Word fatigue.

Words were not always meant to apply to the conventional life.  There is that sense to Zen koans.  Words allow us to reach beyond convention, beyond the mental trends of the day, beyond the bullying of the words that come to us impersonally, barraging us, on screens.  People use words, of course, to bolster up living the conventional life, and so the words are not very weighty, materialist, an outfit to wear, a topic for distraction, do this, do that.  To find the real words, one must go digging.

Beyond the conventional life.   Buddhist thought.  Perspective.  Vast kalpas of time.  Worldly empire and fortune, kingdoms, coming and going, flashing by.  Mountains come, mountains go.  Renounce the idea of stability, solidity.  Thought patterns are the same.  Leave the mode of dualistic thinking behind.  Reach beyond, for truth.

The words.  The words come like rain.  On asphalt, on sidewalk, on brick, on country tarmac roads.  First a drop, then two more.  The bricks are dry, hot sometimes.  Sometimes, humid.  Then the rain comes, as it will.  Snow, sublime, falling, covering itself.  Acts of nature.  Weather.

My father said, and I did and did not understand at the time, being young, bad money drives good money out of the market.  At 53, I have a better sense of what he might have meant.

The Zen Buddhists have a sense of how life is remorseful, properly.  Store up treasures, and they will be gone.  The bar evening is okay, smooth, some sense of decorum, and then one person, strange, in the corner, facing away.  Then two more.   Then another.  Interactions.  The night quickly gets strange, bizarre.  I go downstairs, for a little break, and my coworker says, "hey, wasn't that Dennis who just walked in."  Oh, noooooo, I say.  Shit.  Should have locked the door.

You have some wine, to ease the night's awake, finding some energy to cook, the television a bit more interesting.  And then the next day, you pay for it, lack of energy, depressed mood, of course.

You find a nice girl, you like her, she likes you, but then a moment's inattention, or a frivolity, and then she is gone, gone for life.   A stupid misunderstanding at an age where words are still important, truthful, not gainfully used to manipulate, to get your own way.  One guy comes along, more attentive, shrewd, takes all your poem away.  Sure, you made your own errors, gross stupidity.  Dumb stuff.  But that wasn't what the being wanted to have happen, at the time anyway.

You work hard.  People take advantage, pushing you into something the market affords but which you cannot.  What a favor.


The old writer liked to lay on his side, particularly when he was feeling ill, allergic, or low in energy. Maybe he should get a haircut, or do something productive, but there he was, awake, and the words would come to him, quite on their own, like Groucho talking almost.  The old writer did not give a shit what people thought of him any longer, nor of his writing.  Lying so, he wondered if a babe in the womb, yes, must, sense the effect of words, hear them distantly, like changing light.  Some words would provoke different sensations.  It was all very interesting.  The child could sense them, already quite curious, wanting to be a part of them.  Sometimes, laying there, so, curled up almost, he thought of Jesus lying in the ropes, napping.   How words came to him, having faith in them.

The stories told, of the vineyard, and the worker, and the vineyard owner, those are put in monetary terms, how even the last will be taken away, in the admonishing tales Jesus relates.  In the Buddhist understanding, the tableaux seems broader, more expansive, and human things very little.


"It often happens that some kind of crisis is necessary in one's life to make one put forth all one's strength in solving the koan," Suzuki writes in his preface, reflecting on his own time in the Zen monastery.  "To solve a koan, one must be standing at an extremity, with no possibility of choice confronting one.  There is just one thing which one must do."

Like the koans themselves, these words seem to lie out the outer edge of conventional understandings, as are many of Dr. Suzuki's kernels, such as on the spiritual lesson of charity, the two-way anonymity that supersedes favoritism, insuring the deeper meaning.  (These days more resources are spent on the technology of virtual reality, as somehow it seems to pay off, even, or perhaps particularly, in Japan, than on the value of teaching of words that lead us to a deeper understanding and appreciation of nature and reality.)  Would the busy Wall Street Banker, the lawyer, the lobbyist of some special field be concerned with the magnificent greatness of a koan, I don't think so.  (Preferring the virtual reality of his own bank account and the politics thereof...)


I gather I remember how a Foucault, a Chomsky, makes the point about how words are used effects our reality, our political reality.  But this seems a lesson, for me anyway, that takes time to grasp.  Probably because I am naive, an English major, a student of poems, sacred texts, fiction, places, contexts in which words get their due, which no one can then take away.

But meditating on shame, how shame seeps in to what one does as a job, say, waiting on people--there's nothing wrong with that, if you can take it--or what one makes as income, compared to the successful happy Joneses of Contentment Lane and happy children striving forth like their parents, perhaps that is one way to attempt to try to walk up to that monastery and knock on the door to see what happens.  Then go back and read that part in Corinthians again often read at weddings, about love, as it is, in words' estimation.


(Every one can do it, get words, if not distracted, I suppose.  "It matters not what path a man take," the Buddha says.)


The old writer lay back, and then on his side.  Meditation.  How it is that it is hard for me to be happy?  Well, it is written in Buddhist scripture that one must "cultivate the sense of humility and remorse by reading books and sayings left by the Buddha and the Patriarchs."  I could say, look where words have gotten me, he thought.  But is there a better option, a truer one?  To not be so happy is just to be realistic I guess, a sign I'm attempting to do some work, such as it is.  Words should not pander...


The book I wrote, I've come around to see a certain kind of Zen in it.  The Chekhov ending.  My dad wrote me an excellent letter in his hand writing, that the character here is a Theosophist, and that he's "doing a pretty good job at it."  I had a harder time seeing that, when he wrote that letter, seven years ago, or so, but I knew what he meant.  I knew from whence he was coming from...  I'm happy with that.  I'm content with that...