French wet Frog

I thought that people would throw me buckets of water but I was wrong: the heavens provide the fun. I am soaked in my straw sandals and a fierce cold wind blows over Kyoto. Today, I went back to JR station to walk the huge corridor in a stream of human beings. Snail speed, turtle race facing rat race. Very few coins dropped in my black bowl and in three hours of takuhatsu I hardly had enough to buy a nice lunch. And guess what? I ended up kicked out, of course. It doesn’t matter for Takuhatsu is its own reward. It does matter sometimes too. Singing long hooooo for hours on end and swimming up a rushing stream of frantic economic animals is scary, it feels they are heading at me and manage to avoid the clash and crash at the very last moment (near miss, nearly everytime) and yet they are all Buddhas, which is the meaning of my timeless practice: a clear reminder of the oneness of reality and Buddha nature. For most of the time, behind my hat, it is a clear reminder of my confused monkey mind and freezing body. And sometimes, these women’s legs look very inviting… Wonder if I am the only monk with these ideas ( to be honest with you, I think all monks must play with the beautiful Mara during takuhatsu time). Yesterday, as I was sitting at a coffee shop, a japanese macho guy said in English to his friend: “look, a Buddhist”. I could not help it, I said: “No, first a human being, not even, first a man, and actually no, first an absolute arsehole”. They laughed. I was speaking their language and the language of the truth.