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YAKUSAN’S LAKE 鐵笛倒吹 八十八
When you travel from home and are asked if the lake on the shore of which you live is now full, what can you say. Will you speak of the rains that soaked your fields and what of the herd of water buffalo come to graze since you have left. The eye sees only now…
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THEN
Before the after now is present. It was never like this before, it will not be again anytime soon, for there is no time soon that has yet to be or just gone by. After the before we find ourselves here and now.
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WITH EYES WIDE CLOSED
Between this moment and the next lies an unbridgeable gulf that the mind leaps with great ease, never looking back, or down into the abyss. It is only when the body stops, tries to grasp the space between, that everything collapses and falls into itself until all that is left is improbability.
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TOKUSAN’S LION 鐵笛倒吹 九十三
As you approach the teacher, close the gate ahead of you, for an open one is no gate at all. If you ask, he will open it, but when he asks who wishes entry what do you say, you are a mere cub. If you bow to him expect a gentle blow from his…
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WHEN OR IF
In a clockless world all life is an approximation and clear boundaries evaporate like the mist off a morning pond. In that world this moment seeps into the next, night becomes day, only to return again. The Buddha knew this for in his clockless world all that existed was this moment an instant that was,…
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WHERE?
Is it the trip or the arriving that most matters, or is it simply what you expect once you are there, if there is where you expect for expectations are too often misplaced and assumptions reflect desire, not truth. In the end it hardly matters, for you can never be anywhere but where you happen…
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ARCHER
The work of the bow is done when the arrow takes flight, when the vibration of its string is recurved into stillness. But what of the archer now having let go, can only await the fletched arrival. If the target falls will the bow know the pain, will the archer, will the fingers hold the…
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NO MIND, NO BUDDHA 無門關 三十三
Baso knows well only the ox truly understands the yoke but if you offer it the ox will not accept. Why would you seek to become the ox? It would be better to burn the yoke. A reflection on Case 33 of The Mumonkan (The Gateless Gate)
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TOPOLOGY
Between this point and that lies a vast uncharted space noted on every cartographers chart. If you ask how this could be possible I reply it’s like listening to silence and hearing each sound deeply embedded in the one next to it, a glissando of what exactly? Uncertainty? That is the whole point in the…
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KEMBO’S ONE ROAD 鐵笛倒吹 八十四
As you walk along a road do you know where it begins or where it will end and what lies along it. Perhaps the road is a twisted loop with neither beginning or ending, but if asked where you are on the road you are always here. A reflection on Case 84 of The Iron…
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an old writer and his words 