I Am A Bottomless Pit Poem by Prathibha Nandakumar

Gouging out healthy flesh and creating an open wound. How strange, this “prajna” of his. Just what is it like? “Deep”? “Shallow”? Like river water? Can you tell me, what kind of prajna has deeps and shallows? I’m afraid it’s a case of mistaken identity, confusing the pheasant with the phoenix.
- Zen Master Hakuin



Tell me master,
What is it to be hollow and
What is it to be solid?
To be empty of my own being,
following my master,
'Whatever is form, that is emptiness,
whatever is emptiness, that is form.'
The same is true of feelings, perceptions,
impulses and consciousness.

With empty feelings and impulses
I have discovered anger in a saint
And also distaste,
call it intolerance if you wish.
The great are also allowed it to some extent.
'What a shame, when you draw a snake, to add a leg.'
'There’s no cold water in a boiling cauldron.'
He knows it, and calls me a bottomless pit.
I am the pot never filled to the brim
I am the water dropp fallen on a furnace
I am the snake with legs and wings
Worshipping you
by the fire and by the cold night.
To be judged hollow
for not passing the tests of mind and emptiness.
The white owl at the tree scowls at the new furniture
condemned for the errors uncorrected.
To err is not human, you say master,
What is it to stay trapped and entangled in a bottomless pit?
Whose eyeless state are we targeting?
When you encounter an emotion you don’t understand
You bite and chew it to the pith and spit out
unlike me. I drape it around my body and soul
never to deny it as the great spell,
my master, cast by you.

'To serve a Superior Man is easy,
to please him an impossible task.'
The superior is no superior if he does not
Recognize that the empty form is fearless.
Fearless I move on knowing fully well
that to catch a tiger by the tail
is to realize that
there is no fire without friction.
Seeing Emptiness in the fullness of Form
Is what makes you the master and me
a humble disciple.

I am the bottomless pit, my master,
Fill me with whatever that takes it to get solid.
Remember that Buddha said
in emptiness
'There is neither form, nor reception,
nor perception, nor conception, nor consciousness,
There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance,
till we come to, there is no decay and death,
nor extinction of decay and death;
There is no suffering, nor causation, nor cessation, nor path;
there is no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment.'

I am chained in shackles
and riding a tiger
making all the appropriate noises
which sound hollow
to your divine ears.




18.4.2008