New Orts #56

February 9 MMXXV

(cartoon from the Globe and Mail, Feb.8 2025)

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Through Zen meditation, the writer has managed to achieve complete and perfect
Emptiness, although two hours later he often feels full again.

The Torah says, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”.
The Buddah says there is no “self”.
So maybe you are off the hook.

If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

— all, from David Bader's book, Zen Judaism

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Thus shall you think of all this fleeting world:
a star at dawn — a bubble in a stream —
a flash of lightning in a summer cloud —
a flickering lamp — a phantom and a dream

— the closing lines of the Diamond Sutra, in an elegant iambic pentameter translation

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What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
— Crowfoot, Native American warrior and orator (1821-1890)