No Ifs Ands Or Butts
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![](Today's thought "If you go into the woods you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent. You understand that it didn't get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don't get all emotional about it, you just allow it. But the minute you get near humans, you lose all that. You are constantly saying "You are too this." Or "I'm too that." That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means, I try to appreciate them exactly the way they are." --Ram Dass The art of being useless A certain carpenter was traveling with his helper when they came to a town where a giant oak tree filled the square. It was huge, with many limbs spreading out, and its shade covered the entire square. The helper was amazed at the potential lumber contained in this one tree but the carpenter passed it by with a mere glance. When his helper asked him why he had passed up such a magnificent specimen the carpenter replied that he could see at once that the great oak’s branches were useless to him. “They are so hard,” he said, “that were I to take my ax to them it would split. The wood is so heavy that a boat made of it would sink. The branches themselves are so gnarled and twisted they cannot be made into planks. If I tried to fashion house beams with it they would collapse. If I made a coffin from it you would not be able to fit someone inside. Altogether it is a completely useless tree." The carpenter added, "And that is the secret of its long life.” --Chuang Tzu (399 - 295 BC) The box in our mind In a box in a corner, a very dark comer of the mind of each of us is a voice. Or so says Zen writer Philip Kapleau. The voice says, "I am going to die. One day I am going to die." We tend not to venture near that corner. We rarely listen to that voice. Sometimes it speaks to us so clearly and emphatically that we have to listen. When we're sick, when we narrowly escape harm, when someone we know dies, we hear it speaking to us. We hear it more frequently as we age, as our bodies fail, as our cumulative experience of death increases. Sometimes the voice emits a powerful scream that shakes us mercilessly. When someone we love dies, the voice tells us that our life is forever altered, that there is no going back. "The voice reminds us that we are, like everyone else who ever lived, mortal, expendable. How we react to this voice, how we try block it out, will determine how we live our lives. The Zen of Living and Dying")
Certainly. There's lotsa stuff
that's no more.
Certainty, like death, is forever.
Change stops when you're dead.
Change does just that, keeps changing.
You can give up smoking
yet you can't give up changing.
Gave up smokin' fifty years ago.
Cigarettes, ash trays, things of my past.
There's something about ashes
everyone eventually ends up there.
Many of us make ashes of ourselves.
These Ifs surely can get ya.
And those Ands keep comin'.
But the Butts
no more for me.
Funny how this works.
Certainty, good riddance.
No Ifs Ands or Butts.
19 Lines Free Verse 93 Words October 2022
Pen illustration G. Gaul
Copyright © Greg Gaul | Year Posted 2022
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