for Ruthie

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know

That would and wouldn’t be hard…there’s so much information out there in web-o-sphere that it’s impossible to know even much of it, yet because we know so much because of it, we think we know a lot…someone asks us what “steam punk” is, we know, for example….but what we don’t know and what the audience knows is that it has little to do with what’s going on which is, in fact, happening right outside your window. If a zen poet can show the universe in three lines describing something she sees in front of her, don’t you think the senses have a lot more to say about what you don’t know than some blogger? (oops). But the senses have to be trained, which is why that zen poet sat facing a wall in meditation for twenty years…steam punk, my ass.

my friend’s funeral this morning
burns inside me like my own death ---- Ikkyu

What you don’t or do know is this moment, this circumstance, which is totally unique like all the other snowflakes. It’s all you can know. If you know each moment from now on they call you Buddha, which is not shorthand for Encyclopedia Britannica. The point of knowledge is how it fits with what’s going on, not that it has innate meaning…only useful in synchronicity with phenomena.

Which is a long way of saying pay attention and you might learn something.