an old writer and his words

  • LLANYSTUMDWY

    The small church is tucked alongside the narrow road, its moss encrusted stones bathed in the November sun. The headstones in the churchyard lean askew, sagging under the weight of time. The weeds sprout up answering to a silent call. We are here, they seem to say, to reclaim our own, and we shall do…

    Lou Faber

  • VAIROCANA (NARA DAIBUTSU)

    Daibutsu, you sit placidly staring down at the throng that slowly bows before you. You can small the faint essence of the joss sticks wafting from the great cast iron pot outside the massive doors. “Do not act as if the world were real” you whisper, or so it seems to my chilled ears, “it…

    Lou Faber

  • PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

    The philosopher sits on a rock overlooking a pond with a single water lily. To defeat your enemy, you must have his mind. To have his mind, you must be him. To be him, you must cast off self-loathing When there is no loathing, he is not your enemy. If you have no enemies, you…

    Lou Faber

  • RELATIVITY

    I can no more imagine a lack of freedom then they can imagine the freedom I assume. It is always like that imaginings are real until you try to make them corporeal, then the evanescence is all that is real. It is easy to ask how can they live in such poverty, and had they…

    Lou Faber

  • TAIGEN FANS HIMSELF 正法眼蔵 三十二

    When a leaf leaves the tree it falls precisely where it should. When a flower petal is carried off on a strong wind it comes to rest in the proper place. When you smell the sweet aroma of next summer’s roses you must use the nose you had before your parents were born. A reflection…

    Lou Faber

  • WITHOUT WITHIN

    Within a rock there is another rock that sits in the middle of the stream, in sight, just out of reach. Within a cloud there is another cloud whose rain has fed a barren field. Within this city there is another city whose streets I have walked in countless dreams. Within this mirror there is…

    Lou Faber

  • AN OVERHEARD CONVERSATION

    “It will never be what you think it should, and not what you wish it to be, unless by pure happenstance, so just relax and allow things to happen as they will.” “I know I can change the outcome, have it conform more to my will with enough effort, if others like you don’t get…

    Lou Faber

  • KANNON WAITING

    The hermit lives in the shadow of the great mountain listening to the symphony of the bluebird and the wild Rose engulfed by the sky, the meandering stream his constant companion. I live in a city in a sea of city dwellers each of us prisoners marching from cell to cell, with passing nods we…

    Lou Faber

  • MORNING MEDITATION

    Settling into perfect stillness, each of us in our brown robes on brown chairs, benches, cushions, note his entry is somewhere between the thundering of a forgotten storm or the garbage trucks crawling slowly down the street. Despite the early morning heat there is no breeze, only a large moth comes through the open windows…

    Lou Faber

  • IS THAT SO 沙石集 三

    If you find an orphan do you take him as your own. Do you feed and shelter him and offer him your name. Does he sit at your side in silent meditation. Do you willingly accept the scorn of your neighbors for your bastard child? If his mother later comes, will you part with him…

    Lou Faber