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[Last updated: 7 March 1993]
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"Han Shan's Carousel".

All copyrights to this document belong to John Tarrant, California Diamond
Sangha, Santa Rosa, Cal., USA
Enquiries: The Editor, "Mind Moon Circle", Sydney Zen Centre, 251 Young St.,
Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038, Australia. Tel: + 61 2 660 2993
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JOHN TARRANT ROSHI
(This is an introduction to any selection of the poems in "The Real Naturally Appears.")

Han Shan's Carousel

My daughter's first words were "Mummy," Daddy," and "Dojo."  Over the past few
years, Roberta and I have been travelling to sesshin with her.  I didn't want to
be the kind of teacher who goes off and leaves his family at home.  So, through
carting diapers to Perth and Sydney, and preparing talks while my hair is being
pulled, it's come to me that the best way to convey the Dharma to my daughter is
to immerse her in the attention that, through zazen, we've learned to give to
breath, the rain, the garden, the person in front of us, the world.  Being in
retreat feeds this kind of attention but intrinsically it has nothing to do with
retreat.  Complete attention is itself a kind of love and is one of the true
gifts that we can give to one another. In the Hua-yen vision of the universe
each thing contains each other thing, its Buddha nature shining out of it.  We
are all held in the great matrix, parts of each other, and a family is a
fragment of this net.  One thing we've found is that having young children
around seems to deepen the retreats.  The children circle in their own bright
dream while we, the meditators, circle in ours.  Their ancient voices, the
freshness of their view of things, and the splendid, primary colors of their
toys -- the presence of the children is like a single hibiscus flower on the
altar.  Among the dark robes and black cushions it begins to sing, it recovers
for us the pleasure of walking this arduous way of ours, and we know by
experience how awareness honors the things of our lives, so they come forward to
greet us and we are never lonely again. There was an old and great Chinese
master named Han Shan who left the worldly world, went into his hermitage and
shut the gate, never expecting to open it again.  It occurred to me that having
a child was like this gate closing so that something else could open, a kind of
before and after division of my life.  After Sarah things are more constricted,
even sleep is not guaranteed; everything demands more attention and, like that
little hut in the mountains, is more infinite.  My monastery lies in daily
things, persuading Sarah to get dressed, taking her to preschool on the way to
work.  And I began to know in the cells of my body that it is the commonplace
life that, fully inhabited, contains eternity.  What  Han Shan is doing today is
teaching his daughter letters on the keyboard.  So I wrote some of my own Han
Shan poems.  Here are a few of them.

				John Tarrant
				Santa Rosa  Winter 93
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