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WHERE AM I?
Wandering aimlessly throughthe park, along a well trodden,now well rutted trail, uncertainwhere I was at that moment ormost any moment lately,I came across a weathered signwith what once might have beena map but was now a dot withthe legend “You Are Here” whichsettled one existential question.I realized in that moment Imost likely wanted to be…
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VISITORS
As much as he needed sleephe had grown to dread itfor each night they visited him,always whispering, he strainingto hear if they had wisdom to offeror were simply there to mock,to plague him, as recompense for someimagined sin, some innocent mistakeor simply because eternity canfairly quickly become boring.He knows their number willonly grow over time…
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GOOD LUCK WITH THAT
The fortune cookies of my childhoodwere far more interesting, or somy memory would have it.The cookies offered wisdomof the East, or so it seemedto a 10-year-old, but perhapsit was the same mumbo-jumboin the bulk print today, nowthat the cookies, which oncetasted good, unlike today’sorigami cardboard, werefolded by hand, and therewere no lotteries then, sothere was…
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WORKSHOP
Grace settles into the chair,less an act of sitting thanof floating down onto the seat.She has borrowed my grandmother’ssmile, kind, gentle, inviting.She pulls a book from her bag,its pages or most of themdog eared, and I glimpsesome annotations in the margins.We sit around her like childrenawaiting presents on a holiday,as acolytes seeking knowledgefrom a font…
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KYOSEI’S BUDDHADHARMA 正法眼蔵 三十九
If you ask whenis the best timeto seek wisdom Iwill tell youat the stroke of midnightand I will walkon a lighter left foot.If you ask the next daywhen is the best timeto seek wisdomI will tell youat highest noonand I will walkon a lighter right foot. A reflection on Case 39 of Dogen’s Shoboganzo Koans…
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The World-Honored One’s Intimate Speech 正法眼蔵 三十四
The wise one deliversmost knowledgewithout opening his mouth.The sagacious studentdoes not hide the wisdomhe inherits but offers itin utter silence.What is ityou wished to sayfor I am readynot to listen. A reflection on Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans Case 34 (True Dharma Eye)
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CHATTER
The cat tells me thatlong after we have goneto bed for the night shehears the argumentsof the authors of the bookslining our living room shelves. The poets, she says, quibbleover rhyme and meter, claimthis one is academic, thatone merely skilled in doggerel. And don’t, she adds, get herstarted on the Buddhistauthors, who argue endlesslyover their…
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ZHAOZHOU’S “LOSING THE MIND IN CONFUSION”
Be forewarnedthe greatest wisdomis written on wateron a cloud –the sun reads it clearlyso why are youso blind to it? A blind man will notbe mislead by signsa deaf man cannotfall victimto the siren’s song. A reflection on Case 11 of the Shobogenzo Koans (Dogen’s True Dharma Eye)
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THE CHARM
The first one felt right,there was nothing deeper considered,just that feeling that now,I know, anyone might have providedbut then, it was somethingin a world of nothing. The second, really, wascertainly right, for life this time,the wisdom of a single failureenough to ensure success,and when it came apartthirty years later, it wasapparent it was never right,just…
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IN CHORUS
Deep in a small forest,a murmuring brook reflectsthe shards of sun slidingthrough the crown of pines,its whispered wisdominfinitely more clearthan the babbling of menholding the reins firmlyin distant cities of power. The birds know this well,sing of it in chorus, nature’smusic, jazz scatting thatthe graying clouds absorb,an always willing audience,and the wind rushing bycries through…
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an old writer and his words 