How things real-ly are not

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How things real-ly are not

Nearly lunch time. Another bus passes outside the window, and a green VW Polo parks beside the linden tree. Fewer and fewer leaves are clinging to its tangle of limbs. The cat snores curled by the radiator.

A colleague asks at work yesterday whether there is anything that is not conditioned.
I wait, let him answer for himself. He already knows or he wouldn’t ask.
Nothing? Yes.
« Then we’re all fucked, » he says, and walks away.
Truly, and that’s the good news: No-thing is the beauty of how things real-ly are not.
That is: Nothing is here like we think it is; everything is here as it is.

By | 2015-10-02T20:26:21+00:00 novembre 24th, 2008|Textes|7 Comments

About the Author:

Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste. The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.

7 Comments

  1. little lake 28 novembre 2008 at 8 h 36 min - Reply

    and empathy?

  2. little lake 28 novembre 2008 at 8 h 34 min - Reply

    what about intuïtion?
    what is the relationship between intuîtion and conditioning?

  3. wild primula 28 novembre 2008 at 0 h 04 min - Reply

    the 3 little lightpink flowers beside me are lightpink
    not that they are realy "lightpink"
    they are just lightpink

    they look like little butterflys
    they are growing in gracious curves towards the light
    the leaves are green and have the shape of little hearts
    we name them "little cyclamen"
    not that you can experience them trough the computer though…

    On the other hand I feel like i would like an olive now…

  4. Tu es cela 27 novembre 2008 at 19 h 29 min - Reply

    The green olives with garlic and lemon are succulent at the vegetable stand in the rue Daguerre.

  5. wild primula 27 novembre 2008 at 18 h 56 min - Reply

    The reflexion on it makes it solid ofcourse – and so conditioned –
    yeah-
    not good in wordgames
    why are we writing about it anyway?

  6. tu es cela 27 novembre 2008 at 15 h 25 min - Reply

    When we see what is before us, full and complete, what we see is interdependence and impermanence. And "seeing" thus is also impermanent. The one seeing and what is seen are not two.

    We can accept that this is so. And we may believe that to "see" in such a way is to be enlightened. How funny that we then expect this view to be fixed!

  7. wild primula 26 novembre 2008 at 23 h 46 min - Reply

    When you can see things like in:
    That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete.
    — Huang Po
    This is conditioned to for you?

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