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                                 The darkling way, the bird path, the open hand.                                                                            The Record of Dongshan In the first few days of the month, pallid cuckoos arrive, and fantailed cuckoos, and shining-bronze cuckoos, calling, calling all day, and at night after moonrise – See?See?See?See?See?See? See. Here. Their host birds rush to bring out a first brood from eggs laid before the cuckoos arrived, or to complete their nests if they themselves have only just returned from migration – satin flycatchers! Swallows make reconnaissance flights over dams, checking for insect life, and skirl in and out of the sheds and under eaves where they build their ...

                         Sickness and medicine heal each other. The whole world is medicine. What am I?                           Blue Cliff Record , Case 87 I come from a place of creeks and rivers, and subtropical downpours that feed them. Here, even though rivers run out of the wet forest across the valley, this side is already in the rainshadow of ranges to the west and there’s not much running water – farms rely on dams, and pump through the summer to fill troughs and keep crops growing. When I first arrived I was always listening for water, always looking for its signs. The first few years I was here seemed parched to me. I remember lying awake, sick with longing for the smell of rain, for the sound of it on the roof. Feeling that if it came, softening the air and the ground, it would answer me as well, like a promise that my life too could mollify and ...

                        A monk asked Dongshan, “When cold and heat come, how can we avoid them?”                         Dongshan said, “Why not go where there is no cold or heat?”                         The monk asked, “Where is the place without cold or heat?”                         Dongshan said, “When it is cold, the cold kills you. When it is hot, the heat kills you.”                                                                                                             ...

                                  How many times have I gone down into the blue dragon’s cave ...                                                                                           Xuedou, Blue Cliff Record , Case 3 Southwest over the ranges, at dawn the full moon answers the rising sun that sidles to its midwinter notch in hills to the northeast. Even before the shortest day there’s a feeling that the season has turned. Birdcalls change as territorial manoeuvres begin again; brown thornbills check the eaves for cobwebs to carry away for nestbuilding; blackbirds chase and scold but don’t yet stake out a nest-range with their songs; fantails that didn’t migrate haunt the ways....

                 Reluctance n. ‘act of struggling against;’ ‘unwillingness, aversion;’ …                 from re- ‘back, against, in opposition’ + luctari ‘to struggle, wrestle,’ …                 from PIE * lug-to - ‘bent’ (also Old Irish foloing ‘supports,’ inloing ‘connects;’                 Middle Welsh ellwng - ‘to set free;’ Greek lygos ‘withy, pliant twig,’                 lygizein ‘to bend, twist;’ Gothic galukan ‘to shut,’ uslukan ‘to open;’                  Old English locc ‘twist of hair.’)                 Step by step in the dark, if my foot’s not wet, I’ve found the stone. Soyen Shaku The year winds down towards winter; each day is a small circle, ...

        I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen . . .                                                                               Walt Whitman We drink the beginnings of cider and perry – H has pressed fruit from trees all around the valley, including pears from the old orchard in the paddock here, and he gives us juice – complex earthy sour-sweet, with the zingy edge of new fermentation. I’ve also juiced a few kilos of nashi pears before the currawongs clean them all up – it tastes good, though the fruit is insipid.  Even as autumn deepens here, a tropical cyclone forms in the Timor Sea and travels south off the western coast of the mainland. It gathers strength till sensors on offshore islands record gusts of 290 kilometres per hour before the equipment ...

You come and go by daylight. You make people out by daylight. But suddenly it’s midnight. There’s no sun, no moon, no lamp. If it’s a place where you’ve been, then of course it’s possible – but if it’s a place you’ve never been, how will you get hold of something?      Yunmen  O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall …      GM Hopkins Equinoctial gales have begun. At the start of the month, a wild westerly stream encompasses the whole island, bringing massive swells to exposed beaches, touching up the wind-shorn manicure of coastal and alpine vegetation, combing twigs and leaves and dead wood from the forests to litter the ground. Despite this, the pigeon is raising another brood on the meagre twig platform in the birches where she brought out young in January. The autumn world goes about its business. Wattlebirds and families of currawongs feast on ripe pears. Flocks of thornbills gather, stopping at the water pots, checking the wintersweet out...