Tag: Blues Folk
-
The Buddha’s Eyes Blues
Buddha’s Eyes Blues is a slow-rolling, rootsy folk-blues meditation on the heart of Chapter Ten of the Lotus Sūtra. With warm finger-picked guitar, mournful slide, and harmonica sighs, it honors the sutra’s call to make offerings of devotion and daily action. Each verse carries the listener down a dusty road of incense smoke and open…
-
The Eternal Road in This Burning House
This song is a long, luminous walk through fire and stillness. With a slow, earthy guitar groove and a blues-folk pulse, it weaves ancient parable into present-day grit. The verses trace a pilgrim’s hard miles—years of searching for a distant light—only to discover that awakening is already here, in the everyday and the ordinary. Drawing…
-
The One Great White Ox Cart Blues
The One Great White Ox Cart Blues is a slow-burning folk-blues meditation on finding the sacred in everyday life. Driven by a mournful acoustic guitar in A minor and a steady, heartbeat bass, the song draws on the Lotus Sutra’s parable of the Great White Ox Cart to reveal a timeless truth: there is no…
-
The Eternal Road in This Burning House
This song is a long, luminous walk through fire and stillness. With a slow, earthy guitar groove and a blues-folk pulse, it weaves ancient parable into present-day grit. The verses trace a pilgrim’s hard miles—years of searching for a distant light—only to discover that awakening is already here, in the everyday and the ordinary. Drawing…
-
Muddy Waters, Silent Mind
“Muddy Waters, Silent Mind” is a reflective blues folk song that draws inspiration from Nichiren’s Shishin Gohon-Shō, where he speaks of muddy water catching the moon’s reflection and trees receiving rain without deliberation. With soulful male vocals and a melodic, earthy arrangement, this song explores the quiet wisdom found in nature’s flow—no striving, no resistance,…
-
Times Sweet Sway
“Time’s Sweet Sway” is more than just a song; it’s an invitation to experience time as a melodic force, one that is both gentle and unapologetically unpredictable. It captivates with its poetic narrative and musicality, drawing the listener into a state where the ephemeral nature of time is celebrated rather than feared—a sweet, lingering reminder…
-
🪷 Muddy Waters, Silent Mind — A Song, A Sutra, A Stillness
This song came to me in the quiet of morning practice, while reading Nichiren’s treatise Shishin Gohon-Shō. He writes: “Muddy water has no mind but it still catches the moon’s reflection and naturally becomes lucid. Plants and trees catch the rain in order to blossom, but can we say they do this deliberately?” That line…
-
The Bodhisattva’s Mirror
In the Sahā-World’s [1] swirling mist,Where suffering and joy coexist,A Bodhisattva’s [2] form appears,Reflecting all, dispelling fears. Like moonlight on a placid lake,Or petals that the wind may shake,This being shifts from shape to shape,A master of the skillful drape. In teacher’s robes or child’s small frame,In stranger’s guise—no two the same.Yet wisdom’s light shines…
-
Necklace of the Boundless Heart
(A Bluesy Folk Song) “Dive into the soulful currents of ‘Necklace of the Boundless Heart,’ a bluesy folk ballad inspired by the Lotus Sutra’s timeless tale of compassion and shared merit. With a voice full of grit and grace, this song weaves the story of Bodhisattvas offering a jeweled necklace not for themselves, but for…
-
The Necklace of Boundless Compassion
(A Bluesy Folk Song) “The Necklace of Boundless Compassion” is a soulful, blues-infused folk ballad that weaves a timeless Buddhist parable into a universal anthem of generosity and interconnectedness. Inspired by Chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra, the song tells the story of Endless-Intent Bodhisattva’s offering of a priceless necklace to World-Voice-Perceiver (Avalokiteshvara), who initially…
Mr. Altig’s Overview of the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Sutra 