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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…
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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)
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TOMORROW
As night settles over our house we slip beneath the blanket and imagine the day to come in all of its promise. By morning, reality will set in and I will awake to a day reliant on us to set its course, a captain with no chart and only hope and compassion to steer us…
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STARING
If you stare at it long enough it is certain to become familiar, as though you have seen the very thing in the very place and time before. You know this is not possible, but it allows you to conceive of the future, even though that cannot exist, any more than the past can now…
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BITCH
She’s a real bitch, that one, and there is no telling her anything, at least anything she doesn’t want to hear. And to make matters worse still, she can be so damn alluring, and you know when she turns it on you are hopeless to do anything other than fall hard and fast under her spell.…
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PHOENIX
A Phoenix may rise from the ashes, but you and I have seen the aftermath of the flames and all that rises are our memories and dreams. We lack both wings and a certain amount of faith, for ashes are all that is promised and in the end we are no more than dust avoiding…
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YAKUSAN’S LAKE 鐵笛倒吹 八十八
When you travel from home and are asked if the lake on the shore of which you live is now full, what can you say. Will you speak of the rains that soaked your fields and what of the herd of water buffalo come to graze since you have left. The eye sees only now…
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DROPPING
As night settles in the clouds grow uncertain of their intentions. It is hard to realize that a boundary is silently crossed and summer has retreated into the past, leaving a new season in its wake, harder to know that tomorrow we will awaken into an autumn that at first seems no different then her…
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HAWKING SANITY
I am not the least bit certain why the red-tailed hawk chose that lamppost that day and peered down over the Expressway. Nature has her own logic and we question it at our own risk. Staring into his flaming eyes, for one small moment we both saw the foolishness rolling by below and alongside us.
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FALLING
I stumbled in love with you, she said, because I’ve always had this great fear of falling. It must come from my childhood though I can’t recall any specific incident, just the deep bruises my parents left when they fell, without warning, out of the love I thought had to last forever.
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