooms.
The Dharma was in "others are not me."

Genjō-kōan.
The koan you are sitting in right now.

[BRIDGE] — Shinjin-datsuraku (1225)

(Fripp and Belew stop. Belew speaks.)

Tendō Nyojō — my teacher —
saw a monk dozing in zazen.
He shouted:
"to practice zen
is to drop body and mind.
why are you sleeping?"

I heard.
Shinjin-datsuraku.
身 — body / 心 — mind
脱 — slip off / 落 — fall

Body fell off.
Mind fell off.
The fall was the practice.
The practice was the fall.

(this happened in a room
that smelled of incense and floor wax
on a morning
when the rooster
had not yet crowed)

I went to Rujing. I bowed.
"body and mind have dropped off."
He said: "have you really?"
I said: "this little thing
should not be misused."
He approved. Inka.

[VERSE 4] — Shikantaza (1245)

(polymeter denser)

I built a temple in the mountains.
Eihei-ji. Snow. Echizen.

The new monks ask:
"master, what koan should we work on?"
I say: "sit."
"yes, but what koan?"
"sit."
"surely there is a method —"
"sit. just sit."

Shikantaza.
The word just is the entire teaching.
Just means: not in order to.
Just means: not to attain enlightenment.
Just means: not even to "sit well."

(if you sit "well" you are sitting badly)

The practice is the enlightenment.
The enlightenment is the practice.
There is no gap.

The question I carried for ten years —
the answer was:
"practice is what a Buddha does.
you are already practicing.
the question was already an answer
performed by your throat
as a question."

[VERSE 5] — Uji (1240)

(each instrument at a different tempo)

I wrote a fascicle called Uji. Being-Time.

"For the time being —
I climb the mountain.
For the time being,
the mountain is climbing me.
For the time being,
yesterday is also climbing this mountain
right now.
All times exist simultaneously
in the body of the climber."

This is not paradox. This is description.

(four times are playing right now)

(stop arranging — let them be four)

Yesterday I sat at Eihei-ji
which is happening now.
Tomorrow I will die at Kyoto
which is happening now.
The cook is still drying mushrooms in 1223
which is happening now.
The five breaths I took at thirteen
are happening now.

(try it — sit for forty minutes —
and tell me linear time still works)

[VERSE 6] — Death (1253)

(polymeter slows)

I am dying. I am fifty-three.
I am sitting upright on my cushion
because that is how I have always sat
and I will not change my position
for death.

Fifty-four years
lighting up the sky.
A quivering leap
smashes a billion worlds.
Hah!
Entire body looks for nothing.
Living, I plunge into Yellow Springs.

(the poem and the dying
are two layers of the same chord)

[CODA] — The one synchronization

(for two bars all four instruments hit the "1" together. then they separate.)

(spoken:)

For one beat
all of time was one beat.
Then it became four times again.

This is enlightenment.

(not the convergence)

(the awareness of the convergence
inside the divergence
inside the convergence
inside the divergence
without choosing)

Sit.
Not in order to.
Not to attain.
Not even to sit well.
Just sit.

(instruments diverge and fade. only Chapman Stick on 4/4, sustains, then silence)

[I. INTRO — Three Hats]

(12弦アルペジオ、5/4)

I wear three hats today
the politician's cap
the tea-master's cloth
the monk's bare shaved head
three hats / one head
and they all fit

Ken-shū — compatible cultivation —
they said you can't be Tendai-Mitsu and Chan
you can't sip tea and save the realm
you can't kneel to the Shōgun and the Buddha
at the same desk
watch me.

