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RADIO DAZE
There was a great deal I wanted to say, after all when you end the broadcast career that spanned forty-three years you want to be entitled to a farewell address. She said, “you’ve been on the air here for two years, and reading the news to the blind once a week for half an hour…
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WALKING
He walks slowly, with a stoop, born of time or knowledge of a world that has seeped away. He smiles, but you cannot tell if it is at the worm slowly crossing the sidewalk, or the young woman pulling on the leash of her far too large dog. He could walk this route with his…
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SEKISO’S NOTHING IS CONCEALED 正法眼蔵 語十八
When you look in the mirror are you real, is your reflection real? Be careful what you say, for if I look into that mirror and see you, is the you I see anything other than real? When you go through the gate you say “I am exiting”. When I follow you through the gate…
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FINIS
When it all ends, just what will you being doing the moment before. Of course you cannot know, for you have no idea just when it will end. And if it ends as a result of your actions, then you won’t know that it is your action that is ending it, so that is no…
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IN TRANSIT
We have decided to skip the viewing to say our farewells in thought without needing to see her face frozen in the morticians best attempt at placidity, erasing the anger, the fear, the frustration, the pain that made leaving easier for her than remaining. We will say the prayers, most of them, she with fervent…
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STILL SMALL VOICE
We listen carefully certain we can hear it if and when it appears. We hear nothing, but we are used to not hearing, but faith is a far more patient than it is given credit for and we have nothing to do in any event, other than to abide an event we cannot predict and…
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A MORNING PRAYER
My words are carried on the winter morning wind echoing off the obsidian mound and shattering in silver crystals reflecting the frigid sun. The barren moon recedes as my son, the wolf, ravens devouring knowledge of the world, listening to the song of the dolphin. She is a rose, soft petals fluttering thorns poised to…
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RECALL
It is always odd watching older men gather to talk about their lives, about how much they no longer remember of last year and a decade ago, about the infinite details they do recall of their time spent in the army, air force, navy, the smell of slop on a shingle, the stain on the…
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A CHILDHOOD
I have fond memories of a childhood I never lived. Those are the best childhoods from for they reflect life as you meant it to be lived. In this life my father is in his late nineties, still smiles when he sees me, not didn’t clutch his chest sixty-one years ago, didn’t fall to the…
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UMMON’s KONSHIKETSU 無門關 二十一
Ummon might say a pile of cow dung in the road – this may be the Buddha. Will you step in or walk around? A reflection on case 21 of the Mumonkan (Gateless Gate)
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an old writer and his words 