Sublime

The meditation was making Xuefeng notice the visual oddity of ordinary things, their tendency to tilt into the nonordinary. His friend’s eyes looked beautiful, not quite human, in the dim light. “Well, since you ask, yes, I do worry, I get anxious, my life is going past me like a galloping horse. I get depressed, I don’t feel that I’m of any use.

Like most humanoids, I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the “monkey mind”—the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined.