an old writer and his words

  • OLD MONK

    The old monk stooped carefully, gingerly picking each browning leaf from the dry garden and gently placing it in the sack he carried. With each leaf he would increase his count, always certain that it fully fell into the sack. When the last leaf was picked and even the autumn tree dared not drop another…

    Lou Faber

  • THREE HAIKU

    an entire flower and a single rose petal duplicate beauty a whole universe exists in a drop of dew life evaporates two crested ducks pay no attention to people offering nothing

    Lou Faber

  • WORLD HONORED ONE ASCENDS THE SEAT

    If you sit patiently enough, and sit long enough, just perhaps the teacher will acknowledge you. If he holds out his arms and offers you the heart of the Dharma, will you grasp it and hold it closely? If you try and grasp it it will slip through your fingers, disappear from sight, lost forever.…

    Lou Faber

  • HAWK

    A red tailed hawk watches carefully from the tall pine that stands proud in the next yard. It is not clear for what he is watching, perhaps it is nothing at all, or something my human vision cannot discern. I stare at him, but he does not return my stare, and after some time lifts…

    Lou Faber

  • LIVING

    They sit in a small wine bar on an out-of-the-way street in an out-of-the-way city, she sipping a Oregon Pinot Noir while he is on his second Alsatian Pinot Gris. She asks him if he ever thinks about death. He peers into his wine glass, than at her and smiles a gentle smile, “I don’t,”…

    Lou Faber

  • MINISTER PEIXIU SEES A PORTRAIT

    You are perpetually searching, but what is it you seek? If you say it is wisdom, how will you know it if it finds you? You may look in a thousand mirrors and no mind will be seen in none of them. You are an oyster, where is the pearl? A reflection on Case 9…

    Lou Faber

  • KINHIN (WALKING MEDITATION)

    The entirety of this practice is to learn to walk with a lightness, so that you contact the earth, the grass, not tread on it, so that the earth and the grass caress your feet and not try to push them away, and all the while there must be a gentleness of breath, so the…

    Lou Faber

  • IN DREAMS

    Mingling with the wind, my dreams are carried off into the night before I have fully finished viewing them. The heavy heat of summer has seeps through the windows, a blanket I cannot throw off almost smothering, until it, too, is soon washed away by the rivulets of sweat soaking into the sheets. I reach…

    Lou Faber

  • EUTERPEAN EVENING

    An evening: spring retreating in the face of summer, two garnacha, a piano, standup bass, drums, her voice lifts the weight of the sky and we float up on a melody, unchained. In heaven George and Ira smile and we, here, smile with them.

    Lou Faber

  • SEIJO’S SOUL 無門關 三十語

    Open your mouth and let your soul flee on the dance of your departing breath. Inhale slowly, let a different soul find purchase in your lungs. Both souls are your soul, neither soul is yours, but is it the moon or an obscuring cloud? A reflection on case 35 of the Mumonkan (Gateless Gate)

    Lou Faber