"Don't try to figure out who you are," said the Zen master Tozan Ryokai. "If you try to figure out who you are, what you understand will be far away from you. You will have just an image of yourself." And Eka, the student who would become the successor of the Zen master Bodhidharma, said [...]
Writing my "book," or reading, walking in the rain along a Belgian canal, riding the Métro on a holiday afternoon, letting the cat out and in, pulling on a black sock, sitting at the window, I am always seeking what without fail eludes me: the say of it. I want the last word of the [...]
Often in the afternoon, I turn from the Boulevard Raspail onto the Rue Emile Richard, which on each side is lined by parked cars and the stone walls of the Montparnasse cemetery. It is a straight street, and narrow, and on clear days it is bathed in the setting sun. Motor traffic runs only south, [...]
Please forgive zenscribe's unforeseen absence in the blogosphere: The server was serving. Which serves as a flagrant example of what is so often forgotten or overlooked: The constant disappearance of all I know. There is the sudden hail of hail and then the sudden not-hail of hail, the no-more of hail. Now is the hail [...]
The whole day of words is wordless. I rest. To be quick, I must be quiet. Phone calls are answered. A friend offers tea. The stairs lead up and down, but one by one, nowhere. Thus I go. *** A monk asked Ummon, "What is speech that transcends the buddhas and goes beyond the patriarchs?" [...]
Yesterday in sitting I see it: My thoughts wander, and "I" follows, running in aimless circles along trails that just double back onto themselves. This is going nowhere, blindly, incessantly yearning to come and arrive. Then for a half-second "I" turns to find in a still clearing the silent face of death looking back, unmasked, [...]
"La vulnérabilité des choses précieuses est belle parce que la vulnérabilité est une marque d'existence." Simone Weil, La pesanteur et la grâce (Plon, 1947) "The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a sign of existence." Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (Routlegde Classics, 2002)
"Pour les Anciens comme pour les mystiques, ce champ qu'ils s'accordent à reconnaître comme celui de la divinité se situe au-delà du plaisir et du déplaisir, au-delà du bien comme du mal. Quiconque veut y pénétrer et s'y aventurer, doit consentir à s'y perdre." Catherine Millot, La Vie Parfaite (Gallimard, 2006) "The Ancients and the [...]
If you knew there was nothing to get, would you keep grabbing? If you open to the abundant nothing, what is there left to grab?
In the garden this morning, I am looking where I always look. Blossoms stand ghostlike in abundant tree foliage. A dead leaf hangs captive in the frayed strands of a flag, flit-flapping. Undergrowth and overgrowth fill the day's holes with unknowing. I watch. New faces of color and light emerge. The more I look, the [...]