janvier 2009
Everything is right here
Wake up to another cold, gray day, after a sometimes restless sleep. Some trees are bare, others not, like the holly full and a deep, waxy green outside my window. Assorted birds big and small [...]
First ferry before dawn, with tea
Leaving before sunrise on the first ferry on the final day of retreat, someone asks me, What does it mean to be stuck in the absolute? First, I am surprised by the question, in the [...]
Like the clouds
Back after days and days of retreat, on an island in the North Sea off the coast of Holland. Was endlessly washed by the wind and occasional rain under magnificent skies by night and day. [...]
Equally to be loved
Strife rages, meanwhile, on and on. What's the answer? What's the question? Then, thinking of Palestinian and Israeli, me and you, us and them, my eyes fall on a verse from Kerouac's Dharma Bums on [...]
Cold is cold is cold is cold
No let-up in the cold again today, breath in the air, ice under foot. I'm reminded of case 43 of The Blue Cliff Record: A monk asked Tozan, "When cold and heat visit us, how [...]
No intermission
Everything by its very nature is subject to the process of infinite transformation, said Yasutani Roshi. Such is the undying truth of all life: We must die to live. There is no intermission in this [...]
Everyness
There is something somewhere in this daily record that is more and less than what I think it is and also not more not less than what I think it is. The everyness overwhelms all [...]
Having to start somewhere
According to our accepted and utilitarian convention, this is Day 1. I have to start somewhere. So I open at random Francis Ponge's Le parti pris des choses, a Christmas gift from my son, to [...]
décembre 2008
Master, are you awake?
As we near what we call year's end and then enter what we call new year, an old Zen poem comes to mind: A water bird comes and goes, Leaving no traces at all. Yet [...]
Endgame/Fin de partie
The new year approaches and I come upon this perfect bit of dialogue from Samuel Beckett's Endgame: Clor: Do you believe in the life to come? Hamm: Mine was always that. I wonder about mine. [...]
Silent night
It's a silent night. After all the giving and getting, the expectations and preparations, the obligations, inspirations, connections, separations, exaggerations, what is left tonight of Christmas? Who gave, and what was given? Who received it? [...]
Une vision immédiate
Winter sun in my eyes casts long shadows of tea cup, pile of papers, hand moving with pen, sesame seed, crumb. Bright is bright, darkness dark in this pale season. The vine climbs the stone [...]
Bird Math
Two birds hold a ledge black under bloated clouds then four perch two by two until flight flushes each one equally nowhere.
Seeing and being seen (one big blue ocean world)
The latest installment on stilltv.com from my dear friend Peter (KuKu) Cunningham, longtime dharma bum/photographer/clown with Bernie Glassman Roshi, is of a heart/mind project with his photo students during a workshop in Shanghai last month. [...]
Where my life turns
My teacher wrote this verse, a quote from Nisargadatta, on my rakusu: "When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that's wisdom. When I look outside and see that I am everything, that's [...]
Play of the Day, with Jo-Ha-Kyu
I awoke to dark morning today. Although I see that it has now lightened to a watery gray, I do not see how or when. The advancing thick of day feels spindly, like bare trees, [...]
Waiting for Picasso
They are all lining up, well-heeled, under umbrellas in the rain for Picasso and "the masters" here. Tickets reserved, coats checked, headsets ready. Everyone is as they should be. And the genius of 20th-century art [...]
50 in Paris
There was a little celebration in Paris on Monday night. Check it out at the Zen blog created by my dharma brother Man of No Rank: http://pariszen.wordpress.com/
Ungovernable in Venice
In Venice, everywhere is land's end. Around each corner, water provides direct evidence of the absence of solid ground. Every step is bottomless. But on Monday, we awoke to a deluge in this marvel of [...]
novembre 2008
How things real-ly are not
Nearly lunch time. Another bus passes outside the window, and a green VW Polo parks beside the linden tree. Fewer and fewer leaves are clinging to its tangle of limbs. The cat snores curled by [...]
Alexis says:
Alexis says:
Alexis says: