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THE FUTURE HOLDS
It should be more of a surprise,on this day that you turn ninetybut the mirror, as you see it,has you looking as you did twentytwo years earlier, and twentybefore that, unchanging in anymeaningful way, yet thosearound you laugh when youtell them what you believe. Not a day over sixty-eightyou say, and time to go offand…
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MIRRORS
Each morning I drag myselffrom bed, slowly engage my legs,and amble into the bathroomwhere I peer into the mirror.Each morning I am surprisedthat I am the same as I wasthey day before, and yet the mirrorby all appearances,has grown another day older.It is, I suppose, the natureof mirrors to age, sadly for them,and as I…
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RINZAI’S ENLIGHTENMENT 正法眼蔵 二十七
If you ask your question you will find an answer but ask another and the stick will respond each time. If you seek another teacher will you change the question or the answer, and does it matter. Take up the stick, who will you strike, your teacher or yourself, and is there any real difference?…
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STATELESS
I suppose it is oddly fitting that I was born in the continental U.S. but can claim no state as home. I was a Federal child, and that meant nothing at all to me, a child who left town at two after a father’s death, a sister reclaimed by the government, which was no State,…
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FINDING
Even when I was briefly in Edinburgh I dreamed of walking the streets of Lisbon or Porto looking into the faces of older men and wondering if this one was my father. the father I had never seen, never known. Was the one my Jewish mother described in detail to the social worker who took…
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MORNING READING
You read the obituaries every day not only for the affirmation that you are not listed among them The key five words there are not only for the affirmation, particularly upon hearing the gentle man you liked, that you valued as a friend and craftsman is gone, but you didn’t say goodbye, that you thought…
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APART-IAL EXPLANATION
It is all to often debated what sets humans apart the other species, and that will not be agreed any time soon (which a cynic would note is one such thing itself). Freud would claim it is only our ego, our sense of self, which may explain why people are so capable of being self-…
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IN SEARCH
He’d been searching for ever, or so often seemed, for no-self, and he couldn’t fathom why it was so difficult to attain simple absence, nothing must be less than something, after all. He knew, like Sisyphus, he would continue to search until he succeeded, the gods of his soul decreed it and you don’t fuck…
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NO MIND, NO BUDDHA 無門關 三十三
Baso knows well only the ox truly understands the yoke but if you offer it the ox will not accept. Why would you seek to become the ox as it would be better to burn the yoke. A reflection on Case 33 of the Mumonkan (The Gateless Gate Koans)
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I’M LOOKING, SHOW YOURSELF
I’ve been searching for a teacher for such a long time but despite every effort, the goal eludes me They say that when the student is ready the teacher appears, but i know in my heart I am truly ready. I looked in all of the likely and a number of unlikely places, to the…
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an old writer and his words 