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 21 Sep 2005 @ 10:07
Sitting in an outhouse, I concentrated upon this doubt, and as time passed I forgot to leave. Suddenly a violent wind came, first blowing the outhouse door open and then shut again with a loud crash. My spirit instantly advanced and ripped apart my previous doubt; it was like suddenly awakening from a dream, or remembering something forgotten. I began to dance in a way I had never learned, and there are no words to convey my great joy.
---Gesshu
A reasonable amount o' fleas is good fer a dog---
keeps him broodin' over bein' a dog, mebbe.
---Edward Noyes Westcott
Corruption is more dangerous than terrorism.
---Hadi al-Amiri, Head of Iraqi National Assembly's Integrity Commission
A British soldier, his uniform in flames, prepares to jump from a personnel carrier during rioting that broke out in Basra when Britain sought the release of two detained commandos. (By Atef Hassan -- Reuters)
Americans love a good night's sleep...and we spend tons of money trying to get one here and there. Maybe we spend more money on it, including fees to psychologists and therapists, than almost anything else. Yes, we need oil for all the stuff in our garages...and flying around in airplanes. And we spend lots more on our obesity problems than we contribute to the world's populations of the starving. And of course there is a fortune to be spent finding a sex partner and getting any enjoyment out of the activities. But mostly we really love to sleep...and hate to be awakened!
So let's say that while you were asleep, certain parties "disappeared" $10 billion from the United States Treasury. And let's also say that your sons and daughters were standing guard at those vaults of marble. Not only that, the 10 billion dollars was to be spent for weapons and protection for those duties your children have accepted. In fact, some of those kids are doing that work to get enough money to go to college. If that happened and it was discovered, do you think the story would be in a newspaper the next morning? Maybe? Definitely? Absolutely not? More >
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 24 Jul 2005 @ 08:49
Charles Dharapak/Associated Press
President Bush said in the fall of 2003 that no one wanted to get to the bottom of the C.I.A. leak case more than he did.
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
---Crowfoot
While thinking about the future, and about tomorrow's livelihood, if you don't let go of wordly affairs, if you don't practice the Way, and if you pass your days and nights in vain, you'll regret it. You should rouse your mind, and determine that even if there is no livelihood for tomorrow, and you might freeze, or starve, or even die---still today, you should hear the Way, and follow Buddha's intention. If you do this, you will certainly achieve practice in the way.
---Dogen
If you have the idea of superiority and are proud of your ability, this is a disaster.
---Yuan-Wu
The Sunday New York Times used to hit the streets in Manhattan at about 10:00 Saturday night. I'll bet it still does because it's a great tradition. If I was downtown, I loved to buy it at a newsstand. The subway ride up to The Bronx, where I lived, took about 45 minutes...and the Entertainment section, or The Magazine, or News Of The Week In Review made great company and possibly a diversion from the dramas unfolding in the car around me.
If I were home in the apartment a block off Grand Concourse, I probably was up listening to jazz DJs on the radio at 11:00 on Saturday nights, when the paper became available at newsstands up there. I liked going out at that hour to buy The Times. Maybe I could have afforded to have it delivered, but finding it on Saturday nights was more exciting...and for me very much a part of enjoying New York. Besides, it was great to have it already on the breakfast table when I got up Sunday morning.
These memories were revived this morning when I came down to the computer and found that my wife already had posted an amazing article in this morning's Times to me and her list. My online edition (the actual paper costs many dollars this far out in the Midwest) arrived in my emailbox at 3:00 AM, but Dana had sent this out at 11:30 last night, the old Bronx time for such discoveries. Like many husbands I like finding stuff first, but in this case I really appreciate the scoop!
It's another article by Frank Rich. This guy has really been cranking up the heat lately. He started at The New York Times in 1980, when he was the theater critic. But another of his interests is politics, and so gradually he has evolved into a journalist who writes a "weekly 1500-word essay on the intersection of culture and news," as his columnist biography reads. Now, if you're a president who nominates somebody to the Supreme Court on TV primetime AND a week before you said you were going to, you're asking for one of his reviews. In this case, he's also wondering why another certain somebody, who read for the part, didn't get it. More >
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 15 Apr 2005 @ 11:49
It is no more surprising to be born twice than it is to be born once.
---Voltaire
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
---Niels Bohr
A general in ancient China came to see a Zen master. He drew his sword and pointed it at the teacher, and announced: "Don't you know that I am a man who can run you through without blinking an eye?"
To which the Zen master responded instantly: "Don't you know that I am a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?"
Deeply impressed, the general sheathed his sword and remained for the teaching.
---Zen story
My wife sends me a few emails every day. More often than I like they are about how I can become a better husband for her than I am already. But sometimes she finds a political item or entry as she browses the Net that nails the direction our nation is taking right to the wall. When that happens I find little alternative but to put aside everything I am doing...and really take an inventory. I'm sure she'd like it if I did that with the health and diet articles she sends too, but that is a different essay. More >
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 12 Dec 2004 @ 11:26
Each dewdrop and raindrop has a whole heaven in it.
---Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.
---Tennessee Williams
Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down, splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split.
---Annie Dillard
Gauguin, Paul
Grape Harvest in Arles, 1888
Along with any notions of nonBiblical sex, America is packing away its dreams and memories of a liberal nation. Also into hiding and whispers go any thought of rebellion against stolen elections and a corrupt republic. It's housecleaning time and the jazzoLOG sites have become as messy as those storefront Democratic headquarters in every town, now returned to haunted vacancy. Democrats certainly need practice in organization and calm judgment. More >
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 4 Sep 2004 @ 11:15
The seeker is that which is being sought.
---The Buddha
A cool breeze,
the grasshopper singing
with all his might
---Issa
By three methods may we learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is bitterest.
---Confucius
Hitler used the greatest artistic minds he could attract to his administration---filmmakers and architects---to build not only platforms and sets on and in which to speak, but to create an entire Reality in which his followers could live. I hate to be obvious and crass with such a comparison, but the Bush Republicans have done exactly the same thing. Art can create reality, and there's nothing wrong with both parties doing it...but it's vital to know it's being done! The President has used television producers at high undersecretary-of-this-and-that posts to present him heroically. Everyone thinks of the aircraft carrier thing, but remember too the Statue of Liberty speech, the Twin Towers site performance, and of course the Thanksgiving turkey. The major portion of the Reagan book Bush uses, it seems, is the acting---although, as a theatre guy of some years, I'm here to tell you it ain't acting, so much as a lifetime of lying experience that's kept George in the American spotlight. So who writes his material and how is it done? More >
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