Dogen - Namaste, Namaste, Namaste...

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Sometimes,
God shows us a world
replete with
wisdom and foolishness,
daily practice,
life and death,
saints and sinners.

Other times,
the clarity
and the confusion
and the growth
and the decay
and the saints
and the sinners
and everything else
all vanish into namelessness.

The true way
naturally transcends such opposites.
It joins
life with death,
wisdom with foolishness,
the ordinary with the divine.

Be that as it may -
the blossoms you adore
will wither and fall;
the weeds you abhor
will flourish and sprawl.

The fool bustles around trying to figure out what things are.
The wise man lets things move along and tell him what he is.

The wise man understands completely how little he understands.
The fool completely fails to understand how much he does.
Ignorance is self-perpetuating
Wisdom is self-reinfprcing
The truly wise are not self-consciously so.
But their proven wisdom continues to prove itself.

Comments

Loralee Choate said…
I think that I would definately classify as the fool in that. I always bustle around instead of just letting it be.
2:12 PM
Rowan said…
The fool bustles around trying to figure out what things are.
The wise man lets things move along and tell him what he is.

Loving that part most of all, too true!
4:06 PM
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