Tonight, with words, I construct a diagram of what I experience: the quiet of night deepening, a full stomach, voices in sharp discussion in the street. Language is the form, words the shape, the signs and symbols we have all agreed indicate one thing. In fact, I am only an image, a drawing, as Yves [...]
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?
Lunch with my son at a favorite Sicilian trattoria where the pasta is so fine. The owner says she's weary, has no break. We understand and say so. Smiling, she calls Ciao! as we leave, happy that we are going, happy that we came. Am steeped in Walt Whitman, meanwhile (in preparation for a seminar [...]
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 [...]