I read today that Hemingway said writing is not difficult; you just have to sit down at the typewriter and bleed. Like the Third Patriarch of Zen said of the "perfect" way: It, too, is not difficult; it just dislikes picking and choosing. Looking around all day and into night, imperfection abounds, limitless: Sunlight fades, [...]
After 24 hours without my regular Web connection, a pre-Internet Age experience seems now to have ended. I have no understanding of why it was off then or why it is on now. And I have nothing theological to say about it. Gave it little thought except for fretting a bit about a missed online [...]
Une journée de méditation Zen à Paris/A day of Zen meditation in Paris 14 mars (samedi) 9h30-17h30 30 euros infos et inscriptions: zenscribe@free.fr
This morning, early, as I emerge from underground onto the tony avenue where I spend my office days, the light is clearly growing brighter and stronger with the season. Behind the Arc de Triomphe stretches a bold swath of pink sky. It's gone when I pass again hours later. But spring is irrefutably near. Crossing [...]
So much to do all week left me without words here. I was plunged, however, into Walt Whitman's joyous word cosmos: All truths wait in all things, he wrote. Like Shunryu Suzuki, who said: Wherever you are, enlightenment is there. If you stand up right where you are, that is enlightenment. And now I stand [...]
A friend tells me of an expression in German that translates as, Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere. Reminds me of a line from a Talking Heads song, Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens. And now what's happening? Here? What place is this? And who is here? I smell garlic [...]
Before sunrise this morning, wind sends wispy clouds scurrying across the gray sky. Yet the trees are nearly still. Later, in Gateless Gate, Case 13, Ganto whispers in old master Tokusan's ear. The master, we are told, is satisfied and silent. What, then, is the last word of Zen?
Notes from this day would be of going and coming, the journey of the journey, in wind and rain, darkness early and late. I observe my fellow travelers. A man with thick glasses and a heavy bag steps off the Métro, then quickly jumps back on as the doors close, realizing it's a stop too [...]
Rained most of the day after little sleep. I try to put a human being completely on record, truly as is. It is the story of one and all. A monk asked, When great difficulties come upon us, how can they be avoided? Joshu said, They've come at the right time.
On a poster in the Métro: Estampes Japonaises: Images d'un monde éphémère (Japanese Prints: Images of an ephemeral world) But... There is no world that is not ephemeral. It's right here in the rumble of the trains, clanging back and forth and back, never arriving, neverending around and around, the snow in flurries, flakes one [...]
Le Web carnet de Amy Hollowell Sensei, fondatrice de la Wild Flower Zen Sangha et successeur de Catherine Genno Pagès Roshi dans le lignage Zen Soto de Taizan Maezumi Roshi, fondateur du Centre Zen de Los Angeles.
The Web notebook of Amy Hollowell Sensei, founder of the Wild Flower Zen Sangha and dharma successor of Catherine Genno Pagès Roshi in the Soto Zen lineage of Taizan Maezumi Roshi, founder of the Los Angeles Zen Center.
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