aimlessness
by Genju
I took a shower and went upstairs, hesitated a moment, knocked on Jake’s door. He was sitting in bed reading, his little reading spectacles down on his nose.
“I went out and wandered aimlessly for a while, like a lunatic,” he said. “Now I’m back.”
He was reading Shobogenzo, the great lifetime work of our Zen lineage’s founding teacher, from the thirteenth century.
“How’s the book?” I said.
“As you lose your mind, it almost makes sense.”
from Jake Fades: A novel of impermanence by David Guy
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I guess I’m not lost enough. Or lost in the right way . . .
No matter how lost you get, we’ll always know where you are, Barry!
Thank you for your other comments. I feel so privileged to be able to link all these teachings that arise from relationship. I really resonated with your comment that in the face of our desire for certainty, we can do nothing but practice & try. Somewhere in the nano-space between that desire and trying is practice. I believe it’s what Katagiri called “vow” – such a tough-love concept.