an old writer and his words

  • LINES

    The shortest distance between two points is the path I always discover once I arrive by a more circuitous route, but for one for whom the trip is key, the path I take is the right one every time.

    Lou Faber

  • URBANITY

    Walking down this road I would like to see a rice field golden in the morning sun with a great mountain rising behind it just around the next bend. I would settle for a town its lone Temple quiet, awaiting the morning bell, the call to sit, with maybe a cat at the base of…

    Lou Faber

  • TAKING FLIGHT

    Origami cranes lumber into flight and lift into the sky over the small, back street Temple somewhere on the periphery of Shinjuku. They know their flight will be only temporary, that their wings will grow quickly tired, that the rustling sound of two thousand wings will soon fall silent as the breeze bids them a…

    Lou Faber

  • THE SIXTH ANCESTOR’S “YOUR MIND IS MOVING”

    As you look out the window you say the branches of the tree are dancing, the clouds barely stopping to gaze down on the scene. Walk outside and feel the breeze skitter along your skin, see the seed pods of the maple take wing and fly off. Ask yourself why this is, is it the…

    Lou Faber

  • MORNING

    one thousand fingers gently fold one thousand cranes our tears are countless. red sandstone plateaus coyote stalks through scrub pine chindi howl assent in the Norway Spruce pine cones threaten to descend. Squirrels sit waiting.

    Lou Faber

  • REFLECTIONS

    You believe this is how, and where, it begins, but that is only your conception of it. You believe the mirror shows your face each morning, but it is merely polished glass, and you mind sees what it perceives to be you in the glass, while the glass is empty. It has no real beginning,…

    Lou Faber

  • WITHOUT WITHIN

    When you peer through the glass are you looking out, or are you looking in, and how would you know which is true, and does it matter. When you walk through a gate are you entering or leaving. If you ask where the gate is located, you cannot find where you are going, for all…

    Lou Faber

  • ZAZEN

    He likes the sitting, at least at first. It does calm him, as it is supposed to, and he knows he needs calm in his life. Even his knees accept the stillness for a while. Soon enough they begin to question the wisdom of this practice. Good for him, maybe, but hell for them, regardless…

    Lou Faber

  • TRIPTYCH

    Origami cranes take to the sky, devour clouds denying winter. Zebra butterflies hover, dance on rays of light never tomorrow The pond imagines itself one day a great lake its shore dreams of spring.

    Lou Faber

  • TUNG SHAN’S NO COLD OR HEAT

    You say all you seek is moderation, simply finding a middle way, though nothing at all would suffice for you, no pleasure, no pain, no loss or gain, you would willingly attach to nothing at all. This is not the path the Buddha would tell you, for the place you claim to seek cannot ever…

    Lou Faber