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GOING OVER THE BLUE CLIFF: HEKIGANROKU CASE 4
TE SHAN CARRIES HIS BUNDLE Walking in the room you cast your eyes about, looking for something, although you cannot say what it is that you look for, and you cannot believe you will not find it, for you think you will know what it is only when you see it. The person who sees…
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AKEDA
My father never walked me up a hill, never asked two servants to wait below, never bid me be strong, never asked me to have faith in the Lord, never raised the blade only to see a ram in a thicket. My father never did any of these things and so I have no special…
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TELLER
She claims to see the future in a glass orb, in the palm of a hand, in the cards spread out on a small table. He knows all history is written in books is retold in stories is buried in successive layers of soil beneath the city. Neither walks along the shore see this wave…
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TOOTHLESS BODHISATTVA
He will tell you that the distance between a tear and a laugh is the span of a mother’s arm. He knows the duration of sadness is identical to a shnork*. He cannot understand how you could have forgotten all this. He doesn’t know why you cannot recall that enlightenment is no more than a…
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ON THE MESA
I sit outside, on the mesa, having watched the mauve, fuchsia and coral sky finally concede to night. The two orange orbs sit twenty yards away, staring back and in this moment coyote and I have known each other for moments, for generations, and we are content. Coyote tells me he was once an elder living…
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SENSING NIGHT
“Turn on the light so I can hear you,” she says, and I reach for the switch across the room. “Please whisper,” I respond “and I may be able to see my way to the window.” I draw up the shade and in the dim glow of the night’s light I feel the braying of…
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EMPTY SACKS WILL NEVER STAND UPRIGHT
There are nights when the song of a single cricket can pull you away from sleep. She says that she has heard that not all Angels have wings and neither of them is sure how you would know if you met a bodhisattva. He searches the mail every day, for a letter from an unknown…
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AUBADE
The sun peers through the skylight, sneaks catlike up the comforter. He strokes her cheek, they are drawn together, lips touch, toes twine, hips press, fingers trace, the mattress is a world of infinite gravity. Downstairs the cat paces angrily, the coffeemaker thirsts for beans.
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UNKNOWING
I don’t know what I am, the Buddha said. I don’t know why my mother gave me up at birth or how many cousins walk the streets of Glasgow or where I lost my first tooth I don’t know what became of the nickel or why the tooth fairy…
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ANOTHER VISIT TO SHOBOGENZO
YANGSHAN’S NO ENLIGHTENMENT Within nothing there are all things, within all things there is nothing. The Buddha asks in your binary electronic world how can I count on you to survive if zero is taken from you. NANYUE POLISHES A BRICK There is no reason to sit zazen, it is worthless yet it cannot be…
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an old writer and his words 