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WHEN
We are told that we cannotlive in the past, that would bea senseless waste of the present. But we cannot live withoutthe past for then there would beno true present in which to live. So we are left to hover betweenthe past and its absence,knowing the present will soon be the past, there or gone,caught…
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THE LANGUAGE OF ZEN
The greatest problemwith our languagein the practice of zazencan seem insurmountable. We are lovers of tenses,a dozen to choose from,one spawning offspring,time ever important to us. In zen, on the cushionthere is no past, no future,perfect or otherwise, norour friend the conditional. We strive to always bein the moment, there is nowand nothing else, and…
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PENNED IN
He stares at the collectionof pens crammed tightly intoa coffee mug whose handlehad long since broken away. He knows some are dead,awaiting a proper burial,following a brief memorialservice paying homageto their illustrious past. He is certain that oneor more is secretly harboringthe poem or story that hehas been meaning to write,the one that the journalon…
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UMMON’S THREE DAYS 鐵笛倒吹 六十八
What were you doingthree days agoand what will you dothree days from now.Are you the same person nowas you were, will be? While your face in the mirrorKoanseems much the sameeach day you die a biteach day you are reborn.A thousand daysa thousand yearsa passing moment,how do they differ? A reflection on Case 68 of…
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FINITE LOOP
As it turns out, lifeis an ongoing process of accretionand deconstruction, of growthand eventual shrinkage. I started with 20 teethI am told, and got to 32,only to fall back to 23thanks to orthodontia and wear. We start with 270 or morebones, but we knit that numberdown to 206, or in my case under200, the orthopaedist’s…
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KEEPING FOCUS
It is of little surprise that we find this a dizzying world, for we always try to look forward, but since the future is often vague, we try and keep one eye on the past to understand what our other eye is poorly seeing. The mind does not care to be pulled in two directions…
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MOMENT
If you are patient and do not look for it, there is a still moment in each day when nothing at all happens, when the silence without demands a silence within, when thoughts evaporate like the mist of an early morning dew, when you have precisely enough and cannot imagine needing more, when where you…
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THE FUTURE’S PAST, PRESENTLY
Before the after now is present. It was never like this before it will not be again anytime soon for there is no time soon that has yet to be or just gone by. After the before we find ourselves here and now.
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ONCE
It was easier being Buddhist when I was young, despite the fact I had no good idea what Buddhism truly was. for a child the moment is all there is, the past so short that it means nothing, the future something that will arrive as and when it wishes. For a child, things will go…
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THEN
Before the after now is present. It was never like this before, it will not be again anytime soon, for there is no time soon that has yet to be or just gone by. After the before we find ourselves here and now.
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an old writer and his words 