One

How close do you have to get to something before there is here?

Tathata and French Fries

“What’s the difference between a person and a potato?”
“That depends on the person.”
“Yes, but generally, what are the primary differences?”
“Potatoes are more appetizing when shredded and fried.”
“According to potatoes?”
“Potato doesn’t care.”
“Why not?”
“No mind.”
“Mind cares?”
“Intellectual mind cares.”
“Basic awareness?”
“Potato can’t do it.”
Does basic awareness care?”
“About potatoes?”
“About anything.”
“Yes. No. Stop it.”
“Intellectual mind sits on top of basic awareness and is therefore part of and still somehow separate from it. The answer ‘Yes. No. Stop it,’ might be right. Basic awareness is capable of undifferentiated experience, but without intellectual mind…”
“We’re just like potatoes.”
“With arms and legs.”
“And faces.”
“And stuff…”

Realms

All the single-minded looking for clever beauty and fitting it neatly into a smug and rosy outlook is as much clinging as bashing heads and screaming for the right to claim the most anger at the world.
Samsara and Nirvana both generate karma.

Small Kleshas

Rushing doesn’t help. Even when we pretend to enjoy it.
Talking a lot is very much like rushing but your getting nothing done while doing it.
I’ve wasted nearly a lifetime rushing and talking too much and have less than little to show for it: few generous accomplishments, lost friends, a long wake of awkward enemies, blah, blah, blah…

Emptiness

This struggle with time and space feels like slow-wittedness.
Profound mistrust in the moment after years and lifetimes of learning to never trust the moment and the self and the mistakes that point to emptiness as loss instead of open ground.

Itchy

Itchy nose, mounds of gravel.
The guy on the train by the window  is murdering his newspaper and chewing on his fingers. His anxiety is sprouting waves of energy, reaching, looking for something calm, something fertile. My nose is itchy. It’s unusual.

Grateful

If the circumstances of your life have allowed you to hold your children close, in peace, and without fear, be grateful and help all of those who have never been fortunate enough to have had that opportunity.