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yeah I know you did not ask!
You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.
I have decided that I am a Zen Buddhist. Proof you say. Okay, here it is. I have developed the following koan.
Which is louder? The rantings of an old man scribbling on a lost-in-cyberspace blog or the sound of one hand clapping?
Not really… but the following quote from Ernest Hemingway’s short story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place made me wonder. Nada is Spanish for nothing. In my mind I was making a connection with the Buddhist concept of no-self or emptiness and of the concept of suffering. In actuality Hemingway’s character was speaking of the anxiety or the despair of loneliness (suffering?). But it did give me pause. In any event, I just love the pattern and sentiments of this excerpt.
“What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread, It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not in to nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”
Om mani padme hum