whiskey river

2012-01-31T06:52:00.002-07:00

Ch'ui the draftsman
could draw more perfect circles freehand
than with a compass.

His fingers brought forth
spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind
was meanwhile free and without concern
with what he was doing.

No application was needed
his mind was perfectly simple
and knew no obstacle.

So, when the shoe fits
the foot is forgotten,
When the belt fits
the belly is forgotten,
When the heart is right
"for" and "against" are forgotten.

No drives, no compulsions,
no needs, no attractions:
then your affairs
are under control.
You are a free man.

Easy is right. Begin right
and you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right.
The right way to go easy
is to forget the right way
and forget that the going is easy.
- Chuang Tzu

2012-01-28T15:16:00.001-07:00

This accidental
meeting of possibilities
calls itself I.

I ask: what am I doing here?
And, at once, this I
becomes unreal.
- Dag Hammarskjöld

2012-01-27T07:17:00.001-07:00

"Remembering not to identify with the story has been crucial - and very hard to do, because, in anger the story carries such obsessive power. But this for me really is, most fundamentally, what it means to be "religious." It means remembering, again and again, that the stories we tell ourselves - all those stories about loss, failure, shattered hope, betrayal, blame - are not what is most true about who we are. This is for me the true meaning of "taking refuge," this residing in the vast only don't know of practice."
- Noelle Oxenhandler

2012-01-26T07:26:00.001-07:00

"A crucial first step in the process is to recognize that new forms of Buddhism, at their best, are based upon the creative ways of synthesizing meaning rather than on undermining the beliefs and practice of others. In other words, while it is not okay to say that others have got it wrong and this is the right way of looking at things, it is entirely appropriate (and natural) to say, "Here is an interesting new way of understanding things that I find particularly meaningful." Even if we get it wrong once in a while, better to be actively inquiring into the meaning of the dhamma at every opportunity than to passively accept tradition in a given form. We are not necessarily better at understanding these teachings because we are moderns or Westerners or humanists or typing on keyboards. We cannot assume the troubling bits, about miracles, rebirth, and hell realms, for example, must not be "true" and that we, of course, know better. It is possible to hold the greatest respect for all those who think differently from ourselves, for all those who construct their own meaning of these teachings differently than we do, and simply say at some point that we are not capable of seeing it that way."
- Andrew Olendzki

2012-01-25T07:07:00.001-07:00

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.
- Mary Oliver
New and Selected Poems Volume Two
love is a place

2012-01-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

If someone you didn't know
told you this,
as I am telling you this,
would you believe it?

Belief isn't always easy.
But this much I have learned -
if not enough else -
to live with my eyes open.

I know what everyone wants
is a miracle.
This wasn't a miracle.
Unless, of course, kindness -

as now and again
some rare person has suggested -
is a miracle.
As surely it is.
- Mary Oliver
from In The Storm
Thirst
growing orbits
love is a place

2012-01-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

"I understand that everything I know and do is a product of imagination; and I can accept without difficulty that it is ultimately unreal; but I'm glad it exists, and will engage that existence with as much conscious awareness as I can possibly muster. This is plenty to work with, and it inspires me to make the very best of what is present for myself, those around me, and for the collective whole. The future well-being of us all, said the Buddha a long time ago, lies in the direction of less conceptual attachment to views and more mindful awareness of phenomena."
- Andrew Olendzki

2012-01-21T13:35:00.001-07:00

"Since the entirety of our virtual world is being constructed in the present moment, it is crucial to learn to pay attention to this moment. Paying attention sounds simple; one might think we do it all the time, but we actually pay attention very little to what is going on in our present experience. The human mind is constantly swinging into the future and the past, and like a pendulum it passes through the present moment barely enough for us to keep our bearings. The Buddhists are not saying that we should cut off our sensitivity to the full range of experience and live ordinary life in some sort of eternal present. But in order to get beyond some of the embedded habits of the mind, in order to get free of some of the distortions and confusions to which we are subject, we need to train ourselves to attend very carefully and very deliberately to the process by which we construct past and future experience in the present moment. And this is largely what mindfulness practice is all about. It is accessing the present moment, and it involves cultivating the intention to attend to what is happening right now. Left to its own inclinations, the mind would much rather weave its way through some thought pattern that makes us feel good about ourselves, and lead us away from any kind of insight that might threaten our ideas about ourselves. The mind needs to be carefully and gently encouraged through constant practice to look carefully and deeply at what is unfolding in the immediately present moment."
- Andrew Olendzki

