Everything moves. This instant, without limit, is already gone. Bataille writes, "...l'énoncé se ruine à mesure qu'on l'énonce; même préciptée dans la possibilité du mouvement, ma pensée écrite ne peut l'épuiser puisque, écrite, elle a l'immobilité de la pierre.'' (...a statement is undone by its expression; even hurled into the possibility of movement, my written [...]
Thursday, June 12 20h-22h30 199 bis, rue Saint-Martin 75003 Paris A rare opportunity: Genpo Merzel Roshi, one of the leading masters of Western Zen today, will for the first time present his Big Mind, Big Heart practice in Paris on June 12. Genpo Roshi is the teacher of Catherine Genno Pagès Roshi, who is my [...]
Wind on my cheek, lightly, connects me with all it touches. The thought of who, what and where escapes me, a falling star: I can never fathom it in numbers and names. But in the blue evening, pink flowers burst behind the fading altar. In the hurried clamor of trucks collecting trash, I hear my [...]
I am where the rise and fall cease to meet where simply morning is spring Mexican orange tree blossom all told and telling of nothing no who in the thicket sunpocked to hear.
It's late afternoon by the time I get to my cushion at the window. At first I sit and look. I notice light rain on the brick path, the spiked holly leaves, puddles on the roof. Before I know it, the project has caught me: I am occupied by preoccupation. I am in the snares [...]
A poet wrote, "life on the doorstep of the Absolute..." But... What if there is no doorstep. What if everything is street-level. You don't need a special pass or a ticket to enter. No reservations necessary. It's your life, and you have the best seat in the house today.
Waiting for a visitor in the wet, gray morning, I ask again: What is it? There is no answer apart from the question, which strips away the illusions that I take up in vain attempts to stay dry and warm. Walt Whitman famously urged: "Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from [...]
A story I heard today: After a ceremony in a Zen monastery in Japan, a Western visitor asked a monk, "I don't really understand: to whom are you singing?" The monk replied, "That's difficult to answer because there is really no one singing."
Do I really want to say nothing or do I not? Remember the man who woke up. He came down or out, from the mountain or forest, and returned to old camrades, fellow seekers still at it. They asked where he had been. He told them: "Over there. Sat for awhile. Looked up. Saw the [...]
"...il est clair que le besoin de la durée nous dérobe la vie, et que seule en principe, l'impossibilté de la durée nous libère." Georges Bataille, Théorie de la religion (Gallimard, 1973) ("...it is clear that a need for duration robs us of life, and that in principle only the impossibility of duration frees us.") [...]