The house finch looks like it’s been dipped in a bucket of raw grape juice.  They don’t tend to come by much.  The larger birds might be keeping them away.  Yet every so often, at dusk, there will be one or two that swoop down to the feeders.  In some lights, they appear red, in others they take on a bluish tinge.  In all lights, they exude a sense of having just surfaced from a great depth, dripping colour from crown to chest.

When I see them, I feel as though they are part of a vast red-blue-ness that sometimes separates away in little fragments and the colour is a direct transmission from some boundless ocean.

Mind as the directly transmitted buddhadharma is used in the sense of mind extending throughout all things, and of all things being included within mind.  When we speak of a zazen based on the innate oneness of mind and environment, it should not be understood that zazen is a method of psychic concentration or of trying to still one’s mind.

Kosho Uchiyama writes in The Tenzo Kyokun and Shikantaza (in The Art of Just Sitting, edited by John Daido Loori) and goes on to ask “What, then, is the meaning of mind extending throughout all things and all things being included within mind?” 

What is the colour of a house finch?