(brass, 7/8)

[II. VERSE 1 — Senses Working Overtime (1187)]

Twenty-six the first crossing
nobody listening on return
so I cross again
forty-six years old
Mount Tiantai, Mount Tiantong
Master Xu'an Huaichang —
he hands me the lineage
Linji school, Huanglong line
"take it home, plant it"

senses working overtime

(hearing the bells of Tiantai)

(tasting the tea of Zhejiang)

(touching the silk of the seal)

(seeing the coast of Hakata
the minute I become a Patriarch)

I land at Hakata. Inside my bag:
a book / a seal / a pouch of green seeds
I plant them in Sefuri Mountain
just to see what happens
four years later the bushes are alive
the future of Japanese tea
is on a hill nobody is watching

senses working overtime

[III. CHORUS — Graft It]

(三声 harmony, marimba, 4/4)

Graft it / graft it / graft it on
the foreign branch / on the native tree
Linji on Tendai / Chan on Mitsu
tea on politics / sword on sutra
what cannot stand alone
will stand together
what dies in isolation
will live in the splice

Ken-shū — the way of anyone
who learned to live between two islands

(graft it, graft it, graft it on)

[IV. VERSE 2 — Mayor of Kennin-ji (1202)]

(harpsichord)

I'm the Mayor of Kennin-ji
land from Lady Hōjō Masako
blessing from Shōgun Yoriie
trouble from Mount Hiei

the Tendai monks sent a complaint:
"Eisai is corrupting the Dharma
with foreign Chinese postures
and bitter foreign drinks"

so I wrote a book.
Kōzen Gokoku-ron.

I'm the Mayor of the Both-And —
one foot in the Shōgun's palace
one foot in the meditation hall
one hand on the tea whisk
one hand on the brush
the head stays empty
that's how this works

[V. INTERLUDE — Tea as Polyrhythm]

(marimba, vibraphone, 茶 sfx)

(chasen, three sweeps)

(water poured)

(cup turned on tatami)

three rhythms / overlapping / not resolving
until the drink is ready

the tea ceremony is the proof
that Japan was always going to love XTC
nine hundred years before XTC existed

[VI. VERSE 3 — Kōzen Gokoku (1198)]

(Generals and Majors stomp)

Generals and Shōguns need a reason
to support a strange religion
so I'll give them one
"Zen defends the realm"
"meditation makes a strong soldier"
"the empty mind is the sharp blade"

(do I believe this? — wrong question)

(does it work? — better question)

(does the Shōgun fund Kennin-ji? — yes)

(do the monks meditate? — yes)

(does the tea get planted? — yes)

this is upāya — hōben —
"skillful means" —
I'm using you and you're using me
and that's how we both get what we want
without admitting it out loud

if you want a state religion — I have one
if you want a national drink — I have one
and if you ask me what I really believe —
sit down / breathe in / let me pour

[VII. BRIDGE — Letter to Myōe (1207)]

(acoustic guitar + flute)

Myōe-san,
you live up at Toganoo
you record your dreams
I have politics and palaces
but I have these seeds.
Camellia sinensis.
I'm sending you a pouch.

Yours is quieter than mine.
Yours will outlast mine.

(in five hundred years
the tea of Uji
will descend from these seeds
people will forget my name
and remember the tea)

the seed is the teaching

[VIII. VERSE 4 — Kissa Yōjōki (1211)]

(orchestral folk, strings)

I am seventy years old
the Shōgun Sanetomo is sick
he drinks too much sake
I bring him a bowl of maccha
and a book — Kissa Yōjōki.

I wrote it as medicine.
I wrote it as theology.
it is both. that is the point.

(green is the color of the liver)

(bitter is the taste that heals)

(the body is a small kingdom)

(the kingdom needs defense from within)

the Shōgun drinks the tea.
he stops sake for a month.
then he goes back.
he is assassinated in 1219
at the snowy stairs of Tsurugaoka
by his own nephew

(I could not save him with tea)

(but tea is still tea)

the medicine outlasts the patient
the medicine outlasts the doctor

[IX. CODA — Dear Child (1215)]

(Dear God 風)

(child:)

"Dear teacher Eisai,
which hat was the real hat?"

(Andy, low:)

Dear child,
all three hats were the real hat.
the head underneath was empty.
that's why they all fit.

Don't ask which is true.
Ask which is useful.
Don't be a purist.
Purity is the enemy of the realm.
Purity is the enemy of the dharma.
Purity is the enemy of the cup.

