hermit's chronicles

It doesn't hurt to take a hard look at yourself from time to time and this should help get you started. During a visit to the mental asylum, a visitor asked the Director what the criterion was which defined whether or not a patient should be institutionalized. "Well," said the Director, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and ask him or her to empty the bathtub." "Oh, I understand," said the visitor. "A normal person would use the bucket because it's bigger than the spoon or the teacup." "No," said the Director, "a normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?"

This morning there was a mosquito in my bathroom. It buzzed around frantically from here to there, from one light in the bathroom to another. A couple of times it went to the reflections of the lights in the mirror. It was looking for a way out but was trapped by its fondness for bright lights. It was probably subconsciously seeking the brightest light of all, the sunlight, but in the captivity of the bathroom it did not know this and couldn't seem to find a way to fulfill this deep, primordial search. I watched this all. I could see that the large louvered window was just inches away, if only the mosquito would stop to look instead of expending itself on frenzied activity. After a while, the mosquito perched himself on the basin mirror, almost as if looking at himself, reassessing the situation and probably coming to the conclusion that all his effort was getting him nowhere. He was still stuck where he was and there wasn't anything he could do to get where he, for some unknow...

Sage Tulsidas offers this advice in Ramayana: Je bid rakhe Ram, te bid rahiyo Translation: Whatever the circumstance Existence places you in, accept graciously. Inspired translation: Accept the What-is.

If I was asked to define Zen, I would point to it using this theorem from geometry: The smallest arc of a circle is a straight line.