an old writer and his words

  • LISTENING TO THE FLUTE

    YAKUSAN HOLDS IT         鐵笛倒吹 十  Sit just above the peak of the highest mountain and reach up with open fingers, what will you grasp? Walk slowly across the floor of  the deepest sea, what do you see below you? If you have three daughters is any one less beautiful than the others?   JOSHU COVERS…

    Lou Faber

  • COMPASSION

    Kannon, have compassion for us, as if you could do otherwise. We don’t seek wisdom, that’s out of your department. We all seek enlightenment as if it is some neon sign around the next bend in the path. We are well-suited for rushing to unknown destinations. We would offer you prayers, but we have forgotten…

    Lou Faber

  • ISSA PAUSES

    first snow of winter white coated Buddha dreaming of chrysanthemums   prayer flags unmoving in the stillness of morning summer or winter?   tomorrow is gone, yesterday has disappeared. what moment is this?

    Lou Faber

  • HUMANITY

    Each day I walk out into the sea. Each day the sea engulfs me. I cannot walk on the water, nor does the water part before me. Each day I walk out into the sea and reconfirm my humanity. In my prior life as a Corporate attorney, I was profiled in the ACC Docket, the…

    Lou Faber

  • BASHO’S DREAMS

    on the sacred lake lotus blossoms grasp the sun Buddha steps lightly   Buddha cares little for the endless prostrations preferring Summer   setting summer sun turns the river to purple moon comes from hiding

    Lou Faber

  • THE HERMIT

    The hermit lives in the shadow of the great mountain listening to the symphony of the bluebird and the wild Rose engulfed by the sky, the meandering stream his constant companion. I live in a city in a sea of city dwellers each of us prisoners marching from cell to cell, with passing nods we…

    Lou Faber

  • NARA

    The clouds shimmer in echo of the peel of the great temple bell. Hearing the chorus of monks, a small red maple sheds a leaf. It is the butterfly whose wings gavotte to the inkin bell which causes waves to lap the shore of a distant sea.

    Lou Faber

  • BULLET TRAIN

    From the window of a speeding train the rice fields seem like carpets, today the gold of the alchemist’s dream, just months ago the green of imagined grasses over the next hill. When I sit down to dinner in Osaka, will the rice nestled in my chopsticks tell me of the dreams of those who…

    Lou Faber

  • RIPPLE

    In this moment there is, and can be, no other. And when it is gone it never existed, much as the next will never exist. So it is with us, a reflection of the ripple of the long sunk stone now nestling the bottom of the pond.

    Lou Faber

  • DAWN

    Early morning Tokyo awakens, gray, moist. In the small park the crows listen for the Temple bell then bowing to the Buddha, call out their morning chants.

    Lou Faber