an old writer and his words

  • BODHIDHARMA’S VAST EMPTINESS

    If you go walking one day and meet a person you think may be the Buddha, ask him what is the heart of all of the sutras. If he answers you with Dharma will you be certain this person is not the Buddha? If, on the other hand, he says nothing at all, and merely…

    Lou Faber

  • URBANITY

    Walking down this road I would like to see a rice field golden in the morning sun with a great mountain rising behind it just around the next bend. I would settle for a town its lone Temple quiet, awaiting the morning bell, the call to sit, with maybe a cat at the base of…

    Lou Faber

  • TAKING FLIGHT

    Origami cranes lumber into flight and lift into the sky over the small, back street Temple somewhere on the periphery of Shinjuku. They know their flight will be only temporary, that their wings will grow quickly tired, that the rustling sound of two thousand wings will soon fall silent as the breeze bids them a…

    Lou Faber

  • MORNING

    one thousand fingers gently fold one thousand cranes our tears are countless. red sandstone plateaus coyote stalks through scrub pine chindi howl assent in the Norway Spruce pine cones threaten to descend. Squirrels sit waiting.

    Lou Faber

  • NARA

    It was inside Nara that it finally slipped away. Its tether had grown ever weaker, the first slip was decades before, a book, brief meetings an answerless question. It stretched further in Tokyo, basin incense under the watchful third eye and hung perilously by fewer and fewer threads until, with the monks’ gentle bow, it…

    Lou Faber

  • WINTER FALLS ON JAPAN

    Upon the peak of Mt. Fuji the first snow is shrouded by the mother clouds. In the shadows, rice shoots stare up in reverence.

    Lou Faber

  • THIS TIME AROUND

    He says that in his prior life, this being second he knows of, he was Japanese, although he did have a cousin in China, but he doesn’t know his name anymore. He wasn’t there for the war with Okinawa, but he knows that karate was developed then, and it’s why, in this life he studies…

    Lou Faber

  • MU

    If you ask me whether a dog has buddha nature I will stare back at you in total silence. If you ask again, or implore an answer I will smile at you, offer gassho and a bow. If you ask yet again, I will turn away and you will be left with a box into…

    Lou Faber

  • UNGAN’S SWEEPS THE GROUND

    As you stoop to pick up fallen leaves are you cleaning spring, summer or autumn? What seasons are deep within the winter branch? How does your work and that of the tree truly differ, and what leaves do you shed? A reflection on Case 83 of the Shobogenzo (True Dharma Eye)

    Lou Faber

  • MUSING (4 HAIKU)

    Out the plane window a lake or a sea of clouds Why does it matter?   during an eye blink the butterfly spreads its wings galaxies collapse   Cats curl in furred sleep the moon crawls across the sky a monk awakens   leaves cling to the trees the rivers flow more slowly the stone…

    Lou Faber