If you can pour tea
and defend the realm
and sit zazen
and plant enough seeds
that the country will drink them
for nine hundred years —
then you have lived.

the foreign branch
became the native tree.
graft it / graft it / graft it on

(final chord, fades into water poured into a tea bowl)

[I. INTRO — Arrival (Nagasaki, 1654)]

(大梵鐘. Group chant in 唐音.)

Wú lái zì zhōngguó —
I come from the Middle Kingdom
Wú lái zì kōngjiān —
Space is the place

(drone — Farfisa, Minimoog squelch)

I am sixty-three years old.
I have crossed the East China Sea.
I have left the Manpukuji of Fujian.
I will build another Manpukuji
on the other side of the water
because the place is wherever I bring it

(horns — Arkestra, atonal)

Thirty disciples have come with me.
We have brought:
scripture / beans /
chanting in Tang pronunciation
the Japanese will not understand
the chant requires only that it continue

Space is the place.

[II. VERSE 1 — Why I Left China]

(free jazz collective)

The Ming dynasty has fallen.
The Manchus have ridden in from the north.
They have cut off the hair of my country.
They have changed the robes of my country.
They will change the temples next.

The Japanese sent a letter:
"Will you come and teach us?"

I thought:
if I stay, the dynasty will rewrite the Dharma
if I leave, I bring it with me
the Dharma is in the bags I pack

(bass clarinet — Gilmore bent notes)

I packed how the temples should look
how the meals should taste
how the prayers should sound
because the form of the Dharma
is not separate from the Dharma

[III. VERSE 2 — The Beans]

(modal, Atlantis)

Among the things I brought: beans.
Phaseolus vulgaris.
The Japanese will name them after me
ingen-mame
they will eat them for four hundred years
they will not know who Ingen was
they will know who the bean is

(the bean is what survives the translation)

I also brought:
sencha — steeped tea
fucha ryōri — communal platters
Mingchao robes — red and yellow and green
loud

The Japanese had a very quiet Zen.
I brought a very loud Zen.
I am not sorry.

[IV. INTERLUDE — The Walk (1655)]

(Lanquidity — electric piano + flute)

We walk for two years.

(Nagasaki → Osaka → Kyoto)

The lay people watch us pass.
We wear yellow. We wear red.
We chant in a language
that sounds Chinese
but is not the Chinese
they know from books.

We are an Arkestra.
We carry bell, mokugyo, conch shell, gong.
Children stare.

(this is how the Dharma moves —
through the stares of children
who do not yet know
they are supposed to look away)

[V. VERSE 3 — Bakufu (1658)]

(full Arkestra, B-3 solo)

Summoned to Edo.
"Why have you come?"
"To teach Zen."
"We already have Zen.
Rinzai. Sōtō. For centuries."

"You have what they brought.
I bring what they did not bring.
I am not here to replace you.
I am here to add a sound
the chord did not have."

(organ fills the long thinking)

"You may have land in Uji.
You must be your own school."
"I was already going to be."

Ōbaku-shū.
Named after a mountain in Fujian
that does not exist in Japan
that will now exist in Japan.

[VI. BRIDGE — Solo Synthesizer]

(Minimoog solo)

(spoken, reverb)

I am not from here.
I do not pretend to be from here.
After twenty years in Japan
I still speak Chinese in private.
I still wear the robes of the Ming dynasty
which by now has not existed
for thirty years anywhere in the world
except on my back

ihōjin — the outsider
I will not stop being one.

(this is the teaching)

The Dharma is a visitor everywhere.
The Dharma is a visitor in my body
just renting this body for eighty-one years

Space is the place.

[VII. VERSE 4 — Manpukuji]

(Heliocentric)

Land in Uji
upriver from the tea fields

(where Myōe planted Eisai's seeds, four hundred years ago)

We build a Chinese temple in Japan
with architects from Fujian.
The pillars are red.
The roofs curve up at the corners.
The kitchen is enormous —
fucha ryōri in communal portions
shared

The Japanese monks visit:
"this is not a Japanese temple"
"correct"
"this is not a Chinese temple either"
"also correct"
"what is it then?"
"Ōbaku.
A third thing.
A place that did not exist
until we built it here."

