February 26th, 2015 How rare to have body and mind on the same page! It is not easy to do the things we want when we want to; the auspicious moment always seems to grow from inability and our inability from a desire for something more. Imagination drags us through this lonely field, giving us our tasks, our worries, making the distance around us insufferable. And so whenever I have something to do, it is very difficult not to get caught up in the imagination of doing it before it is actually done, working through it a hundred times. I am not speaking of preparation or details here, but the simple idea of a future to come, and what that future might bring, and how we might handle that--this is the imagination, this is the gateless gate, firmly shut and too defiantly high to look over; this is the gate that never was nor ever has been a gate. Yet it is richly adorned and so much a part of our inability that it seems better to look at and keep closed rather than pass right through
February 24th, 2015 The question of effort always comes up. Am I doing enough? Am I doing it the right way? Is this really how it should be? It is easier to question than to do and even doing wrongly is most of the time better than doubting uselessly. We often rely upon hesitancy to fulfill the effort required because we do not feel ourselves up to the task, or the time does not feel right. Our projects and our plans gather strength the further they remain in the future; the closer they come to completion, the more apt they are to failure. 'Failure occurs near the end,' says Lao-Tzu because our effort has created something that was different from the beginning; we perceive the two differently so they must be acted upon differently. Something the ancient poets used to speak of at the beginning of their poems, and even the Tibetan sages in their poems and prayers to theirs gurus, was a muse awakening, or the idea of something finding a bit of realization in something un