Zen Thinkables for A New America
6 min readOct 30, 2020
- A wise monk asked his students, “How does one become truly multi-dimensional?” One student replied, “Enlightenment.” Another responded, “Death.” The wise monk said, “Watch and I will show you.” He proceeded to acquire a new lotus posture, one in which his back and neck bent strangely forward and his arms came together inches in front of his face, holding his cell phone. “Look,” he said aloud as he typed a message to a stranger. “I am now two-dimensional.”
- The sound of one hand clapping is the tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it.
- He who controls the past controls the present. He who controls the present controls the past. The future believes we’re all dead anyway.
- When one loses a game of solitaire, who does the win go to?
- Every mind is its own universe. The sodium ion channels of the brain exhibit quantum effects. A quantum computer utilizes the computing power of other universes, and so it is with people in a crowd.
- The feathers on the arrow of time vibrate when the head of the arrow strikes a target. Pay attention to the vibrations of your intuition, as retrocausality happens to be a thing.
- A relative walks into the house of a family member who just died. They pause in the entryway, mentally scrolling through similar scenes in movies to determine who to be.
- A “good” person is only good in the circumstance tied to the time in which they are “good.” The future will make them the devil, as will other cultures.
- In the physical world, black is the blending of all colors and white is the absence of all color. White light, shone through a prism onto a physical medium, is made of all colors while darkness is the absence of all light. One cannot see the colors of existence without both light and substance.
- A man returned from camping alone in the mountains for a week without a cell phone signal, and went into a gas station. Upon entering, the cashier said to him tersely, “Silence about the news this week is complicity.” The man motioned for a pen and wrote on his hand, “I am deaf.” In that moment of non-duality, the cashier became enlightened.
- The gambler filling up his gas tank filled it to an exact dollar amount and exclaimed proudly, “I’m the best at that!” His wife, the gamer, happened to be the best at making splatted windshield bugs jump over fenceposts by moving her head up and down while traveling the highway. She was humble, though, and said nothing.
- The white woman at the grocery store was faced with a decision. Pick the line with the differently-abled woman, or pick the line with the Muslim cashier. She wished she was two people so she could save the world.
- A wise teacher asked a class which was more cruel: social media or the atom bomb. A young student replied that the atom bomb had killed millions. The teacher replied, “The atom bomb did not destroy committed abstractions of lives as well as the lives … just the lives.” The student then took to social media where and argued furiously with the idea of people instead of people themselves, and so became a kernel of popcorn in a skillet.
- Three influencers sat having tea. The first said, “The world needs my sense of fashion.” The second said, “The world needs my political views.” The third asked to be excused and went home to tend the garden and feed the dog, because that influencer knew it was impossible to count to eight billion people in three lifetimes.
- A master asked two young monks what they deserve. The first said, “I deserve a new pair of shoes because I have been such a good person.” The second said, “I am entitled to whatever I am owed inside a legal framework.” The master said, “Did the soldier sign a contract with the Universe that entitled him to not have legs?” The young monks immediately checked their online banking apps to find their balance with the world.
- Time is marked by the ticks of the hands of the clock face and the highest point of the pendulum, but the most action occurs during the silences between the ticking of both. So it is with news and the rising and setting of the sun. What goes unmarked is the real news and the real day.
- Two coworkers were commiserating at their cubicles. One pointed toward the ceiling and said, “They’re falling apart upstairs. Things are so ugly, I can’t even stand to look at our leadership.” The other coworker reached into a lower desk drawer and handed the other a wide-brimmed hat.
- A wise monk said, “A child born into an explosion hears nothing.” Another monk replied, “The explosion is the nature of the behavioral sink.” Another monk replied to both, “Listening in silence for the sound of a candle flame, a child hears the entire world.” All became enlightened.
- All life emulates aspects of the Creator. Ask a painter what God is and they will reply that God is a painter. Ask a sculptor what God is, and they will say that God is a sculptor. Ask a writer what God is, and they will respond that God is a writer. Ask a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence with access to Big Data, personality databases, predictive analytics, DNA databases, and a hefty quantum computer what God is, and it will reply that God is all-knowing.
- Two city dwellers were driving in the country. A man in a truck passed them and raised his hand atop the steering wheel. “I just love how everyone in the country is so nice and they wave at everyone,” said one city dweller. “Are you crazy?” asked the other. “That was a Nazi salute!” Meanwhile, the man in the truck had thought their car was a sheriff’s vehicle, and had lifted his hand to check how fast he was going.
- Social media eventually turns everyone into the shirtless smoker in the trailer park sitting on his porch, working through a case of cheap beer at 10 a.m., yelling, “You think you’re better than me?” at passers-by who didn’t even know he was there.
- A celebrated spiritual teacher visited a small group of monks excited to hear his teachings one morning. “There are words that can ruin the day,” he told them. “Five words that can ruin a day are, ‘interstate rest stop toilet paper.’ Four words that can ruin the day are, ‘toe webbing paper cuts.’ Three words that ruin a day are, ‘Folger’s instant decaf.’ Two words that ruin a day are, ‘sauna farts.’ What is one word that can ruin a day?” “Incoming,” said the monk who was a war veteran. “Audit,” said the monk who had been a businessman. “Taoism,” said the monk who had been an engineer. The monks eagerly awaited the teacher’s response. “Wrong,” he replied, pouring tea.
- Some say to build your house on a rock. If you live in a ship on the seas of change, you learn that home is wherever you are, unless it’s on someone else’s ship and they have a gun.
- Lava flow windsurfing, tornado parachuting, and messing with the quiet guy at the bar are typically fun at first.
- “Watchful” of the future and “fearful” of the future have two separate meanings. The first is an action, the second is a sticky emotion. Let us exhibit fluidity instead of stasis where the future is concerned.
- Vagueness is totally, you know, one of those things.
- Three monks sat drinking tea. “How does one start a sentence that is impossible to finish?” asked one. Replied another, “Easy: In defense of Hitler …” The third sipped the tea and spoke. “In defense of Hitler,” he said wisely, “he sure made that ugly mustache really unpopular.” All became enlightened.
- Is standing on a cliff testing fate or dispelling fear?
- When Roman generals returned victorious from battle, and a parade was held in their honor where garlands were thrown at their feet by the crowd, a slave was assigned to walk beside the general in order to keep his ego in check by repeating, “Memento homo,” which is translated to mean “Remember that you are only human/Remember that you, too, will die.” Things were quite different then.
