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NANSEN’S REJECTIONS 鐵笛倒吹 四十四
If you come before Master Nansen, will you come holding the posture of a monk or a lay person, and when Nansen turns you away, how will you exit the room? Nested hands and gassho hands – both are so easily manacled – why leave the room at all? A reflection on case 44…
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THE TRICKSTER RESPONDS
The man liked to cry out into the night, asking questions for which he knew there could be no answers, or if there were, they would be things he would never wish to hear. The coyotes in the hills would listen to his pleas, his entreaties, his moaning, and they would remember the spirits of…
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SLIPPING AWAY
Each day I am certain something more slips away, forgotten, no longer able to be recalled, lost in the vast abyss of yesterdays. I would like to think this happens because something new, something better has taken its place, and I had no choice but to displace it. That is the convenient story I tell…
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BUDDHIST RELATIVITY
Now then, he says, and at once he is again victim of the confusion that he spreads in his wake. She takes him to task again, but he protests that what was now is clearly then, now, and this now, too, is now then, for each now is gone in the time it takes to…
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AN ALIEN(‘S) JOURNEY
He has just returned from the land of Others, where he expected to see all manner of things that would, could never happened to him. He thought he would be able to explain why this was, but now those things are happening to him. He suspects it is because he came to close to the…
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THE GIRL COMES OUT 無門關 四十二
She sits undisturbed Shakyamuni by her side. You can wave at her, she will pay you no mind. You cannot grasp her mind and maintain a hold on your own, you will grow deaf from the chatter but a child can curl at her feet and she will stroke his forehead in perfect Samadhi. A…
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ENLIGHTENMENT
He wasn’t sure he wanted it, was fairly certain he did not, and in that moment,was certain he would get it, so he began developing elaborate plans on what to do with it when it arrived. He laid them out in painful detail, each step, each move carefully choreographed. He waited patiently, each minute washing…
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ARRIVAL
Twisted strands tell a strange story – acid, a trip you never intended to take – amino pairs that walk you into a world that is yours alone and universal, a foreign place you now must call home.
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GALLERY (IN) CONCERT
Kandinsky, Braque, Matisse and Degas all stand patiently in the hall wondering if anyone, this night, will notice them as they always seem to do, while Motherwell and Pollack lurk around the corner, feigning indifference, dreading being ignored. The sound check is long ago complete and the three men sit in the cafe lost in…
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GENSHA’S IRON BOAT 鐵笛倒吹 八十語
Do not suggest you can only be enlightened on a cold day in hell unless you are prepared to carry the air conditioner across the River Styx. Even Cerberus has Buddha nature although none of the heads will say so.
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