2012-01-20T07:45:00.001-07:00

"You know what I believe? I remember in college I was taking this math class, this really great math class taught by this tiny old woman. She was talking about fast Fourier transforms and she stopped midsentence and said, 'Sometimes it seems the universe wants to be noticed.' That's what I believe. I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it - or my observation of it - is temporary?"
- John Green
quote book

2012-01-19T07:16:00.001-07:00

"You have slept for millions and millions of years.
Why not wake up this morning?"
-Kabir

"Practice is allowing everything in your life to wake you up."
- Mirabai Bush

"We have to honestly ask ourselves what our priority is. Is it awakening? Or is dharma practice something I do simply to keep me cooled down?"
- Joseph Goldstein

2012-01-18T07:04:00.001-07:00

The Sciences Sing a Lullabye
Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you're tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
You aren't alone. All of the continents used to be
one body. You aren't alone. Go to sleep.

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and
History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.
- Albert Goldbarth

2012-01-17T07:24:00.000-07:00

"The world - whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world - it is astonishing."
- Wisława Szymborska
from her Nobel lecture The Poet and the World
growing orbits

2012-01-15T08:47:00.001-07:00

"In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable."
- Dag Hammarskjöld
Markings

2012-01-14T14:09:00.001-07:00

"At every moment you choose yourself. But do you choose your self? Body and soul contain a thousand possibilities out of which you can build many I's. But in one of them is there a congruence of the elector and the elected. Only one - which you will never find until you have excluded all those superficial and fleeting possibilities of being and doing with which you toy, out of curiosity or wonder or greed, and which hinder you from casting anchor in the experience of the mystery of life, and the consciousness of the talent entrusted to you which is your I."
- Dag Hammarskjöld

2012-01-12T05:45:00.000-07:00

"I'm for mystery, not interpretive answers.
The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."
- Ken Kesey
acorda eu

2012-01-10T07:15:00.000-07:00

. . . It's 1500
in the book of Chinese watercolors: scholar-artist T'ang Yin
is asleep inside his mountain cottage, dreaming that a self of him,
that looks like him, is floating in the air above
the highest peaks, that looks like air we'd have
if lakes of milk gave off a vapor.
. . . From the Everfloating Void
above our world, a human image slowly drifts back down
and joins its earthly body once again, reenters
days and nights of wine shop, scandal, lawyers
- for such (in part) is the life of T'ang Yin.
He's been dreaming. And now he's going to set it down
on a wafer of unrolled rice paper. Writing:
Rain on the river. That's all. That's his poem.
He's writing:

Rain on the river.
- Albert Goldbarth

2012-01-09T07:27:00.001-07:00

"To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded."
- David Foster Wallace
Kenyon College commencement address
interim arrangements

2012-01-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

"An ardent Jehovah's Witness once tried to convince me that if there were a God of love, he would certainly provide mankind with a reliable and infallible textbook for the guidance of conduct. I replied that no considerate God would destroy the human mind by making it so rigid and unadaptable as to depend upon one book, the Bible, for all the answers. For the use of words, and thus of a book, is to point beyond themselves to a world of life and experience that is not mere words or even ideas. Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.
Therefore the Book that I would like to slip to my children would itself be slippery. It would slip them into a new domain, not of ideas alone, but of experience and feeling. It would be a temporary medicine, not a diet; a point of departure, not a perpetual point of reference. They would read it and be done with it, for if it were well and clearly written they would not have to go back to it again and again for hidden meanings or for clarification of obscure doctrines."
- Alan Watts
The Book on The Taboo against knowing who you are

2012-01-07T14:36:00.001-07:00

"You know when you see something like a marvelous mountain against the blue sky, the vivid, bright, clear, unpolluted snow, the majesty of it drives all your thoughts, your concerns, your problems away. Have you noticed that? You say, 'How beautiful it is,' and for two seconds perhaps, or for even a minute, you are absolutely silent. The grandeur of it drives away, for that second, the pettiness of ourselves. That immensity has taken us over. Like a child occupied with an intricate toy for an hour; he won't talk, he won't make any noise, he is completely absorbed in that. The toy has absorbed him. So the mountain absorbs you and therefore for the second, or the minute, you are absolutely quiet, which means there is no self. Now, without being absorbed by something - either a toy, a mountain, a face, or an idea - to be completely without the me in oneself, is the essence of beauty."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
On Love and Loneliness

2012-01-06T19:47:00.001-07:00

"Some days, anything is wonderful. In its
detail, in its conception, in its chainlink leading
into the rest of the physical and conceptual cosmos, anything
is wonderful."
- Albert Goldbarth

2012-01-04T07:47:00.001-07:00

Satori noted,
the mind, like quicksilver goes,
falsely enlightened,
down those old wrong-headed roads,
each more wrong than the one before.
- Muso Soseki

"Even if you have not awakened, if you realize that your perceptions and activities are all like dreams and you view them with detachment, not giving rise to grasping and rejecting discrimination, then this is virtually tantamount to awakening from the dream."
- [aka] Muso Kokushi

2012-01-03T08:05:00.001-07:00

"To be born as a human being is a rare thing, something to be grateful for. But being born as a human being is worthless if you spend your whole life in a mental hospital. It is worthless if you worry about not having money. It is worthless if you become neurotic because you cannot get a prestigious job. It is worthless if you weep because you lose your girlfriend."
- Kodo Sawaki

2012-01-02T09:20:00.002-07:00

"I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along."
- William Stafford

2012-01-01T10:07:00.002-07:00

Flaws
I had been worrying once again
about sad lives
and almost perfect art, Van Gogh,
Kafka, so when that voice on the radio
sang about drinking
a toast to those who most survive
the lives they've led, I drank that toast
in the prayerless
sanctum of my room, I said it
out loud in a hush. Then I thought
of Dr. Williams
who toward the end apologized
to his wife for doing everything
he had loved to do.
He was speaking of course to death,
not to her, though death instructed him
how valuable she was.
I thought of a lamp the neighbor's child
had broken, then pieced back together
with wires and glue.
And my friend, the good husband,
kissing the scars his wife brought home
after the mastectomy.
I drank that toast again, though silently.
The radio was playing something old
and bad
I once thought was good.
Flaws. Suddenly the act of trying
to say how it feels
to live a life, to say it flawlessly,
seemed more immense than ever. Then
I remembered
those Persian rug makers built them in,
the flaws, because only Allah was perfect.
What arrogance to think
that otherwise they wouldn't be there!
I allowed myself to wonder
about the ethics
of repair, but just for a while.
Sleep, too, was on my mind
and I knew
the difficulty that lay ahead:
how hard I'd try when I couldn't,
how it would come
if only I could find a way
to enter and drift without concern
for what it is.
- Stephen Dunn
Between Angels

2011-12-31T14:13:00.002-07:00

Chew your way into a new world.
Munch leaves. Molt. Rest. Molt
again. Self-reinvention is everything.
- Amy Gerstler
Advice from a Caterpillar
Dearest Creature

2011-12-30T09:12:00.002-07:00

But just when we think we have it,
the personal goes the way of
belief. What seemed so deep
begins to seem naive, something
that could be trusted
because we hadn't read Plato
or held two contradictory ideas
or women in the same day.
Love, then, becomes an old movie.
Loss seems so common
it belongs to the air,
to breath itself, anyone's.
We're left with style, a particular
way of standing and saying,
the idiosyncratic look
at the frown which means nothing
until we say it does. Years later,
long after we believed it peculiar
to ourselves, we return to love.
We return to everything
strange, inchoate, like living
with someone, like living alone,
settling for the partial, the almost
satisfactory sense of it.
- Stephen Dunn
from Essay On The Personal

2011-12-29T09:09:00.002-07:00

"You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding."
- Terence McKenna
acorda eu

2011-12-28T21:10:00.002-07:00

"Things are possible during December's darkened days that are not even dreamt of at other spokes of the Wheel of the Year. We should use this magic as a vehicle for deepening our awareness of the world around us and preparing ourselves for the ongoing pilgrimage of our lives."
- Montague Whitsel

2011-12-27T07:25:00.001-07:00

"We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, to be ravished by the beauty of the world, to seek truth and meaning, to acquire wisdom, and by our treatment of others to brighten the corner where we are."
- Dean Koontz
Life Expectancy

2011-12-26T09:38:00.001-07:00

Priceless Gifts
An empty day without events.
And that is why
it grew immense
as space. And suddenly
happiness of being
entered me.

