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
July 11th, 2014 There is a certain pleasure in being confounded; for it is not through the process of thinking that we come to our conclusion, nor is it a shot in the dark, but the clarification comes offhandedly. Aristotle had said that memory was founded upon relation and that something forgotten could only be remembered through a long series of opposites connecting, like cold to hot or wet to dry; and however far we felt ourselves from the 'right' answer, our erring was essential in bringing forth the reality sought. We can see of course how burdened the mind becomes, and how easily indifferent it makes itself when squirming about as such, but nonetheless we must feel occupied and fool ourselves into doing something, with the belief that we control the appearing and the vanishing of every little thought. The fact is, the quieter the mind the more open it becomes and gives to our confusion a creative aspect that is not involved in our running around against