an old writer and his words

  • OF BEAUTY

    We love the flower, more so if it adopts the brighter shades of nature’s palette, and even tolerate the fern, but only if it truly honors the greens it is supposed to bear and unfurl. We save our spite for the fungus which reaches up to us with surprising haste, nothing this day, fully formed…

    Lou Faber

  • THIN EDGE

    He is certain he has the answer and is imply waiting for someone to ask the correct question. He knows he cannot be wrong For if the answer seems so it is only because the wrong question was asked, and that would hardly be his fault. He tells people this, asking that they carefully consider…

    Lou Faber

  • TEMPUS IN A TEAPOT

    If you’ve been paying attention, you already know that I have always hated Latin, and not merely because I never took it, but because I grew tired of being told to seize the day. It wasn’t like I could put a leash on it – time tends not to remain static, and since it has…

    Lou Faber

  • HAWKING AUTUMN

      The hawks have been circling more frequently of late, but in the early autumn laziness of merely riding the breezes that seem to pick up in the mornings, before the midday sun bids them be calm so it can make its transit. By afternoon, they tend to roost high up in the giant pines,…

    Lou Faber

  • SEIGAN’S COST OF RICE

    The search will be endless the answer at once obvious and incapable of being found. You seek direction to it, certain the right teacher holds the key to the critical gate, inside which all of the Dharma sits waiting for you. If the teacher asks you how many people live in a distant city you…

    Lou Faber

  • FLYING TIME

    She said, “the saddest thing of all is time. We spend so much of it trying to insure we know exactly what time it is, that it gets away from us and is gone long before we get around to using it.” He said, “but it’s important to know what time it is, in case…

    Lou Faber

  • WALKING THE WIRE

    There is a precarious balance we spend much of life attempting to maintain. It is like the invisible border between day and night dream and forgetting and we walk the wire along the precipice awaiting the arrival of the sun so that we can bid farewell to the dark places in which our dreams hide.

    Lou Faber

  • COUPLING

      He asks when as if it were all a matter of timing as if the immediacy or lack of it somehow really mattered. She would never ask that but would want to know who. She’s far too polite to ever ask why preferring to see the scene in the mind’s eye allowing a thin…

    Lou Faber

  • SELF AND NO-SELF

    The Buddha said when the student is ready the teacher appears. My Rabbi used to say when you are ready the Lord will appear. But you may not recognize God, that’s okay. Both Buddha and my Rabbi might have said that when you are ready you will appear and it is then you will no…

    Lou Faber

  • YAKUSAN’S BIRTH OF A CALF

    In the middle of the day you can not see because the sun is too bright and may blind you. At midnight you stumble searching for light for you are blind in the darkness. What is it you struggle so hard to see? A reflection on case 66 of the Shobogenzo (Dogen’s True Dharma Eye)

    Lou Faber