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Liberation & the Sacred
Fall 1997   Vol. 14 #1
Fall 1997   Vol. 14 #1

Poems/Not Poems

Shura

By Stephan Bodian

 
 

  for Trout Black

 

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 hand.

 

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.

 

December 8, 1974    

 

* The shura is the patch of hair left on the head of the monk- or nun-to-be and is shaved off during the ordination ceremony.

 

∞

 

From the Fall 1977 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 14, No. 1)
Text © Stephan Bodian 1997-2020

Author

Stephan Bodian received ordination as a Zen monk in 1974 and directed the training program at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. After leaving the monastic life in the early ‘80s, he practiced meditation with teachers of Tibetan Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, and served as editor in chief of Yoga Journal.

Author

Stephan Bodian received ordination as a Zen monk in 1974 and directed the training program at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. After leaving the monastic life in the early ‘80s, he practiced meditation with teachers of Tibetan Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, and served as editor in chief of Yoga Journal.

 
 
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