Views & Haikus

When my son was very small I accompanied him on a visit to the bathroom at a Wendy's restaurant. Expecting the worst of conditions I was mildly surprised to find a clean facility with a very active strawberry odorizer. My son quickly exclaimed, "Dad, it smells good enough in here to bite the air!".

Ride the clouds up high
See the sun set orange red
Breathe life inside

Effective learning comes in multiple layers and can be a bit like peeling an onion, very slowly, one painful layer at a time

Death comes only once
Yet life is never ending
Fall will be here soon.

A monk asked Yueh-Shan,"What does one think of while sitting?"
"One thinks of not-thinking," the Monk replied.
"How does one think of not-thinking?" Yueh-Shan asked.
"Without thinking," the Monk said.

No thought will come now
I watch to stop anymore thought
Fly is coming near

“Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, we become seekers.”
-Peter Matthiessen

Knowing once was new
Knowing then forgot to know
Time to wake up now

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life….I think that what we’re really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.” - Joseph Campbell

We must know the why
Sun shines as spring rains fall
No words only joy

Two monks were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. Coming around the bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection. “Come on, girl,” said the first monk. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud. The second monk did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. “We monks don’t go near females,” he said. “It is dangerous. Why did you do that?” “I left the girl there,” the first monk said. “Are you still carrying her?”

Attachment brings problem
Problem is ache and worry
Leave attachment empty

When the many are reduced to one, to what is the one reduced?

From there arrives this
From this echos forever
Harmony is now