an old writer and his words

  • SPACING

    We have been told that spacewith its billions of starsand countless galaxies is vastand still largely empty, a voidthat needs no filling, ever expanding.We are small creatures in that vastness,important only to ourselves, motesof cosmic dust easily forgotten.But the space between heart and mindcan be equally vast, one untetheredfrom the other, always a voidthat we…

    Lou Faber

  • TEMPUS

    The clock chimed the hour.How long had he been here,inside the works of the great timepiecemarking imagined units that had meaningonly for him, for all, for no one?He knew his time was limited, alltime would someday be depletedand then what — that was the questionno one dared ask, everyoneanswered. Time was a mazethere was no…

    Lou Faber

  • LIVES

    I have lived many lives, too many to count, and I remember bits and pieces of each, but not necessarily to which life this bit or that bit should attach. It is why I run them together, view them as a singularity, easier to cope even when I know it is a nice delusion. I…

    Lou Faber

  • DIMENSIONS

    It is far less a matter of space for we have that in profusion if mostly always beyond reach, but unnecessary anyway given our pervasive fear of being alone while always trying to define our particular uniqueness. The universe has a vastness we can never hope to grasp and so we turn inward, where space…

    Lou Faber

  • HUANGBO’S SINGLE STAFF

    All singularities are naked and it is only when we clothe them that they crumble away. You step into this river only once but it is this water which will wet your feet when you step in the next and the next. A reflection on Case 91 of the Shobogenzo (Dogen’s True Dharma Eye)

    Lou Faber

  • TRYPTICH (HAIKU

    shout Yuki Onna I have wandered from my course snow piles at my feet   gold Chrysanthemum blooms bright in the summer sun pure water of life   a pebble is plucked from the lake, ripples move in, singularity.

    Lou Faber

  • PEACE MANDALA

    The saffron robed  monks stoop carefully, dropping single grains of colored sand onto the mandala of peace. They rock gently as the intricate wheel takes shape and form. They are drawn to its center, closer day by day, countless hours focussed to a singularity. They interlace fingers bow a collective head and pray silently for…

    Lou Faber

  • SHISHUANG’S THIS SIDE AND THAT SIDE

    You like being here, but you suspect you would like being there as well, if not more than being here. This puzzles you, for you fear leaving here to go there, in case when you arrive there you don’t like being there and would rather be here. You should sit and ponder which is better…

    Lou Faber

  • AT THE BORDER

    Out at the edge of the universe, time has no beginning and stretches endlessly, as a stone dropped, its ripples spreading outward across a shoreless lake. There is no time here at the margin, no space consumed by all space. I would touch the edge and press it outward disrupting balance until it all draws…

    Lou Faber

  • BUDDHA NATURE

    The infant girl smiles with infinite knowledge, present wholly in this moment, knowing no other, her eyes speaking with the wisdom of all who have gone before her. In those eyes your heart hears stories of universes waiting to born, collapsing inward, naked singularities, and compassion. She doesn’t offer to teach you, but you cannot…

    Lou Faber