Sublime

This gatha is simply an offering given to us by the Buddha, the Buddha’s way of saying goodbye: “Until we meet again, here is something for your empty bowl: regard all things, all beings, this teaching, this sutra, this body of merit, this realization, regard them all as unreal.”

Forget about readers, I barely have friends. I’m still in the same apartment with the slanted, peeling walls and the same overbearing afternoon sun, surviving off the same minimum wage job, working full time for not a whole lot more than 100,000 yen a month, and still writing and writing, with no idea whether it’s ever going to get me anywhere. My

The hospital was a place where the dying could undergo the indignities of death without offending the sensibilities of the living. In my high school, my classmates

Li Wen-hui says, “If a person makes an offering of the seven jewels while attached to form in the hopes of attaining merit, this is delusion. Moreover, the merit thereby attained cannot be considered great. It does not compare to the merit of purity, detachment and non-attainment, which is like space and without boundaries.”

Shōyō Rōku says, “On the withered tree, a flower blooms.”