A Tree Frog's Eyes ~~ Excerpt from the Foreword

It seems like some past age in a far different world when, as a displaced homeless nineteen-year old living on his aunt's dining room floor, I ventured into a rickety old second-hand bookstore and found, Zen Poems of China and Japan: The Crane's Bill, by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto, 1973. I read this little treasure with wide-eyed fascination experiencing its ideas, reflections, and poetry, and meditating on it between readings. After my first reading, I started over, but this time around I studied the Introduction in detail.

In the Introduction, Ikemoto challenges Western thinkers to pay attention to Zen poetry and to experience it for themselves, not just read about it. He suggests that to truly experience this poetry one must remove the Zen of it from the Zen of it to realize it is simply poetry of being—dynamism that is life-activity beyond all that is relative. Primed by the greater context of the entire book and Introduction, I re-read this poem on page 7:

Does one really have to fret

About enlightenment?

No matter what road I travel,

I 'm going home.

           ~~ Shinsho

This poem led me to a deep realization beyond words that I can only describe as the peaceful recognition of being at home in the universe and at home in myself together both at once. I perceived that the unfolding of my life before me would be a journey that was to be enjoyed and experienced by making the most of each moment in the here and now; and that living each moment fully is how I would enjoy my own simple little life as an interactive part of humanity and an integral part of the bigger picture of the universe.

It gave me a certain kind of peace and an underlying optimism that was, at times, challenged and tested in life, but which did not subside, and which prepared me for when God called me out some years later to gain a spiritual perception and awareness of His Word, and to become a wandering minister who loves Zen, poetry, and helping people reconnect with God, nature, and a greater sense of self and purpose.

My own deep connections to nature and my transience in life have led me on a journey of self-discovery through myriad geographic, geologic, and natural terrains coupled with a great variety of diverse cultures and manners of life, which I have enjoyed thoroughly with great gratitude (see life summary in the notes below). I have always rejected materialism, the "rat race", keeping up with the Jonses, and falling in line with the accepted norms of society, choosing rather to live a more simple, natural, and pure life. For this reason I have come to view myself as not being wholly unlike the haiku poet-priests or poet-monks of Japan, just in a totally different context.

The Bible is an Eastern book, as taught by the great K.C. Pillai, Doctor of Divinity, a rare convert from Hinduism to Christianity, who taught the Eastern ways, manners, and idioms in the Bible to the Western world so that the strange scriptures that perplex the Western mind could be understood as light through an Eastern window. He opened my eyes to the reality that many of the same principles embraced in Zen thinking and haiku, such as single-minded focus in the present, the interconnectedness of everything, and living in the here and now, are taught in the Bible.

Unfortunately the Bible is viewed and used as a religious book shrouded in mystery rather than the practical spiritual guide to life and living that it is. The Word of God teaches us about the reality of life, spirituality, and the human condition. It teaches us about our minds, our hearts (the innermost mind), logic, will, and emotion, our free will choices, the cycle of life and nature, and how to control our thinking to redirect ourselves to a fuller life, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Please consider getting a copy of A Tree Frog's Eyes. I believe it could be one of the most enlightening books that many have ever read.