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BROKEN TRAY 鐵笛倒吹 九十
If you accidentally breaka wise man’s possessiondo you leave himwith one that is incompleteor two awaiting completion. If he asks you to replace ityou may search endlessly,bring him a thousand replacementsbut expect him to reject each oneas never being the sameas the original.If you grow dejected, rememberhe still has the originalin the cupboard. A reflection…
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LOOKING BACK FORWARD
Between now and eventually lies all of history. We are unable to see it though it lies in our field of vision. That’s the problem, we only know how to look backward. We are barely able to see where we are. It isn’t that we don’t want to be here, merely that here is difficult…
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RISHO’S POEM 鐵笛倒吹 三十語
Have you been here – who will know? The sun and moon record your journey. What you release gathers joyously around you, what you cling to flies off on the slightest breeze, mountain and cloud enfold each other. Will you join them? A reflection on case 35 of the Iron Flute Koans
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A CLIO MOMENT
Each morning I should take a moment and seriously question whether I have any history or should want any. Each day I know in that moment that I have the option of being reborn, of being someone who never existed before, and the price of this is shedding all of my former selves, an erasure…
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THEN NOW
The gap between hail and farewell is small an unbridgeable, no one can walk across, and yet the mind spans but falls away, to hail and ultimately to farewell and between they stare into a chasm they call life
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SHE HOPES
Faith is something, she says, that everyone has, it is just that some don’t recognize it, even while the coin is flipping through the air and the desired outcome is whispered in the mind. She believes that life is a joy, but that it is also heaven’s waiting room, and while there may be a…
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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…
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BORDER
He wants to know why we draw a distinction between dreams and what we like to call reality, as if the former is somehow less than real. We want to laugh at him, but we listen anyway. If all my senses end up in my mind then all that is real is real only in…
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ANGUO’S “THE MASTER’S FLESH IS STILL WARM”
If you are asked “who are you?” how will you reply, and who is the person asking the question? If you answer, you are blind if you say nothing you speak loudly. The sage will tell you that there is no you and if you doubt him he will hold up a mirror and ask…
