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A TURN
He is never certain what to do on days like this one, when the winter takes a particularly nasty turn, the temperature hovers at utter emptiness, and the wind elects to try to enfold everything it can reach in a coat of frost, that bleaches life away. He walks each day, through the nearby park…
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DOGO WON’T SAY
I am the life of a hundred million others, you are the life of a hundred million others, a hundred million others are my life, a hundred million others arise from my death. How may hundred million are the same? None of them will say. A reflection on Case 29 of the Shobogenzo (Dogen’s True…
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A RIVER RUNS
Once, not long ago, a river meandered through our town. Actually, there was never a river here, and our town is really a small and shrinking city. But the wistful look on your face when I mentioned the river is reason enough to have one. So now I have to move somewhere in Connecticut or…
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A PERFECT MOMENT
A week ago there was a moment that perfectly summed up life, at least as seen by a three-year-old. Three-year-olds know far more than they are given credit for knowing, far more, they are certain, than their parents, and just enough to make their grandparents laugh at the most inopportune moments. It was lunchtime, always…
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EARTH MOTHER
In so many mythologies earth is a woman, a mother, and we arise from within her. The pure and simple logic of this assumption cannot be assailed, for she is the crux of all nature, and as it seems in life, it is all too often the males that lay siege and wage wars that…
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CONTINUO
The dolphin knows precisely when to feed when to bless the day when to swim south feels the pull of the tides. Each day at noon he walks across the factory floor around lathes, shavings, and up the metal staircase into the small office its windows overlooking the shop floor and pushes the red button…
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A PLACE OF MONOLOGUES
The cemetery is a place of monologues, family histories laid bare, admissions, secrets long kept hidden finally revealed You must listen carefully, for the voices speak only in hushed tones, befitting both place and circumstance. There is no dialog, no riposte, no response for in this place, that would be put of place, censorious, Thy…
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ANEW
The front of winter slowly seeps up from the sidewalk into the street unveiling the last falling of autumn’s leaves. A gentle fog rises shrouding the fact that winter, or the most of it lurks just over the distant hills, which mark the margin of our vision. Even the birds sing in our confusion they…
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KYOZAN’S DREAM 無門關 二十語
Hear clearly, only silence see clearly only emptiness dream of forgotten dreams awaken having forgotten dream and no dream merge in the light of the lamp. A reflection on Case 25 of the Mumonkan (Gateless Gate) Koans
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FINALLY FALLING
Outside the snow finally falls and presses the last fallen Maple leaves into the ground free, for now from the rake. Outside the snow finally falls and for a few hours November is redeemed and my shoes are suddenly inadequate even on the half plowed road. Outside the snow finally falls and the full moon…
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an old writer and his words 