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DREAMS
Somewhere, tonight a bagpiper is playing., Notes from the drone and chanters lick the sky, piercing passing clouds, embedding themselves in the stars. Somewhere else a flute player fingers the stops as notes pour forth and dance on the moonlit lawn. Neither piper nor flautist hear each other, but I weave both into a song,…
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WHAT, SHE ASKS, DOES A FEATHER SOUND LIKE?
echo of Galileo’s ball in speeding flight once cast off the tower, the cascade of butterfly wings in mid migration, and universes collapsing, and the sound of everything the moment before there was time.
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ESCAPE PLAN
Open the door quickly for you may find a wonderland: a bottled djinn waiting for your wish, a mangy dog looking for scraps his fur wet and matted, head down. Open the door quickly – it may be the entrance to a gallery or another door, and another until you are outside and must open…
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TWO JOURNEYS THROUGH THE GATE
Tosotsu’s Three Barriers 無門關 四十七 Before you sit Tosotsu’s three mountains how will you traverse them, legless on your zafu? Look within your mind, search diligently, for when you find nothing, all is laid out before you. Confuse life and death for one is the other, the other the one. Search…
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TEACHER
My teaching is a drawing made of water, faint when it leaves the pen it will be eaten by the sky, it may fall on the pond amid other drops of rain. If you cup your hands and drink it in it will someday be sprinkled on the earth where it will feed a plant…
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BUDDHA’S BODY
If you see the golden body of the Buddha standing in the road will you stop for him? If you stop and ask him to teach you you will be rejected. If you stop and do not ask him to teach you you will be rejected. If you run him over and leave him…
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FINDING BUDDHA
Grasp what you love but hold it carefully, for it may slip away into the blackness of night. Grasp what you fear but hold it carefully, for it may slip away on the feet of your lover.
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A FLUTE PLAYED BACKWARD : THREE CASES (100 – 98) FROM TETTEKI TŌSUI
ISAN’S TEN FOOT SQUARE 鐵笛倒吹 百 Ten thousand words what do they mean – with which will you compose a poem for the wall of your room. Leave the room, does the poem remain? Enter the room is this the same poem? Write them on the wind with a pointed leaf, that is a fine…
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COYOTE SONG
Down at the butt end of the arroyo is a pond, an aneurysm in the stream that runs down from the mountains for better than a month each spring. The twisted, gnarled mesquite cluster around it, like children gazing at a corpse in utter fascination who dare not approach lest it become real and touch…
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WALKING AMONG SAND AND PEBBLES: SHASEKI-SHU
CUP OF TEA 沙石集 一 When the cup is half full what more can be added? In the garden, the moon can exist in a full cup or one only half full. It is the empty cup that can hold entire universes, infinite in capacity. FINDING A DIAMOND 沙石集 二 There are endless paths…
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an old writer and his words 