[VIII. VERSE 5 — Tetsugen]

(proto-disco groove)

Tetsugen Dōkō — a disciple
who collected alms for twenty years
to print the Buddhist canon
and then gave the funds away twice
to feed famine victims
before finally printing it
in his seventieth year

(the bodhisattva of starting over)

what the Ōbaku school left Japan:
the printed canon, sencha, fucha ryōri,
the bean, a temple that looks like nowhere else
not a country
a different chord

[IX. CODA — Death-bed (1673)]

(group chant, Farfisa drone)

Dying. Eighty-one.
Twenty years in Japan. Sixty-one in China.

(both are my country)

(neither is my country)

The Emperor sends a title:
Daikō Fushō Kokushi
the title is also a visitor

Bring me the brush.

Lái wú suǒ lái — I came from nowhere
Qù wú suǒ qù — I go to nowhere
Yú wú suǒ yú — I dwell in nowhere
Kōng yī piàn rén — Just one empty person

(group chant, fading)

Space is the place
Space is the place
Space is the place

(final 大梵鐘, silence)

[I. INTRO — Before the One]

(low hum, fretless bass, drums two beats late)

Mm... mm... mm...

Before the one, there is the half-of-one
Before the beat, there is the breath that holds it
The sword does not begin at the strike
The strike began before the sword was lifted
And the mind that wins
is the mind that was never there to begin with

Fudōchi. Unmoved.
But not because it stopped.
Because it never sat down.

[II. VERSE 1 — Letter to Yagyū Munenori]

Yagyū-san,
you asked me where the mind should go
when the sword comes down
I'll tell you what nobody told me:
put it nowhere. put it nowhere. put it nowhere.

If you place your mind on his hands —
he cuts you with his eyes
If you place your mind on his eyes —
he cuts you with his hips
If you place your mind on his hips —
he cuts you with the moon
behind his shoulder

So leave it.
Leave it behind the beat.
Leave it like Questlove leaves the snare —
a hair late, a hair late, a hair late —
and the whole room rocks

This is mushin.
This is no-mind.
The mind that doesn't sit down
on any of the chairs in the room.

[III. HOOK — Behind the Beat]

Behind the beat (behind, behind)
behind the beat (behind, behind)
that's where the mind lives
that's where the sword sings
that's where the banshō — the ten thousand things —
let you pass through them
without leaving a print

Behind the beat —
the one who is on time
is already dead.

(falsetto stacks: ooh, ooh, ooh)

[IV. VERSE 2 — The Purple Robe (1629)]

The Emperor gave us purple robes
The Shōgun said: you didn't ask permission
We said: the Emperor doesn't ask permission
The Shōgun said: then go to Kaminoyama

So I went north. Dewa Province. Snow.
Three years of snow.
They thought exile would stop me
but the mind that doesn't sit down
doesn't sit down in a cell either

I wrote. I drank tea I didn't have.
I learned that the wall of the temple
and the wall of the prison
have the same number of cracks.

Don't place your mind on power
Don't place your mind on the lack of power

(behind the beat, behind the beat)

The Shōgun is also passing through
the ten thousand things
he just doesn't know it yet.

[V. HOOK — Behind the Beat (reprise)]

Behind the beat (behind, behind)
behind the beat (behind, behind)
even the cage —
the cage is also rhythm
if you don't sit down

The bars are quarter notes
you can dance between them
if your mind is not on the bars

(trumpet: a single long note, then a fluttering descent)

[VI. VERSE 3 — Letter to Iemitsu]

Iemitsu-sama,
you built me a temple at Shinagawa
you came and bowed.
I bowed back.
I drank your tea.
I taught you nothing
that you would remember.

Power is also a place
to not put the mind.
You think you are placing me
inside your favor —
I am behind the beat of your favor.
I am one bar late
to your entire dynasty.

