get down to one suitcase but be sure it's cool to look at as you carry it about

get it down to one suit case but be sure it's cool to look at as you carry it about

fiction
Edward w Pritchard


I bought two books for a quarter each at a used book sale that have got me to look at myself and the world obliquely.

The books are on Buddhism and Zen by Osho a " contemporary mystic".

Osho believes in using Koans and poetry to awaken us but unlike some others he also writes in verse in traditional Western style and his insights are as Emerson would say  " original and not conventional, always the soul hears an admonition in such lines let the subject be what it may".

Osho writes of the via negativa of Buddhism. All other religions have a positive goal of adding something to yourself, salvation, self realization, union with God, etc. Buddhism takes a negative approach, everything is already inside you right now, right here.

Let go the obstacles and you are complete.

For now, as an American I am working on getting it down to one suitcase but I try to be sure it is cool to look at as I carry it about.

Yesterday with gas at about four dollars a gallon I drove to Youngstown museum to see the James Whistler portrait of a "Lady with an umbrella" and went to a small local cemetery behind a church to look at a civil war veterans grave for Memorial day.

Still as I move about my territory I am aware  I have lost many things. However, nothing essential is missed.

If I need something I no longer have I only need to look skyward.

Here's what I wrote before on that for today, Memorial day 2014.


in the end

fiction
edward w pritchard

In the end, grandpa used to go back behind the house and stare and stare up at the mountains. They are just mountains, beautiful true, but we couldn't ever figure what he was looking at.

After grandpa passed on sometimes I go back behind the house and think of him while I stare at the blue sky and distant white snow capped mountains East of the house. The wind seems to blow from the Mountains toward where we live. The Mountains seem formidable and far off as I stare at them, especially around dawn or dusk. The sun is magnificent also.