Amused Mind

In today's mailbox...

Two birthday reminders: yesterday was the 110th anniversary of the birth of Akira Kurosawa (1910 in Tokyo). And, today is the anniversary of the birth (1919 in Yonkers, NY) of poet, publisher, and bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti (see the note below).

...the greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection or order. There seems to be a shadow side to almost everything … Only the unitive or nondual mind can accept this and not panic, but, in fact, grow because of it and grow beyond it...The compassionate holding of essential meaninglessness, even tragedy, is the final and triumphant resolution of all the dualisms and dichotomies that we face in our own lives. – Richard Rohr

Many (not all) mystic traditions treat the physical world as an illusion, creating a dual, real-not-real, division in our perception. Most of us were brought up in the context of this mythology. The world is not an illusion. What is illusory is our learned and conditioned projection onto the mirror of the world and our belief in the resultant duality.

A note re: Ferlinghetti: at one time, he was the most published poet in America. He founded City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. And, according to Garrison Keillor, Ferlinghetti is one of the few poets in the United States who never held a job at a university, never received government funding, never attended an MLA conference. and never won a Pulitzer. He was 101 when he died last year.

Even dewdrops fall. – Ryōkan