Stories, series of stories told by people who know how to live, who know the rules, who follow the rules.
I read about the rules as I stretch my arm …
“No, this is not how you stretch your arm!”, says the rule “this is wrong, you have to do it like that!”…
I move, flex my fingers … “No, not like this! This is the rule for how you flex your fingers, like this…”
I turn … “No, this is wrong, this is the wrong way to turn, the sinful way, it will have you damned, it is how you fall! Here, this is how you turn, this is how you stretch, this is how you roll, this is how you move, this is how you live, this is how you think!”
I move and stop … arrested, corrected, fixed, righted.
My body grows tense, rigid … I move just a little … “wrong!” … I freeze …. I try again, slowly, maybe this way … “no! wrong!” snaps the rule.
I stop. Shocked, terrified, blank. [click to continue…] About Mind
Stories, series of stories told by people who know how to live, who know the rules, who follow the rules.
I read about the rules as I stretch my arm …
“No, this is not how you stretch your arm!”, says the rule “this is wrong, you have to do it like that!”…
I move, flex my fingers … “No, not like this! This is the rule for how you flex your fingers, like this…”
I turn … “No, this is wrong, this is the wrong way to turn, the sinful way, it will have you damned, it is how you fall! Here, this is how you turn, this is how you stretch, this is how you roll, this is how you move, this is how you live, this is how you think!”
I move and stop … arrested, corrected, fixed, righted.
My body grows tense, rigid … I move just a little … “wrong!” … I freeze …. I try again, slowly, maybe this way … “no! wrong!” snaps the rule.
I stop. Shocked, terrified, blank. [click to continue…]
Christopher sits in front of me. He is angry, angry at how I’ve been, at how I talked, at how I behaved. He talks and talks and talks. An endless litany of words that push me, poke me, assault me.
My mouth pressed together into a thin, angry line, my body rigid. I stare at him, unblinking, hardening with his every word. I am not angry, I am hardening my body into an armor.
He doesn’t talk now and I stare at him. I will have to say something soon, he waits for me to say something. But I can’t. I am so rigid, hidden so far behind my defenses now that all I can think to say are sarcastic, angry things. Words that will push him away, that will stop his words, that will let me escape.
I don’t want to say those words, I see what they are, I see what they are for, I see that they are not real. I can’t say anything that is real. [click to continue…]
Our idea of what reality is determines how we relate with it:
A zen teacher had an affair with his student. It was a long time thing, lasting for some years. During this affair he also had other mini-affairs with other students, multiple students, who knows how many students. Besides having affairs, he was teaching, developing new ways of practice, new techniques that some found difficult to accept as legitimate. He was introducing new ways of being and that does not go down easily within an old, old tradition with a structure unchanged in thousands of years.
He was introducing new ways of being in all areas of life. [click to continue…] 
When did you begin to feel the need to settle down in one place? Had the urge to move on, to go somewhere else, ever went away entirely?
Because I am still feeling it, and with every decision to move I wonder how many of the rational arguments are there only to cover up the fact that I stayed in one place long enough, that I need to go.
Not that I mind it, this need to go to another place. I have nothing that keeps me anywhere. I do not get attached to people and I chose a profession that doesn’t require me to be anywhere in particular. I organized my life around my need to move, because when I stay too long in one place … I get bored. [click to continue…] 
