James: it’s a line i cribbed from the zen poet, Ryokan. he says something like, “the pain of life makes me want to protect everyone. if only these black sleeves were wider, deeper, i’d put everyone inside.” i like the metaphor because I know the feeling. it is a boundless one. as we open ourselves, … Continued
James: The actual line, from my namesake, John Milton, is this: “Come, and trip it as ye go, On the light fantastick toe.” What I think he’s saying here is: you have fantastic toes. Your whole foot, actually, is pretty cool, hinges of joints, pulleys of tendons and muscles. Don’t even get me started about your face. For this … Continued
James: There is subject and object, figure and ground, me and you, inside and out, here and there, good guys and bad ones, Starsky and Hutch. Okay, okay, the last one was a bit of a reach, at the horizons of even my aging memory, but you get the idea. For convenience, our mind parses phenomena … Continued
James: In both interpretations of the phrase, it’s right here. As in: with the world, consonant with how it is supposed to be, for it can be no other way. Also, the opening into a new one that fits us ever better. This is the tension we walk as meditators, the movement between these two. The … Continued
James: As we continue the practice of meditation, we liberate energy otherwise lost to consternation, furtive thinking patterns or behaviours. What once might have disappeared into friction is used to improve our view. Trees get a deeper green, the sparrow song that calls from them, a note sweeter. Friendships too. As discrimination improves, everything becomes more … Continued