-
KANNON’S STATUE 鐵笛倒吹 語十八
If you meet the Bodhisattva, you don’t ask someone to carve the image from your mind. To the carver, she weighs but an ounce and can be carried on his fingertip but try to lift her and you will not be able to move her from her place. All Buddhas are one Buddha but his…
-
PEBBLE
In this moment there is and can be no other. And when it is gone it never existed much as the next will never exist. So it is with us, a reflection of the ripple of the long sunk stone now nestling the bottom of the pond.
-
ISAN’S QUESTION 鐵笛倒吹 二十九
Gather each single leaf from the stones of the garden and place it neatly in a bushel. It will take weeks or months to gather them all even if you have windless days, but this is important work. When the last leaf is gathered take up the bushel and throw the leaves into the garden,…
-
HALT
But what if, just once time slowed significantly or even stopped. A bird becomes frozen in the sky, not moving, not falling, staring at the distant tree in total stillness. A drop of rain hovers just over the grass dreaming of chlorophyl. If you had such a moment how would you wish to spend…
-
EVENT UALLY
A week from this Thursday something will happen that no one could have ever foreseen. This is the beauty and the horror, at once, of our limited vision, afraid to see the present although it is all that is clearly within our visual field. Instead we look back into the shadows where memory substitutes for…
-
JOSHU’S DWELLING 鐵笛倒吹 七十
If a poor man offers you the finest diamond do you take it, and what of the gift of a crust of bread from the wealthy man. Each gift, in its way, is worthy of rejection. Once I grasped at great thoughts – now I can forget my own name and wonder whose face…
-
MINDFUL MINDLESS NESS
The difference between before and after is the moment we can never seem to grasp. In the time it takes to read the definition of evanescence, its meaning is lost to history. That, ultimately is the failure of thought and logic, for the process is so overwhelming what we process is turned to dust in…
-
CHAO CHOU’S FOUR GATES
Standing on the edge of the precipice with your eyes closed, what will you do? If I turn you around, where is the edge and where is the land from which you approached? If I say you must take a step, do you gently place your toe out and seek to feel the earth,…
-
NOW
If the time is now how will we know it? And if we miss it how will we know what the consequences are? The better question is whether it matters, for if we can be in each moment to the extent possible, then nothing is missed and every moment is now and there can never…
-
AROUND IT
It is remarkably simple, really, a single circular brush stroke in a monochrome black on rice paper, always nearly perfectly round, never is the circle complete, always some small thing left wanting. You stare at it, more at the small gap, imagining it filled, hoping it cannot be for it holds out the promise that…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
an old writer and his words 