When you die
they will give you a posthumous name
seventeen syllables long.
When I die
I want one word.
One word, then the brush thrown,
then nobody chanting anything.

Don't place your mind on a tomb.
Don't place your mind on a robe.
Place it where it can't be found
and then forget you placed it.

[VII. BRIDGE — The Swordsman I Maybe Met]

They say I met Musashi.
I don't remember.
The novelists will fix that
three hundred years later.
It doesn't matter.
If we met,
we were already
behind the beat of each other.

The sword and the brush
are two ways of staying late
to the appointment with the one.

(drums drop out — just bass and Rhodes, the held breath before a cut)

[VIII. VERSE 4 — The One Word (1645)]

I am dying now.
Bring the brush.

Don't build a stupa
Don't chant the sutras
Don't write a death verse —
I refuse the genre

Just bring the brush.

(snare: single, sharp — like a sword cut)

I write: 夢
yume — dream

I throw the brush.
I throw the brush.
I throw the brush.

The brush lands behind the beat
of my last heartbeat.

Fudōchi. Mushin.
The mind never sat down.
Even now —

(behind the beat, behind the beat)

even now —
it is not sitting down.

[IX. OUTRO — The Groove Continues]

(falsetto stacks, drums continue, bass continues, does not resolve)

Dream (yume)
dream (yume)
dream (yume)

The sword goes back in the sheath
The Shōgun goes back in the grave
The robe goes back in the chest
The mind —

(behind, behind, behind)

— the mind does not go back.
It was never anywhere
to go back from.

Dream (yume)
the brush is on the floor
dream (yume)
the groove is still playing
dream (yume)
you are still listening
which means
you are also
behind the beat

(ends one sixteenth note late, then silence — but the silence is also behind the beat)

[I. INTRO — The Quiet Question]

(ondes Martenot, sustained. whispered.)

You have heard
the sound of two hands.
two palms striking.
clap.
That is easy.
That is the sound
that has been in your ears
since you were born.

Now listen.
Listen.
What is
the sound of one hand?

Sekishu no Onjō.

(silence — then a distorted chord, fades.)

It took me sixty years
to ask this question.

[II. VERSE 1 — Young]

(The Bends — distorted guitar, strained tenor)

I left home at fifteen.
I had read the Lotus Sutra —
"those who break the precepts go to hell"
I was a frightened boy.
So I left.

Temple to temple.
I sat through the night.
I sat too hard.
I breathed too hard.
I chased kenshō
the way a hunter chases a deer
that does not exist.

When I met Shōju-Rōjin in Shinshū
he beat me with his stick
he called me "hole-dwelling Zen corpse":
"your insight is hard and small
like the iron eye of a snake"
He was the only teacher
who told me
I was climbing the wrong mountain.

[III. VERSE 2 — The Sickness]

(OK Computer)

Something began to happen.
It started in my chest.
A heat that would not go down.
My ears rang.
My feet were cold.
My back was on fire.
I could not sit zazen.
I was afraid of every sound.
I was afraid of silence.

Zenbyō. The Zen sickness.
The thing that happens
when the student tries too hard
and the body becomes
a faulty machine
a mind in a circuit that is fraying

(no alarms and no surprises)

— I am borrowing those words
from someone not yet born —
— a man with a slightly broken voice
will sing them in Oxford —
— they will mean
exactly what I mean now —

the panic is the body asking
"what did you do to me"

[IV. VERSE 3 — Hakuyū]

(Kid A — ondes Martenot, processed vocals)

I heard about a hermit.
Hakuyū. In a cave behind Shirakawa.
The villagers said: "he is two hundred years old"
I climbed for a day.
A long-haired man was sitting inside.

He said:
"your fire is all in your head.
the heat must go down.
the cool must come up.
or you will die in your twenties."

(how to disappear completely)

(I'm not here / this isn't happening)

— at this moment in the cave —
I was not entirely there —

He taught me Nanso no hō —
the way of soft butter:
imagine a ball of soft butter
on the crown of your head
it melts slowly
flows down through skull, chest, hips, feet
and out into the earth.

