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 18 Jul 2004 @ 03:26
And there one is~~~
Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson
On my coming back
how many pathways are there
through the spring grasses?
---Saigyo
I have learned to have very modest goals for society and myself, things like clean air, green grass, children with bright eyes, not being pushed around, work that suits one's abilities, plain tasty food, and occasional satisfying nookie.
---Paul Goodman
A few years ago a colony of honeybees came to live in our house. I was working just outside our garage when their celebration began. I suddenly was aware of three large bees hovering menacingly 2 feet away just above my sightline. I realized by the size these were soldiers, and since they were looking me straight in the 3rd eye I made a beeline for the house. Sure enough, within a minute the swarm arrived and surrounded the northwest end of our home. We all stood in Ilona's room and watched the intensity outside. There appeared to be hundreds of thousands of bees, and the noise and the numbers were terrifying. It made you sorry you've seen too many science fiction flicks. More >
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 29 Jun 2004 @ 10:45
The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow. The longer he lives, the more stupid he becomes, because his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death becomes more and more acute. What bitterness! He lives for what is always out of reach! His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present.
---Chuang-Tzu
The absurd is clear reason recognizing its limits.
---Albert Camus
Great is Mind. Heaven's height is immeasurable, but Mind goes beyond heaven; the earth's depth is also unfathomable, but Mind reaches below the earth. The light of the sun and moon cannot be outdistanced, yet Mind passes beyond the light of the sun and moon. The macrocosm is limitless, yet Mind travels outside the macrocosm. How great is Space. How great the Primal Energy! Still Mind encompasses Space and generates the Primal Energy. Because of it heaven covers and earth upbears. Because of it the sun and moon move on, the four seasons come in succession, and all things are generated. Great indeed is Mind!
---Zen Master Eisai
A female summer tanager
I observed myself talking to a young mockingbird yesterday. This is the time of June when new birds hit adolescence and start venturing on their own. He was rather closer to me than mockers ordinarily get, and so I just wanted to make sounds that would indicate that it's OK . Of course it's not OK, and what he really should learn is to fly for his life whenever a human comes near---but who among us who admire birds and love to watch them can bring himself to scare away a bird to verify its genetic instinct? We long to return to the Garden when birds and beasts frolicked with us...and all was innocent. More >
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 19 May 2004 @ 03:02
A billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But IN you is the presence that
will be, when the stars are dead.
---Rainer Maria Rilke
On a journey, ill---
and my dreams, on withered fields,
are wandering still.
---Basho
Everything you know is wrong.
---Firesign Theatre
The weakest link. More >
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 20 Mar 2004 @ 03:41
Endless is my vow
under the azure sky
boundless spring.
---Soen Nakagawa
I wish we were not so single-minded about keeping
our lives moving, and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves and of threatening
ourselves with death.
---Pablo Neruda
Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words, and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.
---Dogen
A couple of times during my life, circumstances have forced me to accept quite atypical work off the beaten path of success for my career plan. The first time was in the late '60s, following a devastating (for me) divorce, when I became a glorified attendant of some sort in a private psychiatric hospital outside New York. The second time was more recent, after we'd moved to Ohio and I took a bureaucratic job with the Social Security Administration. Both jobs involved receiving considerable hostility from the people I was supposed to serve. But I think of those times fondly because I learned so much. More >
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 26 Feb 2004 @ 01:21
At that pond
the frog is growing old now---
among fallen leaves.
---Buson
How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become---to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being?
---Antoine de Saint-Exupery
One day, while Nan-Ch'uan was living in a hut in the mountains, a strange monk visited him.
Nan-Ch'uan greeted him saying, "Please make yourself at home," and then left to work in the fields. He worked hard all day and came home hungry and tired.
The stranger had cooked a big meal for himself, threw out the leftover food and broke the utensils, and went to sleep. When Nan-Ch'uan stretched himself out to sleep, the monk got up and left.
Years later, Nan-Ch'uan told this story to his disciples, commenting, "He was such a good monk, I miss him even now."
---Zen koan
Celestial Beings Sing and Dance for the Holy Couple
Miniature Painting On Paper, Kangra School
Artist Kailash Raj
There is a slight difference in the latest sheaf of poems from John Tagliabue, my beloved mentor and friend from college days. Hard to believe we've known each other some 45 years---and have laughed and cavorted the whole way. The difference is an aura of summing up that pervades the poems and commentary. Well, that's a big difference right there: commentary. He not only tells us his references, but journals off into the people and places right there at the poem...or on the back of them really. He sometimes does that at his poetry readings, but not so much in letters. He knows I put some of them up on the Internet...and even though he refuses to get involved in computers, he likes what I'm doing. More >
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