[Image: “All I See Is Gold,” by Billy Wilson on Flickr.com. (Used here under a Creative Commons license.) Says the photographer: “I took this this evening — the windchill was unbelievable. This is the edge of the ice at the end of a pier in the Saint Mary’s River. There is enough current at the end on the pier that the water doesn’t freeze there in the winter.”]
From whiskey river:
Eighty-three problems
There is a story of a man who came to see the Buddha because he had heard that the Buddha was a great teacher. He had some problems in his life, and he thought the Buddha might be able to help him straighten them out.
The Buddha listened patiently to the man as he laid out all his difficulties and worries, and then waited for the Buddha to say the words that would put everything right for him.
The Buddha said, “I can’t help you.””What do you mean?” said the man.
“Everybody’s got problems,” said the Buddha. “In fact, we’ve all got eighty-three problems, each one of us. Eighty-three problems, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you work really hard on one of them, maybe you can fix it — but if you do, another one will pop right into its place.”
The man was furious. “I thought you were a great teacher! I thought you could help me!”
The Buddha said, “Well, maybe it will help you with the eighty-fourth problem.”
“The eighty-fourth problem?” said the man. “What’s the eighty-fourth problem?”
The Buddha said, “You want to not have any problems.”
(Steve Hagen [source (in slightly different words)])
…and:
If the boundaries of the self are defined by what we feel, then those who cannot feel even for themselves shrink within their own boundaries, while those who feel for others are enlarged, and those who feel compassion for all beings must be boundless. They are not separate, not alone, not lonely, not vulnerable in the same way as those of us stranded in the islands of ourselves, but they are vulnerable in other ways. Still, that sense of the dangers of feeling for others is so compelling that many withdraw, and develop elaborate stories to justify withdrawal, and then forget that they have shrunk. Most of us do, one way or another.
(Rebecca Solnit [source])
Your immediate surroundings are often what best determine the most natural place for an object to rest. The stark beauty of a single stone or flower arrangement or ceramic plate is often enhanced by its location or its isolation. A great pile of flowers or a room filled with teacups detracts from your ability to focus on one of them and to appreciate it. You begin to learn a great deal when you can bring your careful attention to one single object. Many of the works of poets, such as Pablo Neruda, are the result of such careful observation; these odes cast the most common of household objects — the scissors, the spoon, the onion, or the loose and of wayward thread — in an entirely new light.
(Gary Thorp [source])
…and:
There is the image of the man who imagines himself to be a prisoner in a cell. He stands at one end of this small, dark, barren room, on his toes, with arms stretched upward, hands grasping for support onto a small, barred window, the room’s only apparent source of light. If he holds on tight, straining toward the window, turning his head just so, he can see a bit of bright sunlight barely visible between the uppermost bars. This light is his only hope. He will not risk losing it. And so he continues to staring toward that bit of light, holding tightly to the bars. So committed is his effort not to lose sight of that glimmer of life-giving light, that it never occurs to him to let go and explore the darkness of the rest of the cell. So it is that he never discovers that the door at the other end of the cell is open, that he is free. He has always been free to walk out into the brightness of the day, if only he would let go.
(Sheldon B. Kopp [source])
…and:
Petition
What god will catch me
when I’m down, when I’ve taken
sufficient drink to reveal
myself, when my words are little
more than a blurring
of consonant and vowel?I’m drunk on spring:
branches of waxy leaves that
greet me at my driveway,
a family clutching
trays of sweets.
How can I sing of this?If I cannot sing, then
make me mute. Or lend me
words, send me
the taste of another’s prayer,
cool as a coin
newly minted on the tongue.
(Dilruba Ahmed [source])
…and:
The priest Yueh-an said to a monk, “Hsi-chung made a hundred carts. If you take off both wheels and the axle, what would be vividly apparent?”
(Wu-Men [source])
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