March 30, 2015

For your enjoyment, and for tonight’s 5:15 discussion:

from Acequias and Gates, p. 39

Our lives are the creative medium of the koan; they help us see how to participate in making the world. They also want us to understand that this is not a project of unbridled possibility. It’s become commonplace to say that we create our own reality, but that’s not entirely true; there’s actually something much more subtle and complex going on. First of all, as we fall through this part of the universe, we discover the laws and the customs of this place, and how to engage with them. There is the world of our dreams, and there are also autonomous things, like the second law of thermodynamics and what happens to a body that doesn’t get enough food. We’re bringing imagination and matter together, not imposing one on the other. We’re finding out what’s possible when they shape each other.
Joan Sutherland

And this koan:

A belly swollen full of hell,
countless eons of passions,
wildfires burning without end—
but flowering grasses are born 
again in the spring wind.