A Treat

We took him
a treat when
we picked him
up @ school.

Bad Books

I chased my grand-
son to the library.
When he got there
he played on
the compu-
ter and then
complained
that
his
dad
got
bad
books.

Intimacy

The Buddhist priest described how he saw Zen as intimacy, being close to all as the body is to the robe. He said that intimacy is listening and not judging... and not fixing.

A few minutes later I was racing to the airport in an avalanche of rain to see my new grandson in Philadelphia. I asked my daughter (Dr. Educator) how I should approach his older brother (almost 3). She said just watch what he does and do what he does. If he's playing with stamps don't teach him to spell his name.

Just be there, DAD!

Misunderstanding

Woke up at 5 am believing that two sequential ringing cell phone calls were my alarm clock. One would have been enough. But two indicated the state I was in. The phone calls would have told us that our son and daughter-in-law were on their way to the hospital to drop off (3 pushes) their new baby (just named Dashiell Grey Zwerling Mosley). Rushing out the door to the Zen center, I told my wife I'd be home at 9. A few blocks from home I realized that I'd be there longer than that, so I called and left her a message to call me if she wanted to leave that day.

It turned out that our kids wanted us right away, so my wife arranged for us to leave that morning, expecting me home at 9... and not listening to her phone messages. When I called her at 11, she was angry, even when I told her what the priest had said in his dharma talk about Norman Fisher who spoke about not judging because you can't ever know the whole story. I went home, made reservations for a 1:15 plane flight, and we arrived in Philadelphia via Houston and Nashville that evening.

I'm ready call me
Where is he?

A Doll, not a Baby

Waiting to board the plane, I watched a mother with her two daughters. One of the daughters was swinging her doll by the leg. I said to my wife, "why is she swinging her baby by the leg." My wife said, "it is not a baby, it is a doll." I remembered an hour earlier how the priest said that we won't treat things with respect when we see them as separate from ourselves. Later, on the plane, I asked my wife if our daughter swung her doll by its leg. "No," she said, "it was her baby."

Why did she
deserve
2
be
treat-
ed
like
this

Help me

Yikes

Mu From the Dog's Mouth

Q: Does a dog have Buddha nature?
A: Mu

I asked my son whether he had a name for his new son, born today (5/16/09, 6:45 am). "No," he said. "How about the Japanese name for 'no,' 'mu,'? I asked. "No," he said.

The Mu koan is as follows: A monk asked Zhaozhou, a Chinese Zen master (known as Jōshū in Japanese): "Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?", Zhaozhou answered: "Wú" (in Japanese, Mu).

For less explanation see: http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2000/07/Does-A-Dog-Have-Buddha-Nature.aspx

'tween him thumbs...

He held a piece
of paper 'tween
his thumbs gently.