
Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book
Dumonlin Heinrich, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki. Essays in Zen Buddhism, first series. 2000.p. 255
Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book
Source: Lighthousekeeping (2004)
Context: You say we are not one, you say truly there are two of us. Yes, there were two of us, but we were one. As for myself, I am splintered by great waves. I am coloured glass from a church window long since shattered. I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.
“They can cut all the flowers, but they can't stop the spring…”
Variant: You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.
Tape recording declaring how he recited one of his poems in response to a question "What is your background?" (1992)
Shadowbox Studio
Context: I am a being of Heaven and Earth,
of thunder and lightning,
of rain and wind,
of the galaxies,
of the suns and the stars
and the void through which they travel.
The essence of nature,
eternal, divine that all men seek to know to hear,
known as the great illusion time,
and the all-prevailing atmosphere.
And now you know my background.
The Divine Milieu, p. 128
The Divine Milieu (1960)
Paracelsus - Collected Writings Vol. I (1926) edited by Bernhard Aschner, p. 110
“Flowers are immortal. You cut them in autumn and they grow again in spring—somewhere.”
the organist
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 10, Counting Sheep
Context: We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze. Nonetheless, we can in the same breath deny that there is any such thing as coincidence. What's done is done, what's yet to be is clearly yet to be. In other words, sandwiched as we are between the "everything" that is behind us and the "zero" beyond us, ours is an ephemeral existence in which there is neither coincidence nor possibility. In actual practice, however, distinctions between the two interpretations amount to precious little. A state of affairs (as with most face-offs between interpretations) not unlike calling the same food by two different names. So much for metaphors.