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SHINZAN QUESTIONS THE NATURE OF LIFE
Why, when you sit on the cushiondo you imagine yourselfbecoming a Buddha?If you can imagine yourselfbecoming a Buddha, youare not yet readyto become a Buddha.If you sit on the cushionand imagine nothingyou grow ever more readyto find what you nolonger seek so much. A reflection on Case 70 of the Book of Equanimity (従容錄, Shōyōroku)
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SPINNERS
They were hoveringlike so many demented helicopterson the verge of the pondthis morning, as if fightingthe humidity that hangslike a velvet curtainover summer mornings.They look littlelike the dragonfliesof my childhood imaginationnor of the great beastswho should oncehave roamed here.We are nowtheir predatorsbut the morning sunno longer danceson the wingswe have given up.
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DREAMING OF FLIGHT
As a child I, like so many others,imagined we might have wingsand could take flight at will, unrestrainedby gravity or parents, a freedomboth denied us: for our own goodthe parents said, silently by gravity.We would look at the sky, the clouds,the birds cavorting without seeming careas we were called in for homework,piano practice, household chores.Now…
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VICARIOUSLY
I wonder how my life would bedifferent if just once duringmy childhood I had imaginedthere was a ghost under my bedor a skeleton buried in the garden.I read books with thosescenes and I felt deprived.My friends said that I lackedimagination, and I was ableto imagine them fallingvictim to ghosts that inhabitedtheir homes, were carried offby…
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CONCEIVE OF THIS
No child, no youthwants to imagine the momentof his or her conception.Now, that is the moment of personhoodin some places, a moment whentwo cells become one and isa life of its own, but it isn’tthe convergence of sperm and ovumwe avoid, but the act leading to it.When you are an adopteeand only later in life…
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HYMNAL
Open to page 147 of your hymnals.There is nothing to sing therefor the words of promise oncefound there have witheredand faded, carried off on nowtoxic winds, so hold your breathor whatever heaven you imaginewill be too soon be approachingat a speed exceeding imagination. You don’t remember how you got here,things happened around youwhen you weren’t…
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BUSINESS SUITS
“What do you think is the likelihoodof success in the long run,” she asks,and I watch the fly land on my forearm,perched on hairs that barely bend under his inconsequential weight.His wings are a perpetual twitch,almost unseen, and felt only as a faintbreeze in my imagination, while a world is created, a reality collapses, a…
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HABIT
When you say, she said,that you are a creatureof habit, I have a hardtime imagining you asany sort of nun, or evena monk for that matter. Perhaps, he responded, Ishould emulate KingHenry and start my ownspinoff church, wherethe priestly vestmentswould be jeans and tees. But I would require thatparishioners not weartie dyes on Sunday andCrocs…
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HABITS
Tonight’s moon will looksimilar to last nights, or sowe assume since the cloudsdenied us that view again. It will be fuller, more plumpless an empty cup, now onealmost full, spilling its lightinto the all too dark sky. If she is hidden again, wewill turn to our imagination,for the moon is a creatureof habit, having learned…
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THE MIND’S BLIND EYE
He imagined the end was coming,but that was his problem, imaginingfor it was about all he was capable of doing. He started small, near visualizationmore than imaginings, but he grew moreproficient with practice, his ideas his conceptions of an increasinglygrander scale, until from a single threadhe could weave a tapestry that boggled even his mind,…
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an old writer and his words 