What is the shape of afternoon, in the garden, in spring? Birdsong is the constant outline, coming from nowhere and everywhere, the sound of within. The swallow's rhythmic coo is the call of the inside of the world -- the inside that has no outside. Mind is shapely. The master asks, "How do you stop [...]
A day of Zen practice in Paris with the Wild Flower Zen Sangha and Amy (Tu es cela) Hollowell Sensei May 18 (Sunday) 9h30-17h30 Come one, come all. Beginners and experienced practitioners welcome. Registration (required) and information: zenscribe@free.fr
Behind words, within, beauty lurks. To open the space around words, to free them, I try other tongues. One language limits more than two or three or more. Tree is arbre is baum. Willow is saule is weide. Elm is orme is ulme. Birch is bouleau is birke. And yet the mot word wort is [...]
On the corner the building is gone with a figure I can’t remember brushed on its gray shutter an unavoidable curve an unrecognizable spiral I didn’t know every- time was a climax looping out of reach toward destruction.
"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, [...]