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JOSHU’S DOG (SHOBOGENZO 114)
Joshu’s dog and Schrödinger’s cat- are they one and the same. Leave the lid on the box of the mind. What is the half-life of a thought?
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A SCREAM
Then there are the days when extracting words feels like extracting teeth, and there is no Novocaine for either my pen or me. If you hear a scream, just ignore it please, it is only the agony of a poem’s death throes.
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INSTRUCTIONS TO THE NOVICE HAIKUIST (AND AN EXAMPLE)
INSTRUCTIONS: Make certain that you carefully count syllables and mention summer EXAMPLE perhaps not a bang certainly not a whimper– summer’s arrival.
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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TIME OUT
She is fond of saying that time is on our side although we both know that time does not take sides, is incapable of action, is passive in passage. It is something of which we may never have enough but we are certain no one has more than we in this moment. She cannot imagine…
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BLOWING OUT THE CANDLE無門關 二十八
Ryukan and Tokusan, one an old fool one a young fool. Burn your notes, set fire to them both, enlightenment can be found in the ashes, where words and thought are carried off on the winds. A reflection on Case 28 of the Mumonkan (The Gateless Gate)
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TIPPING POINT
The hardest thing is knowing that this precise moment, this precise place is the tipping point, and things could go either way from here, although the Buddha would suggest that there are ten directions in which everything always can go. You cannot pause and reflect on this, for this precise moment, this precise place…
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OLD MEN
It is always odd watching older men gather, talk about their lives, about how much they no longer remember, of last year, and a decade ago, about the infinite details they can clearly recall about the time they spent in the Army, Navy, Air Force, the smell of Slop-on-a-shingle, of field stripped butts in a…
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an old writer and his words 