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ASKED AND ANSWERED
She wants to ask me how many lawyers can dance on the head of a pin, but she knows that at their hourly rates, no one will pause to count them. There is that, and the fact that lawyers are…
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FLIGHT
One thousand cranes take flight and there is a sudden silence as the cat stares up, bidding them farewell. We barely stop to notice, despite the rainbow of colors replacing the clouds, even the sun seeming to pause in wonder. Two thousand hands made this happen, one person, unrelenting, knowing anything less would be nothing…
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UNASKING
There is much you would ask the Buddha and so little he would tell you. But at the moment that you fall silent, when your last question slips away and you have no request – in that moment the Buddha will speak freely and provide the answer to unthought-of questions.
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DONGSHAN’S ILLNESS
When someone says you are not looking at all well, who is it that is ailing? When that person says you looked better the last time he saw you, which you did he see? If you look in the mirror do you see someone looking ill, and if you do, who is that person, for…
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STAR WALKER
His brother said that if you left the windows open at night, the ghosts would come in and might steal your soul. He didn’t care, he wanted to hear the song the stars sang every night, to see them come down and move in pairs across the mesa, for stars, he knew turned orange when…
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EVOLUTION
We arose from water, crawled forth and inhabited the land and claimed dominion and the land appeared to cede itself to us, knowing better and caring even less. We return to the water feel its pull but immerse ourselves only partially, willing to risk only half drowning, the land and air usually silent, knowingly…
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LISTEN UP, ABRAHAM
A commentary on a holy book suggested snakes cannot hear one another. Perhaps their deafness goes beyond family and species. It would do much to explain God’s rejection of Eve’s proffered excuse that despite her protestations and those of Adam the snake would not take no for an answer – a deaf snake, after all…
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ALONG THE MIDDLE WAY
Each day he stops briefly in the small park along the path, and picks up a pebble which he tucks in the coin pocket of his jeans. There it rests until he comes the pond where he sits on the shore staring out into the heart of the water. He pulls the pebble and tosses…
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SITTING SHIVA
The sitting of Shiva is a tribal right performed with Kaddish and coffeecake. The mourning is harder for the adult child, for the now severed bond grows with time and not distance, and there comes a point where the loss invokes your mortality. Tonight we all speak of the departed off on a journey we never…
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GATE GATE
The hardest thing of all is that there is no one to entreat, no one who has to sort the infinite voices, note who requested what so that delivery of the prayers, the few that warrant granting, go to the correct person, particularly given that there is no system in place to track the whims…
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an old writer and his words 