I heard
in my heartbeat
the birth of time
and each instant of life
one after the other
came rushing in
like priceless gifts.
- Anna Swir

2011-12-25T03:07:00.000-07:00

BC: AD
This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect

Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.
- Ursula Askham Fanthorpe

2011-12-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

25. XII. 1993
For a miracle, take one shepherd's sheepskin, throw
in a pinch of now, a grain of long ago,
and a handful of tomorrow. Add by eye
a little chunk of space, a piece of sky,

and it will happen. For miracles, gravitating
to earth, know just where people will be waiting,
and eagerly will find the right address
and tenant, even in a wilderness.

Or if you're leaving home, switch on a new
four-pointed star, then, as you say adieu,
to light a vacant world with steady blaze
and follow you forever with its gaze.
- Joseph Brodsky
Nativity Poems
five branch tree

2011-12-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

Going to Bed
I check the locks on the front door
. . . . . . . and the side door,
make sure the windows are closed
. . . . . . . and the heat dialed down.
I switch off the computer,
. . . . . . . turn off the living room lights.
I let in the cats.
. . . . . . . Reverently, I unplug the Christmas tree,
leaving Christ and the little animals
. . . . . . . in the dark.
The last thing I do
. . . . . . . is step out to the back yard
for a quick look at the Milky Way.
. . . . . . . The stars are halogen-blue.
The constellations, whose names
. . . . . . . I have long since forgotten,
look down anonymously,
. . . . . . . and the whole galaxy
is cartwheeling in silence through the night.

. . . . . . . Everything seems to be ok.
- George Bilgere
Haywire

2011-12-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

Aren't we enlarged
by the scale of what we're able
to desire? Everything,
. the choir insists,

. might flame;
inside these wrappings
burns another, brighter life,
. quickened, now,

. by song: hear how
it cascades, in overlapping,
lapidary waves of praise? Still time.
. Still time to change.
- Mark Doty
from Messiah (Christmas Portions)
Sweet Machine: Poems

2011-12-21T07:46:00.000-07:00

Snow
Walking through a field with my little brother Seth
I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.
He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.
Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.
Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.
I didn't know where I was going with this.
They were on his property, I said.
When it's snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.
Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.
We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.
But why were they on his property, he asked.
- David Berman
Actual Air

2011-12-20T09:44:00.000-07:00

For the Children
The rising hills, the slopes
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light
- Gary Snyder

2011-12-19T08:20:00.001-07:00

"A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together."
- Garrison Keillor

God, give us a long winter
and quiet music, and patient mouths,
and a little pride - before
our age ends.
Give us astonishment
and a flame, high, bright.
- Adam Zagajewski

2011-12-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

"In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it Christmas and went to church; the Jews called it Hanukkah and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!'"
- Dave Barry
Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide

2011-12-16T08:51:00.001-07:00

Vague fatigued promise hangs
in the low darkened sky
when bunched scrawny starlings
rattle up from trees,
switchback and snag
like tossed rags dressing
the bare wintering branches,
black-on-black shining,
and I'm in a moment
more like a fore-moment:
from the sidewalk, watching them
poised without purpose,
I feel lifted inside the common
hazards and orders of things
when from their stillness,
the formal, aimless, not-waiting birds
erupt again, clap, elated weather -
making wing-clouds changing,
smithereened back and forth,
now already gone to follow
the river's running course.
- W. S. Di Piero
from Chicago and December

2011-12-15T07:32:00.001-07:00

"Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.
It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."
- David Foster Wallace
This Is Water
Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

2011-12-14T07:16:00.001-07:00

"It comes, then, to this: that to be "viable", livable, or merely practical, life must be lived as a game - and the "must" here expresses a condition, not a commandment. It must be lived in the spirit of play rather than work, and the conflicts which it involves must be carried on in the realization that no species, or party to a game, can survive without its natural antagonists, its beloved enemies, its indispensable opponents. For to "love your enemies" is to love them as enemies; it is not necessarily a clever device for winning them over to your side. The lion lies down with the lamb in paradise, but not on earth - "paradise" being the tacit, off-stage level where, behind the scenes, all conflicting parties recognize their interdependence, and, through this recognition, are able to keep their conflicts within bounds. This recognition is the absolutely essential chivalry which must set the limits within all warfare, with human and non-human enemies alike, for chivalry is the debonair spirit of the knight who "plays with his life" in the knowledge that even mortal combat is a game.
No one who has been hoaxed into the belief that he is nothing but his ego, or nothing but his individual organism, can be chivalrous, let alone a civilized, sensitive, and intelligent member of the cosmos."
- Alan Watts
The Book on The Taboo against knowing who you are

