Not a good comparison

97

My mind is like the Autumn moon
Shining clean and clear in the green pool.
No, that’s not a good comparison.
Tell me, how shall I explain?

Han Shan, Cold Mountain (trans. Burton Watson)

I dreamed last night (or I probably did; see below) that I was with some people, and we were laughing about someone who claimed that they’d been officially declared Enlightened by some mystical Teacher, and someone asked me, hey, you’re all into that Zen stuff, I’d think you’d take this more seriously?

And I nodded and said something like:

You know, except for a few annoying [something] sects, it’s not like you go to your teacher and show how you’ve progressed and eventually the teacher says “okay good, you’re enlightened now”.  They might say “okay, keep going” or “okay, here’s what you should work on next” or even like “okay, I think you are ready to teach some students of your own”, but never “okay, you’re enlightened”, that would be just…

and I shook my head and laughed.

(Where the [something] was some Japanese or Chinese word, maybe kensho, or RInzai (no offense to any Rinzai folk in the waking world), or some dream-word entirely, but there was a word there.)

The reason I say above there that I probably dreamed this last night is that it’s like the most literal, ordinary, realistic, unadorned dream I can recall having had, so it’s not by any means impossible that it wasn’t a dream at all, but actually happened sometime recently, and I’ve just lost track of the actual time and place and details and who was there and what that missing word was and all.

It all sort of blurs together, amirite?

So I say to you,
This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:

Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.

ol’ Buddha, the Diamond Sutra (right at the end there)

Medical Science Baffled!

Last week The Employer was very generous, saying “sure, take Thursday and Friday off!”, and also “Visit the Whitney on us!”, both of which we did, and the new Whitney isn’t bad, has some great views, shows off art pretty well (given that “putting lots of art in a building with labels so people can walk through and look at it” isn’t a great way of showing off art, although it’s at least convenient), and is only moderately ugly itself, as a building seen from the outside. The neighborhood right around it is hoppin’, and I am wondering how much of that is due to the museum showing up, and how much was pre-existingly hoppin’.

Then there was resting on Friday, and on Saturday we went out with two other families and sundry relations and hangers-on to a performance of The Arabian Nights by the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival at (ummmm) Bromdiggers (no) Boscobel (that’s it), and that was great (if not strictly-speaking Shakespeare). The company is always energetic and celebratory, and the productions well-done, and since it was the Fourth of July and they’re been through this before they took a second intermission when the fireworks started going off across the river, so we all had a nice half-hour or whatever watching at least three different shows (the ones from West Point were closest and therefore biggest), and then the rest of the performance. (People never applaud for long enough at the ends of these! I always want to go backstage and apologize to the cast and crew.)

On Sunday morning I went and got a dozen bagels and some cream cheese at the bagel store, and we took them down to The Lake, and other people brought other things, and we had a good time eating and talking and being nostalgic about how we used to do this all the time back when the kids were small, and being amazed by how large the kids are, and how engaged and/or married some of them are, and how adorable the tiny grandchild is (not mine, but the neighborhood’s first, so sort of community property, and sooo adorable). Then when it was time we drove the little boy to the train station for going back to Boston, and had probably rather too large but very yummy burritos from Moe’s (“Welcome to Moe’s!”), and came home.

And I took a shower and sat down and started shivering uncontrollably and having a 103°F fever, and we spent the rest of the night in the local Emergency Room.

Which is unusual!

I am finally feeling pretty normal today, which is I think Wednesday. I am taking two kinds of antibiotics, one for each gramness of possible bacteria, and finally not having to take anything for fever (because I don’t have any). The ER’s theory is pneumonia, only without any symptoms actually involving lungs. My internist was favoring gall bladder (due to observing Murphy’s Sign, which makes me think of the Yellow Sign, of which the less said the better), but a nice lady took pictures of my insides with sound-waves, and apparently my gall bladder is just fine. Personally I favor food poisoning due to cream cheese left out in the sun too long or something, but presumably the analysis of my blood by Medical Science didn’t suggest that.

So now I am feeling mostly better but still housebound, and not wanting to (say) work seriously on work stuff for fear of overtiring and relapsing, and I was therefore going quietly mad for things to do, and it occurred to me that I could write things down in my weblog!

And here they are! The things, that is. Written down. Should there be a picture? What would it be of, though?