Walt

1
Earth, round, rolling, compact--suns, moons, animals--all these are words to be said;
Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances--beings, premonitions, lispings of the future,
Behold! these are vast words to be said.

Were you thinking that those were the words--those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots?
No, those are not the words--the substantial words are in the ground and sea,
They are in the air--they are in you.

Were you thinking that those were the words--those delicious sounds out of your friends' mouths?
No, the real words are more delicious than they.

Human bodies are words, myriads of words;
In the best poems reappears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped, natural, gay,
Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.
- from Carol of Words by Walt Whitman

"When the true eye functions, it goes beyond looking and enters the realm of seeing. Looking speaks to what things are. Seeing reveals what else things are, the hidden aspect of reality, the reality of a rock, a tree, a mountain, a dog or a person. Walt Whitman said, “You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and water… a certain free margin, and even vagueness — perhaps ignorance, credulity — helps you in your enjoyment of these things…” Seeing reveals what else things are. It is a direct encounter that involves the whole body and mind. The barrier of subject and object dissolves and one appreciates things immediately and intimately. Like Master Dogen said, 'Seeing form with the whole body and mind, hearing sounds with the whole body and mind, one understands it intimately.'”
- John Daido Loori

Student: Is samadhi necessary for realization? Didn’t Huineng, the Sixth Ancestor of Zen, come to realization without ever doing zazen or cultivating samadhi?
Daido Roshi: Not only did Huineng gain realization without zazen, but so did Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and probably Walt Whitman.