Bones In the Corner of the Cage

"Then I asked: Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so? He replied: All poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything."

-William Blake
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

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"Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred."
- C.S. Lewis
(Mere Christianity)

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“Also, I’ve always been fascinated by families. In families you see how sloppy, in terms of boundaries, and intimate they are in the most beautiful and troubling ways.”

Tony Kuchner

Cosmos of Kushner, Spinning Forward

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"If you call one thing vile and another precious, if you praise success and blame failure, you will fill the world with thieves, soldiers, and businessmen. I have praised the saints and I have told at what cost they strove to surpass lesser men. What madness have I not preached in sermons !"

--Thomas Merton
Confessions of a Guilty Bystander

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"One morning sitting zazen and waiting my turn for sanzen, I saw Mind, not as obscure or deep and hidden, but as superficial and immediately available. I sat there breathing and before long I was thinking about how to get our new video camera working. then I moved on to the day's schedule. I caught myself and wondered how much of a hinrance these thoughts were. The pulling power of my thinking was low and an image arose with the phrase "bones in the corner of the cage." Yep, just old meatless bones I'm gnawing on. And then I thought, well what am I then, the cage? I experienced myself as that room with the cement walls and metal bars, the floor with the bones on it, and some water ina trough by the edge. Hm. The cage? Is that it? I sat and watched and then from within I heard breathing and sensed movement and saw a lion's tail sweep around before me in a circular path."

"Thank you and Ok! An American Zen Failure In Japan"
--David Chadwick

"The Catch-22 of Zen." - Taigen Dan Leighton