Found (just for this morning) on the office door of our IT monk. Bless him!

Here below is the stanza and the whole poem, by Shelley.

Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs-
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find 25
An echo in another's mind,
While the touch of Nature's art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
I leave this notice on my door
For each accustom'd visitor:-
'I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields.
Reflection, you may come to-morrow;
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.
You with the unpaid bill, Despair,-
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,-
I will pay you in the grave,-
Death will listen to your stave.
Expectation too, be off!
To-day is for itself enough.
Hope, in pity mock not Woe
With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on your sweet food,
At length I find one moment's good
After long pain: with all your love,
This you never told me of.'

The hand written note reads, i.e. I'm in the garden. In gassho, Berwyn

West Allen Valley

What might I leave you
as a last gift when my time comes?
Springtime flowers,
the cuckoo singing all summer,
the yellow leaves of autumn.
Zen Master Ryokan, translated by Sam Hamill

In the 1960's there was a TV programme called 'All Our Yesterdays' in which we saw what life was like 25 years previously. Mostly it was black and white newsreel footage from WW2, if I remember correctly.

This picture was taken twenty five years ago in 1982. The priory, as it was then, was switching gears from being a lay retreat center to growing into what it is now, a full training monastery with a continuing guest programme. The chap who sent me the photograph, along with many others who read this, played an important part in the growth and development that has taken place over the years. Here is an opportunity to say thank you.

And the poem? I found it today in the monastic alms box. That's a place we can put religious items for others to pick up and use, I thought you'd like it.

I received an email from a very good friend, and blog reader, with the following poem by Zen Master Ryokan typed into it. My friend had received it, hand written, in a card from a man incarsorated in prison with whom he corresponds as a befriender.

I watch people in the world
Throw away their lives lusting after things,
Never able to satisfy their desires,
Falling into deep despair and torturing themselves.
Even if they get what they want,
How long will they be able to enjoy it?
For one heavenly pleasure,
They suffer ten torments of hell.
Binding themselves more firmly to the grindstone.
Such people are like monkeys,
Frantically grasping for the moon in the water
And then falling into a whirlpool.
How endlessly those caught up in the floating world suffer.
Despite myself,I fret over them all night
And cannot staunch my flow of tears.

My friend replied with the following Ryokan poem:

Even if you consume as many books
As the sands of the Ganges
It is not as good as really catching
One verse of Zen.
If you want the secret of Buddhism,
Here it is: “Everything is in the Heart”!

My thoughts are with them both this evening, and with 'you all' who patiently read what is left here.

Happy shortest day of the year by the way.