2011-12-13T05:54:00.000-07:00

Happiness, Joe says, is a wild red flower
. . . . . . . . . . plucked from a river of lava
and held aloft on a tightrope
. . . . . . . . . . strung between two scrawny trees
above a canyon
. . . . . . . . . . in a manic-depressive windstorm.

Don't drop it, Don't drop it, Don't drop it - ,

And when you do, you will keep looking for it
everywhere, for years,
while right behind you,
the footprints you are leaving

will look like notes
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . of a crazy song.
- Tony Hoagland
from How It Adds Up
What Narcissism Means to Me

2011-12-12T07:34:00.001-07:00

"I hear that in many places something has happened to Christmas; that it is changing from a time of merriment and carefree gaiety to a holiday which is filled with tedium; that many people dread the day and the obligation to give Christmas presents is a nightmare to weary, bored souls; that the children of enlightened parents no longer believe in Santa Claus; that all in all, the effort to be happy and have pleasure makes many honest hearts grow dark with despair instead of beaming with good will and cheerfulness."
- Julia Peterkin
A Plantation Christmas
1934

2011-12-11T16:29:00.000-07:00

Human Beauty
If you write a poem about love -
the love is a bird,
the poem is an origami bird.
If you write a poem about death -
the death is a terrible fire,
the poem is an offering of paper cutout flames
you feed to the fire.
We can see, in these, the space between
our gestures and the power they address
- an insufficiency. And yet a kind of beauty,
a distinctly human beauty. When a winter storm
from out of nowhere hit New York one night
in 1892, the crew at a theater was caught
unloading props: a box
of paper snow for the Christmas scene got dropped
and broken open, and that flash of white
confetti was lost
inside what it was a praise of.
- Albert Goldbarth

2011-12-10T19:38:00.000-07:00

"The people in the world, and the objects in it, and the world as a whole, are not absolute things, but on the contrary, are the phenomena of perception. If we were all alike: if we were millions of people saying do, re, mi, in unison, one poet would be enough. But we are not alone, and everything needs expounding all the time because, as people live and die, each one perceiving life and death for himself, and mostly by and in himself, there develops a curiosity about the perceptions of others. This is what makes it possible to go on saying new things about old things."
- Wallace Stevens

2011-12-09T07:19:00.000-07:00

They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
"Who are you really, wanderer?"
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
"Maybe I'm a king."
- William Stafford

2011-12-08T07:14:00.001-07:00

Happy Bodhi Day

Through endless ages, the mind has never changed.

It has not lived or died, come or gone, gained or lost.

It isn't pure or tainted, good or bad, past or future,
true or false, male or female. It isn't reserved for
monks or lay people, elders or youths, masters or
idiots, the enlightened or unenlightened.

It isn't bound by cause and effect and doesn't
struggle for liberation. Like space, it has no form.

You can't own it and you can't lose it. Mountains,
rivers or walls can't impede it. But this mind is
ineffable and difficult to experience. It is not the
mind of the senses. So many are looking for this

mind, yet it already animates their bodies.

It is theirs, yet they don't realize it.
- Bodhidharma
The Wisdom of the Zen Masters

2011-12-07T07:33:00.001-07:00

"Time is constantly passing. If you really consider this fact, you will be simultaneously amazed and terrified. Time is passing, even for tiles, walls, and pebbles. This means that every moment dies to itself. As soon as it arises, it is gone. You cannot find any duration. Arising and passing away are simultaneous. That is why there is no seeing nor hearing. That is why we are both sentient beings and insentient beings."
- Norman Fischer
The Insentient

2011-12-06T07:04:00.000-07:00

"Self-knowledge leads to wonder, and wonder to curiosity and investigation, so that nothing interests people more than people, even if only one's own person. Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

The people we are tempted to call clods and boors are just those who seem to find nothing fascinating in being human; their humanity is incomplete, for it has never astonished them. There is also something incomplete about those who find nothing fascinating in being. You may say that this is a philosopher's professional prejudice - that people are defective who lack a sense of the metaphysical. But anyone who thinks at all must be a philosopher - a good one or a bad one - because it is impossible to think without premises, without basic (and in this sense, metaphysical) assumptions about what is sensible, what is the good life, what is beauty, and what is pleasure. To hold such assumptions, consciously or unconsciously, is to philosophize.

