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IGNORANT THOUGHTS
NOTE: TODAY’S POST FOLLOWS BELOW: Dear poetry-lovers, Thank you from the bottom of my heart for following my blog. Some of you have been daily readers since it began 9 years ago, some are more sporadic or more recent followers. Thank you one and all. As you can imagine, it takes a fair amount…
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MUSEUMS NO MORE
Travel guides always wantto send me to museums of art,of history, of culture, of science.I appreciate their guidance but Iwould prefer to spend my timevisiting zoos, looking at animalsand ignoring the placardspainfully detailing what I am seeing.I have been to countlessmuseums and while each offeredbeauty and knowledge, eachdemanded that I needed to learn,to interpret, to…
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BEGINNINGS
Some, myself once includedwonder where time and space beganfor all things must have a beginningif they are to have an endas we are certain we will too soon.I don’t stop and wonder whythat matters, how knowledge wouldchange anything at all.Species we have rendered extinctwould remain so, Van Gogh’s paintingswould see no less beautiful,Beethoven’s carefully crafted…
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IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING
Of course, the cat knows what is about to happen but she will not tell us. She always knows what is about to happen, she claims. When we push her to share the information with us she says that we do not speak her language fully enough and she is tired of repeatedly trying to…
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RYUGE PASSES THE CHIN REST
You say you area seeker asking this teacherand that teacher to giveyou the dharmaand the knowledgeof how to attainenlightenment.Each teacher merelystrikes you withthe keisakuso you move on.Each teacherhas given youthe heart of dharma,why can’t you see it? A reflection on Case 80 of the Book of Equanimity, Shoyoroku 従容錄
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THE SNAKE’S LAMENT
You realize that it getstiring always being the onewho they try to blamefor all manner of sinsand flat-out mistakes. I get the garden, but allI did was show them the apple,they decided to eat it despiteHis warning, so how is that on me? And do you know how hardit was for the wife and Ito…
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FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE
When a marriage comes apartas so many do, it seems,there is always someonewatching from the sidelineswho, while not being asked,offers up an “I knew thiswould happen from the start.”The “I told you so’s” pointingto a moment in the heartof the now doomed marriageare irritating enough, butthe “I knew it’s” are unforgivable.And when it happens so…
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SADNESS
He never stopped to take noticethat his anger had given wayto a deep sadness, onehe felt had him trapped, searchingthrough the pain for an exitfrom a place he never imaginedhe would leave willingly.He had promised her a lifetime,a statement he took as a truthnot considering that her promise,whatever it had been, had becomeviolable, the pain…
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JOSHU ASKS ABOUT DEATH
Do not ask a teacherhow you will knowif you ever attain enlightenment.If you do askthe teacher will sayyou cannot knowenlightenmentyou can only be itand if you are enlightenedthere is nothing to know. A reflection on Case 63 of the Book of Equanimity (従容錄, Shōyōroku)
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ON WRITING
Someone once advised methat I should always writewhat I know, for that givesthe work an honesty that isessential to its believability. I should add that he said itknowing I was a poet,and not to cause me to give upany dreams of fictionI might still have harbored. But as I age, I find thatI seem to…
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an old writer and his words 