What does it mean to be dead?
It is to have given one-self for another's well-being.
Be dead in life; be alive in death!
Be Nobody's Darling
Be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.
Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.
Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous
Fools.
On the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.
Make a merry gathering
But be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live Among your dead.
(--poem by Alice Walker)
Walking Ragged Snow Bowl in early morning. Sitting zazen in bookshed retreat while another practitioner sat in zendo. Reading Office of Readings, slowly, after.
No one dead; no one alive.
White dog on pallet outside door.
The sitters, one by one, leave their sitting.
One, by one, the curious experience of being (alive).
The odd monk's life -- following Isaac, Esau, and Jacob -- the undead deceptions of ongoing narrative.
Nobody knows -- the rubble -- we've seen.