Watermark

It is with amusement -- I'm sitting here grinning -- that I consider how just now, at the nadir of my confidence in Buddhist institutions and in some of its claims, I have been busily preaching the Dharma in several unfortunate people's comment-threads. Who am I hoping to convince? Three guesses.

Well. The rose blossoms across the sky.

I say, I know this, or I know that, but I don't. There's the hugeness of the sky, and the sweetness of the rose, and beyond that, who cares? Not me.

Ring the bell once, twice, three times. Bow to the Buddha, bow to your own awakened mind. Suppose you are looking at the blue sky through a fragment of blue glass. And someone says: which blue are you looking at?

You remember, from the high places, you look down on the western sea, at about five o'clock? And it's nothing but shimmering. Like that. And you realize that the sea isn't made of water at all -- what a ridiculous error! -- it's actually made of light, and the light is made of metal. Steel, maybe.

And then when the sun drops over the horizon you forget all this. You look at the gray heaving sea, and you say -- oh yes, how foolish! the sea isn't made of water; it's made of fog. And the fog is made of dirty rags. Everyone knows that.