an old writer and his words

  • HSIANG LIN’S MEANING OF THE COMING FROM THE WEST

    You are certain the key is to sit, for that is what your teacher has told you, that is the practice set out for you. When you feel you have not attained your goal on the path, you assume it is because you have not sat still enough, long enough, deeply enough. A wise sage…

    Lou Faber

  • A SIMPLE QUESTION

    A woman walks up to me and asks, “can you juggle the salt and pepper shakers?” but I know what she really wants is for me to bind her wounds and drag the sun quickly from the horizon. I pick up two apples and a plum but the plum falls to the floor and rolls…

    Lou Faber

  • SEOUL

    Thursday night, and Planet Hollywood in Seoul is dead, more smiling staff than diners, the bar a well polished wasteland, no lines in the gift shop, the Penguin mask staring out over the almost empty dining room. As we leave, having consumed half a bottle of soju between us to the blare of the endless videos,…

    Lou Faber

  • PERCEPTION

    The sweep of the second hand, the minute hand is constant, each moment as long as the last, none longer, none shorter and yet I know that Einstein was right in noting that things unpleasant take forever, while all that is joyful passes quickly, even when the elapsed time is the same. What Albert didn’t…

    Lou Faber

  • HUANG PO’S GOBBLERS OF DREGS

    You have heard that when the student is ready the teacher appears, and you believe you are ready, but no teacher has appeared. I can tell you that you are ready, that you will never be ready, that I am not the teacher, that the teacher is here, that the teacher will never appear. The…

    Lou Faber

  • PADDIES

    At first it is a checkerboard of ponds neatly arrayed, reflecting the sun, the work of man, for God so rarely plays geometrician with creation, less often still using right angles. Soon enough green blades reach up through the shirred surface, random, reaching for a sun they can never touch. Later, it is a field,…

    Lou Faber

  • CONTEMPLATING

    She stands on the bridge and stares down into the slowly flowing river. She wonders what it might feel like to climb the railing and pushing off, gain flight. The river would welcome her, enfold her, carry her to its heart. She will not leap this day just as she did not the day before,…

    Lou Faber

  • HUI CH’AO ASKS ABOUT BUDDHA

    When you look in the mirror do you hope to see yourself, and who is that face that stares back? If you turn out the light, are you still there in the mirror, or has the illusion of you disappeared? If you crack the mirror, do you feel the pain of the scar across your…

    Lou Faber

  • VERITAS

    It is the promise of the grape that lures us, that allows us to imagine the glass stained purple, or a deep golden yellow, an alluring pink. It may be accompanied by words that suggest the approach of a moment not to be forgotten, deep, vibrant, tobacco, stone fruit, a veritable catalog to entice us,…

    Lou Faber

  • DREAM

    She took the flower, placed it gently, arranged just so, between the pages of the giant tome, and closed the book setting it carefully back on the shelf where it would remain until someone, seeing its leathered spine might pull it out, blow off the dust and open to that page, and look into her…

    Lou Faber