I wrote this poem in the fall of 1974 after shaving the head of a friend in preparation for his ordination as a Zen monk. Less than two weeks later, I too was ordained, though my teacher, Kobun Chino, forgot to leave the shura, perhaps out of habit, and i went into the ceremony completely bald, like a newborn babe. Seems like only yesterday—or a mere 2500 years ago! (The names are the English translations of our monastic names.)
Shura
For Thousand Rainbows
Awakening in Truth
Hairy skull, thick flesh,
you are older than I am
and younger. Your body,
crippling a little each year,
has within it a constant turning.
I turn your head,
feeling the bowl of it
in my hands.
There is a head inside this head,
and another, and another,
and inside each head: a voice.
The hair falls from all of them at once.
We are quiet together, listening
to the scrape of razor against scalp,
thinking of the one who,
2500 years ago, first
did this to himself, first
cleared the underbrush with
hesitant hands, first scraped
leaf-rot and humus,
scored and pierced earth
and stone and didn’t stop
until he hit
bedrock,
then walked away.
In us today.
--Dharma Ocean
Pure Practice
(Begun 11/25/74
Completed 12/8/74)
(The shura is the patch of hair left to be shaved off by the monk’s ordination master.)