無事手

The heart is like an ocean, with no bounds,
Nourish the body and the soul, by planting lotuses in the ponds.
One already has a pair of free hands,
Be the compassionate person the world wants.
— Huangbo Xiyun, Tang Dynasty

Notes:

i was not sure how to interpret the 無事手 (literally meaning hands with nothing to do). Don’t we often find ourselves wanting to help, but our hands are already so full so we just can’t squeeze out the bandwidth?

or maybe it’s a challenge for us to think harder? Is our plate really that full? Where did our time go? Is everything that’s taken away our time really what we want to do and aligned with our value?

Whatever the situation is, I guess it’s true that our hands were originally hands with nothing to do. We need to be mindful of what things we pick up, and Huang Bo suggested in the last line to use them to provide 慈悲, which is a Chinese term for metta (meaning loving kindness) and karuna (meaning compassion).

The ocean and the lotus are very often used metaphors in zen poems. The poem starts there as a reminder that we have to take care of ourselves first, not by pushing but by nurturing or nourishing, so we are like the oceans and lotuses, open and elegant, ready and have the capacity to serve others.