Sublime

The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful? And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.1 —JOHN CAGE

Before dawn the next morning I heard my father’s voice come through the answering machine. “Mum died, John. That’s all I have to say. Bye.” I felt a love for him and also felt that my mother had indeed said farewell in a completely satisfactory way.

Koans just take away the painful beliefs and so provide freedom. What you do with that freedom is up to you.

He decided that this insight was what made Yantou seem so objective; Yantou didn’t have an idea of Yantou that he had to groom and manicure.

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No one’s heart seemed to be changing, and though that might be the point of a boring koan, for me this koan was like an apple tree that had always been in the garden but had never flowered. Some passages in life seem plain or nondescript, yet they might make life sing, the way an anonymous brown bird hopping under the orange tree makes the garden

And even this indirect approach is not based on a plan. It’s hard to plan for something that takes you beyond what you can imagine, which is what this method is designed to do.

My mother, the doctor thought, was waiting for my arrival and might not last the night. “Dying of what?” I asked him. “Nothing, everything.”