février 2009
Ocean and office day
This morning, early, as I emerge from underground onto the tony avenue where I spend my office days, the light is clearly growing brighter and stronger with the season. Behind the Arc de Triomphe stretches [...]
Stand up right here
So much to do all week left me without words here. I was plunged, however, into Walt Whitman's joyous word cosmos: All truths wait in all things, he wrote. Like Shunryu Suzuki, who said: Wherever [...]
Calling all bad girls
A friend tells me of an expression in German that translates as, Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere. Reminds me of a line from a Talking Heads song, Heaven is a place [...]
The last word before sunrise
Before sunrise this morning, wind sends wispy clouds scurrying across the gray sky. Yet the trees are nearly still. Later, in Gateless Gate, Case 13, Ganto whispers in old master Tokusan's ear. The master, we [...]
Ciao! Walt Whitman
Lunch with my son at a favorite Sicilian trattoria where the pasta is so fine. The owner says she's weary, has no break. We understand and say so. Smiling, she calls Ciao! as we leave, [...]
Most sincere
Notes from this day would be of going and coming, the journey of the journey, in wind and rain, darkness early and late. I observe my fellow travelers. A man with thick glasses and a [...]
Story of one and all
Rained most of the day after little sleep. I try to put a human being completely on record, truly as is. It is the story of one and all. A monk asked, When great difficulties [...]
Image of an ephemeral world
On a poster in the Métro: Estampes Japonaises: Images d'un monde éphémère (Japanese Prints: Images of an ephemeral world) But... There is no world that is not ephemeral. It's right here in the rumble of [...]
Perfect fit
A student asks me: You say we can talk about everything. Can we also talk about nothing? What is nothing? I reply. Reading Whitman these days, whose poetry Emerson called a combination of the Bhaghvad [...]
janvier 2009
Everything is right here
Wake up to another cold, gray day, after a sometimes restless sleep. Some trees are bare, others not, like the holly full and a deep, waxy green outside my window. Assorted birds big and small [...]
First ferry before dawn, with tea
Leaving before sunrise on the first ferry on the final day of retreat, someone asks me, What does it mean to be stuck in the absolute? First, I am surprised by the question, in the [...]
Like the clouds
Back after days and days of retreat, on an island in the North Sea off the coast of Holland. Was endlessly washed by the wind and occasional rain under magnificent skies by night and day. [...]
Equally to be loved
Strife rages, meanwhile, on and on. What's the answer? What's the question? Then, thinking of Palestinian and Israeli, me and you, us and them, my eyes fall on a verse from Kerouac's Dharma Bums on [...]
Cold is cold is cold is cold
No let-up in the cold again today, breath in the air, ice under foot. I'm reminded of case 43 of The Blue Cliff Record: A monk asked Tozan, "When cold and heat visit us, how [...]
No intermission
Everything by its very nature is subject to the process of infinite transformation, said Yasutani Roshi. Such is the undying truth of all life: We must die to live. There is no intermission in this [...]
Everyness
There is something somewhere in this daily record that is more and less than what I think it is and also not more not less than what I think it is. The everyness overwhelms all [...]
Having to start somewhere
According to our accepted and utilitarian convention, this is Day 1. I have to start somewhere. So I open at random Francis Ponge's Le parti pris des choses, a Christmas gift from my son, to [...]
décembre 2008
Master, are you awake?
As we near what we call year's end and then enter what we call new year, an old Zen poem comes to mind: A water bird comes and goes, Leaving no traces at all. Yet [...]
Endgame/Fin de partie
The new year approaches and I come upon this perfect bit of dialogue from Samuel Beckett's Endgame: Clor: Do you believe in the life to come? Hamm: Mine was always that. I wonder about mine. [...]
Silent night
It's a silent night. After all the giving and getting, the expectations and preparations, the obligations, inspirations, connections, separations, exaggerations, what is left tonight of Christmas? Who gave, and what was given? Who received it? [...]
