Month: January 2013

• January 31, 2013

  Mountain life (An excerpt from Radiance)

  A short excerpt from Radiance: An Essay for Unsettled Time. The book is in progress. * Out the window, snow begins falling on sienna; it is collecting fast. Until now, it has rained warmly three days straight and the ravines, dug out and meandering down the mountainside, had been rolling with sound, the green beneath the…
• January 30, 2013

  Doing what comes naturally

  If it isn’t easy to do, then it’s not the thing to do. Deliberations require lack of spontaneity and struggle a lack of understanding, but graceful action comes quite naturally. Cutting wood is only hard until the trunk and I are on friendly terms and then the neck yields to the axe’s touch. Being courageous is…
• January 29, 2013

  ‘Luckiness is not getting what you want…’

  Luckiness is not getting what you want but realizing that it wasn’t worth wanting after all. This is called adulthood. Unluckiness is getting what you want, only to grow thoughtlessly into old age. This is called childhood. Also: prose.
• January 28, 2013

  The thing desired during sitting meditation

  For the first time this morning, I came upon a criterion for my meditation practice. The criterion allows one to say, when one has hit upon the thing desired, that this is in fact the thing desired. Since last December, I had meditated without any aim apart from the continuing to do so diurnally. Now,…
• January 25, 2013

  Lightening bitter hearts

  A bitter heart can set in one day and thereafter settle in. Be vigilant therefore. Where today have you erred? What deed neglected, left unfinished? What love untold? Now write these reflections down on paper, read them aloud, and cast them thence into the night fire. Tomorrow, during morning meditation amid the quietude that pervades…