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HIERARCHY
The buildings, great towers overlook the city. The hills, torn from the earth, peer down at the towers lights twinkling. The stars, sliding across the dome of night, watch over the hills. The child, for whom all is wonder, grasps the stars in small fingers.
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DUAL SINGULARITY
Stare at white sand surrounding the polished stone, listen to the earth. The stone knows no pain falling to the pond’s bottom, ripples comfort it.
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HOPI DREAMING
Look to the East stare at the sky and feel the winds carry away the snow which paints our lands and shrouds our ancestors in a mantle of white. Look to the South see the waters of the river flowing gently to the horizon bringer of the fish spirits, its azure waters washing away to…
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THOUGHT HARBOR
I harbored the thought one day becoming a monk, and not only because saffron robes would be well within my usual color choices. I knew it was a pipe dream, I love, too deeply, to disavow, life and I’m sure my past lives wouldn’t take all that long to catch up with me, karma can…
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AT THE BORDER
Out at the edge of the universe, time has no beginning and stretches endlessly, as a stone dropped, its ripples spreading outward across a shoreless lake. There is no time here at the margin, no space consumed by all space. I would touch the edge and press it outward disrupting balance until it all draws…
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OCTOBER
There is an infinite space inside an atom, a massive void into which universes tumble and stars and planets are born. Outside, the maple leaves burning flame and crimson spiral to the lawn, which waits to receive them. Autumn is the season when the earth prepares to die and it is left to us to…
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MORE MUSIC OF THE FLUTE
SANSHO MEETS A STUDENT 鐵笛倒吹 十二 One goes to the gate to welcome the new student and with a broad smile turns his back in silence, offering nothing. Another will not leave the Zendo, sitting in stillness at the sound…
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PROPRIETY OF MORNING
There is a propriety of morning that appears denied to the rest of day, escaping Luna’s grasp the sun can sing in a voice deep in prayer and yet at play. The lives that quietly left in the night are balanced by the days measure of births but at dawn when the sun throws off…
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SENBAZURU
A thousand cranes take flight hanging from the ceiling under the watchful eye the old Japanese man framed on my wall and the Buddha staring down from my dresser.
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TWO JOURNEYS THROUGH THE GATE
Tosotsu’s Three Barriers 無門關 四十七 Before you sit Tosotsu’s three mountains how will you traverse them, legless on your zafu? Look within your mind, search diligently, for when you find nothing, all is laid out before you. Confuse life and death for one is the other, the other the one. Search…
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