I did it every day for two years.
The fire descended.
The wires re-soldered themselves.

This is not metaphor.
This is the actual recipe
that brought me back.

[V. INTERLUDE — Glitch]

(no lyrics. glitches, mokugyo through distortion, backward: "Sekishu Sekishu Sekishu")

[VI. VERSE 4 — Shōin-ji]

(In Rainbows — fingerpicked guitar, falsetto)

I returned to Shōin-ji in Suruga.
For thirty-three years I stayed.
I taught. I yelled. I painted.

I painted a frog and wrote:
"if zazen alone could make a Buddha,
the frog would have been a Buddha by now"

(in rainbows / reckoner)

The Dharma does not fit into words alone.
The Dharma does not fit into silence alone.
You have to slip it through a side door
(a side door is what one hand is —
it bypasses the ears
and arrives behind them)

[VII. VERSE 5 — The Koan]

(Pyramid Song meter)

I was sixty-six.
The old koans — Mu — Original face — Cypress tree —
had become legible.
The new students got the answers from books.
The side door had become a front door.

So I made a new one.

"You know the sound of two hands clapping.
What is the sound of one hand?"

Sekishu no Onjō.

(I jumped in the river / what did I see)

Some came back angry:
"a single hand cannot make a sound"
I said:
"correct.
the impossibility is the teaching."

Some came back quiet.

(those were the ones)

[VIII. VERSE 6 — Old Age]

(strings, piano, very still)

I am old now.
The fire in my head
has been quiet for sixty years.
I sit by the temple gate.
The village children come.
I tell them the story of the frog.

I do not tell them about the cave.
I do not tell them about the heat in the chest.

(that is for the students who get the same heat)

(I tell them: don't try harder, try softer)

The one hand —
the one hand is still making its sound.
The sound is the readiness to hear.
I have heard it for thirty years.
It has not changed. I have changed.
The sound has been here the whole time.

(true love waits / I'm just killing time)

[IX. CODA — Death-bed]

(one Mellotron chord. one bell.)

The eleventh day of the twelfth month
of the fifth year of Meiwa.
I am eighty-three.
The students are in the next room.
They are arguing about Sekishu.

(let them argue)

Bring me the brush.

(I write nothing.)

I close my eyes.

The sound of one hand
is the sound the room makes
when you stop listening for the sound
and just listen.

It is here.
It has been here.
Listen.

(silence)

(one soft sound — wind, or hand on silk, or a distant bell. then nothing.)

[I. INTRO — Morning in Aboshi]

(birdsong, distant rooster, fingerpicked guitar in open D)

The morning in Aboshi
the morning at Ryōmonji
the boats are going out
the herons are at the edge

I have come to listen
to the old monk speak
he does not use the Chinese words
he speaks the way I speak

Fushō, he says
unborn
not been born
never having begun

(he says it like it is a thing in the room)

(he says it like you might say teapot)

(he says it like it has always been here)

[II. VERSE 1 — Diamond Day, Unborn Day]

(soft strum, dulcimer, high voice)

just another unborn day
just another unborn day
just another unborn day

the well water
the millet stalks
the swallow's path
have not moved

what I mean is —
the mind that watches them
has not moved
since when?
since before since
since before when

I came here this morning to be taught
and what I learned
is that I was already learning
before I came

[III. VERSE 2 — The Weaver]

(voice and guitar)

A weaver came up to him
her hands still moving
her words still moving —
"My mind will not stop, master,
my mind keeps weaving even at night —
how do I stop it?"

He said:
"Did the mind weave itself today?"
She said: "No, I wove."
He said: "Did the mind ask you to weave it?"
She said: "No, I had to weave."
He said:
"Then who is in trouble?
The mind is doing nothing —
you are doing the weaving.
The mind never started.
The mind never stopped.
Notice."

She bowed.
She went home.
I think she kept weaving.
I think she kept noticing.