I find it almost impossible to imagine a sensitive human being bereft of metaphysical wonder; a person who does not have that marvelous urge to ask a question that cannot be formulated."
- Alan Watts
The Book on The Taboo against knowing who you are

2011-12-05T08:33:00.001-07:00

"I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning."
- J. B. Priestley

2011-12-04T11:59:00.001-07:00

The beginning of being fine is noticing how things really are.
1. Life is uncertain, surprises are likely.
2. If you are alive, that’s good; lower the bar.
3. In a dark place, you still have what really counts.
4. If you are in a predicament, there will be a gate.
5. What you need might be given to you.
6. The true life is in between winning and losing.
7. If you have nothing - give it away.
- John Tarrant
It Would Be a Pity to Waste A Good Crisis

2011-12-03T10:28:00.001-07:00

Everything that Acts Is Actual
From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
alone and more than alone
at the bottom of the well where the moon lives,
can you pull me

into December? a lowland
of space, perception of space
towering of shadows of clouds blown upon
clouds over
. . . . . . . . . . new ground, new made
under heavy December footsteps? the only
way to live?

The flawed moon
acts on the truth, and makes
an autumn of tentative
silences.
You lived, but somewhere else,
your presence touched others, ring upon ring,
and changed. Did you think
I would not change?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The black moon
turns away, its work done. A tenderness,
unspoken autumn.
We are faithful
only to the imagination. What the
imagination
. . . . . . . seizes
as beauty must be truth. What holds you
to what you see of me is
that grasp alone.
- Denise Levertov
Collected Earlier Poems 1940-1960
wood s lot

2011-12-02T06:44:00.001-07:00

"A while ago I gave a public lecture at a university. The speaker who preceded me talked for about an hour and a half, running over his allotted time. The break period between our talks was shortened, and I was called to the podium right away. Concerned for the audience, I opened by asking, "Did you all have time to urinate?"
Apparently this was not what the audience had expected to hear. Perhaps they were particularly surprised because the person standing before them, talking about pissing, was a monk. Everyone broke into hearty laughter.
Having started out on this note, I continued to drive home the point, "Pissing is something that no one else can do for you. Only you can piss for yourself." This really broke them up, and they laughed even harder.
But you must realize that to say, "You have to piss for yourself; nobody else can piss for you" is to make an utterly serious statement.

Long ago in China, there was a monk called Ken. During his training years, he practiced in the monastery of Ta-hui, but despite his prodigious efforts, he had not attained enlightenment. One day Ken's master ordered him to carry a letter to the far-off land of Ch'ang-sha. This journey, roundtrip, could easily take half a year. The monk, Ken, thought, "I don't have forever to stay in this hall practicing! Who's got time to go on an errand like this?" He consulted one of his seniors, the monk Genjoza, about the matter.
Genjoza laughed when he heard Ken's predicament. "Even while traveling, you can still practice Zen! In fact, I'll come along with you," he offered, and before long the two monks set out on their journey.
One day while the two were traveling, the younger monk, Ken, suddenly broke into tears. "I have been practicing for many years, and I still haven't been able to attain anything. Now, here I am roaming around the country on this trip; there's no way I am going to attain enlightenment this way," he lamented.
When he heard this, Genjoza, thrusting all the strength he had into his words, put himself at the junior monk's disposal: "I will take care of anything that I can take care of for you on this trip," he said. "But there are just five things that I cannot do in your place, I can't wear clothes for you. I can't eat for you. I can't shit for you. I can't piss for you. And I can't carry your body around and live your life for you."
It is said that upon hearing these words, the monk, Ken, suddenly awakened from his deluded dream and attained a great enlightenment, a great satori."
- Soko Morinaga
Novice to Master: an ongoing lesson in the extent of my own stupidity