an old writer and his words

  • 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

  • REISHO’S BRIGHT AND CLEAR

    As you stare into the mirror it is your reflection you believe that you clearly see. As the face in the mirror stares at you, it is its face it believes that it sees reflected. There is one face and there are a thousand faces. A reflection on Case 88 of the Shobogenzo

    Lou Faber

  • SOZAN’S FALLING AND RISING 正法眼蔵 三十三

    When you fall earth on one side sky the other. When you rise, earth on one side sky the other. When there is no falling, no sky, no earth, when there is no rising no earth, no sky. Sky and earth do not stand still. Reflecting on case 33 of the Shobogenzo

    Lou Faber

  • ZAZEN

    Soon I will sit and stare into the wall into my heart into the universe and will find something or nothing but the center.

    Lou Faber

  • ANGELIC REALIZATION

    She says she is certain that she has seen the archangel Gabriel. It was late at night, to be sure, but it clearly wasn’t someone of this world and equally clearly not an alien since there was no UFO or wormhole. She knew, as well, it wasn’t God, “Why would God trifle with me, when…

    Lou Faber

  • ZUÒ CHÁN (ALONE AGAIN)

    This morning I plucked a thread of silence from the dawn, watched carefully by a cardinal who knew not to break the purity of the moment. I do this as often as I can, sometimes grabbing one from the moon as it sits overhead holding out its promise of quietude as people retreat into homes.…

    Lou Faber

  • ÁŁTSÉ HASHKÉ (THE TRICKSTER)

    The wind takes up voice as it caresses these mountains, it’s song a lullaby to the coyotes staring at the waning moon. When night grows darkest, they join in the song, a spirit kirtan they have practiced for centuries. Men stare nervously on the mesa at the stars providing faint light, the moon wrapping herself…

    Lou Faber

  • AN OFF YEAR

    The was a winter, once, where even in the north the snow refused to fall, ice rejected jamming the culverts, and the sky stared down in amazement. That was the year trees would not bud and flowers fled deeper into the sweetness of the earth, grass sighed and lay indolent. It was a year my…

    Lou Faber

  • BETWEEN

    Between now and then, between yesterday and today, between night and day, between birth and death, between good and evil, between heaven and hell, between light and dark, between joy and sadness, our lives occur and we are so seldom there to see it happen, lost in dreams of what never will be.

    Lou Faber