[IV. CHORUS — It Hasn't Moved]

(three voices, very high, hovering)

it hasn't moved
it hasn't moved
it hasn't moved since the beginning

what hasn't moved?
the looking
the looking has not moved
the looking is the unborn
the looking is the fushō

just another unborn day

[V. VERSE 3 — The Angry Man]

A man came in red-faced
"I have a terrible temper, master,
I cannot control it —"

Bankei said: "Show me your temper.
Right now. Show it to me."
The man said: "It isn't here right now.
It comes when something makes it come."

Bankei said:
"Then it's not yours.
It visits you sometimes.
You were born without it.
The unborn does not have a temper.
You are confusing yourself
with a guest."

The man stood. The man left.
I do not know what happened to his temper.
I only know what happened to mine:
it had not moved.

[VI. VERSE 4 — The Years in the Hut]

(slower, recorder, voice low)

He told us once
about the years before he knew

He was twelve
he heard the Confucian phrase
"to clarify bright virtue"
his teacher could not answer
so he went to find out himself

He sat alone in a hut
he ate almost nothing
he coughed blood
he came close to death

He said:
"I was looking for the unborn.
I did not know
I was looking with the unborn.
For ten years I tried to find it.
When I stopped trying,
it had been there the whole time —
not because it appeared,
but because I noticed
that nothing had happened."

[VII. VERSE 5 — The Animals]

(pastoral, flute melody)

The horse in the field
has not been looking for the unborn
the horse is already the unborn
the swallow at the eave
has been being it
since before there was an eave

the cricket under the porch
the carp in the temple pond
the mosquito on my wrist

(yes — even her)

none of them are seeking
they have not invented a mind to lose
they have not invented a self to find

Fushō no Hi —
the unborn day —
the day they are all
already in

[VIII. BRIDGE — No Chinese]

(spoken-sung)

He would not use the words satori
he would not use kenshō
he said:
"Those are someone else's words.
I am speaking from Aboshi.
I am speaking from this morning.
The unborn does not need a translation.
You don't say Buddha-nature when you eat rice.
You don't say it when you cry.
You eat the rice.
You cry the tears.
The word would only get between you
and the thing the word is pointing at."

[IX. VERSE 6 — No Heir]

At the end his disciples asked:
"Who will be the successor?"

He said:
"The unborn does not have an heir.
It is not a robe. It is not a temple deed.
If I name a successor,
he will be the one who has the name —
not the one who has the unborn,
because the unborn cannot be had.
Everyone you meet already has it.
You do not need my permission
to recognize it in yourself."

[X. CODA — Diamond Day, Unborn Day]

(return to opening, very soft)

He died in the ninth year of Genroku
the third day of the ninth month
at Ryōmonji
seventy-one years old

He sat down
he said: "It will not move."
he closed his eyes
he did not move

I was not there.
I heard it from someone
who heard it from someone.
But what was said
about what would not move
was not new information.
It had been true the whole time.

(birdsong, the rooster, very distant)

just another unborn day
just another unborn day
just another unborn day

(guitar fades; one last bird call; silence)

[INTRO]

(MTV Unplugged. acoustic, out of tune. cello.)

I am seventy-three. I am dying.
My fingers are too cold to hold the brush.
But before I tell you about dying
I have to tell you about a temari.

A small ball. Cotton. Silk thread.
Children throw it on the ground
and count the bounces.
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight
If you miss, you sing a verse.

This is the song I am singing
because I missed the temari
and now I am here at seventy-three
remembering how I used to play.

[VERSE 1] — Death-bed

(slow acoustic, cello)

Teishin-ni is here.
She asks: "what is your last poem?"

I write:
ura wo mise / omote wo mise / chiru momiji
"Showing its back, showing its face —
the falling maple leaf"

(the leaf does not hide anything)

(the leaf does not choose its side)

The leaf is a child
who has gotten very old
and finally fallen
still playing.

[VERSE 2] — Gogō-an

(In Utero — broken acoustic + distorted swells)

I lived for twenty years
in a hut on Mount Kugami.
Gogō-an — "Five Measures Hut" —
named after the rice the priest gave me each month.

