Encouraging Words by Robert Aitken

Author:Robert Aitken [Aitken, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-77251-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

We die because we live. We die as we live. To live is to die. It is only by dying to the pretense of life that we can truly live this life of death. Otherwise we live a sham and are undone by the death of a relative or friend, and terrified at the prospect of our own. I revere Tom Issan Dorsey, founder of the Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco, who remarked of his illness, “To have AIDS is to be alive.”

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Someone in the early days remarked, “There’s always a good movie at the Maui Zendō.” Quite apart from what this said about our Sangha, the metaphor of movie for life is an interesting one. The frames go by so quickly that we retain the illusion of continuity and are distracted from the light that shines steadily through each frame.

The metaphor has certain weaknesses, of course, but it helps to show how we are caught by the idea of time. “Tomorrow is another day” — this is a comforting thought when things go wrong, but it cannot be our philosophy of life.

“When can you meet today?”54

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