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 2 Nov 2004 @ 09:01
Past mind is not attainable,
present mind is not attainable,
future mind is not attainable.
---The Diamond Sutra
The moon
abiding in the midst of
serene mind;
billows break
into light.
---Dogen
Study the Way and never grow old
distrust emotions
truth will emerge
sweep away your worries
set even your body aside
autumn drives off the yellow leaves
yet spring renews every green bud
quitely contemplate the pattern of things
nothing here to make us sad
---Shih-Shu
Bingham, George Caleb: The County Election (no.2), 1852
This arrived yesterday in the regular mail from John Tagliabue, my friend, poet/teacher, who refuses (at 81) to learn about computers. He does like me to send his stuff out into cyberspace though...so here it comes~~~
"I'm against fanaticism and nationalism of all kinds---including American. And I'm in favor of giving more strength to the UNITED NATIONS. All my long life I was patriotically active praising the best American values---of Franklin, Jefferson, Henry Adams, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Whitman, many others. And now I feel it is especially IMPORTANT to vote against those primarily supporting American imperialism and the Military Industrial Complex and Profit Motives....important to lead to programs primarily concerned with moral social values, moral values to help the working and middle classes and not and not the plutocrats with interest primarily concerned with stocks and bonds and Corporations. More >
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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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