I Used To Distinguish Between My Fiction

In The Clearness Of This Himalayan Air, Mountains Draw Near, And In Such Splendor, Tears Come Quietly To My Eyes And Cool On My Sunburned Cheeks. This Is Not Mere Soft-mindedness, Nor Am I All That Silly With The Altitude. My Head Has Cleared In These Weeks Free Of Intrusions- Mail, Telephones, People And Their Needs- And I Respond To Things Spontaneously, Without Defensive Or Self-conscious Screens. Still, All This Feeling Is Astonishing: Not So Long Ago I Could Say Truthfully That I Had Not Shed A Tear In Twenty Years.

The Purpose Of Meditation Practice Is Not Enlightenment; It Is To Pay Attention Even At Extraordinary Times, To Be Of The Present, Nothing-but-in-the-present, To Bear This Mindfulness Of Now Into Each Event Of Ordinary Life.

I Used To Distinguish Between My Fiction And Nonfiction In Terms Of Superiority Or Inferiority.

In Zazen, One Is One's Present Self, What One Was, And What One Will Be, All At Once.

It Is Said In Java That The Tiger's Hearing Is So Acute That Hunters Must Keep Their Nose Hairs Cut Lest The Tiger Hear The Breath Whistle Through Their Nostrils.