Your welcome letters have been arriving in this jungle of wild improbabilities like drops of syrup falling into a bowl of clear water. Now that winter of your content is approaching, you will be snowed by a large manuscript (Ñānavīra Letters) which I'm having sent to you. It is, in its own way, the jungle fabric of choice: rip-stop, though you will have to see for yourself whether or not it's double-stitched.
I've been doing something like your diet for the past few years: mostly fruit, vegetables, and grains; plain as possible. But I found that any rigid 'I will's' and 'I won't's' only lead to trouble, so -- after recovering from a massive protein deficiency earlier this year -- I remain flexible and healthy without hang-ups and still manage to get along well with the simplest fare, and therefore no need for flu shots, vaccines, etc. But -- there is always natural tree syrups (and a fine sort of syrup here made from the coconut-blossom pollen) which is, I am informed, full of all the undiscovered vitamins. This is an irresistible recommendation, and therefore I lap up syrups as they fall, dropwise, info my alms bowl of clear water, with all the joy with which waves lap a phosphorescent beach.
Long ago you once remarked that nibbāna could not be 'simply annihilation'. After having drunk the syrup of the fruitfulness of that remark, I reply: indeed, nibbāna can not be 'simply' annihilation -- or, rather, it is not annihilation at all, for there can only be annihilation if there is something to be annihilated, and it is precisely our delusion to assume, or conceive, the existence of a 'self' to whom annihilation (as well as birth, suffering, and death) might apply. A delusion, of course, is no illusion. But an insidious reality.
Your basket of preserved plums, generous windows, healing walls – my goodness yes. That time may come. That time may come.
The face in the borscht bowl
sends greetings to the spoon
that leaves no ripple.
V.
No comments:
Post a Comment