both sides now

Though it’s always my intention not to, every once in a while in the blog I stray into my Zen practice, using that particular language, being all yakety yak about it. When I see I’ve done so, my initial response is a feeling I ought to apologize – to you, to me.

Which is interesting. Because I experience that like I’d be apologizing for being right-handed. Or green-eyed. Or having parents named Irene and Win. How can these things not be? How can I not be my practice?

So – he writes – I’m sitting in a coffee shop, writing about my life at the Y, and life in the trailer park, and on the side of a mountain. And all of a sudden Dongshan ( 807 – 869 ) is sitting at the next table over. Maybe looking at me. And here’s the thing, which I sense as amazing and baffling and cool – he’s never not there.

“That’s the way it’s gotta be. Living in a fantasy. It’s you for you and me for me. From now on.” – Supertramp

“I am what I eat.”