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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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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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SPECIES LOGIC
There is a logical reason that zoos are not built in the heart of cities for it would be difficult to ascertain which animals were the exhibits and which were the visitors, each in their own sorts of cages. In the end it would not work out well for lions and monkees prefer to watch…
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DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
They say, “there will come a day,” but I have no idea who they might be, and why today is not the day since it came and even they had to notice it’s sudden arrival. But that’s the problem, for “will come” is in the future and the future offers only tomorrows.
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CLOUDY
They promised rain yesterday. It did not rain yesterday. The sky grew dark, the clouds gathered, convening, no doubt, to consider rain but clearly they did not reach a consensus. They say it will rain today, but we have no reason at all to believe them, for they are wispy and darting around under the…
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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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MARCHING ON
He notes with alacrity that modern man has stripped all logic from time, rendering it an arbitrary temporal system based on mechanics, and even that is quadrennially imperfect. Once it was seasons, which came and went in orderly fashion, but heating was never a science then. Later it was the moon a reusable calendar…
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ENIGMA
As the moon begins it’s slow departure we step carefully out into the receiving night. The neighbor’s black cat looks up at the sky warily, steps around the ladder leading against the house, and sits and contemplates the number thirteen, though it holds no special place in the feline world, it just seems the thing…
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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 