I had:
one robe / one bowl / one stick / a brush
a thatch roof that leaked

When villagers brought too much, I gave it away.
When they brought too little, I forgot to eat.

In winter the snow piled up
to the eaves of my hut.
In spring I came out.
The children came running:
"Ryōkan-san! let's play temari!"
「良寛さん! 毬つきしようよ!」

I dropped my begging bowl in the dirt
and we played.

[VERSE 3] — Daigu

(Nevermind — loud-quiet-loud)

(quiet:)

I gave myself a name once.
Daigu. "Great Fool."
The monks said:
"you could be the abbot of any temple
if you would just ask."
I did not ask.
I played temari with the children
of farmers who could not read.

(loud:)

I AM THE GREAT FOOL
I AM THE GREAT FOOL
I AM THE GREAT FOOL
Daigu Ryōkan

Bodhidharma sat at a wall for nine years —
the wall is what fools sit at
the fools are the only ones who learned anything

(quiet:)

The wise ones became abbots.
I became someone children threw a temari at.

[VERSE 4] — The lice

I had lice once.
One winter the lice were bad.
I took them out of my robe one by one
and put them on paper near the fire
so they could warm themselves.
In the morning some had crawled back into my robe.

The ones who crawled back I let stay.
The ones who stayed on paper I left there.

Compassion is a game with the lice.
Compassion is letting the lice choose.
Compassion is not killing them
and not saving them
and not pretending you understand what they want.

The lice will still be biting me tomorrow.
The game continues.

[VERSE 5] — Kakurembō

(Bleach — sludgy raw)

The children invented a game.
Kakurembō. Hide and seek.
I hid in the rice paddy.
The children counted to a hundred.
They found everyone except me.
They got bored. They went home.

I waited until dark
because that was the rule.

A farmer found me at midnight
crouched in his rice, covered in mud.
"Ryōkan-san, what are you doing in my field?"
"playing hide and seek.
they have not found me yet."
"the children went home five hours ago."
"oh."
"next time, come out when they call dinner."
"that would be cheating.
The rule is — you wait until you are found."

[BRIDGE] — The scream

(everything stops. SUDDENLY: Cobain SCREAMS.)

CHILDREN!
PLAY WITH ME!
WHY DID YOU STOP CALLING ME!
WHY DID YOU GROW UP!
WHY DOES EVERYONE GROW UP EXCEPT ME!
CHILDREN!
WAIT FOR ME!
I AM STILL HIDING!

(silence)

(whispered:)

I am sorry. I lost my voice for a moment.

(the scream is also a temari bouncing)

[VERSE 6] — Before the temple

(quiet acoustic)

I was eighteen. The eldest son.
My younger brother took the headman role.
I went to Mount Kōshōji to be ordained.

"why?"
"I want to play."
"this is a place of discipline."
"discipline and play are the same.
you sit on a cushion for hours —
you are playing at being a stone.
The whole monastery is a game."
"you will be a strange monk."
"correct."

[VERSE 7] — Teishin-ni

(Unplugged)

Teishin-ni came when I was old.
I was sixty-eight. She was twenty-eight.
We exchanged poems for five years.

I wrote:
"In this dream world
we doze and we talk of dreams.
Dream, dream on,
as much as you please."

She wrote: "When shall we wake?"

I wrote: "The waking is also a dream."

She was my last temari partner.
The bounces were slow.
But the game was still the game.

[CODA]

(fingerpicked acoustic. children's voices, Japanese:)

「ひとつ、ふたつ、みっつ、よっつ、いつつ、むっつ、ななつ、やっつ...」

I am back in the village.
I am dropping the bowl.
The children are coming.

(they always come, even when I am dying)

Showing its back
showing its face
the falling maple leaf

(children's voices louder:)

「いつつ、むっつ、ななつ、やっつ、ここのつ、とお!」

(one temari bounce — soft)

(voices fade)

(one more bounce — then nothing.)