When you are cleaning,
what becomes of the dirt?
When you are bathing,
what becomes of the water?
When you exhale,
what becomes of the breath?
When the moon disappears
is the moon truly gone?
When you ask your teacher,
what becomes of the question?
If you sit quietly on the mat
and do not think of this,
what becomes of you?
A reflection on Case 21 of the Book of Equanimity ( 従容錄, Shōyōroku)
I tell him I am thinking of becoming
a rabbi, someone just like him,
a man who saw so many through
all manner of crises, joyous events.
He sits back in his unsteady chair,
one he refuses to replace, this one
finally broken in, he says with that
gentle smile that melts anger, anxiety.
You would do well at it, I know, he says,
and I will gladly write you a recommendation
but think about this carefully, it is
not the life you might imagine it to be.
But before you decide, he adds,
reaching among a stack of books,
read these, handing me two volumes
that I did not imagine would change my life.
And somewhere, I have my own copies
of Alan Watt’s “Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen”
and “The Book:On the Taboo Against
Knowing Who You Are?”, and I then knew.
My mother surrouned me
with books, “read, read”
she would endlessly say.
And if I had a question,
“Look it up, it’s why we
bought the encyclopedia.”
I became a voracious reader,
skilled at finding answers,
never stopping to think.
Now, years later, I know
why I had to read, why
I had to look things up.
What she never said, but
what she clearly meant was
I can’t be bothered now,
can’t be bothered most
ever, so be self sufficient
so I don’t have to mother.
When he says he thinks
that it is rather queer,
you wonder if he uses queer
as a non-gendered pronoun,
and if so you think he
might just be right.
But what if he is a verbal
luddite, locked in an archaic
lexicon, unable to deal
with an ever more complex
social and sexual world
where what was is, and what
never was is, and who is
what is what is in flux.
Our problem is one of blindness.
We are constantly seeking
for that which we have, that
which have no need of, that
which we think we need
but cannot be certain.
If we limited our blindness
to things life would be
simpler, but our blindness
carries over to our search
for enlightenment, for redemption,
for absolution, and we
fail to realize that we have
all of that already, if only
we would stop looking for them.
She sends us a map
showing on which tribe’s land
we are now living.
This is not something
we have thought about,
not something we want
to think about, for that
would demand that we
are the usurpers, the horde
whose pogrom was
ultimately successful,
and that is a face that
refuse to see in the
polished mirror of history.
There will, I am certain, come a day when I will need to do nothing. My computer and my apps will know what I want, will obtain it without asking, will expect my thanks when it arrives, even if they are incapable of understanding what thank you means in a human world. They already plague me with offers and suggestions, if I liked that or even looked at it, I must like this. And they do it with a certainty that only an algorithm can possess. They know me, or so they are programmed, for they cannot think, and they cannot begin to imagine how fickle I can be, or what that term even means. But I know Jeff Bezos won’t give up without a fight. At least if there are a few more billion dollars to be made.
Our cat has become a conversationalist. Her vocabulary grows larger each day. She seemingly shares her every thought with us, and admittedly we talk to and through her with some regularity as well. She does grow frustrated when we don’t immediately understand what she is saying, what she wants in a given moment. That is our assigned task, she will tell us. We ask for a cat dictionary and she scoffs. I may speak in cat, she says, but I certainly think in human, so figure it out, I am not that much smarter than you humans.
I imagine I am the creator
I imagine I am the created
and I am the creator
and I am the created
I am both, I am neither.
I exist because I think I exist
so I have created myself,
just as you exist to me because
I think you exist, I am creator.
I say I can touch you so you
must exist, but I touch with my mind
so I cannot prove your existence
only the thought of your existence.
When I die, I will no longer exist,
and you will no longer exist
as far as my you is concerned
and that is the only you I can know.
I think
therefore I am.
I think
therefore you are.
You think
therefore I am.
If either of us
stops thinking, does
the other cease to be?
If I see you as Buddha
you are Buddha.
If you see me as Buddha
I can be Buddha,
but if I see myself as Buddha
Buddha and I are
mountains and rivers apart.
an old writer and his words 